Personal Carbon Trading: Trade-off and Complementarity Between In-home and Transport Related Emissions Reduction

Personal carbon trading is a downstream version of the cap and trade approaches to mitigating carbon emissions from individual energy use. Although there are studies that investigate the theoretical and implementation issues, there is little evidence over the potential ways people could reduce their emissions when subject to a PCT policy. Especially little is understood about how people make tradeoff between or complement reducing emissions from transport and in-home energy use. This paper addresses this gap by reporting the findings of a questionnaire survey of stated intentions under the policy. Results show that, more people (53.6%) preferred to reduce their emissions from both transport and in-home energy use compared to from only one of these. This shows the flexibility offered by a cap including transport and in-home energy use is more efficient compared to a PCT covering either of these separately. Nearly three-fourths (76.2%) opted to reduce their emissions following a PCT policy. However, among those with above-budget initial emissions, a large share (79.6%) still could not reduce their emissions to below the budget and opted to purchase at least some permits to cover their emissions, indicating the difficulty in reducing emissions at the personal and household level

New appraisal values of travel time saving and reliability in Great Britain

© 2017, The Author(s). This paper provides an overview of the study ‘Provision of market research for value of time savings and reliability’ undertaken by the Arup/ITS Leeds/Accent consortium for the UK Department for Transport (DfT). The paper summarises recommendations for revised national average values of in-vehicle travel time savings, reliability and time-related quality (e.g. crowding and congestion), which were developed using willingness-to-pay (WTP) methods, for a range of modes, and covering both business and non-work travel purposes. The paper examines variation in these values by characteristics of the traveller and trip, and offers insights into the uncertainties around the values, especially through the calculation of confidence intervals. With regards to non-work, our recommendations entail an increase of around 50% in values for commute, but a reduction of around 25% for other non-work—relative to previous DfT ‘WebTAG’ guidance. With regards to business, our recommendations are based on WTP, and thus represent a methodological shift away from the cost saving approach (CSA) traditionally used in WebTAG. These WTP-based business values show marked variation by distance; for trips of less than 20miles, values are around 75% lower than previous WebTAG values; for trips of around 100miles, WTP-based values are comparable to previous WebTAG; and for longer trips still, WTP-based values exceed those previously in WebTAG

International meta-analysis of stated preference studies of transportation noise nuisance

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11116-014-9527-4This paper reports the first meta-analysis and most extensive review of stated preference studies of transportation noise nuisance. The meta-analysis is based on a newly compiled data set of 258 values from 49 studies and 23 countries and spanning more than 40 years. Contrast this with the most extensive meta-analysis of the more conventional hedonic pricing approach which includes 53 noise valuations. Moreover, the sample compares favourably with the 444 observations from the very first meta-analysis of the value of travel time savings which is by far the most widely examined parameter in transport planning. A particularly significant finding of the study is that the intertemporal income elasticity is close to one, somewhat larger than the cross-sectional income elasticity typically obtained from individual studies. This demonstrates the importance of distinguishing the effects of 2 income variations that occur over time, which tend to drive policy, from variations across individuals at one point in time, and such findings are typical of those observed in other markets. Importantly, the values derived are transferable across countries and may be used to benchmark existing evidence and provide values in contexts where none exist. Other key results are that values for aircraft noise exceed those for other modes, whilst those exposed to higher noise levels and those who are highly annoyed also have higher values in line with expectations. A wide range of design effects were tested but few were significant and these included the consumer surplus measure, the representation of noise and the context

A critical review of the socially responsible consumer

The choice to engage in socially responsible consumption is reportedly being made more frequently, but evidence of an attitude-behaviour gap suggests that consumers often fail to translate their intentions or attitudes into actual behaviours, even when they have clearly expressed their commitment to that form of consumption. This ambiguity lies in whether ethical or socially responsible consciousness is motivating the consumers, or if other behavioural drivers have been overshadowed by the appearance of socially responsible consumption. This chapter intends to show that researchers in socially responsible consumption would benefit from a deeper understanding of the intention-behaviour gap modelled by intention, social situations and personality traits. We review the empirical evidence of the behavioural drivers such as value, attitude, situation as well as personality that can play a more effective role in motivating individuals to act upon socially responsible consumption

Evaluating measures to improve personal security and the value of their benefits

Recent national passenger surveys have shown that satisfaction associated with personal security on the railways in Great Britain has been consistently lower than the overall satisfaction level of rail passengers. To address these concerns, and to improve personal security on the railways, the industry has implemented various security measures and schemes. However, in the absence of a value or a set of values to robustly quantify such measures, making a case for investment becomes very difficult. The Rail Personal Security Group asked RSSB to address this knowledge gap. To this end, the project has evaluated the Secure Station and Park Mark schemes implemented by the industry to improve personal security. The aims of the research, which have been fulfilled, were to establish whether the schemes are fulfilling their objectives and to estimate the value of the benefits accrued from their introduction. The project has quantified the schemes’ benefits through increased patronage and crime reduction, as well as identifying wider social and economic benefits. Additionally, the research has delivered a well developed and informed framework to assess the societal and economic benefits of investing in personal security, as well as recommendations on the effectiveness of the schemes. The knowledge gained through this work may be used in the Passenger Demand Forecasting Handbook, the New Approach to Appraisal guidelines; and individual train operator and Network Rail business case frameworks. The outputs will help make better investment and deployment decisions associated with personal security on the railways