A-PLANET: Acceptable PoLicies for the optimAl balaNce between driving and activE Transport

Norway is aggressively promoting zero- and low-emissions vehicles. A high penetration of electric vehicles has positive environmental effects, but a more energy efficient car fleet may exacerbate some problems such as congestion. It can also reduce the competitiveness of public transportation, walking and cycling. Efficient policies, such as road pricing, can help strike a better balance between social costs and benefits. A-PLANET aims to address the trade-off between policy effectiveness and acceptability in search for the optimal balance. By using a mix of methods and gathering a rich set of data, the project will answer a set of research questions that will contribute to the shift to a sustainable transport system. The project connects different research environments: Transport Economic Institute (TØI), The University of Oslo (UiO) and the University Carlos III of Madrid (UC3M). In collaboration with UiO, we are planning a field experiment to test the effect of road pricing on driving behavior and study the effect of policy packaging on acceptance. We are at the stage were we are finalizing the experimental design and app development. Together with our partners in Spain, we reviewed relevant academic literature and policy documents concerning current measures in Norway and Spain. After a pilot in Spain, we conducted the first part of a similar survey in Norway in the fall of 2023. Using the same design, we focused particularly on the difference between road pricing and current tolls. We recruited respondents via Facebook, generating substantial interest and many responses. The results differ somewhat from those in Spain. Many Norwegian respondents were generally against road pricing, but with significant variation. For the next part, we plan to recruit a representative sample of the population in order to gain more reliable results. We underwent a process to evaluate different transport models for simulating the effects of different policy measures, e.g., different varieties of road pricing, in the greater Oslo area. We have chosen to use the Regional Transport Model (RTM) for Oslo and Viken county. This will enable cost-benefit analysis of different policies, and the possibility of assessing how costs and benefits are distributed between groups, enabling a deeper assessment of acceptability that can complement analyses in other work packages. We made a number of preliminary model runs with interesting results, and are preparing a working paper to be presented at conferences in early 2024. We will submit this paper to a peer-reviewed journal sometime during 2024. In this article, we will also further develop some political-economic theories on redistribution as a result of transport policy and political decision-making power. Researchers have actively engaged in dissemination, as evidenced in the report.

A-PLANET is an interdisciplinary project that will create new knowledge and sound empirical evidence acquired by experimentation that will fill important knowledge gaps within transport, behavioral, environmental and political economics. By using a mix of methods from economics, psychology, political and data science, and gathering a rich set of different data, the project aims to answer a set of bold research questions that will contribute to the shift to a sustainable transport system. The overarching focus is to address the tradeoff between policy effectiveness and acceptability in the transport sector, in search for the optimal balance. Results from the use of a newly developed transport model will provide a valuable starting point for identifying the most promising policy options. We will then develop ad-hoc choice experiments to understand how to facilitate policy acceptability, specifically applied to the transport sector. The combination of these results will generate important new insights and enable us to map key factors influencing public acceptability and relevant heterogeneities. The project will then integrate behavioral insights (including gamification techniques) and factors associated with increased public acceptability directly in the design of new policy instruments, which will then be empirically tested through a large scale Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) in the field, both in isolation and as policy packages. By using an RCT, the gold standard of research, we will identify causal effects of policies on transport behavior. Finally, these results will be used to re-calibrate the transport model and analyze the costs and benefits of policies aiming to strike the optimal balance between efficiency and acceptability when scaled up to city level. The model results combined with sound empirical evidence from the experiments will provide a solid foundation for policy recommendations.