A Departure Time Choice Model with Bounded Rationality Wenyun TANG 1 , Lin CHENG 2 , Zhaoming CHU 3 1 Ph.D. Candidate, Prof. Lin Cheng Lab, School of Transportation, Southeast University, No.2 Si Pailou, Nanjing, Jiangsu, 210096; PH 025-83795649; email: towenseu@seu.edu.cn 2 Professor, Prof. Lin Cheng Lab, School of Transportation, Southeast University, No.2 Si Pailou, Nanjing, Jiangsu, 210096; PH 025-83795649; email: gist@seu.edu.cn 3 Ph.D. Candidate, Prof. Lin Cheng Lab, School of Transportation, Southeast University, No.2 Si Pailou, Nanjing, Jiangsu, 210096; PH 025-83795649; email: chuzhaoming@126.com ABSTRACT Knowledge of departure times of commuter trips plays an important role, providing a basis for future policy making and for forecasting the peak hour without a great deal of investigation. This paper has proposed a departure time choice model based on prospect theory, considering that travelers are not entirely rational, being affected by the environment, the ability to obtain traffic information, and so on. In the case study, travelers are divided into several groups by their risk attitude (risk averse, risk neutral, risk appetite). We then find the difference of in the departure time amongst different the kinds of travelers, providing evidence for road network construction and traffic management. 1. INTRODUCTION The departure time decisions of commuters are of fundamental importance to the study of peak-period traffic congestion and to the analysis of traffic control. Additionally, this information aids in the selection of broader demand-side congestion relief measures, such as pricing and ride sharing incentives (Rosenbloom, 1978). The choice of departure times has a direct impact on the subsequent travel route choice behavior, which plays a very important role in the travel choice behavior of road users. In traditional departure time choice models, some considered the decision-makers to be completely rational while others did not classify the travelers. In this paper, travelers are classified by their risk attitudes on the basis that the decision-makers are rationally bound. Based on this, we propose a model to study the decision-making behavior. 2. PROSPECT THEORY Prospect theory was jointly proposed by Kahneman and Tversky in 1979, who pointed out that the traditional theory of decision-making was on the basis of completely rational decision-makers who can predict the future in the longitudinal direction and know the behavior of all other decision-makers’ as well as the environmental factors in the horizontal direction. However, decision-making behavior is affected by other factors, such as the complex environment; the information received by human beings is handled by other systems, and the human beings’ 596 ICTIS 2013 © ASCE 2013 ICTIS 2013 Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by Southeast University on 12/16/14. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.