March 13, 2005

Quo Vadis?

I talked a little more about the setup of my research plan with both my university mentors and my sponsors at Centraal Beheer Achmea insurance company. Both have their wishes with regard to the setup of the project. I have tried to come up with a research goal and questions that both will find acceptable. I will discuss them this and the coming week.

My research goal: To find out whether the introduction of PAYD in the Neterlands can contribute to the transition to a more sustainable mobility

Research questions will be, amongst others:

- What is known about the environmental effects of variabilisation of mobility costs?
- Can PAYD be successfully introduced by individual Dutch insurance companies?

It is to be researched by making a critical synthesis of several existing ex ante studies, and, if obtainable, ex post studies also. This is to be done by selecting a number of criteria and ´scoring´ the respective studies on those criteria. In this way, the various assumptions underlying those studies are to be identified, and thus a kind of theoretical framework can be described.

The next step is to select one or more assumptions that can be empirically tested, by way of a survey.

That would be assumptions that either differ in the studies analyzed, or are considered controversial, for whatever reason.

Finally, the outcome of the survey is to be judged on its consequences for the way the aforementioned studies are to be valued.

At least, that´s what I have come up with so far.

The next step now is to further detail the scheme described above, ie select, formulate and motivate criteria, scope definition (only Dutch studies, also foreign ones, only recent ones?), and the operationalization of the key concepts (environmental effect, PAYD insurance, or, increasing variability of mobility cost in general)

Again, any comment whatsoever is welcome!

Christof

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