The effect of residential housing policy on car ownership and trip chaining behaviour in Hangzhou, China

Abstract

China has recently initialised affordable housing policies to provide low rent housings for medium and low income households aiming to satisfy the growing demand in the housing market. The travel behaviour of residents in these two different types of housing is likely to differ, since public housing tenants have a limited choice of residential location, as the location of low-rent housing is fixed, while residents in commodity housing are able to take their travel patterns into account in choosing their housing location. Therefore, this paper investigates the differences in car ownership and trip chaining behaviour arising from living in different types of residential housing. The self-selection bias caused by the differences in the observed individual and household characteristics is partially controlled by a propensity score matching approach. The study further considers the endogenous effect of car ownership on travel chaining behaviour, thus controlling for the self-selection bias at car ownership level. The results show that residents in private commodity housing are more likely to own a car than those in low-rent housing with similar individual and household characteristics. Different life cycle stages play a vital role in car ownership after self-selection in residential housing has been taken into account. Living in private commodity housing has a direct negative effect on trip chaining complexity, after controlling for endogenous car ownership, although this effect is offset by the tendency for private commodity housing owners to do complex trip chaining because they have one or more cars.