Modeling dynamics in household car ownership over life courses: a latent class competing risks model

Abstract

This study presents a latent class competing risks model to examine the influence of sociodemographics and life course events on car transaction behaviour. The types of car transaction and interval times between car transactions events are incorporated in a competing risk model. To capture unobserved behavioural heterogeneity across the population, the model classifies households into different segments. Results estimated based on retrospective survey data show significant heterogeneity exist in household car ownership decisions. The covariates are found to have different effects on car ownership decisions between different classes. Households in the class labelled "Young households without a car" are more sensitive to life course events related to household composition. Households labelled as "middle-aged and aged households with car(s)" are more sensitive to life course events related to job and house locations.

Trends, Enablers, and Barriers for Car Ownership

“…Acquisition and maintenance costs, as well as the socioeconomic characteristics of a region, cause people to decide not to have cars and sell or delay the purchase of a vehicle ( 33 ). Although owning a car is related to economic benefits, both owning and maintaining a car is expensive ( 27 ), and changing jobs can influence the sale of a car ( 1 ). During the COVID-19 pandemic, the increased cost of car travel disproportionately affected low-income workers and essential workers ( 39 ).…”

“…Life and family events, such as the birth of a child ( 1 ), a new job, an increase in income ( 27 ), and sociodemographic characteristics, like age group ( 28 ) and retirement ( 29 ), are also associated with the acquisition and maintenance of passenger cars. Private car ownership varies across generations and is related to the effects of income ( 29 – 31 ), life stage, and household structure ( 32 ).…”

“…Life and family events and sociodemographic aspects are the highlights. Events such as weddings, ( 1 ), retirements, divorce, ( 35 ), health issues, and residential moves can encourage people to discard their vehicles. In addition, they can prolong transient states, thus decreasing the chances of changes in fleet size ( 63 ).…”

“…Car ownership is an important factor for the behavior of rides, travel, and individual and family activities for providing autonomy to leave home and access desired locations ( 1 ). This topic has been the object of considerable attention in the areas of marketing, economy, and transportation ( 2 ).…”

What Makes You Hold on to That Old Car? Joint Insights From Machine Learning and Multinomial Logit on Vehicle-Level Transaction Decisions

“…Vehicle transaction dynamics investigated by previous studies include changes in the vehicle holdings [e.g., (Prillwitz et al, 2006) (Klein and Smart, 2019)] and vehicle transaction decisions (Mohammadian and Miller, 2003), (Yamamoto, 2008), (Fatmi and Habib, 2016), (Gu et al, 2020). However, changes in the vehicle holdings cannot uncover the incidence of vehicle replacement, as it does not alter the level of vehicle holdings.…”