Using Social Research to Measure, Understand and Predict Behavioral Responses to Road Pricing in the UK

ABSTRACT

The Department for Transport (UK) has developed a program of social research to inform road pricing policy making, using both traditional and innovative research methods. The program addresses issues of public acceptability, the distributional impacts of road pricing policies, and behavioral responses to a complex pricing system. This paper discusses the methodological approaches used therein and sets out some emerging findings. The purpose is to review the use of this social research program and assess its potential for informing transport policy-making, an area where it has traditionally been under-utilized.

Key Words:

• behavior
• distributional impact
• policy
• public acceptability
• road pricing
• social research

Acknowledgments

This paper was first presented at the 11th International Conference on Travel Behaviour Research Kyoto, 16–20, August 2006.

Notes

¹In the UK, public transport delivery is in many cases devolved to local government, where local authorities and passenger transport executives have responsibility for scheme development and implementation.

²The Transport Innovation Fund has two streams, one to fund innovative schemes tackling congestion (this will potentially fund road pricing schemes), and another which focuses on schemes which are linked to national productivity.

³A full text of this speech can be found at http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_roads/documents/page/dft_roads_038886.hcsp.

⁴The Department for Transport commissioned a team from the University of the West of England to take forward an Evidence Base Review of attitudes to road pricing, including international evidence. The Department ran a module of survey questions in the March 2004 Office for National Statistics Omnibus Survey. British Market Research Bureau social research was commissioned to conduct a series of qualitative in depth interviews and workshops to explore in greater depth public attitudes to road pricing.

⁵A Rapid Evidence Assessment was conducted by a team at the Centre for Transport and Society, University of the West of England.

⁶Research on ‘the role of the car' conducted by National Centre for Social Research in 2006–07.

⁷This is a continuous survey, designed to provide a databank of personal travel information for Great Britain. It has been conducted as a continuous survey since July 1988, following ad hoc surveys since the mid-1960s. The survey is designed to identify long-term trends and is not considered suitable for monitoring short-term trends. Results are published annually. For most recent findings see UK DfT (2007).

⁸Further work involving qualitative research with transport experts is currently being undertaken by the Department investigating how evidence on social and distributional impacts can be incorporated more generally in transport appraisal methods. This research was published in 2009 (UK DfT 2009b).