Understanding of the sensitivity of weather on people’s mode choice decision : a case study in Sweden

• This paper investigates the influence of weather condition on Swedish people’s mode choice, using Swedish National Transport Survey Data and daily weather data from Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute. Since time duration covered in these data is 13 years and distinct regions all over Sweden are included, seasonal effect and regional effect of weather indicators on individual’s mode choice decision are studied. The sensitivity of these weather indicators on mode choice is investigated using multinomial logit model. Results show that, in mode choice decision, Swedish people are more sensitive to temperature increase when it is below 10°C than when it is up to 10°C. Also the sensitivity to temperature and precipitation varies in different temperature and precipitation intervals, which is similar to the notion of perception constraint. Also further analysis indicates that sensitivity of weather indicator differs in different seasons and different regions. Temperature increase has a positive effect on walk choice in summer, while the opposite holds true in other three seasons. However the influence of precipitation in different seasons seems to be vague, probably because increased precipitation leads to a slight shortening of the distance and thus would increase the share of non-motorized mode, which interacts with the direct effect that precipitation would reduce the share of non-motorized mode. Regional effect shows that,generally speaking, people in north Sweden are less affected by changing of weather than that in south and middle Sweden. However north bicycle users’ sensitivity to temperature in autumn is much larger than that for middle and south bicycle users, showing a lagged effect of willing to use bicycle in north after summer when weather is still moderate (autumn temperature>0°C).

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Samhällsbyggnadsteknik -- Transportteknik och logistik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Civil Engineering -- Transport Systems and Logistics (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)