Willingness to Pay and Public Acceptance for Hydrogen Buses: A Case Study of Perugia

Sustainability transportation is characterized by a positive externality on the environment, health, social security, land use and social inclusion. The increasing interest in global warming has caused attention to be paid to the introduction of the hydrogen bus (H2B). When introducing new environmental technologies, such as H2B, it is often necessary to assess the environmental benefits related to this new technology. However, such benefits are typically non-priced due to their public good nature. Therefore, we have to address this problem using the contingent valuation (CV) method. This method has been developed within environmental economics as a means to economically assess environmental changes, which are typically not traded in the market. So far, several big cities have been analyzed to evaluate the perceived benefit related to H2B introduction, but to the best of our knowledge, no one has performed a CV analysis of a historical city where smog also damages historical buildings. This paper presents the results obtained using a multi-wave survey. We have investigated user preferences to elicit their willingness to pay for H2B introduction in Perugia, taking into account all types of negative externalities due to the traffic pollution. The results confirm that residents in Perugia are willing to pay extra to support the introduction of H2B.