Are bureaucrats' scepticism to cost-benefit analysis partly due to misconceptions?

Author(s)
Veisten, K. & Elvik, R.
Year
Abstract

Transport sector bureaucrats from several European countries were surveyed about the foundations and implications of cost-benefit analysis in transport planning, especially regarding priority setting for road safety measures. The survey results were applied to an assessment of the hypothesis that bureaucrats have misconceptions about basic principles of welfare economics and that these misconceptions may in part explain a reluctance towards the use of cost-benefit analysis. A simple procedure of information reference testing was performed to identify possible misconceptions. It was found that half of the interviewees could be classified as 'uninformed' about cost-benefit analysis with respect to transport and road safety measures. Half of the interviewees could even be classified as 'fully misinformed' about the normative foundations of cost-benefit analysis. As expected, those with a formal background in economics scored significantly higher in the information reference testing. Lower scores correlated with negative attitudes toward cost-benefit analysis in road safety priority setting (A). For the covering abstract of the conference see ITRD E212343.

Request publication

15 + 3 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.

Publication

Library number
C 47559 (In: C 47458 CD-ROM) /10 /80 / ITRD E216797
Source

In: Greener, safer and smarter road transport for Europe : proceedings of TRA - Transport Research Arena Europe 2006, Göteborg, Sweden, June 12th-15th 2006, 11 p., 17 ref.

Our collection

This publication is one of our other publications, and part of our extensive collection of road safety literature, that also includes the SWOV publications.