Keywords

Willingness to Pay, Transportation, Value Elicitation

Abstract

How does one estimate the value of an individual's time? One possible way is to estimate how much a person is willing to pay for time savings. The majority of transportation studies have used stated preference surveys to estimate an individual's willingness to pay (WTP) for travel time savings. However, stated preferences approaches are subject to hypothetical bias since they elicit WTP for hypothetical outcomes instead of real outcomes. One study used a revealed preference approach in a natural experiment to elicit WTP for travel time savings but the data was for a non-recurring event, which was not replicable. The purpose of this pilot study is to explore new methods, using procedures from a replicable field experiment, to elicit individual WTP for travel time savings. By using a revealed preference approach in an experimental setting, we address the legitimate concern over hypothetical bias while allowing the experimental methods and resulting data set to be replicated in other settings. The results show that the proposed field experiment is feasible, and that a sample of college students places a value of $22.43 on an hour of time. This estimated value is significantly greater than zero. We also find that individual WTP for travel time savings is significantly larger than the average wage rate, and that this WTP varies significantly across certain demographics. We conclude by reviewing the simplifying assumptions made within the study and offer extensions of how our data set can be replicated in the future for more complete analysis.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2008

Advisor

Harrison, Glenn

Degree

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Business Administration

Department

Economics

Degree Program

Economics

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0002184

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0002184

Language

English

Release Date

September 2008

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

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Included in

Economics Commons

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