International Choice Modelling Conference 2019

Dear colleagues,
We (Nobuhiro Sanko, Toshiyuki Yamamoto, Junyi Zhang) are very proud of being chosen to host the 6th International Choice Modelling Conference (ICMC) and would like to express our congratulations to the ICMC on its 10 year anniversary. Continuation is power. We are very happy to bridge the Cape Town conference and all future conferences.
Kobe is a harmonious multi-cultural port city, home to people from more than 130 countries. Since its official opening to the world in 1868, Kobe has been a leading gateway for Japan to connect with the rest of the world. Cultural diversity, the beautiful Rokko mountain range and blue inland sea make Kobe colorful, fantastic and vibrant, attracting a lot of visitors every year.
In the Kobe conference, it is our greatest honor to invite Profs. Joan Walker (UC Berkeley), Takanori Ida (Kyoto University), and Harmen Oppewal (Monash University) (in the order of keynote speeches) to give keynote speeches, respectively. Their presence makes the conference very special and will inspire more internationally-influential interdisciplinary choice modeling research. While we have followed the ICMC tradition in most respects, unlike previous conferences we are also convening special sessions, each of which will be further edited as a special issue at an SCI/SSCI-indexed journal after the conference, depending on the quality of full papers. Each special issue will further make an open call for papers after the conference. In total, we received about 400 papers (extended abstracts), the largest submissions in the ICMC history. More than 50 researchers voluntarily reviewed these papers. Eventually, we accepted 180 papers, including 55 papers for eight special sessions (i.e., advanced models in practice, choice modelling in the global south, energy and environmental decision-making, hybrid choice models, machine learning and spatiotemporal choice modelling, models of moral decision making, tourism behavior and decision making, unravelling choice set compositions in the era of large-scale revealed preference data). Without professional help from the special session organizers and the reviewers, this conference would not have taken place. We would like to express our sincere thanks to them.
We three, as fans of choice research, hope that the Kobe conference will bring choice modeling research into a new stage and contribute more to the culturally sustainable development of the whole world.
Finally, our sincere thanks also go to our sponsors: Kobe Tourism Bureau, Kobe Convention Bureau, The Institute of Behavioral Sciences, Institute of Systems Science Research and Nikken Sekkei Research Institute.
We wish you an enjoyable and successful Kobe Conference.

Co-chairs of the local organizing committee: Nobuhiro Sanko, Toshiyuki Yamamoto, Junyi Zhang

ICMC logo’s designer: Setyo NUGROHO