Agent-Based Simulation of Children's School Travel Mode with Parental Escort Decisions

Authored by Peng Jing, Qingku You, Long Chen

Date Published: 2018

DOI: 10.3390/info9030050

Sponsors: No sponsors listed

Platforms: AnyLogic

Model Documentation: Other Narrative Mathematical description

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

In the last few years, the number of private cars has expanding quickly in China, more and more parents use cars to escort their children to school, thus cause serious traffic congestions near school in many cities. In this paper, we developed an agent-based model (ABM) of the parents' choice of escort mode. The core of this model is an escort mode choice motivation adjustment function that combines distance, traffic safety and social influence. We also used ABM to exhibit the emergent decoy effect phenomenon, which is a dynamic phenomenon that the introduction of a decoy to the choice-set could increase the share of other alternatives. The model reveals the parents' inner psychological mechanism when facing competing escort mode choice in transportation system. The simulation results show that the proportion of parents to choose bus escort was 62.45\% without the decoy effect was introduced, while the proportion of parents to choose bus escort increased to 74.29\% with the decoy effect was entry. The use of the ABM method gives the potential to cope with the dynamic changes in studying parent escort mode choice behavior.

Tags

Agent-based model Walking Attitudes Children Choice Transport Gender Parental escort decision School travel mode Decoy effect