Impact of gender and personality traits on preferred pricing of public transport in rush hours

Price is an inherent part of marketing mix. It is used for multiple reasons, from skimming consumer's surplus to antimarketing. In public transport, higher prices are often used in rush hours. The logic is to give an incentive to customers to travel outside rush hours, thus more evenly distribute the load. But it is possible to argue that prices should be lower in rush hours because means of public transportation tend to be full, i.e. there is a lower comfort of travelling, possibly even taking longer to travel the same distance. It is also possible to argue that the prices should be the same all the time because the distance of travel stays the same. The paper analyzes if gender and personality traits influence for which pricing a person would decide. The logic for the three ways of pricing were not provided in the questionnaire. Big Five Inventory-10 was used to measure personality traits. Moreover, narcissism, and trust were included. The research was conducted in the Czech Republic using an on-line questionnaire.