Design and classification of tradable mobility credit schemes

Abstract

The ongoing research on tradable credit schemes (TCS) in mobility has captured the attention of policymakers, authorities and academics. Even though several studies have demonstrated the potential of such schemes, key policy design aspects that are relevant for real world implementation have been overlooked. There exists insofar no blueprint for an actual application of a TCS. We therefore propose a single all-encompassing framework for designing a TCS based on three dimensions: ownership, transfer and consumption. This framework has been developed through the extraction of policy design questions in the existing literature on TCS as well as alternative demand management schemes. Literature on the design of central bank digital currencies (CBDC) and digital tokens has been used to derive additional decisions regarding technical implementation and regulation. The decisions that are incorporated in the framework facilitate the comparison of different scheme designs in a three-dimensional space, addressing aspects of security, anonymity, centralization and technical feasibility. Hence, it provides policymakers and responsible authorities with a comprehensive framework on the essential decisions that need to be made upon practical application of a tradable credit scheme. It also serves as a means to classify existing work and develop new (or more realistic) variants of TCS that can be studied in future research endeavors. Based on the proposed framework, we devise an extensive research agenda describing directions for future research on tradable credit schemes across a variety of themes.