Public Acceptability of Low Emission Zones: The Case of “Madrid Central”

Javier Tarriño-Ortiz, Julio A. Soria-Lara, Juan Gómez and José Manuel Vassallo
Additional contact information
Javier Tarriño-Ortiz: Transport Research Centre, TRANSyT, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Julio A. Soria-Lara: Transport Research Centre, TRANSyT, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Juan Gómez: Transport Research Centre, TRANSyT, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain
José Manuel Vassallo: Transport Research Centre, TRANSyT, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 6, 1-17

Abstract: Cities have intensified the adoption of Low Emission Zones (LEZs) to improve urban livability. Despite the high social controversy caused by LEZs in many cities, the scientific literature has paid little attention to study their public acceptability. This paper conducts a modelling approach exploring the impact of four groups of variables on the public acceptability of LEZs: (i) socio-economic and demographic characteristics; (ii) personal attitudes; (iii) travel-related variables; and (iv) perceptions and mobility habits linked to LEZs. The city of Madrid, Spain, is a case study of great interest because a LEZ called “Madrid Central” has been recently implemented. A total of 799 individual questionnaires were used to calibrate an ordered logit model. Results indicate that socio-economic and demographic variables are weakly related to the level of public acceptability towards the LEZ. On the contrary, the political ideology of individuals, their environmental awareness, their primary transport mode, the use of shared mobility systems, and the frequency of access to “Madrid Central” have a higher explanatory power. The results may be useful for policy-makers to understand the factors that increase the public acceptability of LEZs.

Keywords: air quality; urban traffic; emissions; pedestrianization; low emission zone; Madrid; acceptability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/6/3251/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/6/3251/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:6:p:3251-:d:517701

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().