# Green Public Procurement for Accelerating the Transition towards Sustainable Freight Transport
## 3 Materials and Methods
### Surveys  
Two separate surveys were designed and distributed among potential participants: (1) survey for public procurers distributed among municipalities' staff, and (2) survey for freight transport providers distributed among transporters. The design and distribution of the two surveys are briefly explained in this section.  
The survey for municipalities is structured according to the same three main topics as in the interviews, while the questions are reformulated to fit into the format of a survey. Findings from the interviews were used to create response categories. The survey was distributed via e-mail to all 356 Norwegian municipalities with a request to forward it to administrative personnel responsible for or experienced with procurements. A reminder was sent out to non-response municipalities after two weeks. In total, we received 71 individual responses from 61 different municipalities, implying that the request had been forwarded to more than one person in some municipalities, and both had responded. However, as the roles and the answers from the same-municipality respondents are not identical, all responses are included in the analysis. There was no record of more than two answers from identical municipalities. Although only 46 participants responded to all the questions in the survey, all 71 responses were included in the analysis since those who were not able to complete the survey also provided useful information about why they did not include requirements for low or zero emission solutions.  
Using the classification of municipalities by population size from Statistic Norway [44], and comparing to national statistics for 2022, we found that the smallest municipalities were somewhat underrepresented, and the largest somewhat overrepresented in the survey sample, while the remaining categories were proportionally represented (Table 2). The informants represent a range of roles related to public procurement (Table 3).  
The survey among freight service providers was distributed to the members of the Norwegian association for lorry owners (NLF), targeting freight service providers at different levels. In the survey, we asked whether they submit tenders for public procurements, together with other questions about public procurements, how they relate to it, and their opinion on its effects on sustainable transitions. The survey was initially distributed to over 3000 members of the NLF, of which 220 responded.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c c} \hline \hline \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Population Size**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Survey Sample**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{
\begin{tabular}{c} **Norwegian Municities** \\ **2022**[45] \\ \end{tabular} } \\ \hline  & N & \% & \% \\ Under 2000 inhabitants & 8 & 12 & 22 \\
2000–4999 inhabitants & 18 & 26 & 27 \\
5000–9999 inhabitants & 13 & 19 & 20 \\
10,000–19,999 inhabitants & 10 & 15 & 13 \\
20,000–49,999 inhabitants & 11 & 16 & 12 \\
50,000 or more inhabitants & 9 & 13 & 6 \\ Missing & 2 & & \\ Total & 71 & 100 & 100 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 2: Categorization of included municipalities.  
Roughly one third (39%) of the respondents provide services for the public sector, and one out of four (27%) are personally involved in tenders for the public sector (Table 4). The results presented in this paper are based on responses from companies which do provide services to the public sector (N = 87).