Treatment of Respondent Uncertainty in Stated-Choice Survey for Fare Simplification on Bus Journeys

This paper presents the findings of an analysis making use of a stated choice (SC) survey looking at bus travellers’ preferences for specific fare structures. Specifically, respondents were given the choice between the current fare structure, which is largely distance based, a fixed fare structure, and a zonal fare structure. It was anticipated that there might be two sources of substantial respondent uncertainty, in relation to the current fare as well as the number of zones a specific journey covers. These two types of uncertainty could create a significant level of bias in the results, and in this paper, we put forward a modelling approach that allows us to accommodate this respondent uncertainty and avoid the source of bias.