Alice Ciccone

Research

 

Publications

    Visit my page at the Institute of Transport Economics (TØI) or  Google scholar.


    Ongoing projects

    • SALIENT: Experimental evidence on the effect of information & saliency of costs of car ownership and use
      English website Norwegian website
      The project investigates the effect of providing information and making costs associated with car ownership and use more salient. We'll study the impact of promptly informing drivers about road toll prices over time and providing personalized information about carsharing as an alternative to car ownership. We will run randomized control trials (RCTs) in collaboration with public agencies and businesses to provide causal results on individual behaviour and attitudes. Our goal is to study to what extent lack of information and attention is a barrier to behaviour change, and the role of relatively cheap measures, such as providing information, for reducing car ownership and use.
    • A-Planet: Acceptable PoLicies for the optimAl balaNce between driving and activE Transport
      English website Norwegian website
      This project focuses on addressing the tradeoff between policy effectiveness and acceptability in the transport sector, in search for the optimal balance. Norway aims at being a low-emissions society and is promoting low emissions vehicles, as well as walking and cycling in urban areas. Even though a high penetration of electric vehicles has its positive effects, a more energy-efficient car fleet does not solve all problems related to car driving. It may even lead to more congestion, as it reduces the competitiveness of public transportation, walking and cycling. Novel policies, such as road pricing, can help strike a better balance between social costs and benefits. And new technologies and mobile apps development offer novel options for the introduction and testing of such policy tools.
    • CarNudge: The impact of parking policies and nudging on carsharing
      English website Norwegian website
      A group of interdisciplinary TØI researchers has created the CarNudge project, where research institutes, government agencies and private companies collaborate at both national and international level to create knowledge and expertise for a more innovative and sustainable transport system with fewer vehicles and a more efficiently utilized car fleet.
    • PULSE: Promoting active school travel to improve mood and performance
      Collaboration with the Nordic Institute for studies in innovation, research and education (NIFU).
      Website
      Physical inactivity among adolescents remains a major public health. The PULSE project investigates how active school transport can enhance physical activity, mood, and learning outcomes among lower secondary students. Through an interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers, schools, and science educators, PULSE will develop and test several interventions to promote active transport. Using travel data from a mobile app, randomized controlled trials, and quasi-experimental methods, the project examines behavioral mechanisms, contextual factors, and the causal links between active mobility, mood, and academic performance.

Work in progress

  • Road Pricing: Travel Behavior and Public Support
    with Cloe Garnache and Gøril L. Andreassen
    Download working paper
    We conduct a large-scale randomized controlled trial to examine the effects of time- and location-specific, distance-based road pricing on travel behavior and driving externalities. Using financial incentives and a smartphone app that automatically tracks participants' travel behavior across different modes, we find that road pricing reduces driving externalities by 5.3%, implying a price elasticity of -0.07 to -0.15 for the external costs of driving. Our findings suggest that drivers of battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) are much less responsive to road pricing than drivers of non-BEVs. Furthermore, we find that providing information on the expected benefits of road pricing enhances public support for such policies, whereas experience with road pricing has little impact.
  • The real cost of owning a car: Individual and city-wide benefits of carsharing. 
    with Rebecca Thorne and Ingrid Sundvor and Grunde Wesenberg
    Download working paper
    This study investigates the economic and environmental potential of carsharing as an alternative to private vehicle ownership. Using data from a web-based calculator (N=2 965), we estimate cost and emission savings based on vehicle characteristics and travel behaviour. A cluster analysis reveals three user groups: those who consistently save money by switching to carsharing, those with negligible savings, and those for whom carsharing is not cost-effective. Largest savings are found among users who do not rely on private cars for daily commuting, but instead use them occasionally for errands, weekend outings, or vacations. Users in the “gain” cluster (more than 60%) can save on average 36 000 NOK annually (EUR 3 000). Scaling these findings to Oslo’s vehicle fleet under a 15 % uptake scenario suggests potential city-wide reductions of 7 % in CO₂ and 13 % in NOₓ emissions, primarily due to the greater efficiency and higher EV share in the carsharing fleet. Policy implications highlight the importance of targeting non-daily car users and supporting peak demand periods through infrastructure and shared fleet integration.
  • Game On: Promoting Active Transport Among Adolescents 
    with Siv-Elisabeth Skjelbred
    This paper examines whether behavioural techniques and gamification increases active travel --- walking or cycling as a means of transport --- among adolescents. We conduct a randomized field experiment with 163 upper secondary school students in southeastern Norway, who used a mobility tracking app that recorded their walking and cycling activity. Despite incorporating behavioural change techniques that have proven effective in other context, such as goal-setting, personalised feedback and social comparison, the treatment produced no consistent effects on walking and cycling activity. Subgroup analyses indicate weak effects among students with low baseline activity levels. The study highlight the challenges of influencing habitual behaviours through light-touch interventions.
  • Public support for replacing road tolls with universal road pricing: a stated choice experiments 
    with Alberto Antonioni, Cloe Garnache, Sara Ghivarello, Askill H. Halse and Francesca Lipari
    Economists have long argued that road traffic should be taxed based on the externalities it imposes. Several countries are now considering moving towards universal road pricing, where all car drivers pay a tax based on kilometers driven, which varies by time and place. While there is some evidence on public opposition against road tolls, fuel taxes, and other environmental taxes, there is little evidence on attitudes towards universal road pricing. In this paper, we show evidence from a stated choice experiment among survey participants in Norway. Norway is interesting both because the high share of electric vehicles means that many do not pay fuel taxes, but also because many drivers already face road tolls on their daily trips and therefore might not pay more under road pricing. The experiment shows that a substantial share of the respondents prefer universal road pricing over current road tolls and fuel taxes, but that support depends on the price level and how revenues are spent. Using latent class analysis and machine learning methods, we identify different groups of respondents with quite distinct policy preferences.
  • Public support for designing a universal road pricing. Experimental insights from Madrid  
    with Alberto Antonioni, Sara Ghivarello, Askill H. Halse and Francesca Lipari
    Designing effective and publicly acceptable transport policies is crucial for promoting sustainable mobility. This study investigates public attitudes toward universal road pricing using survey experimental data from over 600 participants in the Madrid region. We find that higher price levels significantly reduce support for road pricing, while electric vehicle discounts and allocating revenues to public transport investments increase acceptability. Using latent class analysis adn supervised machine learning algorithms, such as random forest and gradient boosting, we identify four groups ranging from pro-policy to anti-policy individuals. We also measure empirical and normative expectations, showing that perceived social norms diverge from actual behavior. Rspondents systematically overestimate car use and what others consider desirable. This work contributes to the design of more acceptable and equitable transport policies in a context shaped by behavioral, social, and economic factors. Our findings offer actionable insights for policymakers aiming to align transport policies with citizen preferences, highlighting the potential of norm-based interventions.
  • Working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic in Norway: impact on subjective mood and work performance 
    with Aslak Fyhri and Katrine Karlsen
    This article presents the effects of working from home as a restrictive measure of the Covid-19 pandemic. We collected data from about 2000 Norwegian workers through a 7-wave survey covering the period of re-opening between May and September 2020. We provide a picture of the workers’ situation in Norway adjusting to an early “new normal” and insights into the subjective experience of working from home, overcoming shortcomings typical of earlier literature. The majority of our sample report both travelling to work and working from home during the observation period, due to changes in public reccomandation. Exploiting such variation, we find that people who work from home, report a significantly higher mood and work performance (0.17-0-16 points higher on a scale 1-7) compared to when they travelled to work. We also find important factors and heterogeneity impacting the subjective experience of working from home.
  • Voluntary contributions to an alternating-offer bargaining: hold-up problem in the lab 
    with Kjell Arne Brekke
    A two-stage game is designed to study how the bargaining outcome is influenced by relation specific contributions. With two parties investing in a joint project and sharing the profit though bargaining, the investment would be sunk cost at the bargaining stage and hence not affecting bargaining strength, creates a hold-up problem which leads to underinvestment. There are however several reason why the bargaining outcome could dependent on contributions: fairness consideration, reference points and loss aversion. In this paper we argue that the bargaining outcome do depend on contribution, and sufficiently so to turn the hold-up problem into an coordination game, in many cases. We first estimate parameters in a model with reference points and loss aversion, and show that full contribution could potentially be an equilibrium. We then revert to a linear model where we also can include the cost of bargaining. We find not only that subject get a share of the pie that increases in their share of the contribution, but also that disagreement and hence negotiation cost is increasing in the inequality of contribution, consistent with self-serving biases.

  • Saliency of toll ring prices, a large scale experiment  
    with Gøril L. Andreassen, Karen Hauge and Askill H. Halse

  • The effect of electricity price shocks for electric vehicle demand in the new and used Norwegian market  
    with Cloe Garnache