A Psychological Approach to Demand Forecasting: A Measure of Potential User in Bus Service

Abstract

A recent trend in transport demand modeling with a focus on potential users emphasizes the understanding on the human decision-making process. Among various theories studying the process, loyalty-based theory has the closest relationship with the concept of potential users. However, conventional loyalty frameworks are insufficient for demand modeling. To address the issue, the present study proposed a psychological demand model based on a loyalty framework considering both service-quality-related and non-service-quality-related factors. The proposed model is able to quantify potential users and to measure maximum values of bus patronage respect to different service scenarios. Based on the proposed model, an increase of 18.05% on the group of car drivers could be expected to be at the highest priority for pushing up bus patronage in term of improving service quality. In contrast, a little increase was found on the group of non-car drivers with only 3.81% even an ideal service was provided.