Bumpy designs: impact of privacy and technology costs on support for road mileage user fees.

I. INTRODUCTION The fuel tax has grown increasingly inadequate as a means of financing road infrastructure in the United States, primarily because it is not adjusted for inflation in the [...]
The mileage user fee is a promising alternative to the fuel tax but public opposition is a barrier to implementation. We use a nationally representative survey with an embedded experimental design to determine the extent to which technology costs and perceived invasion of privacy influence public opinion regarding the adoption of mileage user fees. We find that the ratio of opponents to supporters is about four to one, and that public opposition can be attenuated by insulating motorists from a new one-time cost for GPS technology to measure mileage, and by providing safeguards that eliminate or minimize perceived invasions of privacy. Keywords: mileage road user fee, fuel tax, highway financing, public opinion JEL Codes: H2, H4, H54, R4