Kevin Blättler | Searcharxiv

arXiv2024

Free public transport to the destination: A causal analysis of tourists' travel mode choice

In this paper, we assess the impact of a fare-free public transport policy for overnight guests on travel mode choice to a Swiss tourism destination. The policy directly targets domestic transport to and from a destination, the substantial contributor to the CO2 emissions of overnight trips. Based on a survey sample, we identify the effect with the help of the random element that the information on the offer from a hotelier to the guest varies in day-to-day business. We estimate a shift from private cars to public transport due to the policy of, on average, 14.8 and 11.6 percentage points, depending on the application of propensity score matching and causal forest. This knowledge is relevant for policy-makers to design future offers that include more sustainable travels to a destination. Overall, our paper exemplifies how such an effect of comparable natural experiments in the travel and tourism industry can be properly identified with a causal framework and underlying assumptions.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2022

Do price reductions attract customers in urban public transport? A synthetic control approach

In this paper, we assess the demand effects of lower public transport fares in Geneva, an urban area in Switzerland. Considering a unique sample based on transport companies' annual reports, we find that, when reducing the costs of annual season tickets, day tickets and hourly tickets (by up to 29%, 6% and 20%, respectively), demand increases by, on average, over five years, about 10.6%. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to show how the synthetic control method (Abadie and Gardeazabal, 2003, Abadie, Diamond, and Hainmueller, 2010) can be used to assess such (for policy-makers) important price reduction effects in urban public transport. Furthermore, we propose an aggregate metric that inherits changes in public transport supply (e.g., frequency increases) to assess these demand effects, namely passenger trips per vehicle kilometre. This metric helps us to isolate the impact of price reductions by ensuring that companies' frequency increases do not affect estimators of interest. In addition, we show how to investigate the robustness of results in similar settings. Using a recent statistical method and a different study design, i.e., not blocking off supply changes as an alternate explanation of the effect, leads us to a lower bound of the effect, amounting to an increase of 3.7%. Finally, as far as we know, it is the first causal estimate of price reduction on urban public transport initiated by direct democracy.

econ.GN↗