The development of public attitudes towards the Stockholm congestion trial
Abstract
A full-scale congestion charging trial was carried out in Stockholm the first months of 2006. Almost half of respondents in a county-wide survey stated that they changed their attitudes towards congestion charges during the trial. Most of them became more positive. An analysis of media shows that the attitudinal change in media towards the trial coincides with the attitudinal change of the public. There was no dramatic change in the proportion of articles expressing a negative view. Instead, the result indicates that the increase in positive views was driven by a shift from neutral to positive articles during the trial. In order to ascertain why the public attitudes swung, we have analysed the anticipated and perceived effects of the trial. Generally, the analysis seems to indicate that improved understanding of the type and magnitude of concrete effects was not a main driving force behind the attitudinal change. Instead, it seems that the public attitude changed because personal experience gave a new understanding of the implications of the charges for the personal well-being. This would imply that trials, generally, may be a more useful tool than information in the process of implementing 'difficult' policy measures, such as congestion charges.Download Info
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Bibliographic Info
Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice.
Volume (Year): 43 (2009)
Issue (Month): 3 (March)
Pages: 269-282
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Related research
Keywords: Public attitudes Public opinion Congestion charges Road charges Media analysis;References
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Harsman, Bjorn & Quigley, John M., 2010.
"Political and Public Acceptability of Congestion Pricing: Ideology and Self Interest,"
University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers
qt14n0h1nv, University of California Transportation Center.
- Björn Hårsman & John M. Quigley, 2010. "Political and public acceptability of congestion pricing: Ideology and self-interest," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(4), pages 854-874.
- Harsman, Bjorn & Quigley, John M., 2010. "Political and Public Acceptability of Congestion Pricing: Ideology and Self Interest," Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy, Working Paper Series qt77b5243v, Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy.
- Bjorn Harsman & John Quigley, 2011. "Political and Public Acceptability of Congestion Pricing: Ideology and Self Interest," ERSA conference papers ersa10p1477, European Regional Science Association.
- Kallbekken, Steffen & Sælen, Håkon, 2011. "Public acceptance for environmental taxes: Self-interest, environmental and distributional concerns," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 2966-2973, May.
- Börjesson, Maria & Eliasson, Jonas & Hugosson, Muriel & Brundell-Freij, Karin, 2012. "The Stockholm congestion charges – five years on. Effects, acceptability and lessons learnt," Working papers in Transport Economics 2012:3, CTS - Centre for Transport Studies Stockholm (KTH and VTI).
- Kallbekken, Steffen & Aasen, Marianne, 2010. "The demand for earmarking: Results from a focus group study," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(11), pages 2183-2190, September.
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