IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecotra/v45y2026ics221201222600002x.html

Are the rich reaching saturation: Income and fuel price elasticities of car ownership and use

Author

Listed:
  • Berry, Carl
  • Börjesson, Maria

Abstract

We estimate the income and fuel price elasticities of household vehicle kilometres travelled (VKT) and car ownership. To model the VKT, we apply a discrete-continuous model on registrAy micro panel data, covering all Swedish households from 1999 to 2018. We model two joint choices: car ownership and VKT conditional on car ownership, where the elasticity of VKT from these two choices are obtained by using the Two-Part model. We account for unobserved household effects using a correlated random effects specification and take household adjustments into account by including lagged values of fuel prices and income. Our preferred model yields a long-run income elasticity of 0.45 for private VKT, where close to two-thirds of the effect comes from the income elasticity of car ownership. The long-run fuel price elasticity of private VKT is −1.03, with the response in VKT among car owners being larger than the response in car ownership.

Suggested Citation

  • Berry, Carl & Börjesson, Maria, 2026. "Are the rich reaching saturation: Income and fuel price elasticities of car ownership and use," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecotra:v:45:y:2026:i:c:s221201222600002x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecotra.2026.100448
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221201222600002X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ecotra.2026.100448?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
    • R41 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - Transportation: Demand, Supply, and Congestion; Travel Time; Safety and Accidents; Transportation Noise
    • R42 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - Government and Private Investment Analysis; Road Maintenance; Transportation Planning
    • R48 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - Government Pricing and Policy
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy

    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:eee:ecotra:v:45:y:2026:i:c:s221201222600002x. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecotra .

    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.