Evaluation of drivers' benefits accruing from an intelligent parking information system

Abstract

Intelligent Parking Information Systems (IPIS) being implemented in the built environment are regarded as an effective measure for transport management in smart cities, where congestion due to parking search has caused air pollution apart from time wastage. An IPIS improves the efficiency of disseminating real time parking vacancy information and provides convenience to drivers via Apps installed in their smart phones. After giving an overview of various IPISs being applied globally, this research on a typical IPIS is aimed at valuing the benefits to drivers and modelling how variations in the independent variables affect their use. A stated preference approach is presented with a discrete choice survey conducted in Hong Kong with more than 800 valid samples. Contingent Valuation (CV) is applied to evaluate the intangible benefits associated with the use of IPIS, based on the estimation of Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) for its installation with a binary logit model. An aggregated WTP would be useful to policy makers when making decisions to scale up the system. It was found that three factors (download habit, parking time, and parking App usage) have positive impacts on WTP, whereas length of driving experience turned out to have a significantly negative influence. The econometric analysis provides useful contributions for the objective assessment of the viability of IPIS projects and their further investment in an emerging smart city environment.