Abstract:

In order to analyze the preference and influencing factors of air passengers’ travel mode choice of getting to an airport, this paper establishes a latent category Logit model considering the heterogeneity of passengers’ psychological fatigue. Firstly, a questionnaire survey at Nanjing Lukou Airport is conducted to obtain individual characteristics, psychological states and travel habits of 580 travelers, and psychological states of travelers are quantified by a five-level Likert scale, in which intrinsic attributes of the psychological states include perceived risk, emotional reflection, attitude reflection and perceived convenience. Secondly, the psychological state of travelers is assessed by using the psychological state scale, which includes seven dimensions: tension, fatigue, panic, depression, anger, energy and sense of self-esteem. Travelers are also classified according to the psychological fatigue score, and a latent category Logit model is established and compared with the mixed Logit model for analysis. Finally, the model parameters and marginal effects are evaluated, and the factors influencing air travelers’ choice of airport arrival modes are analyzed based on the model results.

The results show that the prediction accuracy of the latent category Logit model is 60.8%, and that of the mixed Logit model is 55.9%, indicating that the latent category Logit model has a better fitting effect. According to the classification of passengers’ mental fatigue, passengers can be classified into low, medium and severe mental fatigue types, accounting for 36%, 48% and 16% respectively. The low, medium and severe mental fatigue travelers correspond to the subway preference group, the airport bus preference group and the cab preference group respectively. Travelers’ gender, age, income, body mass index and situations like whether they carry bulky luggage, whether they own a private car, and whether they travel alone also have significant effects on the choice of arrival mode.

An increase in mental fatigue makes travelers less sensitive to travel costs, and travelers with low mental fatigue are more concerned about travel costs and tend to choose the subway or an airport bus as the mode of arrival to the airport. Therefore, city public transport providers can provide targeted services to improve traveler satisfaction by identifying the characteristics of air travelers. In the group of travelers with low psychological fatigue, perceived risk and emotional response are significant, and their coefficients are negative: for an increase of each unit, the probability ratio of travelers belonging to the subway preference group decreases by 48% and 42% respectively. However, attitude reflection and perceived convenience are significant, and their coefficients are positive: for an increase of each unit, the probability ratio of travelers belonging to the subway preference group increases by 89% and 67% respectively. In addition, in the group of moderately mentally fatigued travelers, the coefficients of perceived risk and emotional response are significant and negative, with an increase of each unit decreasing the probability ratio of travelers belonging to the airport bus preference group by 49% and 46% respectively. Consideration of psychological characteristics in the choice of travel mode has important implications for a deeper understanding of sustainable transportation.