National mileage fee survey

As governing bodies continue to explore mileage fees as an alternative to the gas tax, of the uncertainty surrounding public support remains a critical barrier to policy uptake. This study examines the extent to which public perceptions of mileage fees are guided by misinformation or lack of information using a national, internet-based survey. We use hypothetical voting opportunities to gather respondent support for mileage fees, coupled with educational treatments that address mileage fee fairness, privacy, and costs. The findings indicate that respondents are largely misinformed or lack information about mileage fees and the gas tax. Pre-education, only 32% of respondents supported the policy, but post-education, 46% of respondents supported the policy. Through binomial, multinomial, and fixed effect modeling, we examined the factors associated with policy support, changes in policy support, and the educational treatments. Ultimately, our findings indicate that education can play a key role in increasing support for a mileage fee policy as an alternative to the gas tax. 

Methods
An internet-based survey was used to assess nation-wide support for replacing state gas taxes with a mileage fee. Respondents were given three opportunities to vote for or against a mileage fee replacement, with educational treatments in between votes. The impact of education on respondent voting was evaluated using a variety of regression modelling methods.

Respondents were recruited to the survey through Qualtrics. This company used quota-based sampling schemes to field the survey to every U.S. state. Since this research hypothesized that mileage fee opinions may be in part due to low information about mileage fees, we opted to omit respondents from states where widespread mileage fee education or mileage fee policies were implemented. As of July 2023, we identified California, Oregon, Utah and Hawaii as states where residents were likely meaningfully more educated about mileage fees and chose not to survey those populations.

Three versions of the survey were released, each proposing mileage fees are collected using a different method. The three options proposed collecting mileage fees using (1) an annual odometer reading, (2) a plug-in device without GPS technology, and (3) a plug-in device with GPS technology. Besides differing in the method displayed for collecting mileage information, the surveys were identical.