Give and take

Abstract

Social routing schemes are widely regarded as promising tools to reduce traffic congestion in urban networks. We contribute to the growing literature on such schemes and their effect on travel behavior, by exploring the interaction between the characteristics and framing of the scheme on the one hand, and travelers' moral personality and moral motivations on the other hand. Our method uses a two-wave stated intention experiment eliciting preferences in a hypothetical context where a social routing scheme is presumed to have been established already. This is followed by a morality survey. We hypothesize and then confirm the following: when a social routing scheme is framed and designed as an altruistic effort requesting personal sacrifices for the benefit of other travelers, people who strongly adhere to care related notions of morality are attracted to such a scheme. On the contrary, a scheme that is designed and framed as a collective endeavour which would also benefit participating travelers attracts those who strongly adhere to moral notions related to fairness. We derive tentative policy recommendations from our findings, suggesting that a collective good scheme, albeit more difficult to implement, is likely to be more viable in the long run.