Acceptability of Vehicle Mileage Taxation in Sweden A Behavioral Economics Approach to Introducing Road Policy Reforms

Sammanfattning: Vehicle Mileage Taxation is a proposed improvement to addressing external costs of driving. A key hurdle for its implementation is its acceptability by the public. Theories of psychological reactance, fairness perception and status quo bias are explored as influences on tax reform perception. Data, representative for Sweden, was collected from 407 individuals in an online survey. A framing experiment investigated influences of policy communication on acceptability and its determinants through structural equation modeling. A choice experiment tested acceptability of different reform proposals over the status quo. The acceptability of introducing vehicle mileage taxation is found to depend on its perceived fairness, the arousal of psychological reactance and its tax rates, but not on the framing used to communicate the reform proposal.