Increasing car ownership and use is a trend observed in almost all countries and in recent years it has become the focus of major policy concern. However, although many countries now share similar concerns to reduce their dependence on the car, it is less well understood how the nature and extent of this dependence varies quite significantly across different national contexts. These differences provide an opportunity to learn more about the nature of car ownership and use, and thereby to plan more effective policy interventions. Existing crossnational comparative studies have in the main been qualitative in nature, and in those cases where quantitative analysis has been undertaken, there have sometimes been there have sometimes been serious methodological weaknesses in the approaches adopted. The aim of this paper is to report the results of a comparative analysis of car ownership and use undertaken using panel data from three different countries, Norway, the United States and the Netherlands. The analysis is based on the estimation of panel-data models of car ownership and use, and comparisons between countries are made in terms of the estimated parameter values. In the first section of the paper, previous cross-national work, concentrating in particular on methodological aspects, is briefly reviewed. In the second section, the data sets used in the current study are briefly described. The third section outlines the modelling approach adopted, which is based on the application of panel-data models of the discrete level of car ownership and the continuous level of car use. The fourth section discusses the modelling results and the final section draws out some general lessons and conclusions. An abstract only of this paper appears in the seminar proceedings.
Samenvatting