Automatic Preferences in the Choice of Transport Mode

There is a growing consensus currently among transportation researchers on the importance of psychological aspects in the choice of transport mode, but there has been difficulty in determining the strength of this aspect on the mode decision. This paper provides a new basic framework for automatic preferences (AP) data and automatic choice (AC) methods when applied subconscious choices on modes of transport and the associations of positive qualities and modal choices. The framework also includes the observable attributes of travel time, waiting time, number of transshipment, costs, and socioeconomic characteristics of the users, all of which may have an influence in the mode choice. The most relevant results obtained were the automatic association between the car and positive constructs in the car users, and a large difficulty in obtaining an association that is a positive construct to the bus. The bus users also can associate more easily to this mode with positive constructs than the car users.