Prediction Model of Car Ownership Based on Back Propagation Neural Network Optimized by Particle Swarm Optimization

Aiming to address the problems of traditional BP neural networks, which include their slow convergence speed and low accuracy, a vehicle ownership prediction model based on a BP neural network with particle swarm optimization is proposed. The weights and thresholds of the BP neural network are optimized by PSO to make the prediction results more accurate. Based on the current literature regarding BP neural networks’ ability to predict car ownership, a 9-10-1 BP neural network structure model is established. A traditional BP neural network and a PSO-optimized BP neural network are used to predict car ownership at the same time. In order to compare their prediction accuracy, a genetic algorithm (GA) and whale optimization algorithm (WOA) are additionally selected to optimize the BP neural network as a control group to predict car ownership. The data on China’s car ownership from 2005 to 2021 were collected as experimental data. The data from 2005 to 2016 were used as training data, and the remaining data were used as validation data for model prediction. The results show that the PSO-optimized neural network only undergoes three iterations of training, and the convergence accuracy reaches 1.41 × 10 −8 . The relative error between the predicted value of car ownership and the corresponding real value is between 0.023 and 0.083, and the decisive coefficient R 2 is 0.96002, indicating that the neural network has better prediction ability and higher prediction accuracy for car ownership. The particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to optimize the weights and thresholds of the BP neural network, which solves the problems of the traditional BP neural network, including the ease with which it falls into the local minimum value and its slow convergence speed, and improves its prediction accuracy of car ownership. Compared with the results optimized by the genetic algorithm and whale optimization algorithm, the error of the BP neural network optimized by PSO is the smallest, and the prediction accuracy is the highest. Through the comparative analysis of training results, it can be seen that the PSO-BP prediction model has the best stability and accuracy.