The Study of Differences in Public Acceptability Towards Urban Road Pricing

Road pricing was regarded as an effective instrument to reduce traffic congestion and environmental-related problems in metropolitan areas. However the low public acceptability was always one of the biggest barriers to implement this measure. In order to solve the problem above, this paper uses cluster analysis approach to identify groups of car users with a similar background in relevant socioeconomic variables and compares their responses to road pricing. Four groups are identified: short-distance travel and low-income people, long-distance travel and low-income people, short-distance travel and high- income people, long-distance travel and high-income people. Those groups indeed differ in their acceptability towards urban road pricing and factors affecting their acceptability. While there were no significant difference in acceptability among four groups from the results. Finally, this paper proposes various suggestions towards different groups to improve their acceptability by analyzing characteristics and attitude to charging practices in those groups.