Designing Effective and Acceptable Road Pricing Schemes: Evidence from the Geneva Congestion Charge

Abstract

While instruments to price congestion exist since the 1970s, less than a dozen cities around the world have a cordon or zone pricing scheme. Geneva, Switzerland, may be soon joining them. This paper builds on a detailed review of the existing schemes to identify a set of plausible design options for the Geneva congestion charge. In turn, it analyzes their acceptability, leveraging a large survey of residents of both Geneva and the surrounding areas of Switzerland and France. Our original approach combines a discrete choice experiment with randomized informational treatments. We consider an extensive set of attributes, such as perimeter, price and price modulation, use of revenues, and exemption levels and beneficiaries. The informational treatments address potential biased beliefs concerning the charge’s expected effects on congestion and pollution. We find that public support depends crucially on the policy design. We identify an important demand for exemptions, which, albeit frequently used in the design of environmental taxation, is underexplored in the analysis of public support. This demand for exemptions is not motivated by efficiency reasons. It comes mostly by local residents, for local residents. Further, people show a marked preference for constant prices, even if efficiency would point to dynamic pricing based on external costs. Hence, we highlight a clear trade-off between efficiency and acceptability. However, we also show, causally, that this gap can in part be closed, with information provision. Analyzing heterogeneity, we show that preferences vary substantially with where people live and how they commute. Even so, we identify several designs that reach majority support.

Animal welfare is a stronger determinant of public support for meat taxation than climate change mitigation in Germany

“…The introduction of taxes on food is undoubtedly a political challenge, particularly in times of high inflation and globally rising food prices 27 . Numerous surveys and choice experiments have examined individuals’ preferences regarding (carbon) tax schemes in general, and animal products in particular 28 – 35 . Several policy characteristics have been found to increase public support, for example, refraining from calling the charge a tax, earmarking revenues, establishing progressive taxation and clearly explaining the tax’s impact 36 , 37 .…”

Linking integrity with road pricing cause-and-effect model: A system dynamics simulation approach

“…Following Stockholm's congestion charge implementation, traffic volume decreased by approximately 20%, and inner-city kilometre travel decreased by approximately 15% (Croci, 2016;Eliasson, 2009;Maria, Eliasson, Hugosson, & Brundellfreij, 2012). Simultaneously, travel times were reduced by approximately a third to half during these times, and the road toll resulted in a 4.5% increase in public transit ridership (Baranzini, Carattini, & Tesauro, 2021). Stockholm's congestion pricing system has led to a 10% to 14% drop in carbon dioxide emissions in its central area (Federal Highway Administration, 2022).…”

Value profiles as tools to understand and guide societal decision making

“…For decision situations, we borrow methods and practices from decision analysis (Keeney and Raiffa, 1993); for causal descriptions, methods from impact assessment (Pearl, 2005); for priorities, from choice experiments (Baranzini et al 2021); and for priority generalisations, from multi-attribute utility theory (Keeney and Raiffa, 1993). Causal impact models are effective tools for describing decision situations.…”

“…Asking several attributes simultaneously is a useful feature also for our purposes. (Baranzini et al 2021) Revealed preferences is a method where actual prices and their variations of e.g. actual houses are studied to identify determinants of variation.…”