高速公路差异化收费引导假日旅游供需平衡研究

2012年8月,国务院下发通知,首次在全国范围内重大节假日免收小型汽车高速公路通行费。免费新政下,国庆期间游客都扎堆涌向了全国各名胜古迹,高速公路拥堵不堪,超饱和的景点和拥堵的道路大大降低了游客出游幸福感。缺乏必要的流量控制措施导致国内景点冰火两重天,给旅游业的持续健康发展打上了问号。文章基于经济学中"价格歧视"策略与社会福利最大化理论,探索性提出高速公路重大节假日差异化收费用于合理引导居民出游,增进社会福利。通过对经济学理论图示法分析和建立高速公路差异化收费影响游客出行选择的数学模型,从定性和定量角度客观分析得到利用差异化收费机制和游客自我选择机制的相互作用,可将热门景点的过量游客分流到冷门景点,平衡景点之间的供给与需求,保障旅游业可持续健康发展,也能确保社会福利不致流失。

Highway Toll Charges Guide Holiday Tourism Supply and Demand

In August 2012, China implemented a new policy in which highways are free for small cars on major holidays. As the result, during National Day, the highways were congested as tourists flocked to the popular scenic spots. This naturally reduces tourism happiness as nobody likes overcrowded scenic spots and congested roads. This lack of flow control leads to an unbalanced development of scenic spots, which harms the development of the tourism industry. Based on a price discrimination strategy and social welfare maximization theory, we propose a differential highway toll charge scheme. We envisage that price differences in toll charges will guide tourist travel, reducing excessive number of tourists in popular scenic spots and promoting currently unpopular attractions. This will ensure that scenic spots have a reasonable number of tourists to protect tourism property and guarantee service quality. Based on a benefit-cost economic analysis, we show that a toll-charge price differentiation for scenic spots is rational and feasible, and optimized toll charges can be set up by inspecting scenic spots. We use established mathematical models of tourists＇ travel choices influenced by differential highway toll charges to objectively find the relationship between toll charges and tourists＇ self-selected options. Popular scenic spots and unpopular scenic spots are assigned different highway toll charges ranging from 20% to 200% （10 levels, increments of 20% ）. As the price difference becomes larger, the number of tourists transferring to unpopular scenic spots increases. We conclude that a large toll-charge price differentiation effectively distributes tourists across all scenic spots. From our simulation results, we have two scenarios 1 ） 16% of self-driving tourists will be prepared to change their plans and visit unpopular scenic spots if toll charges of popular scenic spots remain unchanged and highways to the unpopular sites are free on major holidays, and 2） 29.4% of self-driving tourists will choose to visit unpopular scenic spots if the toll charge of highways to the popular sites is doubled during the holiday period and the unpopular sites are free. We establish equations to evaluate the changes, accounting for all correlated aspects including popular and unpopular scenic spot management departments, tourism service businesses, tourists, environment, traffic, scenic spot protection and toll revenue. We consider the differences in the two scenarios to obtain equation coefficients and compute the changes occurring in all correlated aspects that are affected by the differential highway toll charges. We conclude that the changes in all correlated aspects for the two scenarios are synergistic. Even if we use other scenarios, congestion is reduced on highways to scenic spots therefore increasing social welfare. A differential highway toll charge on major holidays has advantages over toll-free policies. Our differential highway toll charge not only promotes the sustainable and healthy development of China＇ s tourism industry but also increases tourists＇ happiness. Differential highway toll charges will encourage tourists to visit unpopular scenic spots, balance the traffic flow, and increase tourists＇ enjoyment.