He writes about a group of researchers led by Taede Tillema of the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands, who recently designed a study to compare the effects of congestion pricing (punishment) to a Dutch program called "Spitsmijden," or "peak avoidance" (reward).
"In an upcoming issue of the journal Transport Policy, Tillema and colleagues report that a reward system like "Spitsmijden" may indeed be more effective than punishments."The researchers combined data from a previous study and a previous survey and found that paying people not to drive during peak times changed behavior 37% of the time, whereas boosting tolls during peak times changes behavior only 15% of the time. A nagging question, as the author points out, is if paying people not to drive during peak times works best, who will pay them?
