“Incorporating Social Interaction into Hybrid Choice Models.”

摘要

The aim of this paper is to develop a methodological framework for the incorporation of socialinteraction effects into choice models. The developed method provides insights for modeling theeffect of social interaction on the formation of psychological factors (latent variables) and on thedecision-making process. The assumption is based on the fact that the way the decision makeranticipates and processes the information regarding the behavior and the choices exhibited inher/his social environment, affects her/his attitudes and perceptions, which in turn affect her/hischoices. The proposed method integrates choice models with decision makers’ psychologicalfactors and latent social interaction. The model structure is simultaneously estimated providing animprovement over sequential methods as it provides consistent and efficient estimates of theparameters. The methodology is tested within the context of a household aiming to identify thesocial interaction effects between teenagers and their parents regarding walking-loving behaviorand then the effect of this on mode to school choice behavior. The sample consists of 9,714participants aged from 12 to 18 years old, representing 21% of the adolescent population ofCyprus. The findings from the case study indicate that if the teenagers anticipate that their parentsare walking lovers, then this increases the probability of teenagers to be walking-lovers too and inturn to choose walking to school. Generally, the findings from the application result in: a)improvements in the explanatory power of choice models, b) latent variables that are statisticallysignificant, and c) a real-world behavioral representation that includes the social interaction effect.