This paper provides an overview of research results obtained in the NWO/Connekt Program 'Behavioral aspects of a Personal Intelligent Travel Assistant' (PITA). First, it is put forward how PITA-research has formalized the role of information in traveler decision making by making use of the concept of Bayesian updating and choice set updating for travelers with different decision styles. Then, the results of computer simulations and data-analysis based on a websurvey and a multimodal travel simulator are presented. Three important conclusions that may be drawn from the PITA-research effort performed so far are as follows: firstly, travelers' need for personalized information from PITA-like services is predominantly motivated by the aim of making travel easier. Secondly, it appears that travelers are very well able to deal with complex choice situations involving multiple types of knowledge limitations and information provision in an intelligent, efficient manner. Thirdly, it appears that travelers' actual use of provided information does increase the queality of their subsequent choices. (Author/publisher)
Abstract