Buying without using: Biases of German BahnCard buyers

Schmale Hendrik, Ehrmann Thomas, Dilger Alexander

Zusammenfassung

We use a large data set of German railway travellers to analyse the purchasing decision for fare-reducing BahnCards. We expect that this tariff choice is neither completely rational nor irrational, but bounded-rational in a meaningful way. Actually we predict a flat-rate bias, i.e. an under-use of their BahnCards by many customers. However, we estimate that this bias is not too large. The empirical results approve our hypotheses for the most part, especially for the more expensive BahnCard50 (BC50), whereas the under-use of the cheaper BahnCard25 (BC25) is so extensive that it is not worthwhile on average. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Schlüsselwörter

Flat-rate Bias; Empirical Analysis; Consumer Behaviour; Rail Industry

Zitieren als

Schmale, H., Ehrmann, T., & Dilger, A. (2013). Buying without using: Biases of German BahnCard buyers. Applied Economics (Appl. Econ.), 45(7), 933–941.

Details

Publikationstyp
Forschungsartikel (Zeitschrift)

Begutachtet
Ja

Publikationsstatus
Veröffentlicht

Jahr
2013

Fachzeitschrift
Applied Economics

Band
45

Ausgabe
7

Erste Seite
933

Letzte Seite
941

Sprache
Englisch

ISSN
00036846

DOI

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