Valuation of Aircraft Noise by Time of Day: A Comparison of Two Approaches

Abstract

The paper reports on an innovative application of stated preference techniques to derive values of aircraft noise by time of day and by day of week. Revealed preference techniques cannot provide such segmentations, which would clearly be of use in policy development, especially relating to airport operations. Given the lack of research on this issue, the work reported herein is highly experimental. Two stated preference experiments were designed. The first focused on a single time period, whilst the second asked respondents to trade between time periods. Both approaches yielded results that are plausible and mutually consistent in terms of relative values by time period. It is concluded that stated preference techniques are particularly useful in this context where the use of aggregated values may lead to non‐optimal policy decisions.

Acknowledgements

This study was undertaken as part of the 5A project (Attitudes to Aircraft Annoyance Around Airports) funded by the EUROCONTROL Experimental Centre. The authors would like to thank Ted Elliff, Peter Hullah and Elisabeth Plachinski for their support throughout the project. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors alone.

Notes

1. Where the average sound level is measured for different time periods and the evening and night‐time periods are then weighted by 5 and 10 dB(A), respectively.

2. The SP experiments were based on the summer schedules as shown in Table 1, and this was clearly specified in the questionnaire.

3. Whilst it is recognized that this assumption could be challenged, equally the assumption that a respondent would give an individual willingness to pay in terms of a household‐level payment would also be open to challenge. This issue is of greatest importance with respect to absolute values rather than the relative values that are the primary focus of the paper. This point is returned to in the Conclusions.

4. These results differ slightly from those reported by Bristow and Wardman (2003), which contained an error in the process of correcting for repeated observations.