In transport related market research, the use of strength-of-preference indicators (e.g. ranking and rating) to elicit consumer preferences hasdeclined in favour of more basic choice tasks. The frequently cited reason for this trend is that choosing a preferred alternative from a given choice set is more natural to consumers than ranking or rating choice options. That said, in some circumstances the respondent might welcome the opportunity to indicate their strength of preference to communicate a strongly preferred option or where they are indifferent between options (Burge et al, 2000, Swallow, 2001). Allowing respondents to rank or rate alternatives could therefore enhance the respondent experience and potentially provide a richer dataset for model estimation. There are however technical issues regarding interpersonal comparison of preferences when working with strength-of-preference data - does the statement "Strongly Prefer Option A" meanthe same thing to different individuals? In this paper, we extend and apply the ordered response logit model to data from the 1987 UK Value of TimeStudy (MVA, 1987). This data involves a preference rating exercise for two travel options described in terms of time and cost. To examine the influence of model structure on the value of time we estimate a series or models ranging from a simple binary logit through to a brand new specification referred to a mixed ordered response logit. As expected, the levels of model fit improve as the models become more complex but it is interesting to note particularly significant improvements when random variation of the structural coefficients of the ordered response logit are specified. For thecovering abstract see ITRD E135582
Abstract