Revealing heterogeneity in air travelers' responses to passenger-oriented environmental policies: A discrete-choice latent class model

Adverse environmental impacts caused by increasing air travel put pressure on governments and the airline industry to take mitigating actions. However, taking effective actions that are accepted by airline passengers requires an understanding of air travelers' preferences. To reach this understanding, a stated-choice experiment is conducted among Dutch air travelers. The survey is appended with measures of attitudes toward air travel and climate change. The heterogeneity in passengers' preferences is revealed by estimating a discrete-choice latent class model, which aims to identify classes in the population that are homogeneous in their preferences. The attitudinal constructs are additionally included in the model to predict class membership. Three classes are identified: price hunters, luggage lovers, and ecoflyers. Overall, the study indicates that a considerable portion of the air travelers derive utility from passenger-oriented environmental policies. Based on the revealed passenger segments, specific policy measures are proposed.