A Behavioral Approach to Modelling Household Motor Vehicle Ownership and Applications to Aggregate Policy Analysis

A unified approach to the modelling of household motor vehicle ownership level, consumption of vehicle holdings, and vehicle use is described. The model system is founded on a utility theory of household behavior, and is implemented through probabilistic discrete choice models estimated from cross-sectional samples of households. Following the introduction of the model, an application involving forecasts of US motor vehicle sales through the mid-1980s is presented.