Investigating travelers’ heterogeneous attitudes toward losses: insights from a stated preference experiment

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the heterogeneity property of travelers’ loss attitudes. Specifically, three assumptions are made: 1) travelers’ loss attitudes are attribute-specific; 2) travelers’ loss attitudes are related to their socio-demographic attributes; and 3) the reverse of loss aversion may also occur to some travelers. An ordered logit model allowing for heterogeneous loss-attitude effect is proposed, whose ability is proved by two synthetic data sets. An empirical data set based on a stated preference experiment is further collected and used to examine the three assumptions. The estimation results confirm all proposed assumptions and reveal some interesting insights about the influence of loss attitude in travelers’ choice behavior that rarely found in previous studies. In addition, an analysis of WTP/WTA involving travelers’ loss attitudes is also carried out.