How important is safety in making flight choices? Evidence from simple choice experiments

This paper examines the extent to which safety risk information influences flight choice. Simple stated choice experiments were implemented with four independent samples of college students, young non-college students and older employed people across a 20 months period. Strong consistency in the flight choice behaviour across the samples was observed. In particular, there is evidence that even if potential travellers do not nominate “safety” as a criterion in airline choice, when presented with safety information in a stated choice scenario, the respondents use that information to make decisions. However, there is also a significant variation in the extent to which the respondents are sensitive to the safety information, which was represented in the form of aircraft incidents similar to the way aviation statistics are used by the media. Understanding the reasons for the wide variability could help improve public acceptability and tolerance towards risk control measures in aviation.