Promoting Zero Emissions Buses Programs: a Study of Ekaterinburg Residents’ Willingness to Pay

Abstract

Transports are among the major sources of atmospheric pollution, causing climate change and public health damage. Public transportation is a well-known, recognized solution to greatly decrease transport emissions, especially when making use of zero emissions buses in the fleet, such as buses driven by batteries or by hydrogen. However, cost imposes a large barrier on zero emissions buses. The transition to the use of such buses is expensive, and it must be driven by several stakeholders, thus motivating service providers to make efforts towards zero emissions buses implementation strategies. In this study, citizens from a Russian district capital city were questioned on their potential role as contributors to the zero emissions buses transition, by studying their willingness and attitudes to pay a premium for the bus fares, in order to supplement the public transport agencies revenues. It was found that environmental concern and air pollution concern can be critical factors driving consumers into paying premium, but not noise pollution. Based on this study, there are several recommendations proposed for practitioners, as well as several future research avenues. In this article we seek to investigate how the consumers’ attitudes and concerns over the environment and city pollution could influence their willingness to play a role as supporters of the introduction of zero emissions buses in the public transportation fleet, since understanding the consumer attitudes is essential to perform and run an efficient public system.