The amount of consolation compensation in road traffic accidents

• This study aimed to examine the consolation compensation in road traffic accidents. Contingent valuation method framework was used.
• Five injury levels were designed to analyse the consolation compensation.
• Spike model was used to overcome zero willingness to pay.
• Results showed consolation compensation was increased as injury severity increased.

This study aimed to investigate the amount of consolation compensation that road accident perpetrators were willing to pay victims. It used 2010 statistics for general road accidents from Taiwan's National Police Agency (NPA) for further sampling and to mail questionnaires. In investigating consolation compensation, the framework of the contingent valuation method was used, and the data were collected through the design of different scenarios. In this study, five injury levels were designed to further analyse the consolation compensation price the perpetrators were willing to pay: minor injury, moderate injury, serious injury, disability, and death. The results revealed the price that many perpetrators were willing to pay was zero; however, we overcame this issue by using the Spike model. The estimated results showed that road accident perpetrators were willing to pay more consolation compensation with increased injury severity.