Accepting Charging – A Matter of Trusting the Effects?

Abstract

It is difficult to formulate congestion charging policies that obtains public support before implementation, but more positive attitudes typically evolve after implementation. Explanations have often referred to the public misjudging elasticity of demand and therefore distrusting the effectiveness of charging policies, but convinced by personal experiences once available. In this paper the authors study these issues based on data from Stockholm by exploring how (i) attitudes towards congestion charging and (ii) expectancy/understanding of which effects charging will have/over time and between individuals. The authors estimate ordered logit models of two types: Model 1 predicting the trust in effectiveness as a function of personal characteristics and experience (year), and Model 2 predicting acceptance as a function of personal characteristics, trust in effectiveness and experience (year). The results show that before the Stockholm trial, trust in effectiveness was an important factor determining individual attitudes to charging. During the trial, the average citizen became more convinced that charging was effective. This seems to have happened through a collective, rather than individual, process, and was an important reason for why acceptance increased. In the second step, from trial to permanent introduction, acceptance increased further. This was not driven by changes related to perceived effectiveness, but by more positive attitudes among car drivers, and among those who remained doubtful as to whether charging was effective.

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