Household vehicle holding decisions in response to life cycle events

Abstract

Abstract People choose a new mobility tool when their mobility needs of change or their current vehicle need replacement. Changes in mobility needs may be triggered by life events. A life event triggers households to reconsider their current vehicle holdings and leads them to change their vehicle holdings if the changing demand makes a changed desirable. Electric cars and car sharing provide new options, which deserve studying in the context of sustainable transport and energy consumption. In the context of re-assessing mobility needs, it is important to better understand the process that leads households to purchase an electric car as a replacement or supplement of their current vehicle, or to join car-sharing. To investigate this decision-making process, a stated choice experiment was designed. This paper reports the results of a mixed logit model, which was estimated to assess the degree of heterogeneity among households in their preferences for vehicle purchase and replacement decisions as a function of life events.