Tourist Uncertainty Premium for Intra-Destination Public Transport: A Context-Specific Hybrid Choice Model

Limited attention has been paid to intra-destination transportation in tourism research, particularly the incorporation of contextual factors into tourist transport choices. Taking Hong Kong as an illustrative case, this research adopts a mixed-method approach involving on-site interviews and choice modeling to investigate the facilitating and inhibiting determinants for public transport decisions, and to describe tourist attribute trade-offs across diverse transport scenarios. The results reveal that, apart from typical modal attributes, tourist intolerance for transport uncertainty hinders public transport adoption, resulting in a sizable average “uncertainty premium.” This issue is especially serious among female and highly educated tourists. The proposed context-specific hybrid choice model provides a template for urban tourism destinations to validate and quantify the impact of tourist uncertainty intolerance in intra-destination transport decision-making.