The media influence on public opinion about a Dutch road pricing policy proposal

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of exposure to news reported by newspapers about the Dutch road pricing proposal (Kilometerheffing) on public opinion. We combine data from a public opinion survey (N = 705) with a content analysis of 280 news articles about the pricing proposal published in five leading Dutch newspapers. Our findings indicate that exposure to news content about Kilometerheffing affects public opinion. We found that the more negative the news content people are exposed to, the more negative their opinions about Kilometerheffing, and in the same way, the more positive the news content is, the more positive their opinions are. The effect, however, differs for obtrusive and unobtrusive issues. Our hypothesis was that people’s opinions about the financial impact of Kilometerheffing on households would not be affected by exposure to news content about this issue as this is an obtrusive issue for readers, on the other hand, opinions about the impact of Kilometerheffing on congestion or the environment would be affected by news exposure as these issues are unobtrusive. Our results confirm these hypotheses. We, therefore, recommend that policy makers particularly focus on unobtrusive issues such as the impact of their proposals on congestion when organizing information campaigns and providing information to the media.