Guided Persona-based AI Surveys: Can we replicate personal mobility preferences at scale using LLMs?

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Main Authors: Tzachristas, Ioannis, Narayanan, Santhanakrishnan, Antoniou, Constantinos
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Tzachristas, Ioannis
Narayanan, Santhanakrishnan
Antoniou, Constantinos
author_facet Tzachristas, Ioannis
Narayanan, Santhanakrishnan
Antoniou, Constantinos
contents This study explores the potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate artificial surveys, with a focus on personal mobility preferences in Germany. By leveraging LLMs for synthetic data creation, we aim to address the limitations of traditional survey methods, such as high costs, inefficiency and scalability challenges. A novel approach incorporating "Personas" - combinations of demographic and behavioural attributes - is introduced and compared to five other synthetic survey methods, which vary in their use of real-world data and methodological complexity. The MiD 2017 dataset, a comprehensive mobility survey in Germany, serves as a benchmark to assess the alignment of synthetic data with real-world patterns. The results demonstrate that LLMs can effectively capture complex dependencies between demographic attributes and preferences while offering flexibility to explore hypothetical scenarios. This approach presents valuable opportunities for transportation planning and social science research, enabling scalable, cost-efficient and privacy-preserving data generation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_13955
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Guided Persona-based AI Surveys: Can we replicate personal mobility preferences at scale using LLMs?
Tzachristas, Ioannis
Narayanan, Santhanakrishnan
Antoniou, Constantinos
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
This study explores the potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate artificial surveys, with a focus on personal mobility preferences in Germany. By leveraging LLMs for synthetic data creation, we aim to address the limitations of traditional survey methods, such as high costs, inefficiency and scalability challenges. A novel approach incorporating "Personas" - combinations of demographic and behavioural attributes - is introduced and compared to five other synthetic survey methods, which vary in their use of real-world data and methodological complexity. The MiD 2017 dataset, a comprehensive mobility survey in Germany, serves as a benchmark to assess the alignment of synthetic data with real-world patterns. The results demonstrate that LLMs can effectively capture complex dependencies between demographic attributes and preferences while offering flexibility to explore hypothetical scenarios. This approach presents valuable opportunities for transportation planning and social science research, enabling scalable, cost-efficient and privacy-preserving data generation.
title Guided Persona-based AI Surveys: Can we replicate personal mobility preferences at scale using LLMs?
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.13955