Abstract
A dominant theme in the debate on road pricing (RP) reform is securing buy in from all key stakeholders as a pre-condition for gaining support from politicians. This paper explores the key influences and the extent to which particular RP schemes are acceptable to the community at large, and how this translates into support if a scheme were subject to a vote in a referendum. Using data collected in Sydney in 2012 from a sample of car users, we estimate a recursive simultaneous bivariate probit model that recognises the endogeneity effect of scheme acceptability on voting plans. We find that there is a very strong link between voting intentions and scheme acceptability, and provide a series of direct elasticity estimates of the influence that the cost elements of RP reform schemes have on the joint probability of accepting and voting for a scheme.
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Notes
See a later section for more details on the definition of endogeneity and a test to establish its presence.
Arendt and Holm (2007) investigate the relationship between trust and voting in a health context using a similar method.
The tetrachoric correlation is used when it is assumed that there are latent continuous variables underlying the observed binary variables. The tetrachoric correlation estimates the correlation between the assumed underlying continuous variables.
This result does not hold for a linear regression form where we would be manipulating certain sample moments that do not converge to the necessary population parameters in the presence of simultaneity (see Greene 1998 for further details).
The context here is one where tolls already exist, which might be replaced by a (more flexible) RP scheme. This context differs a lot from countries (i.e., several countries in Europe) that do not have tolls on a major scale, and where the issue is to introduce a form of RP that will not be replacing tolls. Getting support might then be more difficult.
Travel time impacts are not included in the choice experiment. We laboured over it for many hours, recognising that this is almost impossible to identify without integrating the experiment into a network model that can capture the net time savings associated with the full set of responses from all motorists. We decided that it would be best to recognise that motorists would internalise their expectations of time savings based on their contextual experience, but we recognise that a worthy extension of our work is to combine the effort to date with some traffic simulation capability. In mid-2013, we established TRAvel Choice Simulation LABoratory (TRACSLab), a visualisation laboratory to study travel behaviour and drivers’ interactions.
The status quo is the fall back alternative, analogous to choosing none of the new alternatives on offer. That is, we defined the status quo as the null since it is what respondents do now, and it is not unreasonable to assume that this would be a valid null.
The socioeconomic profile, at the mean is representative of the wider population of car drivers in Sydney. The average age of car drivers and their personal incomes is almost identical to the 2011 census average.
Interviewer effects in the responses are always a possibility and need to be checked carefully. When we train highly specialised interviewers, they know that they must not interfere with the choice making process. The biggest concern in the past has been incompetent interviewers (many studies have a few of these), and in the current data collection exercise we worked with four highly trained interviewers for over 6 months of in depth and pilot activities to get the instrument to a level that it was relevant, comprehensive and comprehendable. We could not find any systematic sources of bias across the interviewers (tested by adding interviewer-specific dummy variables).
Public acceptance can be achieved ex ante through a pilot scheme such as the Stockholm pilot, which is a real demonstration of the merits of RP reform (see Eliasson et al. 2009). Alternatively we have to rely on identifying the extent of public acceptability of very specific RP schemes, ex ante, and ensure that the support is sufficient to obtain a positive outcome in a referendum.
The alternatives defining each binary response are taken from four choice scenario screens. To account for the possibility that the response associated with a particular alternative is conditioned on the offered set of three alternatives, we included three dummy variables to represent the four choice scenarios. These variables were highly statistically non-significant and were excluded from the final models, giving us confidence in the approach we have adopted.
The time benefits were not directly communicated. There are, however, clues as to how respondents perceive the benefits beyond monetary cost implications, notably potential travel time benefits. The response to how effective the scheme is in reducing congestion must have some link to a view of improved travel time. It was mentioned up front that these RP reforms are designed to reduce traffic congestion.
We have no basis of calibrating when the reform schemes are not in existence in real markets. Furthermore, there is only one market choice observed, and hence there is no revealed preference model. The evidence in Li and Hensher (2012), which includes a review of revealed preference evidence, focuses on changes in travel. It is not possible to contrast our evidence with other studies because the focus is on voting and acceptance elasticities which, as far as I am aware, do not exist in other studies.
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Acknowledgments
This study is supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery Program Grant DP110100454 titled “Assessment of the commuter’s willingness to pay a congestion charge under alternative pricing regimes and revenue disbursement plans”. I am indebted to Jun Zhang for programming of the survey instrument and the substantial contributions of John Rose and Andrew Collins to the overall project and co-authors of papers on Road Pricing Reform. Discussions with Michiel Bliemer and Corinne Mulley are appreciated, as are the comments of three referees.
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Hensher, D.A. Exploring the relationship between perceived acceptability and referendum voting support for alternative road pricing schemes. Transportation 40, 935–959 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-013-9459-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-013-9459-4