The seminar programme for September-December 2011 is currently being finalised, and will be sent next week. The intention is to reduce the number of advertising emails delivered to the UTSG list. Further dates available for presentations are: 14 Oct, 18/25 Nov, and 2/9 Dec. Please get in touch if you would like to present on any of these dates.
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For details of the first seminar in the series, please see below:

Analysis of multi-agent choices in transportation: household residential choice and freight agent policy preferences
Edoardo Marcucci (DIPES/CREI, University of Roma Tre, Roma Italy)

Time/Date: 14:30, Friday 9th September 2011
Location: Institute for Transport Studies Lecture Theatre, University of Leeds

Summary: The first part of the presentation reports the results of a study that investigates the dissimilarities between individual and joint decision-making in the context of residential location choice. It is widely recognized that household location choices involve several members of a household with heterogeneous preferences and influence. Nonetheless, little is known about group decision-making processes in practice. In particular, there is only scant evidence on how preferences differ among family members and to what extent individual preferences can be aggregated to achieve an approximation of joint choices. The presentation addresses the issue of heterogeneity in single members' preferences, compares ex ante single preferences and ex post joint choice outcomes, and quantifies the implicit bias generated by relying on the representative member approach. A set of hypotheses is tested via a two-stage conjoint choice experiment administered to a sample of 78 Italian families. The main novelty relates to the extension of the dyadic interaction approach to consider the role of adolescents in household decision-making.

The second part of the presentation addresses a somewhat similar choice context (three decision makers interacting in dyads) contextualized in the case of urban freight distribution representing both a complex and relevant field of application.

City logistic policy definition and evaluation requires an understanding of several specific issues (e.g. freight distribution context, preferences and relationship among agents) seldom investigated in current research. Policy implementation runs the risk of producing unsatisfactory results since behavioural and contextual aspects are neglected. The acquisition of relevant data is crucial to test hypotheses and forecast agents' reactions to policy changes. The development and wide application of appropriate survey instruments to test innovative policy ex-ante acceptability is still lacking despite recent and promising methodological advances in modelling interactive behaviour. The presentation describes the results of a Volvo Research Foundation Report that expands and innovates the methodological literature by describing a stated ranking experiment aimed at studying freight agent interactive behaviour and discusses in detail the efficient experimental design implemented to incorporate agent specific interaction in city logistic literature.

The only seemingly unrelated topics dealt with in the seminar represent two examples of cooperative (the first) and non-cooperative (the second) environment in which group decision making is analyzed via discrete choice experiments in order to capture the policy relevant issues that might be overlooked when considering just single agent choices contexts. In fact, there is growing evidence indicating that there can be significant differences between choices made by single individuals and those made by the same individuals when choosing collectively.


More details about the department, as well as a map and directions can be found at: http://www.its.leeds.ac.uk/
All welcome (no booking required), refreshments provided. Please get in contact for any further details.

About the ITS Seminar Series
The seminar series provides a forum for dissemination, discussion, evaluation and feedback on topics from across the spectrum of transport disciplines - researchers and practitioners are welcome - for presentation to a group of fellow professionals with shared interests.  The audience is usually 20-50 in size, including members of ITS & the University, visiting researchers, and UTSG members. Optional video recording is also available, for wider dissemination subsequently via the web.


Best wishes,

Daz Hibberd
PhD Student
Institute for Transport Studies (Room 304)
University of Leeds
LS2 9JT
U.K.
Tel: 0113 34 31 788