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In recent years, the importance of incorporating attribute uncertainty in models of spatial choice behaviour has been recognized in urban planning research. The majority of studies concerned with decision-making under uncertainty assume some a-priori probability distribution for discrete attribute levels or continuous attribute values. Consequently, it has been implicitly assumed that the decision maker perceives the uncertain attributes as reflected in the presumed discrete or continuous probability distributions. This assumption may, however, not be necessarily true. Capturing the shape of the probability distributions from the decision maker’s perspective likely increases the accuracy of models of decision-making under uncertainty. The aim of the current paper, therefore, is to develop an approach for measuring and modelling individuals’ subjective beliefs about uncertain attributes. The approach is illustrated using beliefs about future mortgage rates as an example. To understand the impact of trends in the data, we experimentally changed the trends in mortgage rates over 20 years with 5 years intervals and analysed the impact of such trends on subjective beliefs of anticipated future mortgages. More specifically, four patterns of the evolution of mortgage rates were created, i.e. monotonically increasing, monotonically decreasing, increasing for the first four intervals and then decreasing, and decreasing for the first four intervals and then increasing. Results suggest that the shape of the pattern (nature of the trend) significantly influences subjective probability assessments of future mortgage rates. Highlights Imputations of subjective probability distribution of uncertain environment is crucial for urban and transportation planning The information trend on an uncertain event has significant impact on sits subjective probability envisaged by respondents. Social demographic variables are significant moderators for subjective mean and standard deviation of uncertain events.

Objectives To empirically test whether offenders consider environmental features at multiple spatial scales when selecting a target and examine the simultaneous effect of neighborhood-level and residence-level attributes on residential burglars’ choice of residence to burglarize. Methods We combine data on 679 burglaries by 577 burglars committed between 2005 and 2014 with data on approximately 138,000 residences in 193 residential neighborhoods in Ghent, Belgium. Using a discrete spatial choice approach, we estimate the combined effect of neighborhood-level and residence-level attributes on burglars’ target choice in a conditional logit model. Results Burglars prefer burglarizing residences in neighborhoods with lower residential density. Burglars also favor burglarizing detached residences, residences in single-unit buildings, and renter-occupied residences. Furthermore, burglars are more likely to target residences in neighborhoods that they previously and recently targeted for burglary, and residences nearby their home. We find significant cross-level interactions between neighborhood and residence attributes in burglary target selection. Conclusions Both area-level and target-level attributes are found to affect burglars’ target choices. Our results offer support for theoretical accounts of burglary target selection that characterize it as being informed both by attributes of individual properties and attributes of the environment as well as combinations thereof. This spatial decision-making model implies that environmental information at multiple and increasingly finer scales of spatial resolution informs crime site selection.

Decision making is a cognitive process that mediates behaviors critical for survival. Choosing spatial targets is an experimentally-tractable form of decision making that depends on the midbrain superior colliculus (SC). While physiological and computational studies have uncovered the functional topographic organization of the SC, the role of specific SC cell types in spatial choice is unknown. Here, we leveraged behavior, optogenetics, neural recordings and modeling to directly examine the contribution of GABAergic SC neurons to the selection of opposing spatial targets. Although GABAergic SC neurons comprise a heterogeneous population with local and long-range projections, our results demonstrate that GABAergic SC neurons do not locally suppress premotor output, suggesting that functional long-range inhibition instead plays a dominant role in spatial choice. An attractor model requiring only intrinsic SC circuitry was sufficient to account for our experimental observations. Overall, our study elucidates the role of GABAergic SC neurons in spatial choice., Essig et al used a combination of behavior, optogenetics, neural recordings and modelling to directly examine the contribution of GABAergic superior colliculus neurons to the selection of opposing spatial targets. They demonstrated that these neurons do not locally suppress premotor output, suggesting that functional long-range inhibition instead plays a dominant role in spatial choice.

This study identifies what factors have effects on college graduates&rsquo, decisions to stay for jobs in lagged regions using a bivariate probit model with sample selection. The results show that strong preferences for a home village and a university region contribute to the decision about job location concerning the regions. In addition, low living costs have much significant impact on spatial choice compared with economic factors, such as the levels of wage and job security. The long-term economic growth of lagged regions could be affected by a preference of high-school graduates to attend local universities.

Decision making is critical for survival but its neural basis is unclear. Here we examine how functional neural circuitry in the output layers of the midbrain superior colliculus (SC) mediates spatial choice, an SC-dependent tractable form of decision making. We focus on the role of inhibitory SC neurons, using optogenetics to record and manipulate their activity in behaving mice. Based on data from SC slice experiments and on a canonical role of inhibitory neurons in cortical microcircuits, we hypothesized that inhibitory SC neurons locally inhibit premotor output neurons that represent contralateral targets. However, our experimental results refuted this hypothesis. An attractor model revealed that our results were instead consistent with inhibitory neurons providing long-range inhibition between the two SCs, and terminal activation experiments supported this architecture. Our study provides mechanistic evidence for competitive inhibition between populations representing discrete choices, a common motif in theoretical models of decision making.

Objectives: This study explores preference variation in location choice strategies of residential burglars. Applying a model of offender target selection that is grounded in assertions of the routine activity approach, rational choice perspective, crime pattern and social disorganization theories, it seeks to address the as yet untested assumption that crime location choice preferences are the same for all offenders. Methods: Analyzing detected residential burglaries from Brisbane, Australia, we apply a random effects variant of the discrete spatial choice model to estimate preference variation between offenders across six location choice characteristics. Furthermore, in attempting to understand the causes of this variation we estimate how offenders’ spatial target preferences might be affected by where they live and by their age. Results: Findings of this analysis demonstrate that while in the aggregate the characteristics of location choice are consistent with the findings from previous studies, considerable preference variation is found between offenders. Conclusions: This research highlights that current understanding of choice outcomes is relatively poor and that existing applications of the discrete spatial choice approach may underestimate preference variation between offenders.

The processing of spatial and mnemonic information is believed to depend on hippocampal theta oscillations (5–12 Hz). However, in rats both the power and the frequency of the theta rhythm are modulated by locomotor activity, which is a major confounding factor when estimating its cognitive correlates. Previous studies have suggested that hippocampal theta oscillations support decision-making processes. In this study, we investigated to what extent spatial decision making modulates hippocampal theta oscillations when controlling for variations in locomotion speed. We recorded local field potentials from the CA1 region of rats while animals had to choose one arm to enter for reward (goal) in a four-arm radial maze. We observed prominent theta oscillations during the decision-making period of the task, which occurred in the center of the maze before animals deliberately ran through an arm toward goal location. In speed-controlled analyses, theta power and frequency were higher during the decision period when compared to either an intertrial delay period (also at the maze center), or to the period of running toward goal location. In addition, theta activity was higher during decision periods preceding correct choices than during decision periods preceding incorrect choices. Altogether, our data support a cognitive function for the hippocampal theta rhythm in spatial decision making.

Spatial homogamy may be defined as follows: anyone may be attracted to anyone else, but near candidates are more attractive than distant candidates. In this article, we propose a model of partner choice, where homogamy is defined in terms of spatial, demographic, socioeconomic and cultural similarity. A spatial choice model using random utility theory is formulated, taking into account a relaxation of the independence from the irrelevant alternatives property, as spatial alternatives are not independent of one another. We model partner choice given the characteristics of the chosen partner and a choice set of alternatives, using unique micro data on all new cohabiters in the Netherlands, linked to other relevant data sets. The model takes the spatial locations of potential candidates within a choice set into account, including an indicator for the spatial similarity between alternatives. We find that spatial homogamy is a vital component of partner matching, aside from and adding to the spatial effects in demographic, socioeconomic and cultural homogamy. Given a choice set of partners, the highest likelihood of a match occurs with a person who is born and lives near by, who is close in age, is in the same life stage and has the same marital status, who has the same educational and income level and the same labour market status, who speaks the same dialect and lives in a culturally similar residential area. The distance effect is most pronounced for those individuals with lower levels of education and those living in rural areas.

This paper provides an empirical comparison between utility-maximization and regret-minimization perspectives of spatial-choice behaviour. The key difference between these two perspectives is that the regret-minimization perspective implies that the anticipated satisfaction associated with a chosen spatial alternative depends on the anticipated performance of nonchosen alternatives. In order to provide a meaningful statistical comparison, we formulate a model of regret minimization such that it reduces to utility maximization for a given parameter restriction. Estimation results, based on a binary stated travel-mode-choice experiment, show how the regret-based model outperforms its utilitarian counterpart. Furthermore it is shown how participants in the experiment attached relatively much weight to the situation where the nonchosen alternative is slightly better than the chosen one, and they tend to discount larger differences. We show how this concavity of the regret function is in line with the prospect theoretical notion of risk-seeking behaviour in the domain of losses.

Constructing the universal choice set in spatial choice models developed at the level of elemental alternatives (atomistic models) is challenging because disaggregate data on the attributes of nonchosen alternatives are often not available. Even when the disaggregate data on nonchosen alternatives are available, matching two data sources will inevitably be error prone given that they might be collected at different times and they might have different coding for categorical variables. An important practical question in the estimation of such atomistic models, therefore, is how to construct the universal choice set in the absence of disaggregate data on the attributes of the nonchosen alternatives. This paper presents a novel approach for spatial imputation of attributes of nonchosen alternatives for estimation and application of atomistic spatial choice models in the absence of disaggregate data. The proposed approach uses the iterative proportional fitting algorithm to impute the attributes of nonchosen alternatives from aggregated data on elemental alternatives. The proposed method is validated with a Monte Carlo experiment and applied to real data in the London residential location choice context.

Objectives: This study builds on research undertaken by Bernasco and Nieuwbeerta and explores the generalizability of a theoretically derived offender target selection model in three cross-national study regions. Methods: Taking a discrete spatial choice approach, we estimate the impact of both environment- and offender-level factors on residential burglary placement in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Combining cleared burglary data from all study regions in a single statistical model, we make statistical comparisons between environments. Results: In all three study regions, the likelihood an offender selects an area for burglary is positively influenced by proximity to their home, the proportion of easily accessible targets, and the total number of targets available. Furthermore, in two of the three study regions, juvenile offenders under the legal driving age are significantly more influenced by target proximity than adult offenders. Post hoc tests indicate the magnitudes of these impacts vary significantly between study regions. Conclusions: While burglary target selection strategies are consistent with opportunity-based explanations of offending, the impact of environmental context is significant. As such, the approach undertaken in combining observations from multiple study regions may aid criminology scholars in assessing the generalizability of observed findings across multiple environments.

This chapter presents a spatial firm demographic model (SFM) that simulates changes in states of individual firms and their location choice behaviour. Firm location choice in such disaggregate models is characterised by large numbers of alternatives and complex spatial interdependencies among them. This chapter deals with a particular issue of firm location choice: the choice set composition in a disaggregate spatial choice context. A choice model is presented with probabilistic choice sets assuming that choice alternatives that are dominated by others are not taken into consideration in the location decision. The estimated models have significant parameters for dominance, and they are implemented in the SFM model, to test to what extent the simulation results are improved.

The importance of properly specifying choice sets to avoid biased parameters is well recognized in the literature and it is particularly relevant for spatial choice models where alternatives are generally numerous and somewhat artificially defined (i.e. traffic zones). The choice set refers to the set of discrete alternatives considered by an individual in the decisionmaking process which is a subset of the universal choice set that consists of all alternatives available to the decision-maker. The objective of this paper is to review the various approaches that have been suggested to model such set formation. Strengths and weaknesses of each of these approaches are discussed.

The ventral striatum has long been proposed as an integrator of biologically significant associative information to drive actions. Although inputs from the amygdala and hippocampus have been much studied, the role of prominent inputs from orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) are less well understood. Here, we recorded single-unit activity from ventral striatum core in rats with sham or ipsilateral neurotoxic lesions of lateral OFC, as they performed an odour-guided spatial choice task. Consistent with prior reports, we found that spiking activity recorded in sham rats during cue sampling was related to both reward magnitude and reward identity, with higher firing rates observed for cues that predicted more reward. Lesioned rats also showed differential activity to the cues, but this activity was unbiased towards larger rewards. These data support a role for OFC in shaping activity in the ventral striatum to represent the biological significance of associative information in the environment.

Arbeitsberichte Verkehrs- und Raumplanung, 380

Models of spatial choice behaviour have been around in urban planning for decades to assess the feasibility of planning actions or to predict external (competition) effects on existing destinations. The well known spatial interaction models of the 1970s have gradually been replaced by discrete choice models in the 1980s and 1990s, and even more complex activity-based models have started to appear in the literature over the last couple of years. Many examples can be found on commuter behaviour, spatial shopping behaviour, residential choice behaviour, recreational behaviour, etc. Although these models differ in terms of complexity and key concepts, they all have in common that spatial choice behaviour is predicted as a function of the attributes of the choice alternatives and distance or travel time separation only. None of these models take into account that the attributes of choice alternatives and travel time may be highly non-stationary and that often the utility that people derive from visiting a particular location also depends on the choice behaviour of other individuals. For example, the utility of visiting leisure facilities (restaurants, urban parks, movie) may depend on the number of other visitors, depending on one’s preferences about crowding. Similarly, the utility that is derived from conducting a shopping activity at a particular location may depend on the queues that one experiences. The development of particular locations may also depend on one’s expectations about the interest in this location and the expectations about the development of adjacent locations. Under these circumstances, individuals may exhibit strategic choice behaviour. That is, they will choose particular choice options taking into account their expectations of the behaviour of others such as to maximize their own utility. The purpose of the proposed paper is to discuss possible models of strategic choice behaviour for these urban planning problems. Theory will be outlined and some critical issues in the application of such models to problems of spatial choice will be discussed.

The focus of this paper is on the microeconometric analysis of spatial choice in a cross section. Nested multinomial logit models are used to analyze the determi-nants of individual choice among destinations and vacation activities. Cramer and Ridder's likelihood ratio test for pooled alternatives in multinomial logit models is sequentially applied in order to determine the adequate aggregation level of the mutually exclusive alternatives in the choice set. The specification test suggested by Chesher and Santos Silva (1992) is used to investigate whether or not the IIA proposition is fulfilled within the assumed choice subsets.

Conventional choice-models are based on the assumption of a stable utility function. Previous studies have indicated that this assumption may be less valid for certain types of choice-behaviour. In this paper the idea of variety seeking is put forward as a possible explanation for varied choice-behaviour. A model is developed and tested in the context of recreational choice-behaviour.

This paper is concerned with the idea of invariant preference structures. At the outset, it is argued that empirical tests on the transferability of preference functions to other regions are necessary to substantiate the claim that behavioural models represent valuable ways of assessing the impact of environmental planning programs. Subsequently, the findings of an empirical study of spatial shopping choice behaviour in two Dutch regions are considered. It is demonstrated that, using Rushton's preference scaling methodology, the preference functions pertaining to one group of respondents in one particular region can be used successfully to predict aggregate spatial shopping patterns of an entirely different group of respondents living in a completely different environmental setting.

Submitted by Guilherme Lemeszenski (guilherme@nead.unesp.br) on 2013-08-22T18:43:38Z No. of bitstreams: 1 S1679-62252010000400021.pdf: 157029 bytes, checksum: 0d6f7e112035b611b33bab67b4298177 (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2013-08-22T18:43:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 S1679-62252010000400021.pdf: 157029 bytes, checksum: 0d6f7e112035b611b33bab67b4298177 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-01-01 Made available in DSpace on 2013-09-30T17:42:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 S1679-62252010000400021.pdf: 157029 bytes, checksum: 0d6f7e112035b611b33bab67b4298177 (MD5) S1679-62252010000400021.pdf.txt: 15304 bytes, checksum: b8b49e7c3d0a0f46bb50a05ff98be275 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-01-01 Submitted by Vitor Silverio Rodrigues (vitorsrodrigues@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2014-05-20T13:12:40Z No. of bitstreams: 2 S1679-62252010000400021.pdf: 157029 bytes, checksum: 0d6f7e112035b611b33bab67b4298177 (MD5) S1679-62252010000400021.pdf.txt: 15304 bytes, checksum: b8b49e7c3d0a0f46bb50a05ff98be275 (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2014-05-20T13:12:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 S1679-62252010000400021.pdf: 157029 bytes, checksum: 0d6f7e112035b611b33bab67b4298177 (MD5) S1679-62252010000400021.pdf.txt: 15304 bytes, checksum: b8b49e7c3d0a0f46bb50a05ff98be275 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-01-01 A enguia mirongo-mirim Myrophis punctatus vive em agrupamentos de alta densidade populacional e comumente se enterra ou permanece sob o substrato. Esses comportamentos podem levar a marcas químicas no subtrato e podem, portanto, modular o uso do espaço nessa espécie. Neste estudo, testamos a hipótese de que a preferência espacial da enguia mirongo-mirim é influenciada pela presença de odor do animal coespecífico no subtrato. Mostramos que as enguias evitam a área que contém tal odor, indicando que as decisões de ocupação espacial podem ser influenciadas por pistas químicas de coespecíficos. As enguias claramente detectaram o odor de um animal coespecífico e essa percepção poderia ser um indicativo da presença de um coespecífico enterrado no substrato. Visto que elas evitam uma área contendo tal odor, sugerimos que isso poderia ser uma resposta para evitar invadir o território de um animal residente. The speckeld worm eel Myrophis punctatus lives in high-densities assemblages, and usually digs through, or lies on the substrate. These behaviours could lead to chemical marks on the substrate and could modulate the spatial distribution in this species. We tested the hypothesis that the spatial choice of the speckled worm eel is modulated by the presence of conspecific odour on the substrate. Here, we showed that the speckled worm eel avoids the substrate area containing the conspecific odour, indicating that this chemical cue modulates the eel's spatial decision. The eels clearly detected the conspecific's odour. This perception might indicate the presence of conspecifics into the substrate. Since the eels avoided an area containing conspecific odour, we suggest this may be a response that avoids the consequences of invading a resident-animal's territory. UNESP Centro de Aquicultura Center UNESP Departamento de Fisiologia nstituto de Biociências UNESP UNESP Centro de Aquicultura Center UNESP Departamento de Fisiologia nstituto de Biociências UNESP

The purpose of this paper is to outline a conceptual model of consumer spatial decision making and choice behaviour and to investigate the use of various combination rules of consumer's evaluations of attributes of shopping centres to predict spatial choice behaviour. The research findings indicate that the linear combination rules perform as well as the multiplicative rules and that both types of rules perform quite acceptably. The paper concludes by discussing some implications for future research on spatial decision making and choice.