Fare evasion and information provision: What information should be provided to reduce fare-evasion?

To fight fare evasion, Public Transport Companies (PTC) mainly use two strategies: increasing inspection to detect fare evaders and enforcing fines incurred in case of being caught. PTC communicate differently on sanctions and inspection probabilities. Little is known about the effects of such a communication on fare evasion. Using a survey-based experiment, we examine experimentally what information (fine or inspection rate) and what framing of that information (minimum, maximum, average and range) can better refrain people from travelling irregularly on public transports. We found relatively high levels of fare evasion intentions and results on deterrence consistent with the existing literature. We showed that participants are not sensitive to the content of the information delivered nor to its framing when considering to fare evade or not. We found that beliefs about the pervasiveness of fare evasion (e.g., the social norm) seems to be the main determinant to fare evade.