Lifecycle analysis of gasoline expenditure patterns

Abstract

The work presented here demonstrates the existence of statistically identifiable groups of consumers within the population with differentiable gasoline expenditure levels. The existence of these differences in gasoline expenditure levels is demonstrated through examination of urban consumers in the southern region of the USA and US rural consumers as a proxy for southern regional rural consumers. Current work in the analysis of energy end-use patterns indicates that changes in socioeconomic characteristics can lead to substantial changes in the demand for energy. The groups identified in this work have been linked to a developmental description of the formation and maturation of the family unit, known as a lifecycle. The majority of previous studies of consumer demand for gasoline have been performed with aggregate data on a state, regional or national basis. As a result household characteristics, such as age distribution within the household, which have been shown to play an important role in the determination of levels of other transport services, have not been included in previous analyses of the derived household demand for gasoline. Incorporating these factors into an analysis should be useful from a policy perspective, as well as from the perspective of improving forecast reliability.