A nationwide study of factors associated with household car ownership in China

Car ownership is growing very rapidly in China; whilst this is a reflection of sustained economic growth, it presents a major challenge to Chinese transport policymakers. The consequences of China's motorization also extend beyond the national borders, however, via mechanisms such as increased demand for new automobiles produced in North America and Europe and the global atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. Chinese cities are also experimenting with innovative transport policies to manage increasing car ownership, which in a number of cases go beyond the menu of policy options that have traditionally been considered in the West. Despite policy interest for these reasons, China's motorization process is poorly understood, in part due to a scarcity of relevant data.This paper contributes to the body of literature regarding this phenomenon by drawing on a unique data resource: the 2011 wave of the China Household Finance Survey (n=8438 households). This is a disaggregate national-scale survey dataset developed to monitor economic conditions in China, though to the authors' knowledge the CHFS has not previously been employed to study patterns of car ownership. The authors report a set of three analyses, to identify factors associated with: 1) whether a household owns at least one car, 2) multiple car ownership, and 3) whether a household owns a new car. Amongst other empirical results, they find that living in a rural area is negatively associated with car ownership, net of confounding effects, and that within towns/cities poor accessibility (i.e. long travel time) to the town/city centre is also negatively associated with car ownership. These findings regarding spatial effects are contrary to typical findings in the West, where car ownership is generally lowest in urban centres. An earlier version of this study was presented at the 2017 Transportation Research Board conference.

• Record URL:
  • https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iatssr.2017.10.001
• Record URL:
  • http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0386111217300614
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/03861112
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © 2017 International Association of Traffic and Safety Sciences. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. Abstract reprinted with permission of Elsevier.
• Authors:
  • Le Vine, Scott
  • 0000-0003-1455-5640
  • Wu, Chenyang
  • Polak, John
  • 0000-0002-3222-483X
• Publication Date: 2018-10

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: References; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 128-137
• Serial:
  • IATSS Research
  • Volume: 42
  • Issue Number: 3
  • Publisher: International Association of Traffic and Safety Sciences
  • ISSN: 0386-1112

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Automobile ownership; Economic development; Logistic regression analysis; Residential location; Surveys; Transportation policy; Travel time
• Geographic Terms: China
• Subject Areas: Economics; Highways; Policy; Society; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01689456
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Dec 20 2018 3:33PM