How Momentary Travel Experience Shapes Post-Trip Evaluation: Evidence from an Experience Sampling Study in Hamburg

Kurzfassung

Psychological research suggests that retrospective judgments of experiences rely on heuristic rules that are strongly shaped by the most intense and the last moments of an episode (Peak - End rule). However, public transport studies to date mostly report patterns closer to weighted averages than to simple heuristics, although this evidence is limited by low temporal resolution and small samples. This study investigates which summary of within-trip experience best explains remembered travel satisfaction. 239 participants recorded 1,666 intermodal trips in Hamburg, Germany, using a smartphone app asking eight experience questions every five minutes and a comparable set of questions immediately after each trip. We examined several possible aggregation rules (including peak–end, mean, minimum-end, and duration) by estimating mixed-effects models. The results show that a minimum-end rule, combining the most negative moment of the trip and the final moment, provided the best model fit. This indicates that travelers’ final evaluations depend strongly on the worst and the last parts of the journey, rather than on the average experience or trip length. Hence, reducing particularly negative moments and improving the final phase of a trip may meaningfully increase overall travel satisfaction and support a long-term shift towards sustainable mobility.