3. Data and study design
As discussed in section 2, road pricing might influence the relocation decision itself, but
might also affect the final location choice of people. Therefore, this paper focuses on the
following two goals:
• To get insight into the probability of households to change to a residential location (in
most cases: closer to work), or to search for another job (in most cases: closer to home)
under influence of a road pricing measure and furthermore to get insight into explanatory
variables for the relocation choices;
• To get insight into the relative importance of trip and location related variables in the
actual residential location choice with the final goal of getting more insight into location
decisions under road pricing conditions.
The second goal especially focuses on the importance of travel costs versus travel time and on
the influence of travel costs versus monthly housing costs in location decisions. Staying in
line with the mainstream in the field of transport theory and modelling, both goals are studied
by taking the micro-economic consumer theory as point of departure. The first goal, the
probability of location change of households (including explanatory variables), is studied by
using stated preference data. In a questionnaire people were asked to indicate the probability
of moving to another house closer to work, or to search for a job closer to home1, after a road
pricing measure was shown to them. Several road-pricing measures were presented to each
respondent. Furthermore, the second goal is studied on basis of a stated choice experiment in
which respondents had to choose between alternatives consisting of trip and location related
variables.
The total data collection took place in two questionnaire rounds, partly held amongst the same
respondents. To get insight into the probability of relocation due to road pricing measures and
into explanatory variables for those relocation choices specifically due to the introduction of a
road pricing measure, a questionnaire survey was conducted amongst 512 respondents. This
questionnaire especially focussed on the behavioural effects (short and long term) due to
1 This research only focused on shortening the commuting distance due to a pricing measure. In reality people
may also decide to increase the distance (by changing house or work location). This can for example be the case
when a price measure leads to substantial decreases in traffic congestion. However, it is expected that the large
majority of people (especially with respect to a kilometer charge) will reduce the commute distance when they
are going to relocate due to a pricing measure. Therefore this paper only studies relocations aimed at shortening
the commute distance.