Which pricing policy do road users accept?

Road pricing remains one of the questionable concerns for transportation planners and researchers. However, the prerequisite for implementing road pricing is still user acceptability. The present study provides users’ preferences for different road pricing schemes, which will help the researchers determine the optimum pricing schemes to adopt. We conducted a user acceptability survey to analyse their perceptions and acceptability of different road pricing schemes. Based on the questionnaire survey, a large-scale survey was conducted. However, with the varying toll charges and travel time savings from the alternatives, this study reviews the stated preference survey. The results from the developed multinomial logit model show significant differences in the choice of pricing scheme. The probability of supporting distance-based pricing is significant and it is affecting significantly. High occupancy toll emerged as the most acceptable by users with a perception of less travel time savings from using toll roads. However, the acceptance rate of dynamic toll pricing (DTP) increased among the users who opposed the current pricing scheme. Additionally, socio-economic variables had a major impact on the pricing scheme. The estimated parameter signs were logical and statistically significant. Further, the price elasticity was calculated for each pricing scheme, ranging from –0.45 to –4.80. The elasticities for DTP were greater when compared with other pricing schemes. The research outputs generated from this study will assist the practitioners working in a similar domain in developing various schemes and estimating their acceptance after implementation