An Analysis of Car and Motorcycle Ownership in Macao

Abstract

Reducing automobile dependency is one of the key challenges in the development of a sustainable transportation system. However, to evaluate the effectiveness of a policy, it is necessary to understand the factors that would influence the choice behavior of travelers. In this paper, the impacts of urban characteristics to the household vehicle ownership level for cars and motorcycles in Macao are investigated. A discrete choice approach is used to estimate the number of vehicles that a household would own using disaggregate household survey data. The result reveals that whereas income has positive effect on both car and motorcycle ownerships, the demographic attributes of the residential locations have different effects to the ownerships of the two vehicle types. We also propose that the motorcycle ownership should be represented at a personal decision level instead of a household level.