Alternative Modeling Approaches Used for Examining Automobile Ownership: A Comprehensive Review

Abstract

Household vehicle ownership, and the associated dimensions including fleet size, vehicle type and usage, has been one of the most researched transport topics. This paper endeavors to provide a critical overview of the wide-ranging methodological approaches employed in vehicle ownership modeling depending on the ownership representation over the past two decades. The studies in the existing literature based on the vehicle ownership representation are classified as: exogenous static, exogenous dynamic, endogenous static and endogenous dynamic models. The methodological approaches applied range from simple linear regressions to complex econometrics formulations taking into account a rich set of covariates. In spite of the steady advancement and impressive evolution in terms of methodological approaches to examine the decision process, we identify complex issues that pose a formidable challenge to address the evolution of vehicle ownership in the coming years. Specifically, we discuss challenges with data availability and methodological framework selection. In light of these discussions, we provide a decision matrix for aiding researchers/practitioners in determining appropriate model frameworks for conducting vehicle ownership analysis.

Keywords:

• vehicle ownership
• vehicle type and usage
• econometric models
• endogenous choices
• land use and built environment

Acknowledgements

The corresponding author would like to acknowledge financial support from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada under the Discovery Grants program. The authors would also like to acknowledge the critical input of three anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. For our literature review, we primarily focused on travel behavior literature while augmenting with research from marketing literature. The review process involved a two-pronged approach. First, we employed the standard research databases for literature search on vehicle ownership. Second, a comprehensive cascading search of research based on the references in highly cited research articles on vehicle ownership was conducted. The two approaches ensured we covered the broad spectrum of literature on vehicle ownership.

2. To be sure, recent techniques proposed and implemented by Bhat and his colleagues (Bhat, 2011; Paleti, Bhat, & Pendyala, 2013; Paleti, Bhat, Pendyala, & Goulias, 2013; Paleti et al., 2013) circumvent the need to employ simulation for the computation of MNP models. However, there are still challenges associated with the deployment of these techniques for traditional transportation models.