Impact of Perceived Uncertainty on Public Acceptability of Congestion Charging: An Empirical Study in China

Severe traffic congestion is now a common problem in major cities worldwide, causing huge economic, environmental, and social losses to overall welfare. Governments are now considering congestion charging as an effective way to manage congestion. However, since congestion charging has not yet been implemented widely, the public remains uncertain about it. Few scholars have explored public uncertainty about congestion charging. This paper examined how the public perceived uncertainty toward fairness and efficiency affects willingness to accept congestion charging. Through an experimental study of stated preference, this paper analyzes the influence of observable variables and unobserved latent variables on public acceptability and compares the results with a traditional discrete choice model. The results indicated that the public’s perceived uncertainty about congestion charging will have significant negative effect on acceptability and that the perception of fairness has an even larger effect. As for uncertainty about the effectiveness of congestion charging on alleviating congestion, the implementation efficiency of the government is the most significant. For uncertainty about fairness, whether charge collection and revenue allocation are reasonable is the most significant. These findings provide an empirical basis for reducing public uncertainty and increasing public acceptance of congestion charging