The impact of environmental attitudes on responses to emissions charging and vehicle choice

Abstract

While there has been extensive literature on the concept of congestion there have been very few studies that explore road pricing as a function of vehicle emissions. A growing global focus on environmental concerns, in particular the role of carbon emissions in global warming, has created a social atmosphere where attitudes towards the environment are a pre-eminent focus of news media. In stated choice experiments, such attitudes play a key role in determining willingness to pay measures. This paper employs a stated preference survey to examine motor vehicle purchasing in the presence of hypothetical annual and variable emissions surcharges. Using latent class modelling, it is shown that four classes of individuals exist, whose sensitivities to annual and variable emissions surcharging differs. Importantly it is also shown that these differences can be explained by environmental attitudes. The policy implications of this result are discussed, highlighting the usefulness of the modelling technique in the management of environmental policy.