Abstract:

Public transportation is a well-know recognized solution to greatly decrease transports emissions, especially when making use of zero emissions buses in the fleet, such as buses riven by batteries or by hydrogen. However, price remains a large barrier on zero emissions buses. The transition to use of such buses is expensive, and it must be driven by several stakeholders, thus motivating service providers to make efforts into the zero emissions buses implementation strategies. In this study, citizens from a Russian district capital city were questioned on their potential role as contributors for the zero emissions buses transition, by studying their willingness and attitudes to pay premium for the bus fares, in order to supplement the public transport agencies revenues. It was found that environmental concern and air pollution concern can be critical factors driving consumers into paying premium, but not noise pollution. In this article we seek to investigate how the consumers’ attitudes and concerns over the environment and city pollution could influence the willingness to play a role as supporters for the introduction of zero emissions buses in the public transportation fleet, as understanding the consumer attitudes is essential to perform and run an efficient public system.