Valuations on quality of service for intercity travels using high-speed rail

Abstract

There have been extensive studies on the monetary valuations for the transit service attributes such as fares, frequency, and in- and out-of-vehicle time. On the contrary, five categories of the elements relating to tangible, comfort, convenience, customer care, and safety and security have not been sufficiently evaluated. This paper explored the valuations based on the service improvements of Korean high-speed rail. The survey for attribute selection identified 11 user-tailored items for the betterment. Factors pertinent to comfort were predominantly preferred. Subsequently, choice experiments were conducted in the form of train-type choices. Binary logit models were then specified and estimated using the data collected. Monetary values were obtained in both individual attributes and a service bundle. Policy implications were also investigated in terms of price discriminations. The direction for future studies, particularly in examining user heterogeneity, was finally suggested.