Estimating the demand for freight transport: The private versus public trade-off in Andalusian food industry.

Abstract

Previous work in the demand for freight transportation has focused in the rail-truck substitution problem, leaving aside the prior private versus public trade-off, often found in transportation decision-making. Moreover, those studies that actually examine this alternative selection problem fail to consider the interdependence between the transport type choice and the shipment size decision. The purpose of this paper is to analyze shippers’ behavior. Particular attention is paid to, first, the public-private trade-off and, second, the simultaneity of alternative selection and shipment size choice. In order to provide a quantitative evaluation, as an illustrative case, the theoretical model developed is tested on data gathered by means of a sample survey conducted to Andalusian enterprises belonging to the food industry.