The evaluation of road safety projects following a cost-benefit approach requires the valuation of road accidents as a fundamental input. According to the current German evaluation methodology only the direct and indirect economic costs of road accidents are taken into account, while the intangible consequences such as pain, sorrow, loss of quality of life and the willingness-to-pay of the population to reduce / avoid these consequences are not considered. This study summarizes the state-of-the-art for assessing the willingness-to-pay (WTP) in a traffic safety context and it presents a comprehensive and systematic overview of the scientific literature. The most popular approaches for assessing the WTP (i.e. the hedonic pricing, the contingent valuation, the risk-risk-analysis, the standard gamble method and Stated-Choice-approach) are analyzed regarding their theoretical foundations, the current state-of-the-praxis and the empirical evidence. Among the analyzed alternatives, the SC-approach represents the current state-of-the-art for determining people´s WTP for non-market goods. Nevertheless, most empirical evidence relying on this method is related to the valuation of the travel time (VOT) and to the value of reliability (VOR). It must be stated, that during the last years a gap between the state-of-the-art (SC-methods) and the state-of the- praxis (other methods) has arisen, which should be filled with empirical evidence. Particularly in Germany there is a significant need for research. This work provides recommendations for further investigation on this subject. (Author/publisher)
Abstract