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Adaptation patterns to high speed rail usage in Taiwan and China

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Abstract

Understanding the gradual changes in travel behavior over time is essential to comprehending travelers’ adaptation process to new infrastructure. However, capturing cause and effect relationships in long-term travel behavior patterns is generally difficult to obtain even with panel data. This paper proposes a different data collection methodology, which aims at analyzing specifically the gradual changes of travel behavior. As a case study we analyze the usage of high speed rail in Taiwan and China over the last 8 years. By developing ten graphical long-term usage patterns with detailed usage descriptions, the behavioral dynamics of our sample could be captured and to some degree explained. Our results indicate that nearly all respondents can identify with one of the pattern. A comparison between stated usage frequency and our patterns illustrates further the additional information we obtain compared to “traditional” surveys. Analysis of the causes for usage changes further illustrates some marked differences between reasons for initial usage uptake (among others personality related factors), gradual usage increases (particularly service quality) and usage reductions (such as life events).

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Acknowledgments

We want to thank Dr. Zhang Dong for his support in collecting the data from China. During seminars in Kyoto we further received valuable feedback from Kay Axhausen, Satoshi Fujii, Nobuhiro Uno and several members of the ITS research group. A draft and shortened version of this paper was presented at the Annual Transportation Research Board Meeting 2016.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Urban Management, Kyoto University, C1-2-436, Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto, 615-8540, Japan

    Yeun-Touh Li & Jan-Dirk Schmöcker

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  1. Yeun-Touh Li
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  2. Jan-Dirk Schmöcker
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Correspondence to Yeun-Touh Li.

Appendix

Appendix

See Appendix Tables 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14.

Table 10 Motivation of starting to use HSR (Section A)
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Table 11 HSR usage increased (Section B)
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Table 12 Constantly using HSR (Section C)
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Table 13 HSR usage decreased (Section D)
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Table 14 Second HSR usage increased (Sect. 2B, specifically for pattern 10)
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Li, YT., Schmöcker, JD. Adaptation patterns to high speed rail usage in Taiwan and China. Transportation 44, 807–830 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-016-9679-5

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