Fuel price changes and their impacts on urban transport – a literature review using bibliometric and content analysis techniques, 1972–2017

ABSTRACT

While the period of heightened oil prices in 2005–2014 has attracted considerable academic and policy attention, there is scant cross-disciplinary research considering energy price, transport and land use together. In car dependent societies many socio-economically disadvantaged areas often lack public and active transport accessibility. Emerging research focus has been placed on issues of transport equity including effects of fuel prices. We reviewed 45 years (1972–2017) of publications about fuel price impacts, transport, and urban context, drawn from Web of Science listed publications. Bibliographic citation analysis reveals eight major research clusters with a set of inter-city comparative studies at their centre. The historical evolution, geographical trends, research approaches and the key themes are revealed by context analysis. The paper highlights the need for further studies looking at energy, transport and land use interaction, and suggests a greater focus on transport equity.

KEYWORDS:

• Automobile dependence
• energy stress
• transport equity
• transport and society
• fuel price
• bibliometric analysis
• content analysis

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Abraham Leung http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3895-8762

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship which provides the PhD research expenses of the first author. The first author was also the recipient of an Australian Government Endeavour Research Fellowship. The second author was a recipient of an Australian Research Council – Discovery Future Fellowship (FT120100976). Transport research at the Cities Research Institute at Griffith University is supported by the State of Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads and the Motor Accident and Insurance Commission.