Evaluation of the Factors which Influence the Willingness to Pay among pedestrians for Choosing Appropriate Policy Measures to Improve Safety Facilities by Discrete Choice Models

Vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians, have an increased rate of death and injury due to the consequences of traffic crashes. The knowledge of willingness to pay for crossing the street easier and safer will help policy makers to identify the best policies to be complemented. This study focus on the willingness to pay for facilitating pedestrians’ cross passing and, increasing safety while crossing the street.
In this study, three different scenarios including crossing the street with zebra crossing facilities, crossing the street with zebra crossing facilities and installing pedestrian traffic light, and constructing a pedestrian bridge equipped with escalator has presented. The research was conducted based on a stated preference method and a questionnaire which asked about pedestrians’ demographic characteristics, travel characteristics and scenarios. The studied sample size was 384 random pedestrians in Qazvin city that they have been asked the willingness to pay for increasing the safety of their crossing in one of the major cross in the city. For each of the scenarios, four different payments are presented and for each proposed payment of each scenario a logit model has been adopted.
The results show that age, education, car ownership and level of household income have significant relationship with willingness to pay. The older pedestrians have less willingness to pay in each of three scenarios. With increasing the level of education and number of car ownership among pedestrians, the willingness to pay in the first and third scenarios increases. The pedestrians with more than 40 million Iran Rials household income have the willingness to pay for making their crossing safer but others do not.
It can be concluded that among the policies, which have been mentioned through scenarios in the questionnaire, in cases that there is a willingness to pay, the scenario of crossing the street with zebra crossing facilities and installing pedestrian traffic light with a willingness to pay of 10,000 Iran Rials is the most frequent.