Investigating the stated preferences of Tehrani citizens regarding: "Car-Free City Center": A Discrete Choice Experiment

One of the possible solutions for the challenges caused by the use of private passenger cars, especially traffic, congestion, and air pollution in Tehran, avoiding huge economic costs and reducing the annual death rate, is to apply the approach of "city center without private passenger cars". The purpose of this study is to measure the stated preferences of Tehrani citizens to identify the non-market influencing components and the economic valuation of these components based on the discrete choice experiment approach and conditional logit models. The findings of the present study revealed that the "additional green and recreational space" is more significant compared to other components. The components of "parking facilities at the border of the area" and "abundance of public transportation" within the area of the city center without a car are the next priorities, and the heterogeneity in the preferences of Tehrani citizens is in addition due to these two components. Noteworthy that the source of this heterogeneity is also the demographic variables "income" and "age" of people. In the analysis and interpretation of the estimated values of "willingness to pay", noteworthy that Tehrani citizens attach relatively less significance to the components of designing a cycling path and reducing the average walking distance to the nearest station. On the other hand, they prefer components of "designing additional green and recreational space within the area", "designing parking facilities at the border of the area" and "more public transportation within the area"; In such a way that the willingness to pay them is 44,375, 30,000 and 28,125 rials, respectively, which is approximately one and a half to two times the current fares. Therefore, it is recommended that in the traffic policy for the city of Tehran, the two components "designing additional green and recreational spaces within the area" and "designing parking facilities on the border of the city center without cars" should be of higher priority than other components.