Choice Modelling and Valuation Research

In many fields, the choices made by individuals will determine the effectiveness of policy. Therefore, understanding what drives people's choices and how these choices may change is critical for developing successful policy. Discrete choice modelling provides an analytical framework with which to examine and quantify the importance of key drivers of people’s choices. Moreover, in appraising policy options, the value placed on services, goods or environment by the population will determine whether public or private investments are worthwhile. Discrete choice modelling provides a crucial method for understanding and measuring the values attached by people to a variety of marketed and non-market goods and services.

The Choice Modelling and Valuation group provides specific expertise in using discrete choice modelling methods to understand and predict choice behaviour as a result of policy intervention. This work is frequently undertaken in the transport sector, but increasingly we are applying our expertise in other sectors, for example health and social care, post and communications and provision of regulated consumer services. Our contribution has been to take these methods out of the university environment and make them applicable to forecasting and evaluation issues in policy analysis.

Our Work in the Transport Sector

RAND Europe specialises in the development of discrete choice travel demand models to address a wide range of transport policy options. The models are based entirely on evidence, using observations of individual travel behaviour. The model systems predict traveller responses under a wide range of policies, and take account of demographic changes over time. We develop models to evaluate transport policy at an urban, regional, national and international scale.

Members of RAND Europe's Choice Modelling and Valuation group have contributed to the development and testing of new modelling approaches in transport studies for decades. Several research studies have recently been conducted for the UK and other governments, as well as for transport operators.

Valuation Studies

RAND Europe has significant experience undertaking economic valuation studies to quantify the value of public sector goods and services across a range of sectors including transport, health, information and postal sectors. We provide specialist expertise in the use of stated preference methods, particularly stated choice experiments for eliciting consumers’ willingness to pay.

Valuations can be provided from DCM in the form of marginal benefits (e.g. willingness to pay) or in the form of consumer surplus or other overall measures of satisfaction.

Featured Research

Do Attitudes Affect Choices, or Vice Versa? — 19 Aug 2011

Growing interest in the use of models that recognise the role of individuals' attitudes and perceptions in choice behaviour has influenced a team of RAND Europe researchers to examine the latent nature of attitudes. In an article in Transportation they present an application of jointly estimated attitudinal and choice models to a real-world transport study, looking at the role of latent attitudes in a rail travel context. The result of their work is an ordered logit structure that explains how the choices people make may be strongly influenced by their attitudes, but that the choices also say something about those attitudes.

Current ProjectsMore »

Assessing the Public Perception of Security and Privacy in Europe

Security technologies and related measures are implemented to mitigate likely risks from terrorist attacks and other threats, but these technologies and measures may compete with privacy and civil liberties. RAND Europe is participating in PACT, a 3-year EU-funded research project to assess existing knowledge about the relation between security and privacy; collect empirical evidence through a pan-European survey; and analyze the main factors that affect how the public perceives the security and privacy implications of security technology.

What Types of Interventions Change Energy Using Behaviours?

The UK Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) commissioned RAND Europe to conduct a rapid evidence assessment on the question of “Which types of interventions work the best in changing energy using behaviours?” The review will cover energy use in the home, including for heating space, heating water, lighting, and electrical appliances; the research team's focus is on interventions — such as social marketing, customer or community engagement, education, and regulation — whose primary aim is to affect habitual behaviours.

Completed ResearchMore »

Modelling Transport Demand in Sydney, Australia — 13 Mar 2012

Transport for New South Wales (NSW) operates the Sydney Strategic Travel Model (STM) to inform long term transport planning, policy development, and infrastructure assessment in Greater Sydney, Australia. The STM was developed in 1999-2002 and updated and expanded in 2009-10. At the request of the NSW Bureau of Transport Statistics, RAND Europe implemented the new travel frequency, mode, and destination model components of the STM and extended the model scope to include toll road choice for car drivers, and park-and-ride and kiss-and-ride access to train.

Developing a Vision for Qatar's School Transportation System — 21 Feb 2012

Considering the challenges associated with continued growth and demographic changes, the government of Qatar is interested in updating its school transportation system (STS). RAND Europe helped to assess the perspectives of parents and school administrators, identify a vision for the STS, and discuss strategies to achieve it. The four elements of the vision: providing safe, efficient, and high-quality transportation; enabling mobility and access; supporting Qatari values and culture; and minimizing the impact on traffic congestion and the environment.

What Factors Affect the Wider Adoption of Electric Vehicles? — 17 Feb 2012

To understand the factors affecting the wider adoption of electric vehicles, RAND Europe has sponsored a project to evaluate the barriers, as well as relevant government and public-private interventions that have been used in other countries to facilitate adoption. The project team will also conduct a survey to determine the potential uptake of electric vehicles within a municipality, using Cambridge, UK, as a case study.

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Choice Modelling & Valuation

Contact Information

Charlene Rohr, Director, Choice Modelling & Valuation, RAND Europe

Peter Burge, Associate Director, Choice Modelling & Valuation, RAND Europe

Researcher Spotlight

Andrew Daly

Senior Research Fellow

Andrew Daly

Andrew Daly is a Senior Research Fellow in RAND Europe's Choice Modelling and Valuation Group. He is also a Research Professor at the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds and the developer and supporter of the ALOGIT software package for choice modelling.

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