Effects of friends' information interaction on travel decisions

Many existing studies focus on the effects of traffic information from ATIS on travel choices. Research on the effect of friends' travel information on people's travel choice is uncommon, yet needed. In this paper, behavioral experiments are conducted to discuss what the effects of information interaction with friends can bring on individual travel decision behavior. The experimental results concluded that when the rate of friends' information interaction reaches 33.3%, the whole system is at an optimal level. Furthermore, users reach an optimum when the rate of friends' travel information interaction is 75%. The average time and cost per person is increasing when the whole system optimum transfers to the user optimum. Moreover, adjustments of departure time at the system optimum are more dispersed than at the user optimum, while travel choice changes are more concentrated.