Road pricing acceptability and persuasive communication effectiveness

Abstract

To facilitate coercive policy implementation encountering public opposition, this study focuses on road pricing policy (1) to examine an integrated framework accommodating the relationships between participation in administration, trust in government, fairness, freedom infringement, public opinion, and policy acceptability; and (2) to analyze the effect of persuasive communication with request and advice methods on policy acceptability. Using data from 175 participants in Taiwan, results find that participation in administration increases procedural fairness, which and distributive fairness via scenario fairness improve acceptability; however, freedom infringement reduces acceptability. Public opinion affects acceptability directly and indirectly through scenario fairness. Moreover, persuasive communication does not change overall acceptability but improves acceptability in the ethical aspect and for males, the middle-aged and elderly, and mixed-mode users. Findings suggest that governments should introduce public participation into coercive policy formulation and apply persuasive communication to policy acceptability improvement.