In-store or online grocery shopping before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper presents results of a unique stated choice (SC) experiment to uncover the determinants of grocery shopping channel choice during the first wave of COVID-19 infections, where the most restrictive containment measures were in place. The choice sets were framed under regular and pandemic conditions, allowing for the estimation of pandemic-specific effects for each of the choice attributes. Our results show a significant overall increase of about 13%-points in online grocery shopping under pandemic conditions. Shopping and delivery costs were found to be the major decision drivers in both experimental settings, while the waiting time in front of the grocery store and risk of infection only played an secondary role. The value of delivery time savings (VDTS) decreases from about 10.8 CHF/day in the regular to 7.4 CHF/day in the pandemic case, indicating that respondents show an increased patience when waiting for the delivery of the ordered groceries. However, choice attributes related to the shopping trip, i.e. travel time and cost, do not show any notable effects. The COVID-19 death risk was valued rather low by the respondents and the relatively unrestricted Swiss containment measures are in line with the respondents' average preferences, as shown by a relatively low value of statistical life (VSL) of about 800,000 CHF.

Surveying and analysing mode and route choices in Switzerland 2010-2015.

Every five years, the Mobility and Transport Microcensus (MTMC), a one-day CATI diary survey representative of the Swiss population in terms of socio-economics and trip characteristics, is carried out. In the year 2015, for the second time after 2010, an additional stated preference (SP) survey on respondents' mode and route choices was linked to the MTMC. The combination of revealed preferences (RP) from the MTMC interview and stated preferences from the follow-up survey provides a valid set of parameters for a new generation of regional and national transport demand models in Switzerland that are sensitive in terms of trip purposes, target groups and spatial patterns. These models, in turn, are needed for reliable transport forecasts and thus build the foundation of future transport policy in Switzerland. Willingness-to-pay indicators savings are found to be rather stable over time, which bodes well for their use in cost-benefit analyses.

A joint time-assignment and expenditure-allocation model: value of leisure and value of time assigned to travel for specific population segments.

Based on a time-use model with a sound theoretical basis and carefully collected data for Austria, the value of leisure (VoL) for different population segments has been estimated. Through the combination of these results with mode-specific values of travel time savings from a related study based on the same data, the first mode-specific values of time assigned to travel (VTAT) were calculated. Data was collected using a Mobility-Activity-Expenditure Diary, a novel survey format which gathers all activities, expenditures, and travel decisions from the same individuals for 1 week in a diary-based format. The average VoL is 8.17 €/h, which is below the mean wage of 12.14 €/h, indicating that the value of work is, on average, negative. Regarding the reliability of the VoL, we show its sensitivity to the variance of working time in a sample, something that has been ignored in previous studies and could be used to avoid inadequate segmentation. We controlled this effect in the analysis of the heterogeneity of the VoL across the population by estimating the parameters from the total (unsegmented) dataset with single interaction terms. We find that the VTAT is strictly negative for walking, predominantly negative for cycling and car, and predominantly positive for public transport with 0.27 €/h on average. The positive VTAT for public transport is a strong indication for the importance of travel conditions, in turn suggesting that improvements in travel conditions of public transport might be as important as investing in shorter travel times.