Towards models of strategic spatial choice behaviour: theory and application issues

Models of spatial choice behaviour have been around in geography urban planning for decades to assess the feasibility of planning actions or to predict external (competition) effects on existing destinations. 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 do 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. Under these circumstances, individuals may exhibit strategic choice behaviour. That is, they will choose particular choice options taking into account their expected 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.