Investigating the willingness of shifting to MaaS in one-trip scenarios: Insights from comparative stated surveys

Considered as a potential solution to improve transport systems, Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) has attracted considerable attention and has been widely studied. However, how to guide users to shift from their current travel behavior (or non-MaaS) to MaaS at its early stage still needs more insights, which is critical for the sustainable development of MaaS. Motivated by this, we conducted a stated preference (SP) survey in Beijing with a novel experiment manner, which provides respondents with comparative scenarios to ask them to focus on differences between MaaS options and provided unimodal modes. Further, a latent-class-based model is developed, integrating travel habit and cross-scenario variables collected from the comparative SP experiments. According to the estimation results, we obtain two classes. The first represents respondents who tend to be familiar with MaaS and use shared mobility, and the other represents car enthusiasts. With respect to the preferences of these two classes, respondents in the former class may generate higher utility for all MaaS options. That said, they also tend to keep their mode choice in the scenario without MaaS when they choose private cars or taxis. On the contrary, respondents in the latter class may be negative about all MaaS options. Despite this, the previous mode choice of public transportation (PT) positively affects choosing MaaS options including PT. Further, we propose the shift to MaaS index to quantify willingness to shift to MaaS. Our findings demonstrate that respondents in class 1 are much more likely to shift to MaaS, and decreasing trip time does not have a strong effect on shifting to MaaS. Accordingly, some insights and policy implications are proposed for MaaS development, including promotional strategies, current transport mode changes, and the direction of MaaS development.