Towards ANPR-enabled expressway tolling in Sri Lanka: stated acceptance of subscription and congestion-pricing options

Sri Lanka's expressway network continues to rely on toll plaza transactions and partial electronic payment adoption, which keeps attention focused on barrier-free tolling and more flexible pricing. This paper examines stated acceptance of two proposed ANPR-enabled tolling packages on Sri Lankan expressways: a subscription package and a congestion pricing package. The study reanalyses a 2020 cross-sectional survey of 205 retained expressway users drawn from an initial 350 responses. An adapted Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) distinguished congestion pricing acceptability, subscription model attractiveness, package-specific perceived ease of use and usefulness, and overall stated acceptance. The subscription package means were numerically higher than the corresponding congestion pricing means, but these within-respondent differences were not tested inferentially, and the retained item structures differed. Single predictor regressions showed that overall perceived usefulness had the strongest association with overall stated acceptance (β = 0.805, R 2 = 0.648), whereas overall perceived ease of use was materially weaker (β = 0.272, R 2 = 0.074). One user type interaction was statistically significant in the archived output; however, the nominal moderator had been entered as a single numeric code, so H8-H11 are treated as exploratory, and none is reported as supported. A supplementary simultaneous regression explained 68.6% of the variance in stated acceptance, with low VIF values but coefficient reversals that indicate overlap among the composite predictors and highlight the exploratory nature of the model. For transport managers and policymakers, the findings suggest that pricing package design and perceived value matter more than interface simplicity alone. The managerial implication is not immediate national rollout, but staged implementation: validate ANPR locally, simplify customer onboarding, compare subscription and pay-per-use packages explicitly, protect personal data, and test congestion pricing only through a transparent pilot with equity and operational safeguards.