IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bsl/wpaper/2025-08.html

Mode Choice for Leisure Travel in Europe: Simulating Future Transport Policies

Author

Listed:
  • Roth, Jakob
  • Schwab, Laura
  • Hintermann, Beat

Abstract

The European travel sector is experiencing a transformation driven by increased climate awareness and policy measures aimed at reducing external costs such as emissions. This study examines how Swiss travelers respond to these developments, using a stated preference experiment including the modes train, night train, car, and airplane. Employing nested logit models, we find a significant willingness-to-pay for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) of CHF 94 per ton of CO2e. Based on the estimated coefficients, we evaluate the impacts of four policy scenarios: an aviation tax (CHF 30), a night train subsidy (CHF 20), a SAF blending quota, and a market outlook for 2030. These scenarios are benchmarked against the first-best Pigovian tax on transport externalities. Assessing demand shifts, consumer surplus, and external costs, we find that subsidizing night train prices, the aviation tax, and the 2030 scenario increase welfare, whereas a 6% SAF mandate reduces it.

Suggested Citation

  • Roth, Jakob & Schwab, Laura & Hintermann, Beat, 2025. "Mode Choice for Leisure Travel in Europe: Simulating Future Transport Policies," Working papers 2025/08, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    • Handle: RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2025/08
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://edoc.unibas.ch/bitstreams/b683e47c-cd24-4555-9e25-d1b1906f4b66/download
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics
    • R4 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics
    • Q5 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2025/08. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: WWZ (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wwzbsch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.