Information Design for a Two-Route Transportation Network Considering Travelers’ Adoption of Navigation Service

The advancement of GPS-enabled technology has enabled navigation applications to gain access to the actual condition of transportation networks, thus providing travelers with accurate transportation information. However, not all travelers adopt the navigation service, and it is well-known that if all travelers on the road adopt the accurate navigation service, it is not socially optimal. This raises the question of minimizing the total congestion cost on the road, given that some travelers have adopted the accurate navigation service, what information service should be provided to those travelers who have not? In this paper, we investigate this question in a Bayesian persuasion framework and consider a two-route network with one safe route and one risky route. We first derive travelers’ equilibrium route choice given the information scheme. Then, we investigate the optimal information scheme. Our results show that congestion can be mitigated via information design.