Twenty-four college students judged the probability that they would ride hypothetical bus systems for a work trip (to or from a job or school) and for a leisure trip (to or from shopping or recreation). Bus systems varied in terms of the attributes of fare, total walking distance to and from the bus stop, number of intervening stops enroute, and time of service during the day. An information-integration model was used in which the subject's response is assumed to be aweighted geometric average of the subjective values of the attributes describing a system. The effect of trip purpose was accounted forby changes in the weight and subjective value of information. This approach increases the generality of results by using psychologically meaningful parameters to specify how the effect of an attribute varies from one situation to another.(A)
Abstract