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.
Samenvatting