Adaptive behavior of intercity travelers within urban agglomeration in response to adverse weather: Accounting for multilayer unobserved heterogeneity

Travelers often change their behavior in reaction to adverse weather conditions. This paper seeks to conduct an empirical evaluation of both ordered and unordered discrete outcome frameworks for examining the adaptive behavior decisions of intercity travelers and investigate the varying effects of explanatory factors on different alternatives of adaptive behavior during adverse weather. The data from 754 respondents in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration, China are collected by a two-phase survey instrument. To capture the unobserved heterogeneity more effectively, this paper develops three advanced models to investigate the variations in intercity travel behavior during adverse weather. Four alternative adaptive behaviors are determined as outcome variables: maintaining original travel plans, changing only the intercity mode, changing the departure date, and canceling the trip, while potential influencing factors including adverse weather conditions, trip-related characteristics, individual attributes and urban agglomeration attributes are statistically assessed. The results indicate that the unordered models consistently outperform their ordered counterparts, and the incorporation of multilayer heterogeneity enhances the model fit. Furthermore, significant factors and their coefficient values vary across the different adaptive behavior alternatives. Intercity travelers demonstrate a higher probability of changing departure dates or canceling trips during snowy and windy days compared to rainy and foggy days. Trains exhibit higher flexibility and reliability during adverse weather, and access attributes significantly affect intercity travel adaptive behavior. Additionally, the analysis of individual and urban agglomeration attributes uncovers variations in adaptive behavior among individuals and cities. These findings provide profound insights into the complexities and variations of intercity travel behavior during adverse weather, and propose practical strategies to mitigate the detrimental impacts of adverse weather on intercity travelers.