THE DETERMINANTS OF URBAN HOUSEHOLDS' TRANSPORT DECISIONS: A MICROECONOMETRIC STUDY USING IRISH DATA*

Abstract

This paper uses Irish micro-data to analyse the determinants of urban households ’ transport decisions by estimating elasticities of demand for car ownership, car use and public transport with respect to income and various household socio-demographic characteristics. This paper uses expenditure data to examine car and public transport use and analyses the latter decision for separate samples of households, namely, those owning one car and those owning no car. A binary probit model is estimated for the car ownership decision, while for the car use and public transport expenditure decisions, Tobit models adjusted for heteroscedastic and non-normal errors are estimated.