IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rff/dpaper/dp-16-38.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Explaining the Evolution of Passenger Vehicle Miles Traveled in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Leard, Benjamin

    (Resources for the Future)

  • Linn, Joshua

    (Resources for the Future)

  • Munnings, Clayton

    (Resources for the Future)

Abstract

After growing steadily for several decades, passenger vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in the United States unexpectedly leveled off in the 2000s. The growth rate of VMT has since rebounded, and determining the factors that explain these developments has implications for future US oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. We show that changes in the demographic and economic characteristics of households in the United States, rather than changes in driving habits, explain most of the recent dynamics. These results suggest that over the next decade, VMT in the United States will continue to grow roughly at historical rates, causing substantially higher oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions than if persistent changes in household driving habits explained the recent changes in VMT.

Suggested Citation

  • Leard, Benjamin & Linn, Joshua & Munnings, Clayton, 2016. "Explaining the Evolution of Passenger Vehicle Miles Traveled in the United States," RFF Working Paper Series dp-16-38, Resources for the Future.
    • Handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-16-38
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.rff.org/RFF/documents/RFF-DP-16-38.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christopher R. Knittel & Elizabeth Murphy, 2019. "Generational Trends in Vehicle Ownership and Use: Are Millennials Any Different?," NBER Working Papers 25674, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Dowds, Jonathan & Howerter, Sarah & Hines, Paul & Aultman-Hall, Lisa, 2024. "Integrated Modeling of Electric Vehicle Energy Demand and Regional Electricity Generation," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt9nv8z4kc, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    3. Linn, Joshua & Liang, Jing & Qiu, Yueming, 2022. "Rising US Income Inequality and Declining Residential Electricity Consumption: Is There a Link?," RFF Working Paper Series 22-09, Resources for the Future.
    4. A. Wren Montgomery & Kimberly S. Wolske & Thomas P. Lyon, 2021. "The Millennial ‘Meh’: Correlated Groups as Collective Agents in the Automobile Field," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(3), pages 673-717, May.
    5. Srinivasa Raghavan, Seshadri, 2020. "Behavioral Realism of Plug-In Electric Vehicle Usage: Implications for Emission Benefits, Energy Consumption, and Policies," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt1rz000pf, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    6. Leard, Benjamin & Xing, Jianwei, 2020. "What Does Ridesharing Replace?," RFF Working Paper Series 20-03, Resources for the Future.
    7. Carvallo, Juan Pablo & Murphy, Sean P. & Stuart, Elizabeth & Larsen, Peter H. & Goldman, Charles, 2019. "Evaluating project level investment trends for the U.S. ESCO industry: 1990–2017," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 139-161.
    8. Naroa Coretti Sanchez & Luis Alonso Pastor & Kent Larson, 2022. "Can autonomy make bicycle-sharing systems more sustainable? Environmental impact analysis of an emerging mobility technology," Papers 2202.12405, arXiv.org.
    9. Nicholas Rivers, Randall Wigle, 2018. "An evaluation of policy options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector: The cost-effectiveness of regulations versus emissions pricing," LCERPA Working Papers 0107, Laurier Centre for Economic Research and Policy Analysis, revised 01 Jan 2018.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    passenger vehicles; miles traveled; demographics; gasoline consumption; greenhouse gas emissions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q4 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy
    • Q5 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics
    • L62 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - Automobiles; Other Transportation Equipment; Related Parts and Equipment

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-16-38. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Resources for the Future (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rffffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.