Sammendrag
Users reaction to toll user charges is crucial when it comes to policy development in the transport sector. Knowledge about how user will react and what their attitudes will be when tolls are implemented is still scant in the literature. This paper presents the results of a Norwegian case study conducted to explore elasticities and users attitudes with respect to tolls, and it combines elasticities and users attitudes in a sort of taxonomy to guide decision-making. The data set comprises of 15 projects spread over the country. We find the following: (i) short run elasticities with respect to tolls vary in the range -0.3 to -0.8, (ii) the long run elasticities are found to be higher than the short run ones in the interval 0.75 to 0.90, (iii) elasticities are smaller in the cities where there is cordon toll compared to the rest of the sample, (iv) users attitudes are generally negative towards tolls as means of financing infrastructure and, (v) negative attitudes are highly correlated with the level of information supplied to users on the intentions with tolls prior to implementation. Furthermore, the level of attitudes is impacted by user’s characteristics such as age, sex and income. Thus to gain acceptance of tolls among users, informational campaigns are called and different user should be targeted differently. The connection between elasticities and user attitudes shows that policy makers should either seek policies where there are positive attitudes and low elasticities or high elasticities and positive attitudes. The former is suitable for tolls as means for financing infrastructure while the latter is suitable for congestion pricing.
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