Stakeholder perspectives on the value of parking

Car parking is a routine yet highly complex part of daily life for both drivers and those affected by parking. This paper aims to unravel how key stakeholders value parking, by looking beyond the traditional possibilities associated with supply and demand to help better inform decision makers with their parking related dilemmas, by drawing on a series of in-depth interviews. First, interviews were conducted with eight academics who maintain a research interest in parking, to validate key stakeholders and their parking dilemmas as identified from literature. Second, interviews with 20 representatives spanning an assortment of key stakeholder groups affected by parking were undertaken, to determine their perspectives on the value of parking. The findings indicate that a considerably broader reach of stakeholders are affected by parking than the existing literature suggests, and the process of means by which stakeholders value parking is more sophisticated than previously thought. This new finding dispels traditional beliefs relating to how stakeholders value parking; the article outlines the extent to which such beliefs are mistaken, and provides the foundation for further work to understand the extent of these replacement values. Keywords: car parking; transport policy; stakeholder values; actor perspectives; planning attributes