Is there a willingness to pay for shade provision as part of cycling urban infrastructure? Eliciting attributes of a discrete choice experiment in Neiva, Colombia

Sammanfattning: This manuscript reports on an exploration of whether shade provision is valued by urban users of cycling infrastructure. A description of the elicitation process has been outlined in order to build a general but detailed analysis of the different stages included in the exercise of attribute elicitation. As a departure point, a thorough literature review was conducted in order to establish a state of the art’s scenario. Different kinds of attributes that have been evaluated previously within discrete choice experiments and other relatable methods linked to bicycle commuting and bike route choices were compiled, however, shade appeared as an overlooked attribute. From this, a theoretical and methodological approach based on welfare economics and, the concept of willingness to pay as an indicator of shade provision’s value is proposed for the context of Neiva, Colombia, a medium size city in a developing country. Preliminary focus groups were conducted to build a surveying tool for eliciting the proposed attribute and gathered more contextual information. Finally, a pilot survey was launched in order to test the perceived value of shade and its importance for commuters. Special attention is devoted to the description of how the tools and methods were used in order to help future efforts. Several sets of data and information were reviewed and contrasted in order to build an accurate image of the current status of shade within the local commuters’ minds, what barriers were found while executing the research plan, and what can be some important implications for future urban planning studies and sustainable mobility research. Several different commuting conditions and individual realities were found, nonetheless, the existence of valuing shade provision was pervasive across all the surveyed university students and graduated staff. Furthermore, the benefits were perceived as socially broad, even by motorized, non-walking, and cycling commuters. Other valuable insights were found, like the effect of corruption when asking for policy implementation, further research needs to be conducted due to sampling limitations, the scarcity of previous research aimed at the subject, and for gathering more information about how acknowledging the attribute might be potentially critical for the future.