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The Effect of Owning a Car on Travel Behavior: Evidence from the Beijing License Plate Lottery

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  • Linn, Joshua

    (Resources for the Future)

  • Yang, Jun
  • Liu, Antung A.
  • Qin, Ping

Abstract

To reduce pervasive problems of traffic congestion and air pollution, many cities in developing countries have considered restricting vehicle ownership. There is no empirical evidence on these programs’ efficacy and costs, but other prior work suggests that not having a car increases the cost of commuting and limits the set of job opportunities. However, these prior studies do not address the endogeneity of car ownership. We leverage a unique policy, the Beijing license plate lottery, to estimate the effect of restricting vehicles on distance traveled and commuting time, while addressing the endogeneity of car ownership. We find that adding a car has little impact on total distance traveled or time spent traveling, but a large impact on mode of travel. While reducing car ownership by 20 percent and car travel distance by 10 percent in Beijing, this policy has not added significantly to overall distances traveled or commute times.

Suggested Citation

  • Linn, Joshua & Yang, Jun & Liu, Antung A. & Qin, Ping, 2016. "The Effect of Owning a Car on Travel Behavior: Evidence from the Beijing License Plate Lottery," RFF Working Paper Series dp-16-18, Resources for the Future.
    • Handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-16-18
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    File URL: http://www.rff.org/research/publications/effect-owning-car-travel-behavior-evidence-beijing-license-plate-lottery
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    Cited by:

    1. Imran Khan, Muhammad, 2017. "Policy options for the sustainable development of natural gas as transportation fuel," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 126-136.
    2. Junze Zhu & Hongzhi Guan & Mingyang Hao & Zhengtao Qin & Ange Wang, 2021. "“License Plate Lottery”: Why Are People So Keen to Participate in It?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(23), pages 1-16, December.
    3. Vaclav Plevka & Paola Astegiano & Willem Himpe & Chris Tampère & Martina Vandebroek, 2018. "How Personal Accessibility and Frequency of Travel Affect Ownership Decisions on Mobility Resources," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-25, March.
    4. Khan, Nazmul Arefin & Habib, Muhammad Ahsanul & Jamal, Shaila, 2020. "Effects of smartphone application usage on mobility choices," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 932-947.
    5. Zhuge, Chengxiang & Wei, Binru & Shao, Chunfu & Shan, Yuli & Dong, Chunjiao, 2020. "The role of the license plate lottery policy in the adoption of Electric Vehicles: A case study of Beijing," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    6. Smith, Göran & Sochor, Jana & Karlsson, I.C. MariAnne, 2018. "Mobility as a Service: Development scenarios and implications for public transport," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 592-599.

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