https://hdl.handle.net/2123/17668 2026-06-13T04:04:42Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19417 Ordered choices and heterogeneity in attribute processing Greene, William H; Hensher, David A. A growing number of empirical studies involve the assessment of influences on a choice amongst ordered discrete alternatives. Ordered logit and probit models are well known, including extensions to accommodate random parameters and heteroscedasticity in unobserved variance. This paper extends the ordered choice random parameter model to permit random parameterization of thresholds and decomposition to establish observed sources of systematic variation in the threshold parameter distribution. We illustrate the empirical gains of this model over the traditional ordered choice model in the context of identifying candidate influences on the role that specific attributes play, in the sense of being ignored or not, in an individual’s choice amongst unlabelled attribute packages of alternative tolled and non-tolled routes for the commuting trip. The empirical ordering represents the number of attributes attended to from the full fixed set. The evidence suggests that there is significant heterogeneity associated with the thresholds, that can be connected to systematic sources associated with the respondent (i.e., gender) and the choice experiment, and hence the generalized extension of the ordered choice model is an improvement, behaviourally, over the simpler model. 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19470 Urban transport in Australia: Has it reached breaking point? Stanley, John; Hensher, David Urban transport problems have become major community concerns in Australian’s largest cities, a reflection of significant market failures in facility and service provision. This paper suggests that a lack of focus on transport system planning is a major reason for the current concerns. The challenges posed by climate change are argued to require transformational changes in the way we approach urban transport problems, with radical reform of pricing system an early priority for action. Infrastructure development priorities are then outlined. 2009-07-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19475 The emergence of interactions as strategic entities in value chain networks Bhattacharjya, Jyotirmoyee; Walters, David Purpose: The article analyses the interactions that are engaged in when specialist organisations collaborate in value chain networks. It aims to bridge the gap between existing theory and emerging practices and identify a conceptual foundation for future research and practical application. Interaction costs are described as including transaction costs plus the costs for exchanging ideas and information. Design/methodology/approach: The paper adopts a conceptual approach, and introduces the basic elements of an interaction theory based on past theory and current practices. Findings: In an increasingly global economy, reducing risks while maximizing returns for emerging business models are a key concern. The article puts forward the view that as interaction costs decrease, potential business partners have greater scope to interlink their business strategies and operations to co-create value. It discusses the nature of interactions and highlights three factors that are either reducing interaction costs or increasing the effectiveness or frequency of interactions, thus increasing their facility for business purposes: the convergence of technologies, the delineation of roles within value chain business networks, and the emergence of innovative interaction strategies among network participants. It concludes by emphasizing the importance of an interactions strategy through an analysis of IKEA’s business model from an interactions perspective. Originality/value: The paper provides the basis of an interactions framework for researchers and practitioners to analyse value adding activities and to develop strategies in value chain networks. 2009-04-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19401 A framework for strategic decision-making and performance among Chinese managers Lok, Peter; Rhodes, Jo; Cheng, Vincent This study develops an integrative model that explains the relationship between Chinese culture, managers’ strategic decision making (SDM) processes, and organizational performance. 1200 participants were randomly selected from a business club’s company register, resulting in 204 valid respondents. The results highlighted two significant SDM paths used by managers: (1) The cognitive-speed path, which suggested that Overseas Chinese managers (the Chinese who live outside of Mainland China ) focus on the big picture, draw analogies from past experiences, and use extensive networks to reduce the duration of the decision process. (2)The social-political path which shows that Overseas Chinese managers focus on collective interests, strive to maintain harmony, and to save face whilst using a collaborative style to handle conflict; this approach reduces dysfunctional political behavior, while reinforcing the decision team’s focus on common goals. From these results we concluded that a speedier decision making process (based on intuition, experience and networks) accompanied by the appropriate use of political behavior (that created harmony, through a hierarchical structure, during conflict management) in the Overseas Chinese managers’ strategic decision making process could positively influence organizational performance. 2009-07-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19415 Hypothetical bias, choice experiments and willingness to pay Hensher, David A. There is growing interest in establishing the extent of differences in willingness to pay (WTP) for attributes, such as travel time savings, that are derived from real market settings and hypothetical (to varying degrees) settings. Non-experiment external validity tests involving observation of choice activity in a natural environment, where the individuals do not know they are in an experiment, are rare. In contrast the majority of tests are a test of external validity between hypothetical and actual experiments. Deviation from real market evidence is referred to in the literature broadly as hypothetical bias. The challenge is to identify such bias, and to the extent to which it exists, establishing possible ways to minimise it. This paper reviews the efforts to date to identify and ‘calibrate’ WTP derived from one or more methods that involve assessment of hypothetical settings, be they (i) contingent valuation methods, (ii) choice experiments involving trading attributes between multiple alternatives, with or without referencing, or (iii) methods involving salient or non-salient incentives linked to actual behaviour. Despite progress in identifying possible contributions to differences in marginal WTP, there is no solid evidence, although plenty of speculation, to explain the differences between all manner of hypothetical experiments and non-experimental evidence. The absence of non-experimental evidence from natural field experiments remains a major barrier to confirmation of under or overestimation. We find, however, that the role of referencing of an experiment relative to a real experience (including evidence from revealed preference (RP) studies), in the design of choice experiments, appears to offer promise in the derivation of estimates of WTP that have a meaningful link to real market activity, closing the gap between RP and SC WTP outputs. 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19420 Discrete location planning Haase, Knut Two new models for discrete location planning under static competition are introduced. The empirical context is an enterprise that is planning to set up a number of stores in various locations. The probability that a customer chooses a specific store is obtained from a multinomial logit (MNL) model. In the first model we apply the basic MNL model where the choice set contains all potential locations. To obtain the choice probabilities of a reduced choice set, we take advantage of the property of constant substitution patterns which can be modelled by linear constraints. In the second model we consider the case where flexible substitution patterns are accounted for. The main idea is to simulate, for a given number of individuals, their alternative specific utility values. Thus for each individual, we can identify which locations have to be opened to attract an individual as a customer. We consider two parcel service providers in the City of Dresden. Both approaches can be solved very fast within few minutes with a small solution gap by a state-of-the-art solver. 2009-03-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19445 Petrol consumption and emissions from automobiles: Can policies make a difference? Li, Zheng; Rose, John M.; Hensher, David A. The use of fossil fuels in transportation has increasingly become an important topic as a result of growing concerns over global warming. Automobile petrol demand has been of particular interest to researchers and policy makers, given that the automobile is considered to be a major contributor to the enhanced greenhouse effect. This paper seeks to predict Australia’s automobile petrol demand up to the year 2020 based on the best performing forecasting model selected out of eight models. In order to establish ways to reduce emissions for cars, we estimated the impact on CO2 for several potential policy instruments, using TRESIS 1.4 (an integrated transport, land use and environmental strategy impact simulation program). 2009-05-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19451 A strategic-level modelling tool for evaluating air quality and greenhouse gas mitigation strategies for urban road freight in Sydney Greaves, Stephen This paper details the development of a strategic-level modelling tool to evaluate the impacts of air quality and greenhouse gas mitigation strategies for urban freight. The model, known as STEAR-F (Strategic Tool for the Environmental Analysis of Road Freight) combines publicly available information on freight travel, fleet characteristics, and emission factors to provide estimates of total Greenhouse Gas (GHG) and non-GHG emissions. Following details of the model development and underlying assumptions, STEAR-F is applied to evaluate strategies currently under consideration in the Sydney region. These include accelerated vehicle scrappage programs, diesel vehicle retrofit programs, Low Emission Zones, alternative fuel programs, and educational/information programs focused on driver behaviour, new technologies and proactive vehicle maintenance. 2009-03-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19477 Constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function can greatly overestimate the economic costs of climate policies. Truong, Truong P. In this paper, we look at a modification to the conventional constant-elasticity-of-substitution (CES) production function to arrive at a more general specification which can allow for varying, or ‘flexible’ elasticity of substitution (FES). The function reduces to the CES as a special case, hence it is more general. We use the new function in a climate policy experiment to test the usefulness and robustness of the new function. It turns out that using the new function in an economic model can give estimates of the economic costs of a climate policy which is about half of the costs as estimated from a conventional CES production function specification. This has significant implication, not only for climate policy, but also for any other economic policy which relies on models which use the CES production function specification as a basic building block. 2009-07-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19455 Attribute processing, heuristics, and preference construction in choice analysis Hensher, David A. It has long been recognized that humans draw from a large pool of processing aids to help manage the everyday challenges of life. It is not uncommon to observe individual’s adopting simplifying strategies when faced with ever increasing amounts of information to process, and especially for decisions where the chosen outcome will have a very marginal impact on their well being. The transactions costs associated with processing all new information often exceed the benefits from such a comprehensive review. The accumulating life experiences of individuals are also often brought to bear as reference points to assist in selectively evaluating information placed in front of them. These features of human processing and cognition are not new to the broad literature on judgment and decision making, where heuristics are offered up as deliberative analytic procedures intentionally designed to simplify choice. What is surprising is the limited recognition of heuristics that individuals use to process the attributes in stated choice experiments. In this paper we present a case for a utility-based framework within which some appealing processing strategies are embedded (without the aid of supplementary self-stated intentions), as well as models conditioned on self-stated intentions represented as single items of process advice, and illustrate the implications on willingness to pay for travel time savings of embedding each heuristic in the choice process. Given the controversy surrounding the reliability of self-stated intentions, we introduce a framework in which mixtures of process advice embedded within a belief function might be used in future empirical studies to condition choice, as a way of increasingly judging the strength of the evidence. 2009-04-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19469 European aviation liberalization: A view from afar King, John M C This paper traces the development of Australia’s aviation relationship with European countries and shows how new European air carriers have entered and exited the market. The traffic rights available and the emergence of codes-shares as a marketing presence and network substitute for own aircraft operations is demonstrated. Negotiations between Australia and the European Union for a so-called ‘horizontal’ agreement to replace the 16 existing air service agreements are discussed and the obstacles to such an agreement identified. Similarly, a review of air service arrangements and operations arising there from both ASEAN states and New Zealand with Europe is conducted. The paper concludes by noting New Zealand’s very limited physical operations with Europe whereas ASEAN carriers have extensive physical operations but ASEAN has a very limited capacity to negotiate a horizontal agreement with the European Union. The rise of the Gulf State carriers through geo-political optimization of traffic rights and location has led to the replacement of European service by European carriers with service by carriers from Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha. 2009-09-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19418 Costing value chain relationships: A challenge for strategic cost management and value chain management Walters, David The global business environment is changing rapidly. Among the many changes are a number of challenges; one important change being the increase in inter-organisational relationship management and the challenge being – how do we cost the transactions between these increasingly different value chain network structures. Strategic cost management (and analysis) has attempted to explore these issues. Shank J and V Govindarajan (1993) probably offered the most visible approach of the 1990s using Porter’s value chain and contributions from Scherer (1980) and Riley (1987) Chandler (1962). Shim and Siegal (2000) identified the value chain as being important from two perspectives; strategy and administration and management accounting. Macri, Silvi and Zanoni (2000) began to tackle the issues of inter-organisational relationships. This paper discusses the characteristics of the “new economy” business model and proposes that the ‘structural costs’ of Scherer and the ‘executional’ costs of Riley be reviewed in the context of the value chain network structures that are increasing in number and application. To do this we discuss the interpretations of value from a purchaser and a corporate perspective, introduce the notion of value builders and value drivers as planning and costing concepts and revisit activity based management on the way to making proposals for a value chain network costing approach. 2009-03-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19527 Incorporating model uncertainty into the generation of efficient stated choice experiments: A model averaging approach Rose, John M.; Scarpa, Riccardo; Bliemer, Michiel C.J. Stated choice (SC) studies typically rely on the use of an underlying experimental design to construct the hypothetical choice situations shown to respondents. These designs are constructed by the analyst, with several different ways of constructing these designs having been proposed in the past. Recently, there has been a move from so-called orthogonal designs to more efficient designs. Efficient designs optimize the design such that the data will lead to more reliable parameter estimates for the model under consideration. The literature dealing with the generation of efficient designs has examined and largely solved the issue of a requirement for a prior knowledge of the parameter estimates that will be obtained post data collection. Nevertheless, problems related to the fact that the efficiency of a SC experiment is related to the variance-covariance matrix of the model to be estimated and that different econometric models will have different variance-covariance matrix, thus resulting in different levels of efficiency for the same design, has yet to be addressed. In this paper, we propose the use of a model averaging process over different econometric models to solve this problem. Via the use of a case study, we show that designs generated using the model averaging process prove robust to different model estimation as well as provide decent levels of protection against biased parameter estimates relative to designs generated specifically for a given model type. 2009-04-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19482 Is ‘Compact City’ a sensible planning approach? Empirical evidence of cross perceptions of travel attitudes in British settlements Aditjandra, Paulus T.; Mulley, Corinne; Nelson, John D. This paper will present empirically based evidence from the UK in respect of the impact of neighbourhood design on travel behaviour using a case-study approach. The case-study is based on the metropolitan area of Tyne and Wear, North East of England. Ten different neighbourhoods have been carefully selected to characterise two different types of traditional and suburban neighbourhood street layouts. A self-administered questionnaire has been delivered to 2,200 households to capture neighbourhood design, travel patterns, travel attitudes and socio-economic characteristics. Multivariate analysis of cross-sectional data shows that some socio-economic variables as well as travel attitudes and neighbourhood design preferences can explain the differences in travel patterns. Furthermore, the application of a regression analysis model for different neighbourhood types reveals that the traditional neighbourhood group has more sensitive factors that influence the differences in travel pattern than the suburban neighbourhood group, suggesting that land-use policy designed to accommodate low carbon-based travel neighbourhood characteristics will have greater impact on the traditional group than the suburban group. This finding suggests that the generic measures implied by UK land-use policy to promote sustainable mobility should be selectively targeted. 2009-08-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19436 Commentary on the report to COAG by Infrastructure Australia Stone, Alastair In December 2008, Infrastructure Australia issued a Report to the Council of Australian Governments, http://www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/files/A_Report_to_the_Council_of_Austra lian_Governments.pdf that establishes a framework for the provision of public infrastructure services in the transport, energy, water and communications sectors of the Australian economy. Measured against the approach used by the World Bank it contains many positive features but falls short of what should be expected from a developed economy. This paper follows the framework of the Infrastructure Australia Report to comment on the absence of sufficient rigor in the subject matter addressed including by mixing social/political discussion with economic, by taking a national/external account framework as the focus of economic development, by ignoring the need for review of existing institutional arrangements including Commonwealth/State relations on infrastructure investment and collections (user charges and taxes), Many of the comments would be met by seeking to institute in the discussion on infrastructure in Australia what the World Bank terms Sector Analysis in each of the four nominated sectors. General suggestions are made on how to overcome specific shortcomings identified in the current approach. 2009-03-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19459 A study of a trusting partnership between government and industry Mellish, Darryl This paper is about reform to rural and regional bus services. The Stage 1 and 2 reforms were not done in true partnership with Industry and those experiences were published for T10. The Stage 3, Rural and Regional Reforms, were much closer to achieving trusting partnerships. The Stage 3 reforms also provide important examples and experiences in the way social exclusion can be addressed and how different funding options can be applied. The Government’s School Student Travel Scheme (SSTS) is the framework for services in rural and regional areas. This paper covers all of the conference themes and contrasts the different approaches in Stage 3 to the earlier stages. The political environment has been changing in the NSW jurisdiction and this has had a big impact on the reform and partnership debate. Competition in rural and regional areas presents a different challenge than in urban areas and value for money and service planning have different dynamics. In most rural and regional areas cost recovery is very low and service design has been based on population rather than travel demand. The Rural and Regional Reforms allowed Government to ensure greater community consultation in the planning of bus services and included performance reporting, which was previously lacking as a mechanism to determine renewal. The rollout of new contracts with accompanying explanatory notes was the work of a joint BusNSW/Government Taskforce and are key features of the Stage 3 reforms. 2009-09-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19456 Using value chain networks to enhance cash flow management and create corporate value: Some observations Walters, David Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which cash flow management, the value of the organisation, and strategic decision making are correlated. Methodology/Approach: A cash flow model is proposed based upon four levels of strategy decisions. The business press has been monitored for a period of twelve months to find evidence of linkages between cash flow management and strategy decisions. Findings: There is sufficient evidence to suggest that a number of organisations do consider cash flow management and strategy decisions as related and that both have an impact on the value of the organisation. Research limitations/implications: This project was designed to validate the notion of an awareness of the links between these important aspects of corporate decision making. The scope of the findings has been limited by the number and content of the material; however further research using case studies as a primary method of approach is justified. Practical implications: The evidence presented suggests a logical approach among a number of companies when seeking to increase their value. It suggests an increasing awareness of the importance of cash flow by senior management. Originality/value of paper: As the concept of network based business structures expands the role of the NPV of future cash flows generated from strategic and structural decisions is likely to become the preferred measure of potential performance criteria. 2009-04-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19457 Road transport and climate change: Stepping off the greenhouse gas Stanley, John K.; Hensher, David A.; Loader, Chris Transport is Australia’s third largest and second fastest growing source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The road transport sector makes up 88 percent of total transport emissions and the projected emissions increase from 1990 to 2020 is 64 percent. Achieving prospective emission reduction targets will pose major challenges for the road transport sector. This paper investigates two targets for reducing Australian road transport greenhouse gas emissions, and what they might mean for the sector: emissions in 2020 being 20 percent below 2000 levels; and emissions in 2050 being 80 percent below 2000 levels. Six ways in which emissions might be reduced to achieve these targets are considered. The analysis suggests that major behavioural and technological changes will be required to deliver significant emission reductions, with very substantial reductions in vehicle emission intensity being absolutely vital to making major inroads in road transport GHG emissions. 2009-09-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19454 Observed efficiency of a d-optimal design in an interactive agency choice experiment Puckett, Sean M.; Rose, John M. There have been a number of recent calls within the choice literature to examine the role of social interactions upon preference formation. McFadden (2001a,b) recently stated that this area should be a high priority research agenda for choice modellers. Manski (2000) has also came to a similar conclusion and offered a plea for better data to assist in understanding the role of interactions between social agents. The interactive agency choice experiment (IACE) methodology represents a recent development in the area of discrete choice directed towards these pleas (see e.g., Brewer and Hensher 2000). The study of the influences that group interactions have upon choice bring with them not only issues that need to be overcome in terms of modelling, but also in terms of setting up the stated choice experiment itself. Currently, the state of practice in experimental design centres on orthogonal designs (Alpizar et al., 2003), which are suitable when applied to surveys with a large sample size. In a stated choice experiment involving interdependent freight stakeholders in Sydney (see Hensher and Puckett 2007, Puckett et al. 2007, Puckett and Hensher 2008), one significant empirical constraint was difficulty in recruiting unique decision-making groups to participate. The expected relatively small sample size led us to seek an alternative experimental design. That is, we decided to construct an optimal design that utilised extant information regarding the preferences and experiences of respondents, to achieve statistically significant parameter estimates under a relatively low sample size (see Rose and Bliemer, 2006). The D-efficient experimental design developed for the study is unique, in that it centred on the choices of interdependent respondents. Hence, the generation of the design had to account for the preferences of two distinct classes of decision makers: buyers and sellers of road freight transport. This paper discusses the process by which these (non-coincident) preferences were used to seed the generation of the experimental design, and then examines the relative power of the design through an extensive bootstrap analysis of increasingly restricted sample sizes for both decision-making classes in the sample. We demonstrate the strong potential for efficient designs to achieve empirical goals under sampling constraints, whilst identifying limitations to their power as sample size decreases. 2009-04-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19476 The influence of organizational subcultures in health organizations Lok, Peter; Westwood, Bob; Rhodes, Jo; Wang, Paul This study investigates the mediating role of organizational subculture and its antecedents of organizational commitment namely leadership, culture and job satisfaction. Structural equation analysis is used to examine our model in which organizational subculture mediated the influence of leadership style and organizational culture on commitment, and in which job satisfaction is an antecedent of commitment. The results of this study highlight the important role of local leadership and subculture in determining employees’ job satisfaction and commitment. The findings in this study could also provide managers with a new lens to examine organizational culture via three perspectives: bureaucratic, supportive and innovative. Furthermore, the results could renew interests in developing other organizational subculture models that could determine the relationship between organizational subculture and commitment 2009-08-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19491 Non-attendance and dual processing of common-metric attributes in choice analysis: A latent class specification Hensher, David A.; Greene, William H. There is a growing literature that promotes the presence of process heterogeneity in the way that individuals evaluate packages of attributes in real or hypothetical markets and make choices. A centerpiece of current research is the identification of rules that individuals invoke when processing information in stated choice experiments. These rules may be heuristics used in everyday choice making as well as manifestations of ways of coping with the amount of information shown in choice experiment scenarios. In this paper, using the latent class framework, we define classes based on rules that recognise the non-attendance of one or more attributes, as well as on the addition and the parameter transfer of common-metric attributes. These processing strategies are postulated to be used in real markets as a form of cognitive rationalization. We use a stated choice data set, where car driving individuals choose between tolled and non-tolled routes, to translate this new evidence into a willingness to pay (WTP) for travel time savings, and contrast it with the results from a model specification in which all attributes are assumed to be attended to and are not added up with parameter preservation. We find that the WTP is significantly higher, on average, than the estimate obtained from the commonly used full relevance and attribute preservation specification. 2009-05-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19481 Factors that comprise driver boredom and their relationships to preferred driving speed and demographic variables. Heslop, S; Harvey, J; Thorpe, N; Mulley, C Driver boredom is an area of driver behaviour that has received limited attention. This study explores the factor structure underlying driver boredom and investigates age and gender differences in the experience of driver boredom and preferred driving speeds using a self-report questionnaire. A rotated principle components analysis of 49 attitude items yielded four dimensions: responses to under-stimulation, flow, lapse and error proneness and anxiety. Age and gender differences were found in these dimensions as well as in preferred driving speeds; two of the factors, responses to under-stimulation and flow were particularly related to preferred driving speeds on all but urban roads. These findings are considered in terms of cognitive capacity required for driving, self-reporting of cognitive failure and error-proneness and the implications for drivers maintaining safety margins when bored. 2009-08-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19286 Estimating the willingness-to-pay and value of risk reduction for car occupants in the road environment Hensher, David A.; Rose, John M.; de Dios Ortúzar, Juan; Rizzi, Luis I. In recent years there has been a re-focus on the valuation of a statistical life (VSL) from the ex post or human capital method to an ex ante willingness to pay approach. This is in part a recognition that we may have been undervaluing the cost of fatalities and injuries to society associated with crashes, but also a strong belief in the need to focus on establishing the amount, ex ante, that individuals are willing to pay to reduce the risk of exposure to circumstances that might lead to death or degree of injury on the road network. This study has developed a framework in which to identify the heterogeneity in willingness to pay (WTP) by individuals who are drivers or passengers in cars to avoid being killed or injured. A stated choice experiment approach is developed. The empirical setting is a choice of route for a particular trip that a sample of individuals periodically undertakes in Australia. The particular trip is described in enough detail to provide the respondent with a familiar market environment, providing all the relevant background information required for making a decision. Mixed logit models are estimated to obtain the marginal (dis)utilities associated with each influence on the choice amongst the attribute packages offered in the stated choice scenarios. These estimates are used to obtain the WTP distributions for fatality and injury avoidance, which are then aggregated to obtain estimates of the value of risk reduction (VRR), often referred to generically as the value of a statistical life. 2009-02-01T00:00:00Z