A neurobehavioral study of bus crowding valuations in picture-based and immersive choice experiments

This paper investigates how picture-based and virtual reality (VR) experiment types influence individuals' valuation of bus crowding in stated preference settings and explores the cognitive mechanisms underlying heterogeneity in crowding perceptions, using a sample of 38 participants, each completing 40 choice scenarios in each of the two experimental formats. We estimate individual-level crowding multipliers, that is, the ratio of travel time valuation in crowded versus uncrowded scenarios, across two experiment types and investigate their correlations with neural biomarkers. We find systematic differences in cognitive processing across formats: participants in the picture-based experiment tend to rely more on internal beliefs and prior experiences, while those in the VR-based experiment are more influenced by the visual information presented in choice experiments. However, these cognitive and perceptual differences did not translate into significant behavioral differences in crowding valuations, i.e., they resulted in similar crowding multipliers across both experiment types. One potential explanation is the static nature of the experimental stimuli, which may limit the capacity of VR to evoke personal beliefs and richer experiential responses. Our findings suggest that picture-based experiments are sufficient for capturing preferences in the static choice contexts considered here, while experiments incorporating dynamic or interactive stimuli (e.g., pedestrians’ route choices under different built environments) warrant further research.