The value of car ownership and use in the United States

Abstract

It is widely accepted that consumers underestimate the full cost of car ownership and that correcting this bias could meaningfully accelerate the adoption of shared mobility. Yet this argument fails to consider how much benefit consumers enjoy from owning their own vehicle. Here we estimate the value of private car ownership and use in four US metro areas—Chicago, Illinois; Dallas, Texas; Seattle, Washington; and Washington DC—using online discrete choice experiments. We find that, on average, people would need to be paid $11,197 to give up access to their privately owned vehicle for one year, which is at least as much as estimates of the average total private cost of vehicle ownership (~$9,000). Critically, we find that more than half of this value is non-use value—such as the option to travel whenever or wherever needed at a moment’s notice and the status that comes from owning one’s own vehicle—beyond the use value of getting from A to B. Further, this non-use value was found to be much higher during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings reframe the conversation around the transition away from private vehicle dependence, emphasizing the need to provide value and convenience if alternative mobility solutions are to be widely adopted. A choice experiment shows that perceived benefits of vehicle ownership, including non-use values such as schedule flexibility and status in addition to the transport value, are on average larger than their private costs.