Pigovian Transport Pricing in Practice

Beat Hintermann, Beaumont Schoeman, Joseph Molloy, Thomas Götschi, Alberto Castro, Christopher Tchervenkov, Uros Tomic and Kay W. Axhausen

Working papers from Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel

Abstract: We implement Pigovian transport pricing in a field experiment in urban agglomerations of Switzerland over the course of 8 weeks. Our pricing considers the external costs from climate damages, health outcomes from pollution, accidents and physical activity, and congestion. It varies across time, space and mode of transport and is deducted from a budget provided to GPS-tracked participants. The treatment reduces the external costs of transport by 4.6% during the course of the experiment. The main underlying mechanism is a shift away from driving towards other modes, such as public transport, walking and cycling. Providing information about the external costs of transport alone is insufficient to change the transport behavior for the sample majority. We compute the welfare improvement due to mode shift to be 77 Swiss francs (or US dollars) per person and year, and that a fuel tax would achieve 70% of this gain.

Keywords: GPS-tracking; Pigovian taxation; Transport pricing; congestion; external costs; mobility; transportation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H23 H31 I18 Q52 Q54 R41 R48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-04-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-reg, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Pigovian Transport Pricing in Practice (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2021/11

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