*3.3. Information Provision*

Interestingly, the analysis shows that slightly over half of those surveyed (51%) declared that they would not purchase a diesel vehicle after acknowledging the potential harm that they cause. However, a minority of the respondents (9%) said that they would still purchase a diesel vehicle. Furthermore, about 40% of the respondents claimed that they might buy a diesel vehicle, which implies that changes in policies and regulations related to LEZs and banning diesel vehicles should be more flexible. For example, these could include tightening the entry requirements for LEZs and extending LEZs to cover a wider area. Moreover, rather than banning diesel vehicles completely, a ban could be imposed on older vehicle models [15,56] as implemented in Hamburg [62], or diesel vehicles could be banned from entering certain roads that are severely affected by air pollution [63]. This might encourage those who said they "might" buy a diesel vehicle to compromise in the light of the aforementioned types of policy changes.

The KWT was used to ascertain if there was a relationship between the information provision about the harm caused by diesel vehicles and the likelihood of people supporting the ban. The results showed a significant relationship between those two factors with an H-value of 30.38, as can be seen in Table 2.


**Table 2.** Kruskal–Wallis H test results.

In the survey, prior to asking the participants whether they would purchase a diesel vehicle, they were given information about the potential harm caused by such vehicles. This led more than half of them to state that they would not buy a diesel vehicle, as opposed to only 9% who said they would still buy one. An important implication can be drawn from this, which is that the more awareness people have, the more likely they are to support the ban. This view is also supported by the testimony of Londoners in the survey:

"I was not aware of any damage that diesel vehicles can cause. But luckily with this survey, I am more aware now and will do what I can daily to save the society." (male, 31).

"I believe that what the governmen<sup>t</sup> is doing is a good step forward. I have a diesel Mercedes CLS, and I really enjoy driving it, but now I am in the process of selling it for the sake of air quality. Thank you." (male, 25).

A key policy priority should, therefore, comprise a strategy to increase the public awareness about the negative health and environmental impacts caused by diesel vehicles emissions. This would facilitate the movement towards a zero-carbon transport system since it is argued that the decarbonisation of the road transport is strongly linked to people's travel behaviour [11].
