In freight transport demand research, most surveys claiming a behavioural approach tend to assume that the firm is the sole unit of behaviour. Such research has tended to disregard the nature of human choice and assumes that freight transport demand, and in particular modal choice, can be explained in terms of cost relationships or technological phenomena. Other surveys assume that the preferences of particular organisational members can be equated with the use made of modes by shipper firms. The paper presents a survey approach which seeks to identify relevant socio-organisational groups and examines their relationship to the technology of the transport system. A socio-organisational group is defined as people employed by different firms but undertaking broadly similar tasks (e.g. traffic managers). members of such groups develop shared implicit theories derived from similar roles and tasks in organisations and shared professional affiliations. The modal choice or preference of the socio-organisational group will be based on its implicit theory. The modal use of the firm is the result of the interaction of different socio-organisational groups. insights into implicit theories are gained by means of a personalised survey in which respondents themselves provide a large part of the contents of their questionnaires within a formal framework. The implicit theory is assumed to be revealed in the formal relationships between objects (e.g. modes) and concepts related to the objects. Although each individual respondent's questionnaire is personalised, it is possible to aggregate the formal relationships. (Author/publisher) for the covering abstract of the conference see IRRD 286978.
Samenvatting