Public’s Trade-off between a New Risk-based Airport Screening and Asserted Terror Risk Impact: A Stated Choice Survey from Norway

This paper presents a survey-based economic evaluation of security measures protecting against the risk of aviation terrorism. A sample of Norwegians were asked to state their choices between different air travel al-ternatives, i.e. travel time, trip costs, fatalities in terrorist acts on air transport and type of passenger screen-ing. Screening was specified as either the current uniform screening or a new risk-based screening in which passengers are divided into three groups: high-risk, medium-risk and low-risk. Respondents were informed that risk-based screening implied they would have to identify themselves using a biometric identity card and that those not qualifying as low-risk passengers would be checked with body scanners. Our results indicate that the sampled passengers were very concerned about privacy. Maintaining existing uniform screening was preferred to a new risk-based screening system, even though risk-based screening was presented as poten-tially preventing future terrorist fatalities