This research explores the influence of representational methods as they are used in stated-preference (SP) surveys of neighbourhood choice. These types of surveys have traditionally been administered in text-only format, by asking subjects which alternative they prefer based on written descriptions of neighbourhoods. It has been argued, alternately, that the visual presentation of attributes can either dominate in SP surveys, or that it can be used to help improve the realism of choice tasks, and/or increase the number of attributes that can be included in such surveys. A few studies have tested the difference between multimedia and text-only SP surveys of housing choice. While these studies have been informative, they have drawn conflicting conclusions, and have been based on small sample sizes.
The research presented here sought to take advantage of the capabilities made available by gaming engines to compare the results of SP surveys of neighbourhood choice administered either on a gaming platform, or as a traditional text-only survey. A sample of 368 (184 for each survey) respondents was used to compare neighbourhood choice model parameter estimates drawn from data administered with the two different survey methodologies. We found that while both surveys result in similar models, the model estimated using data obtained from the gaming platform show slightly better performance; providing 3D simulations appears to better focus respondent attention. At the same time, these 3D simulations have the unfortunate drawback of decreasing the generalizability of some visual parameter estimates, as they need to provide precise visual representations of their characteristics
