Estimating the willingness-to-pay for road safety improvement

Abstract Few studies have explored, to date, the issue of the monetary valuation of non-fatal injuries caused by road traffic accidents. The present contribution seeks to raise interest in this question and to estimate, by contingent valuation, French households’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) to improve their road safety level and reduce their risk of non-fatal injuries following a road accident. Much of the literature focused on estimating WTP for a reduction in the risk of fatal accident and on the calculation of the value or price of the risk, collectively named “the value of a statistical life”. In contrast, the present paper is interested in the valuation of more or less serious non-fatal injuries caused by traffic accidents. More specifically, it estimates road users’ WTP for a reduced risk of being a victim of various types of non-fatal injury. To do so, contingent valuation was conducted on the adult population (aged 18 years and older) of a French administrative Departement (Rhone) during the year 2012. A survey was conducted in 2013 by telephone interview from 2,216 inhabitants, randomly selected from the Rhone population. The stratification of the sample was made by geographic region (two areas in Greater Lyon and outside). This study was based on the stated preference method. Respondents were asked their WTP to avoid diverse consequences of a road accident. More precisely, the questionnaires contained five categories of questions: (1) personal experience in dealing with road accidents, (2) driving behavior and traffic accident risk perception, (3) use of means of transport (4) general socio-economic characteristics, and (5) willingness to pay to reduce the risk of non-fatal injury following a road traffic accident. Participants had to envisage contributing financially to the implementation of a local project to improve the safety of road users in the Rhone Departement. Since the participants were themselves inhabitants of the Rhone, they should feel immediately concerned by a project within their own area for their routine travel. To test the relationship between WTP and injury severity, three road safety projects were independently presented. Each was characterized by the types of injury against which it offered protection. For each project, respondents were asked whether they were willing to pay for the project to be implemented, if so, the maximum amount of money they were willing to pay each year. If not, zero WTP was assigned, and follow-up questions tried to identify the reasons for this choice; this allowed “genuine zero values”, consistent with an economic decision, to be distinguished from protest responses. A Tobit and a type-II Tobit model were estimated to identify factors for WTP. The results highlighted the significant and positive influence of injury severity on WTP. Experience of road traffic accidents seemed to play an important role, positively influencing valuation of non-fatal injury. The young people seemed to be more willing to invest in improving their road safety. As predicted by economic theory, the study confirms the positive relationship between WTP and income level.