01128660

Component

For economic and environmental policy formulation and with the effort of creating less car dependent societies, it is important to study the changing characteristics of car ownership in a household through time as well as factors responsible of these variations. There is a vast body of literature on empirical studies of car ownership and use. These studies have investigated the socio-economic background of the decision maker, the built environment and the perception associated with owning a car as determinant factors of car ownership and use. In most cases, these analyses have been carried out using cross-sectional data sets. However, the analysis of factors determining changes in travel behavior of an individual or household requires information on their behavior over time (longitudinal data set). In this study, the German Mobility Panel (1996-2006) is used to examine variation of car ownership through time and across households. The Panel Data Modeling results showed that there are variations of car ownership between households whereas changes in car ownership of a given household over time (within household variations) are insignificant. The influence of other factors such as the households’ socio-economic background, the availability of public transportation and shopping/leisure facilities, perception on parking difficulties and satisfaction with existing public transportation services on the car owning characteristics of households is also presented and discussed in this paper.

01120148

09-0096

English

16p

2009

Transportation Research Board 88th Annual Meeting

DVD

Figures (2) ; References (24) ; Tables (3)

Automobile ownership; Environmental impacts; Environmental policy; Households; Socioeconomic factors; Time; Travel behavior; Travel surveys

German Mobility Panel

Automobile dependence

Environment; Highways; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2009 Paper #09-0096

TRIS, TRB

Jan 30 2009 4:21PM