Pre-commitment and usage: Season tickets, cars and travel

Abstract

Travellers commit themselves to particular behaviours through the ownership of cars and season tick- ets. They trade a large one-off payment for low or zero marginal cost at the point of use. To the knowledge of the authors there is no literature which addresses this joint decision. The paper presents an initial model based on a small Swiss 1999 representative sample survey. Using a structural equation model to test a-priori hypotheses on the paths linking car ownership, sea- son ticket ownership and modal usage. The results confirm the dominance of car ownership, which drives the other variables, in particular season ticket ownership. Still, car usage is complementary with public transport usage through direct positive links to season ticket ownership and public transport us- age. The paper concludes with research questions raised by results so far.