2011 M4 Session 4 Multi Driver

These are the surveys and instructions given to subjects in the last of four sessions in one of our two conditions. This is the condition using multiple driver simulations.

Session 4 tasks for multi-driver experiment are scheduled for 20 minutes.

Welcome 2 minutes

Opinion survey 3 minutes

travel time 10 minutes

payment 5 minutes

sum 20 minutes

Welcome

Thank you for returning for session four, the final session of our traffic study. We are delighted to have you here.

We expect the session to last about half an hour and you will have a chance to make some earning based on the download from the GPS recordings in addition to the participation fee of $____.

There is one other task for money today in addition to some questionnaires. We will not be watching any traffic simulations today. You may skip specific questions and tasks. However, if you skip paid tasks you will not be paid for them. If you skip a large number of questions or tasks you may need to withdraw, in which case you will be paid for the tasks you have completed and $10 of the participation fee as a compensation for your travel expenses.

HANDOUT: Overview of the Session

• Short survey of your opinion

• Task based on travel time for money

• Payment

The money you receive based on the GPS recordings and the travel time task is in addition to your show-up fee.

Short Questionnaire About Your Opinions on Reducing Congestion

We are interested in how you think you would vote in a referendum to reduce traffic congestion. We want to know if you would be more likely to vote for the referendum, less likely to vote for it, or would not care.

Please circle the option that best matches your opinion. What would be the effect on your voting if congestion was to be reduced by

Financing enhanced road capacity through increased gas and property taxes?

MORE LIKELY TO VOTE LESS LIKELY TO VOTE DON’T CARE

Financing enhanced road capacity through toll lanes with a fixed toll charge?

MORE LIKELY TO VOTE LESS LIKELY TO VOTE DON’T CARE

Financing enhanced road capacity through toll lanes with toll charges that vary by the time of day or by the traffic volume?

MORE LIKELY TO VOTE LESS LIKELY TO VOTE DON’T CARE

Converting more lanes into carpool lanes with no additional taxes or tolls?

MORE LIKELY TO VOTE LESS LIKELY TO VOTE DON’T CARE

Converting more lanes into toll lanes with no additional taxes?

MORE LIKELY TO VOTE LESS LIKELY TO VOTE DON’T CARE

Which of these two alternatives is the most important to you?

• Reduce the average travel time even if the maximum travel time and the minimum travel times would stay the same as they are now?

• Reduce the maximum possible travel time even if the average travel time is not reduced by as much as in the first alternative?

Reducing the average travel time

Neither

Reducing the maximum possible travel time

Earnings by Travel Times

(About 10 minutes needed for this task in pretest. This is done on computers and is a task done before so instructions will just be review.)

This task is like one you did during your first session. Today you will get paid for that task as well. Here are the same instructions you were given then.

In this task you will be paid according to how long it takes to travel on ______________. Precisely, your earnings depend on the DIFFERENCE in travel time between these two routes. As we now have the data from the first two weeks of driving we can calculate the average travel times. We collate all westbound drives that start at __________between (times here) . For each of these 12 collated sets of travel times we then calculate the average travel time across all participants and then take the difference between the average travel time on ______ and the average travel time on ______. You will be asked to make decisions that impact your earnings for two of these time periods, randomly selected.

You will be shown a page on the computer which looks like this. On the top of the page you can see which of the 12 time periods that is selected. In this illustration it is _______. You may get a different one. There are also six buttons numbered 1 to 6 that will be explained later.

The top part of this page displays earnings that you may make depending on what the actual travel time is. The height of each bar measures the dollar amounts that are shown on the left. The bottom part shows you four sliders that you can move around to change how much you get paid. In this illustration the top slider determines how much you get paid if the actual travel time difference is less than 60 minutes. The left bar in the top part of the image shows you that this is $560. The next slider is moved to determine how much you get paid if the actual travel time difference is between 60 and 120 minutes. The earnings are displayed in the second bar from the left at the top and are $760. The next two sliders similarly are used to choose how much you want to get paid if the travel time difference is between 120 and 180 minutes, or greater than 180 minutes respectively.

As you move the sliders the bars showing your earnings will move too. The image below shows an example where the first slider has been moved to the left, lowering the earnings you get if the travel time difference is less than 60 minutes from $560 to $230. The third bar has been moved much further to the right, so that if the travel time difference is between 120 and 180 minutes you would be paid $930.

If you want to continue to adjust only two or three of the sliders, you can lock the fourth one in place by checking the “Lock” box on the right.

The six buttons above the bars select the number of minutes that will be shown to the left of the sliders. Before making your decisions you will roll a regular 6-sided die to select one of these 6 options. After clicking the appropriate button you will see the number of minutes that your earnings are defined over.

You will be able to practice using this computer interface before making any decisions for money.

In the practice you will not be paid. After that you will be given two tasks such as this.

Payment and Scheduling

This is the end of today’s session and also the last session in the study. You will receive your final payment today. You will be paid again using Paypal.

We want to thank you for completing the study. If you would like a short summary on the study, which we can complete after all of our sessions are over, around October, please indicating this on our record sheets today.