The Mediating Effect of Social Media on the Relationship Between Travel Preference and Tourist Behavior of Local Tourists in Davao City

This paper aims to determine the mediating effect of social media on the relationship between travel behavior and tourist preference.This paper utilized the mediation analysis design to determine whether social media significantly affects the independent and dependent variables.For the statistical tools,the proponents of the study utilized descriptive statistics,Sobel’s test,mean and standard deviation.Also,the proponents of the study utilized data from questionnaires gathered through an online google form.Most of the respondents are single females,college-level,and use Facebook most of the time.Therefore,this is the social media platform that the majority utilize.It has been revealed in the study the three sets of correlated variables:Travel behavior vs.tourist behavior,travel preference vs.social media,and social media vs.tourist behavior,have a strong positive linear relationship between the two quantitative variables.Thus,the study proponents concluded that there is an indirect effect between the travel preference and tourist behavior of local tourists in Davao City via social media.Lastly,the study’s findings reveal the fundamentals of how visitors make decisions,which are essential for enhancing the competitive advantages of cultural destinations.Significant findings from the study are beneficial to the growth of cultural tourism in Davao City.

Analysis of Transportation Users’ Preferences and Attitudes for Identifying Micro-Level Determinants of Transportation Network Companies’ (TNCs) Growth

Over the last decade, the popularity of Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) as a mode of travel has been increasing at a steady pace. This trend highlights the importance of identifying the determinants that influence transportation users to adopt TNCs as a preferred mode choice and the impacts of such preferences on their travel patterns and transportation network operation. This paper reports on a recent study undertaken in Birmingham, AL aiming at understanding and documenting the factors that influence transportation users to select TNCs (such as Uber/Lyft) for completing typical day trips. In doing so, a travel diary questionnaire survey was developed in accordance with the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Manual on Transportation Engineering Studies using the Qualtrics Research Core platform. The questionnaire was used to survey over 450 transportation users in the Birmingham Metro area. The survey participants provided detailed trip information for a typical 24-hr day along with demographic data and travel preference information. The survey responses provide high-resolution micro-level indicators of travel preferences and behaviors in a TNC-served area, which is a much-needed type of information for researchers and transportation planning agencies.

A Trusted and Privacy-Preserving Carpooling Matching Scheme in Vehicular Networks

With the rapid development of intelligent transportation, carpooling with the help of Vehicular Networks plays an important role in improving transportation efficiency and solving environmental problems. However, attackers usually launch attacks and cause privacy leakage of carpooling users. In addition, the trust issue between unfamiliar vehicles and passengers reduces the efficiency of carpooling. To address these issues, this paper introduced a trusted and privacy-preserving carpooling matching scheme in Vehicular Networks (TPCM). TPCM scheme introduced travel preferences during carpooling matching, according to the passengers’ individual travel preferences needs, which adopted the privacy set intersection technology based on the Bloom filter to match the passengers with the vehicles to achieve the purpose of protecting privacy and meeting the individual needs of passengers simultaneously. TPCM scheme adopted a multi-faceted trust management model, which calculated the trust value of different travel preferences of vehicle based on passengers’ carpooling feedback to evaluate the vehicle’s trustworthiness from multi-faceted when carpooling matching. Moreover, a series of experiments were conducted to verify the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed scheme. The results show that the proposed scheme has high accuracy, lower computational and communication costs when compared with the existing carpooling schemes.

Comparing traveler preferences for BRT and LRT systems in developing countries:Evidence from Multan,Pakistan

Rapid transit(RT)systems are becoming increasingly attractive in the developing world as they improve transportation and mobility conditions in urban areas,reduce motorization impacts and offer high quality,yet cost effective services to travelers.Light rail transit(LRT)and bus rapid transit(BRT)are RT systems that combine high capacity with relatively low investment costs,and as such,they are preferred in developing countries over regular metro systems.This paper investigates traveler preferences over alternative,planned rapid transit options for the city of Multan,Pakistan.The analysis is based on a household information survey with over 2300 questionnaires completed via personal interviews.Intention to pay for improved PT services and choice between LRT and BRT systems are investigated,using appropriate econometric models.Findings of this study can assist in better understanding the factors and their effect on choice between BRT and LRT in developing countries.Results show that potential travelers,who prefer LRT are willing to pay more for better public transport services.On the other hand,commuters and elders express a taste towards BRT implementation.Based on model outputs policy makers can develop targeted marketing policies in order to promote BRT/LRT implementation andattract candidate travelers from different groups,improving the possibility that users would support a BRT or LRT project.