An Internet-Based Stated Choices Household Survey for Alternative Fuelled Vehicles

The development of alternative fuelled vehicle technology is a key strategy towards environmental sustainability and improved air quality in cities. Analysis of the role of vehicle technology in fulfilling sustainability targets requires estimates of future vehicle demand. The inability to observe actual car-type preferences for cleaner vehicles has led researchers to the development of stated choice methods. This paper reports on the design and descriptive analysis of a stated choices survey on the demand for alternative fuelled vehicles in the Census Metropolitan Area of Hamilton, conducted through the Internet. Respondents were asked to select the vehicle they would most likely buy out of a set of conventional, hybrid and alternative-fuel options over a time horizon of five years. Characteristics such as vehicle purchase price, fuel and maintenance cost, acceleration, alternative fuel incentives, fuel availability and pollution levels were used to describe each vehicle presented. To our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind that focuses at the urban level and the Canadian context and also, it is the first to demonstrate the time- and cost-efficiency of the Internet in designing and collecting Stated Choices data for automobile demand

An insight into the impacts of COVID-19 on work-related travel behaviours in the Cardiff Capital Region and following the UK’s first national lockdown

Traveller responses to transport disruptions can be used to understand individual travel choices and the potential barriers restricting the uptake of sustainable travel behaviours. Using the Cardiff Capital Region as the study area, this research employed a cross-sectional survey to determine the immediate and anticipated long-term impacts of COVID-19, as a transport disruption, on work-related travel behaviours. This research identified that COVID-19 had the greatest significant impact on travel frequencies for office-based workers, with reductions identified during and in expected frequencies following COVID-19. Similar modal changes and intentions to shift were identified as an immediate and potential post-lockdown impact. Meanwhile, departure times before and after the pandemic are expected to remain between similar hours. Additionally, no statistical relationships were identified between respondents' socio-demographics and attitudes towards the avoidance of public transport and the exclusive use of a private car in the future. Overall, the research indicated the potential for low-frequency work travel but increased car dependency following the pandemic. This signifies the importance for local policymakers and planners to continue to improve existing active and public transport infrastructure, to secure a low-carbon recovery and future

Introducing public transport and relevant strategies in Riyadh City, Saudi Arabia: a stakeholders? perspective

There is an increasing concern about the growth of car dependence and its associated negative impacts on cities, including economic and environmental factors, urban form and lifestyle. City authorities worldwide now pay increasing attention to sustainable transport systems by enhancing or introducing public transit services. An example is Riyadh City, Saudi Arabia, which has witnessed a significant growth in car ownership and population. Current efforts to reduce high dependence on private cars in Riyadh involve the development of a new public transport system. Against this background, this paper considers the wider impacts of the new public transport system in Riyadh City on urban form, economics, environment, social norms and culture. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews conducted with transport experts and officials of relevant authorities in Riyadh City. The study results highlight that the city’s urban form would have the highest impact on the uptake of public transport. Moreover, stakeholders assumed that the provision of public transport services in Riyadh would improve mobility, decrease travel time, and create more employment opportunities, positively affecting Riyadh City’s economy and the environment. Interviewees concluded that these potential interventions would affect social norms and culture positively in the long term

Are existing battery electric vehicles adoption studies able to inform policy? A review for policymakers

Accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles provides a rare historic opportunity for reducing the dependence on fossil fuel and decarbonising road networks in the field of transport. Many countries have introduced various policy packages on both national and local levels to encourage electric vehicle adoption, but their market shares remain low. For better understanding the reasons behind this evidence, exploring the determinants that influence consumers’ adoption intentions is significant. Previous literature reviews have made clear and elaborated syntheses of influential factors; however, a summary of how evidence can be translated into policy through these factors is lacking. In response, this paper synthesises the main policies of various countries, summarises the previous research results, and forms corresponding policy tools, which can provide a reference to policymakers and guide the policy-making process

Factors influencing active travel to primary and secondary schools in Wales

This paper examines the factors associated with active travel to school on an average (typical) school day in Wales and contrasts these findings between primary and secondary school children. The analysis was based on data for 4206 primary school children (4–12 years of age) and 3203 adolescents (12–19 years of age) collected as part of the 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 waves of the National Survey for Wales. Logistic regression estimates showed that living within less than one mile from the school, parents’ frequency of walking and cycling and residing in an urban area were positively associated with active travel to both primary and secondary schools. Children’s age, mother’s unavailability and home ownership were negatively associated with active travel to primary school. Gender differences were only identified in the secondary school trips with female adolescents being less likely to walk to school than males. Findings point to the importance of ‘beyond-the-school’ active-travel campaigns and intervention programmes aimed at involving parents in encouraging walking and cycling to school

Public preferences for internet surveillance, data retention and privacy enhancing services: evidence from a pan-European study

This paper examines public preferences regarding privacy implications of internet surveillance. The study was based on a pan-European survey and included a stated preference discrete choice experiment (SPDCE) involving the choice of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) offering varying levels of storage, access and sharing of internet activity, continuous surveillance and privacy enhancing technologies. The survey obtained 16,463 individual responses across the European Union's 27 member-states1. Respondents expressed highest levels of concern about: Internet facilitated crime, namely using the internet to share and publish child pornography (68.2%); individual data protection and security threats – i.e., personal information not being handled in a legitimate way (62%); computer viruses (61.4%) and finally the theft of financial data or identity (61.4%). Such levels of concern affect trust in the Internet: 27.7% of respondents trusted websites for information exchange and a similar figure, 30.7% reported they trust websites for business transactions. Given this context, following our analysis of preferences, on average, respondents were more likely to choose an ISP that would not store any internet activity, would retain any data for up to 1 month and would not share data with anyone else. Interestingly, respondents did recognise the potential benefit for continuous state-surveillance (by the police), but only under an appropriate accountable legal basis. Also, respondents were in favour of an array of privacy enhancing technologies that would enhance their privacy when using the Internet. Finally, the analysis shows that in some cases, significant differences in preferences across countries and socio-economic characteristics suggest that individual privacy-preferences do vary across cultural/national settings, age, gender and education level

An internet-based stated choices household survey for alternative fuelled vehicles

The development of alternative fuelled vehicle technology is a key strategy towards environmental sustainability and improved air quality in cities. Analysis of the role of vehicle technology in fulfilling sustainability targets requires estimates of future vehicle demand. The inability to observe actual car-type preferences for cleaner vehicles has led researchers to the development of stated choice methods. This paper reports on the design and descriptive analysis of a stated choices survey on the demand for alternative fuelled vehicles in the Census Metropolitan Area of Hamilton, conducted through the Internet. Respondents were asked to select the vehicle they would most likely buy out of a set of conventional, hybrid and alternative-fuel options over a time horizon of five years. Characteristics such as vehicle purchase price, fuel and maintenance cost, acceleration, alternative fuel incentives, fuel availability and pollution levels were used to describe each vehicle presented. To our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind that focuses at the urban level and the Canadian context and also, it is the first to demonstrate the time- and cost-efficiency of the Internet in designing and collecting Stated Choices data for automobile demand

The supply of personal information: A study on the determinants of information provision in e-commerce scenarios

Disjoint research efforts have so far considered latent constructs (e.g. privacy concerns) either as an independent variable to explore consumers' actual or stated intentions or - to a less extent - as dependent variable explained through a number of antecedents (e.g. privacy awareness, demographic differences). However, there has not been a formal link across antecedents, latent constructs and behavioural (or stated) intentions in the context of ecommerce or information disclosure. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature in order to establish a better understanding of the role of attitudes in respondents' willingness to engage in online purchases. We employ a stated preference discrete choice experiment to collect respondents' choices across online retailers, conventional store and opt-out options under different levels of personal-information requirements. Personal information in the experiment is presented across three dimensions (attributes): amount/type of information collected, duration of storage and the likelihood of this information being shared with third parties. These dimensions are introduced in order to be able to capture risks involved in online transactions according to consumer perceptions. Using the Privacy Calculus as a guiding conceptual framework, the experiment also offers respondents trade-offs between benefits such as faster check-out, detailed reviews and priority shipping of the purchased product. The choice data are complemented with a set of attitudinal indicators (psychometric scales) describing individuals’ attitudes toward information privacy protection. The data comes from 502 participants representing the online-user population in the UK. We report results from Integrated Latent Variable models, which test the influence of these latent constructs in the consumers' decision to purchase a product online and their sensitivity upon attributes describing online retailers. Preliminary model estimation results show that the higher an individual's concern, general caution and technical protection the less likely a consumer is to purchase a product online. In a joint model, the influence of privacy concern is found to outweigh the influence of general caution and technical protection. Also, consumers with increased general caution are less sensitive in the case an online retailer shares their personal data with third parties

Walking and cycling infrastructure priorities: Qualitative testing of a Best-Worst Scaling experiment.

The built environment plays an important role on individuals’ propensity to walk and cycle and local authorities increasingly invest financial resources towards their development. Organisations managing the built environment have developed auditing tools as guidelines to inspect routes and identify improvements to support active travel. Using several auditing tools, this study developed 21 walking and 25 cycling investment-relevant factors that were embedded into two choice-based survey instruments focusing on walking and cycling, respectively. The study aims to internally validate a preference-based elicitation approach known as Best-Worst Scaling (BWS) aimed to capture pedestrian and cyclist preferences. Preferences directly translate into investment priorities aimed at increasing the rates of walking and cycling. As part of a survey instrument, these experiments will help obtain a ranking (preference) order of the most and least important factors that are likely to encourage people to walk and cycle on a common scale. We report findings on the internal validity of the BWS choice tasks as these were examined via a series of cognitive interviews with 20 participants (10 participants for each experiment). In both sets of interviews, four themes emerged regarding how the participants approached the BWS task and six themes related to the understanding of the factors. The study findings provide insights on how participants perceive BWS experiments, which can improve our large-scale BWS survey and similar studies. Furthermore, the study aims to produce an internally consistent BWS instrument that any local authority can use to determine which walking and cycling infrastructure investments to prioritise

Appropriate Methodologies to Better Measure Consumer Preferences for Postal Services

This report summarises work undertaken testing the use of stated preference discrete choice experiments to measure consumer preferences for postal services. It discusses the importance of understanding and quantifying consumer priorities in the postal sector and presents different methods used for valuing non-market goods. We recommend the use of stated preference discrete choice experiments, and test the use of this approach in three member states. We provide the findings for these member states, as well as a “tool kit” for applying this methodology in other member states in future.Consumer preferences, postal services, discrete choice, two-sided market