Gasoline consumption in Saudi Arabia: an analysis of consumer attitudes and perceptions using microsurvey data

Abstract

AbstractThe study analyses gasoline consumption behaviour by ordinary consumers in Saudi Arabia using household‐level disaggregated survey data. We applied parametric methods to test 10 hypotheses related to gasoline consumption. To collect the data, we surveyed 1862 households across 13 regions of the country. The empirical results show that gasoline consumption is significantly affected by age, nationality, education, employment characteristics, household size, vehicle engine size, gasoline price, household location and consumers’ concern about future price change, but it is not affected by income. We also find that consumption varies among different groups within each factor and that many differences are statistically significant. The importance and contribution of this study stem from the fact that there is no research on gasoline demand using household‐level disaggregated survey data in Saudi Arabia, and thus our results should be useful to policymakers. Our study is particularly timely considering that the government is trying to move away from subsidy in the oil sector.