One of the critical problems in making an effective strategy to control fugitive road dust is to estimate the emission factor accurately. The paper presents measured results of emission factor at field and in a wind tunnel. For the field study, three unpaved roads in Hsin Chu, Taiwan were tested. For the wind tunnel testing, the tested road dust was also collected from the field. Results of field study indicate that the emission factor of unpaved roads increases with the increasing wind speed, the number of vehicles and the speed of vehicles. It can be predicted as e (g/m(2)day) = 8.72 x 10(-3) x V-w(0.64) X s(0.19) x M-0.05 x V-v(1.32) x N-v(1.11) (V-w, m/s-wind speed, s, %-silt content of road dust; M, %-moisture content of road dust; N-v, #/h-number of vehicles: V-v, km/h-speed of vehicles) by the multi-variable regression technique. The fractions of PM10 and PM2.5, in the TSP reentrained from the unpaved roads are 20.6 +/- 12.9% and 2.3 +/- 1.2%, respectively. The wind tunnel test results show that air acceleration rate and edge effect of the dust surface increase the emission factors considerably. As air acceleration rate increases from 0.1 to 1.5 m/s(2), the emission factor increases linearly from 1.0 x 10(-4) to 7.0 x 10(-4) kg/m(2) s. However, test results show no significant effect of air acceleration and edge effect of dust surface on the threshold wind speed of reentrainment. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.