Traffic Assignment Under Tradable Credit Scheme: An Investigation Considering Travelers' Framing and Labeling of Credits

Yang and Wang (2011) have investigated tradable credit scheme for mobility management, which could achieve the same efficiency as equivalent road pricing scheme. However, this holds under the case that all travelers treat credit charge cost equivalent with objectively identical road toll. Actually, there is an unearned windfall if the initial credits are distributed to travelers by the government for free, and credits are labeled as special allowance for travel. From the perspective of mental account, the framing of windfall and the labeling of income can dramatically influence people's decision making. In this paper, we investigate the impact of travelers' framing and labeling of tradable credits on their route choice behavior. The user equilibrium conditions with framing and label effect are given, as well as an equivalent VI problem. The numerical example shows that compared to conventional models, the travel demand and credit price both increase with travelers' framing and labeling of credits and routes with moderate credits charge have higher flows.