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This dissertation answers these questions by integrating theories from the fields of microeconomics, psychology, marketing and transportation into mathematical models of traveler behavior. Subsequently, a computer-based travel environment is developed that simulates actual travel situations (involving for example time pressure, traffic jams and train delays). By observing the behavior of hundreds of participants to an experiment using the artificial travel environment, a unique dataset is obtained. Advanced econometrical analyses of the data, performed during a 4-month visit at MIT, show that the developed theoretical models form an adequate description of actual traveler behavior. And more importantly, they suggest that travelers are pretty good at dealing intelligently with complex travel situations and sophisticated information services.
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