Estimation of Willingness to Pay for Reducing Road Accident Risk Using Route Choice Model

Abstract

The proportionality of road accidents with urbanization triggers road accident cost analysis, as a prime component in the planning and designing of road projects. However, proper quantification of accidents and analyzing every parameter associated with it is a tedious task and requires expert approaches. This study deals with the cost of road accidents in Thiruvananthapuram city as it houses the most critical accident spots in the state of Kerala. Essential stretches of roads to be analyzed were identified using Accident Severity Index (ASI). A Stated Preference (SP) survey was conducted to estimate the trip-wise mean willingness to pay value (WTP) of road users of the selected road stretches based on logit models. Travel time, travel costs, and accident rates were taken as the attributes. The behavior of individual users was interpreted from the coefficients estimated from the models. The mode-specific variables showed relations consistent with the expectations. The willingness to pay value to avoid a critical accident estimated from the final model was found higher for short trip setting (Rs.1.08/trip), which indicates the importance of safety of the short frequent trips among the road users compared to the longer trip setting (Rs. 0.72/trip). © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.