  In this study, we consider traveler coupon redemption behavior from the
perspective of an urban mobility service. Assuming traveler behavior is in
accordance with the principle of utility maximization, we first formulate a
baseline dynamical model for traveler's expected future trip sequence under the
framework of Markov decision processes and from which we derive approximations
of the optimal coupon redemption policy. However, we find that this baseline
model cannot explain perfectly observed coupon redemption behavior of traveler
for a car-sharing service. To resolve this deviation from utility-maximizing
behavior, we suggest a hypothesis that travelers may not be aware of all
coupons available to them. Based on this hypothesis, we formulate an
inattention model on unawareness, which is complementary to the existing models
of inattention, and incorporate it into the baseline model. Estimation results
show that the proposed model better explains the coupon redemption dataset than
the baseline model. We also conduct a simulation experiment to quantify the
negative impact of unawareness on coupons' promotional effects. These results
can be used by mobility service operators to design effective coupon
distribution schemes in practice.
