Austria's KlimaTicket: Assessing the short-term impact of a cheap nationwide travel pass on demand

Fuente: arXiv
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Autor principal: Wallimann, Hannes
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Wallimann, Hannes
author_facet Wallimann, Hannes
contents Measures to reduce transport-related greenhouse gas emissions are of great importance to policy-makers. A recent example is the nationwide KlimaTicket in Austria, a country with a relatively high share of transport-related emissions. The cheap yearly season ticket introduced in October 2021 allows unlimited access to Austria's public transport network. Using the synthetic control and synthetic difference-in-differences methods, I assess the causal effect of this policy on public transport demand by constructing a data-driven counterfactual out of European railway companies to mimic the number of passengers of the Austrian Federal Railways without the KlimaTicket. The results indicate public transport demand grew slightly faster in Austria, i.e., 3.3 or 6.8 percentage points, depending on the method, than it would have in the absence of the KlimaTicket. However, the growth effect after the COVID-19 pandemic appears only statistically significant when applying the synthetic control method, and the positive effect on public transport demand growth disappears in 2022.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_06835
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Austria's KlimaTicket: Assessing the short-term impact of a cheap nationwide travel pass on demand
Wallimann, Hannes
General Economics
Economics
Measures to reduce transport-related greenhouse gas emissions are of great importance to policy-makers. A recent example is the nationwide KlimaTicket in Austria, a country with a relatively high share of transport-related emissions. The cheap yearly season ticket introduced in October 2021 allows unlimited access to Austria's public transport network. Using the synthetic control and synthetic difference-in-differences methods, I assess the causal effect of this policy on public transport demand by constructing a data-driven counterfactual out of European railway companies to mimic the number of passengers of the Austrian Federal Railways without the KlimaTicket. The results indicate public transport demand grew slightly faster in Austria, i.e., 3.3 or 6.8 percentage points, depending on the method, than it would have in the absence of the KlimaTicket. However, the growth effect after the COVID-19 pandemic appears only statistically significant when applying the synthetic control method, and the positive effect on public transport demand growth disappears in 2022.
title Austria's KlimaTicket: Assessing the short-term impact of a cheap nationwide travel pass on demand
topic General Economics
Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.06835