01156990

Component

Coercive policies, such as road pricing or environmental taxation, are policies of an authority that charges or restricts its subjects with the aim to protect or restore common goods. Road pricing examples have further shown that it is important to understand the acceptability of such policies to the general public in order to guarantee the long term success. This paper investigates the underlying factors that determine acceptability. There are number of well-established psychological factors that determine acceptability such as perceived effectiveness, fairness or problem awareness. It is however not yet well understood what are the factors determining these in turn. The authors propose as a "deeper" determinant a person's belief in absolute values defined here as the belief that objective truths, true justice and an authentic beauty in this world exist. To understand the importance of the psychological factors as well as belief in absolute in different cultures for acceptability the authors conduct a survey among British and Japanese students asking about acceptability for a hypothetical scenario of environmental taxation. The authors find that belief in absolute can explain acceptability via the psychological determinants well among British students but it is not significant in the Japanese sample. The authors further find that scenario specific determinants are more important in Britain whereas trust in government per se is more important in Japan. Policy implications are discussed.

01147878

10-1471

English

12p

2010

Transportation Research Board 89th Annual Meeting

DVD

Figures (1) ; References; Tables (4)

Policy making; Road pricing; Social factors; Taxation; Traffic congestion

Acceptability; Coercion

Highways; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2010 Paper #10-1471

TRIS, TRB

Jan 25 2010 10:39AM