Alice Ciccone (Institute of transport Economics)

Road pricing and Public Support: Evidence from a combined field and information provision experiment

Venue: Campus Luigi Einaudi, room 3 D1 01

Abstract: We conduct a large-scale randomized controlled trial to examine the effects of time- and place-specific road pricing on travel behavior and driving externalities. Using financial incentives and a smartphone app automatically tracking participants’ travel behavior across transport modes, we find that road pricing reduces driving externalities by 5%, corresponding to a price elasticity of external costs of driving ranging from -0.08 to -0.15. Our findings suggest that drivers of electric vehicles (EVs) are much less responsive to road pricing than drivers of non-EVs. Furthermore, we find that providing information on the expected benefits of road pricing enhances policy support for such policies, whereas experience with road pricing has little impact on public support.