In the last decades, several studies have been undertaken to evaluate the total cost of transport, both in the USA and in Europe. Among those studies, we have taken into consideration the one of Litman (1999) and Delucchi (1998) for the USA, the research of Mayeres, Ochelen & Proost (1996), of Quinet (1993) and the EXTERNE study (1996) in Europe and the research of Danielis & Rotaris (2001) in Italy. In the different studies a variety of methodologies to calculate the social cost of transport have been used. The present paper start from a previous research concerning the social cost of transport, carried out in Italy (Pronello, 2003); here the further investigation on the usefulness and the robustness of the methodology already used to evaluate the social cost of transport and also to test two different techniques is carried out. Then, we would like to focus the attention to the results given by the two methods. Are they reliable? Are the results similar and comparable? Or a better understanding of the underlying constructs must be taken into account? (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting