Quantifying individuals’ trade-offs between privacy, liberty & security: The case of rail travel in U.K

Public transport systems have been targets in several terrorist attacks, notably in recent years, resulting in tight security measures worldwide. However, individuals’ privacy and liberty often conflict with efforts towards safety and security, making it difficult to assess the benefits of security measures balanced against the costs (e.g. citizens may be stopped, searched and asked to provide personal identification data to authorities without any particular reason). Henceforth, our research question asks, "to what extend would legitimate citizens sacrifice their privacy and liberty rights in exchange for potentially safer and more secure travel?" This paper uses a stated choice experiment to quantify individuals’ trade-offs between privacy and security within a real-life context, namely rail travel in the UK. Using a nationwide sample, the empirical analysis yields the importance of improvements in the security infrastructure and identifies areas of concern with regard to privacy and liberty controlling for travel related factors. Further, trade-offs across different security improvements for rail travel are quantified in terms of individuals’ willingness to pay extra on top of the average ticket price.