Attitudes towards road pricing and environmental taxation among US and UK students

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Abstract

This study investigates the determinants of public acceptability of road pricing and environmental taxation policies. The strength and direction of causal paths between psychological determinants and the acceptability of these policies are measured with survey data from students in New Jersey, USA and London. The estimated models show that a number of well-established psychological determinants provide an explanation for the acceptability of both policies and in both locations despite various differences in the policy scenarios. Scenario fairness appears to be the most important direct determinant of acceptability in both countries. We further verify the effect of “specific trust in government” on scenario fairness and other direct determinants that indicate the important role of government performance for achieving acceptability for these measures. Our findings further suggest that awareness of wider environmental issues, such as climate change, can lead to the support of specific sustainable transport policies, such as road pricing, which do not address climate change issues directly.

Highlights

► General environmental awareness influences acceptance of road pricing. ► Trust in government is found to be another important determinant. ► Determinants of acceptability of road pricing and environmental taxation are similar. ► There are some differences in determinants of hypothetical and implemented policies.

Introduction

Most transportation planners are aware that traffic causes significant environmental problems and congestion within cities and agree that pricing policies are a potential solution. There is significant concern about how the public will accept these measures, which can be seen as restricting mobility, especially for those with less income. Some people may not accept pricing policies because they believe they will be net losers. Alternatively, some people may be more willing to accept pricing policies because they believe society as a whole will gain. These perspectives influence individuals’ propensity to accept and support these type of policy initiatives (Bonsall et al., 1992). Based on a survey in the U.S., Maibach et al. (2011) showed that even those who recognize the risks of climate change oppose pricing policies, such as increased gasoline taxes.

There are a number of successful urban road pricing implementations, for example in London and Stockholm, where the public supports these policies. In some other cities proposals have been rejected because of a lack of public support. For example in Edinburgh the discussion of possible economic effects of a proposed scheme raised concerns leading to its rejection in a referendum (Gaunt et al., 2007). Also a planned scheme for road pricing in New York City was rejected, largely because of a lack of public acceptability (Schaller, 2010). One of the main challenges for the implementation of road pricing is the need to design schemes that are acceptable to the public and effective in achieving their objectives (Jones, 1998). Furthermore, it is not clear how people evaluate and respond to different road pricing features and whether they perceive the benefits. Public acceptability of road pricing can often be better explained with determinants such as perceived fairness or perceived effectiveness than with utility-based concepts (Schade and Schlag, 2003). Sociodemographic status and travel behavior also do not seem to explain acceptability; Gehlert et al. (2011) found that the “life situation” of individuals explains the behavioral adaption to road pricing as well as their preferred revenue usage but not the acceptability of the scheme before its introduction. Rather, acceptance appears to be influenced mainly by psychological determinants (Gärling et al., 2008, Jakobsson et al., 2000, Ittner et al., 2003, Bartley, 1995).

Road pricing is often regarded as a tax by the population. Therefore determinants of acceptability of road pricing might be similar to determinants of acceptability of a tax. Supporting this assumption Kirchler (2007) states that acceptance of tax policy is influenced by perceived fairness, people’s subjective beliefs about the complexity of the tax law, tax ethics and the evaluation of government activities. Following a recent study by Schmöcker et al. (2012) we include “trust in government” as a distal determinant of acceptability.1

Our analysis is partly based on data used in the study by Schmöcker et al. (2012). We extend this study in two ways: Whereas Schmöcker et al. discuss the acceptability of environmental taxation only, here we focus primarily on an analysis of the acceptability of road pricing, and, in addition, compare this to the acceptance of environmental taxation. Our research questions are: Firstly, do determinants for acceptability of a road pricing policy addressing city specific problems differ across countries? We use data from London and New Jersey, USA to address this question. New Jersey is situated near New York City where a proposed congestion pricing scheme was rejected. Secondly, do determinants of acceptability for road pricing differ from environmental taxation that focuses on global issues such as climate change? We address this question by comparing road pricing and environmental taxation. Thirdly, is general awareness of environmental issues a predictor for specific policies such as road pricing? We take determinants used for the environmental taxation scenarios as determinants for road pricing to investigate this question. Fourthly, do the results regarding trust in government reported in Schmöcker et al. (2012) also hold true for road pricing scenarios and the environmental taxation scenario in the New Jersey sample? Schmöcker et al. argue based on a comparison between Japanese and British data that trust in government is linked to “belief in absolute values” and might be connected to religious beliefs and cultural values. In this study we therefore investigate the role of trust in government in more detail, distinguishing between specific and general trust in government.

Our samples are limited to students. In New Jersey students with varying degree levels and majors but all focusing on environmental issues participated in the survey. In London the sample was drawn from undergraduate students majoring in civil engineering. Clearly the samples are not representative of the general public. However, it is an important subgroup to investigate since some will likely pursue careers as decision makers for transport policy schemes aimed at reducing congestion or environmental externalities.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The first section describes psychological determinants of public acceptability and summarizes our hypotheses. We examine the psychological determinants that are most important for the acceptability of a coercive policy in more detail. We then describe the survey method and questionnaire. In the following section, the results of the descriptive analysis of each factor are presented. The correlation of determinants of acceptability and the results of Structural Equation Model (SEM) estimations are shown in Section 4. Finally, Section 5 summarizes the findings and discusses the implications for promoting coercive (transport) policies.

Section snippets

Review of psychological determinants of public acceptability

There is an extensive body of literature attempting to understand general factors that influence public acceptability of pricing and taxation policies for transport. Several studies have shown that determinants relating to the scheme itself explain acceptability. For example Gärling et al. (2008) refer to the constructs infringement on freedom, fairness, problem awareness, and perceived effectiveness as psychological determinants that directly or indirectly explain policy acceptability.

Survey

The New Jersey data were collected via an online version of the survey described in Schmöcker et al. (2012). An undergraduate class on Climate Change at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey was surveyed in autumn 2009 and 2010, while a graduate class on Transportation and the Environment was surveyed in spring 2010. The London survey was conducted in November 2008. It was administered in paper to undergraduate students majoring in Civil Engineering at the end of a lecture period. We

Correlation analysis

Simple correlations between acceptability and its proposed determinants are shown in Table 3. For the road pricing scenarios and procedural fairness, infringement on freedom, perceived effectiveness, self problem awareness and specific trust in government relate significantly to acceptability in the U.K. as well as the U.S. sample. In both samples scenario fairness shows the strongest correlation with acceptability. In the U.K. sample correlations between acceptability and social problem

Conclusions

Our results highlight the similarity of determinants of acceptability for both road pricing and environmental taxation but also that some reasonable differences exist. Gaining acceptability for road pricing is difficult and depends on the specifications of the proposed scheme. This is confirmed by our analysis that emphasizes the importance of determinants such as perceived fairness (distributive, procedural, and scenario), perceived infringement of freedom and perceived effectiveness. In

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