The Socioeconomic Characteristics, Urban Built Environment and Household Car Ownership in a Rapidly Growing City: Evidence from Zhongshan, China

Abstract

Growth in car ownership has significant impacts on the use of urban space and management of urban environments, especially in rapidly developing countries such as China. However, among voluminous literature, few studies have investigated the correlates of household car ownership in the Chinese context, leading to the lack of effective measures to tackle rapid motorization. This study explored the impacts of household-level socioeconomic characteristics and neighborhood-level built environment on household car ownership, with data collected from 25,325 households in Zhongshan, China. The Zero-inflated Poission regression models detect that, all else being equal, living in a neighborhood with a compact and mixed urban form, better bus service and adjacency to CBD is associated with fewer household cars and higher probability to own zero cars. The models also suggest that household size and income, number of employed or students, and availability of competitive vehicles are significantly related to the number of cars in a household. The findings facilitate our understanding of the effects of socioeconomic characteristics and built environment on household car ownership and provide insights into an effective design of measures to slow down the rapid motorization in China.