Travel preferences and travel behaviour in a world with MaaS

Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) is a new transport concept in which existing and new mobility services are integrated into one single digital platform, providing customised door-to-door transport.

Instead of owning individual modes of transportation, or as a complement to these, customers buy mobility service packages tailored to their individual needs. There are high hopes for MaaS, as many see it as a way to support the shift from private vehicle ownership to shared vehicles, to reduce congestion and to delay or diminish the need for non-car-owners to purchase these. Empirical research focusing on travellers and MaaS is still relatively limited but already provides some insights on how MaaS would (or not) influence travel preferences and travel behaviour. Based on a systematic literature search, we find that two main types of studies on MaaS and travellers exist: studies based on MaaS pilots and studies using Stated Preference experiments, where respondents are asked to make choices given hypothetical scenarios.

The convenience, the choice freedom, the flexibility, the costs and the simplicity of the service in MaaS are found to be important determinants in the way both preferences and behaviours would change or not. Furthermore, aspects pertaining to travellers themselves such as socioeconomic characteristics and current travel behaviour must be taken into account to understand who would adopt MaaS and potentially change travel behaviour.

The outcomes from this literature review are used for a study aiming at quantifying the expected effects of Mobility-as-a-Service on travel preferences and travel behaviour in the Netherlands. As we already know much about sociodemographic characteristics, travel preferences and travel behaviour from MPN respondents, they will be involved in this research so that we can get a first picture of what the impact of MaaS on travellers and on the transport system in the Netherlands might be.