Abstract
Decision makers in urban goods movement (UGM) typically need to assess the impact new policy interventions might have on freight distribution. The effects of policy changes are inextricably related with the extant regulatory framework that also influences the relationships among the various actors interacting along the supply chain. The operators commonly considered important, given the crucial role they play in UGM, are: retailers, transport providers, and own-account. Notwithstanding the admittedly important role that a detailed knowledge of these three agent categories has for a correct policy implementation there is a limited knowledge concerning the specific preferences and behavior of each agent-type. It is de facto assumed that retailers, own-account and transport providers have homogenous preferences and can be seamlessly treated. The upsurge of behavioral models and the acquisition of data necessary to predict goods and vehicle flows both under the current and, more importantly, under altered policy/regulatory conditions explains the progressive importance that is attributed to an agent-based perspective. This research reports the result of a stated ranking exercise conducted in the Limited Traffic Zone in 2009 in the city center of Rome focusing on retailers which demand freight transport services and play an important role in extended supply chains. This paper proposes a comparison between two different Multinomial Logit model specifications where non-linear effects for the variations of the levels of the attributes considered are studied and detected. A meaningful comparison between willingness to pay measures derived by the two model specifications is proposed so to avoid known scale problems. The results obtained are very interesting and meaningful from a policy perspective since they show potentially differentiated effects of the policy implemented in deep contrast with the, often assumed, homogenous effect hypothesis.
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Notes
- 1.
Non-linear effects on utility function can be also tested via self-stated attribute cutoff. Please refers to Marcucci and Gatta (2011) for a detailed description and application.
- 2.
UMG literature analysis also reveals a substantial heterogeneity in the approaches adopted relates to the public or private perspective considered. The former mainly focuses on the definition of policies for reducing the negative external effects on cities, while the latter essentially aims at enhancing the efficiency of business operations (Corò and Marcucci 2001; Marcucci and D’Agostino 2003).
- 3.
For a definition of UGM see for example Ambrosini and Routhier (2004).
- 4.
- 5.
Nighttime deliveries, for instance, were considered efficiency enhancing by carriers but considered a mere increase in costs by retailers and were consequently excluded.
- 6.
An important phase of the expert surveys focused on defining the policies considered most appropriate to mitigate the identified UGM problems (Stathopoulos et al. 2011). Volvo Report (2010) provides a detailed overview of the link between the stakeholder survey results and the attributes used in the SRE.
- 7.
The models are estimated using NLOGIT 4.0.
- 8.
- 9.
We just recall that a MNL specification of the model implies an implicit assumption concerning the independence from irrelevant alternatives. In other words, it is assumed the unobserved effects homogeneously impact all the alternatives in the same way that is equivalent to hypothesizing that the error component is identically and independently distributed.
- 10.
For a clear description of effects coding the explanatory variable please refer to Hensher et al. (2005), pp 119–121.
- 11.
We checked this by performing a log-likelihood ratio test.
- 12.
Therefore, we recoded this variable so that LUB3 = 1 when LUB = 1,200 and −1 otherwise (according to the effects coding of the variables).
- 13.
Notwithstanding the above made considerations we think it would be interesting to test under which conditions each of the three methods provides the best results. We are presently working on a paper specifically addressing this issue using both simulated as well as real data.
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Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments: we would like to thank Volvo Research Foundation for funding the project SP-2007-50 “Innovative solutions to freight distribution in the complex large urban area of Rome” and all those people who administrated the interviews, in particular Matteo Russo, Silvia De Silvestris, Vivian Diaferia, Amedeo Nanni, Giacomo Lozzi, Matteo Genovese, Francesco Di Antonio, Emanuele Barzagli, Amedeo Naponiello.
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Marcucci, E., Gatta, V. (2014). Behavioral Modeling of Urban Freight Transport. In: Gonzalez-Feliu, J., Semet, F., Routhier, JL. (eds) Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems. EcoProduction. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31788-0_12
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