The tendency of public’s attitudes to evaluate urban congestion charging policy in Asian megacity perspective: Case a study in Jakarta, Indonesia

Abstract

Urban congestion charging (CC) is regarded as a potentially powerful instrument aimed at changing road users’ travel behavior and achieving efficient infrastructure use. Yet, at the same time, implementing this policy is not easy. There are thoughtful barriers to the pursuit of the CC implementation. The public is skeptical about such a policy, so public rejection arises mainly among car users. The acceptability of a CC reflects public’s attitudes towards the scheme and public support is regarded as a prerequisite. Understanding this is crucial to any investigation of what might improve public acceptability. Given an absence of studies from the perspective of Asian megacities, a comprehensive stated choice (SC) survey is conducted in Jakarta, where CC scheme has been introduced and remain under consideration as a way to mitigate acute traffic congestion. A multiple-indicators multiple-causes (MIMIC) approach is applied to investigate causal paths among psychological determinants that representing public’s attitudes and their strength from psychological perspectives. Statistical findings depict that a CC acceptance can be influenced and explained by an individual’s psychological motivations such as perceived effectiveness and awareness of the proposed scheme. Psychological motivations including “awareness of the city’s environment” and “awareness of the problem of cars in society” appear to be the most important direct determinants leading to recognition of the effects of a CC scheme and they are indirect determinants of policy acceptance. Furthermore, the car-dependent society is seen as part of the problem in Jakarta, and people who are dependent on the car are more likely to understand that an effective policy is needed to address this problem. We found that people had explicitly mentioned “awareness of city’s environment” and “awareness of problem car in society” as the two most popular reasons for supporting the CC. Additionally, path analysis result on the effect of specific measure “trust in government policy” on the correct and acceptable policy has revealed a positive determinant. These indicate the important role of current government performance for achieving acceptability for CC proposal. Public marketing campaigns to promote CC are strongly recommended to focus on providing the public with credible and specific information related to perceived effectiveness and awareness (less congestion and a better environment).