There is a growing interest in the possibilities of being able to place money values on environmental effects of roads and traffic. Environmental effects are generally not marked and so there are no market prices from which to derive money values. One approach is the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) in which survey respondents are asked to state their willingness to pay (WTP) or willingness to accept compensation (WTAC) to obtain or avoid changes in the goods being valued. There are several problems that need to be solved before the CV can be used to obtain money values for traffic nuisance, not least of them being how to describe to respondents the change they are being asked to value. This report discusses some of the issues involved in using the CVM to value the subjective nuisance caused by road traffic. It focuses on the kinds of CV questions that might be appropriate for this kind of application. It then describes an exploratory study in which respondents were asked their WTP and WTAC for changes in the level of traffic or traffic nuisance. The novel approach of asking people to value shifts along nuisance rating scales was included. The CV questions were followed by an intensive interview designed to explore whether respondents understood the questions and how they went about answering them. (A)
Samenvatting