Valuing casualty risk reductions from estimated baseline risk

Abstract

Stated choice studies have been applied regularly to the valuation of time savings and other attributes of travelling as perceived by individuals. In such experiments, respondents often provide reference levels for the attributes and the hypothetical choices presented to them are pivoted around actual behaviour. However, most individuals are not able to provide reference levels for the number of casualties on the road they travel. Thus, if valuation of this important element is attempted, it is the researcher who must provide casualty risk reference levels to the respondents. Some studies have applied route choice experiments including a safety attribute but the majority have been limited to only one particular road section with a common baseline risk for all respondents.This study discusses the setting up and results of a more generalized route choice experiment including a safety attribute. Respondents provided, at an initial stage, their travel times and costs related to a recent trip by car. Then, expected numbers of casualties for different trip lengths were calculated based on travel distances and traffic densities. So, the calculated number of severe injuries and fatalities (casualties) per year, on the road section the respondent had travelled, entered as a third attribute in the choices, together with the reported travel times and costs. Route choice was analysed using multinomial logit and mixed logit models. From the latter models we obtained point estimates for the value of the statistical life ranging from € 7.3 million to € 19.1 million.

Car drivers’ valuation of landslide risk reductions

“…This expression can be termed the subjective value of a casualty reduction (Hojman et al, 2005;Veisten et al, 2013), and the casualties will contain a share of serious injuries, p si , and a share of fatalities, p f = (1 À p si ). Similarly, c/b yields a subjective value of travel time savings (Gaudry et al, 1989;Hensher et al, 2009).…”

“…To some extent we control for the unreliability caused by landslides, incident-related delays/detours or blockages, as we include in our choice experiment a separate and deterministic travel time attribute. The procedure for valuing landslide risk changes in road transport should, therefore, be based on choice experiments including travel time and casualty risk, in addition to landslide risk and travel cost, consistent with the approaches used for valuing other factors in Norwegian road transport Veisten et al, 2013). The hypotheses that we test comprise the sign and statistical significance of the landslide risk parameter and whether choice behaviour is explained by the choice attributes and the individual characteristics according to theoretical expectations.…”

“…The main survey was carried out in April/May 2010, where the choice experiment involving landslide risk was part of a second wave resurveying car drivers who had faced another choice experiment in a first wave (with a response rate of 21.87%); 3109 of the 9538 car drivers from the first wave were routed to the second wave survey and 75.33% responded, i.e. 2342 (Veisten et al, 2013). 4 Some data were cleaned at the first wave stage of the survey.…”

“…valuation of landslide risk in choice experiments has not been reported in the literature. 1 Our main aim was, therefore, to test a procedure for the valuation of landslide risk in road transport, applying choice experiments consistent with the approaches used for valuing other public good factors in Norway Veisten et al, 2013). Our choice experiment and the assessment of the procedure also comprised, as a necessary first step, consideration of establishing value functions or unit values for landslide risk reduction in cost-benefit analysis in the road transport sector.…”

Reflections on the economics of transportation safety

“…The literature continues to expand. The paper by Knut Veisten et al (2013) describes an experiment where drivers choose between routes that have different inherent risks. The authors are able to infer a willingness of pay for safety.…”