**1. Introduction**

In this paper, a preference model for mobility as a service (MaaS) is reported. The proposed model can support decision makers and decisions takers in designing a complete survey and model for feasibility studies for planning sustainable transport systems. The specifications of the proposed pre-test model and the preliminary results can be used as a basis for the development of experimentation on a larger scale. The pre-test model is tested with a pilot survey in an area with weak transport demand.

MaaS is important because it allows the use of different modes and services of transport for traveling with adaptive travel demand and the use of a single digital interface. A stateof-the-art example is reported in [1]. A MaaS system has an integrated mobility service and an integrated digital platform for both users and operators (with users at the center of the system). In a transport system, fares and schedule integration, the sharing of a vehicle, information provided to users, and the existence of only joint services are not sufficient to be defined as a MaaS system [2].

In [2], the evolution of a MaaS system is proposed, from an N-MaaS (no transport service integration) to an S-MaaS (sustainable MaaS) composed of the following: transport integration and the availability of an information and communication technology platform

**Citation:** Franco, A.; Vitetta, A. Preference Model in the Context of Mobility as a Service: A Pilot Case Study. *Sustainability* **2023**, *15*, 4802. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15064802

Academic Editor: Federico Dell'Anna

Received: 26 January 2023 Revised: 5 March 2023 Accepted: 6 March 2023 Published: 8 March 2023

**Copyright:** © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

(I-MaaS); a transport decision support system platform (T-MaaS); and sustainability goals, such as those of Agenda 2030 (S-MaaS).

An analysis of the MaaS concept and a state-of-the-art example are reported in Section 2 with a table that contains the main characteristics of the papers analyzed. Some of the papers give a definition of MaaS. Other papers report examples of MaaS experiences in urban contexts, some of them with model calibration. The MaaS literature relative to the calibrated models (Section 2.2) focuses on urban areas; in this paper, a MaaS preference model in an extra-urban area is considered. In this paper, a pre-test model is presented for evaluating user preferences and for testing the feasibility of a MaaS system in an extra-urban context with weak transport demand.

The main objective of the paper is to propose a methodology for immediate application to be implemented with a low budget. The proposed model aims to provide the first indications in a preliminary evaluation step to decision makers and decision takers before starting planning activities. The proposed model hypothesizes two alternatives relating to the preference of users towards MaaS. The construction of the MaaS preference pretest model is carried out with the following steps: survey, specification, calibration, and validation. The study can be considered as a pilot study and the results need to be confirmed with a larger survey and a more general model. To evaluate the pre-test model presented, a pilot application was developed in the Gioia Tauro area, an extra-urban area in southern Italy. Pilot data were collected in relation to road transport, rail, car sharing, bike sharing, and on-demand services.

This paper is divided into five sections. After Section 1, Section 2 describes the literature review. Section 3 describes the methods used for the specification, calibration, and validation of the pre-test model. To evaluate the applicability of the reported method, the preliminary results and discussion of the adopted pilot survey are reported in Section 4. Section 5 reports the main conclusions.

The main innovation reported in this paper is related to a MaaS preference pretest model (Section 3) that can be adopted for the estimation of user preference with an immediate response and low budget before a more extensive survey and the more detailed specification, calibration, and validation of choice models. In order to test the applicability of the reported model, a pilot survey and experimentation in an extra-urban area with weak transport demand are reported (Section 4).
