Valuing the Attributes of Freight Transport Quality: Results of the Stated Preference Survey

This paper presents the results of a survey of fifty firms transporting ten commodity groups, using an interactive stated preference game to obtain values of the rate reduction necessary to compensate for longer transit times, poorer reliability and the use of intermodal systems. Generally, the pattern of results is as expected, with the quality of the transport service being less important for low value products in industries with high levels of stockholding, and vice versa. Quality requirements are also generally less stringent when products are moving to depots than to customers. In a critique of the method, some reservations are expressed both about the reliability of the results, andabout the high cost and time of the survey method. Nevertheless, we conclude that overall the approach has worked reasonably well, and yielded much valuable data; we know of no alternative method which could have yielded quantitative valuations in these circumstances.