A stated preference study for a car ownership model in the context of developing countries

A stated preference ( SP) experiment of car ownership was conducted in Mumbai Metropolitan Region ( MMR) of Maharashtra in India. A full factorial experiment was designed to considering various attributes such as travel time, travel cost, projected household income, car loan payment and servicing cost. Data on 357 individuals were collected which resulted in 3213 observations for the calibration of the work trip and recreational trip car ownership models. The car ownership alternatives considered 0, 1 and 2 cars. A multinomial logit framework was used to develop the car ownership model taking the household as a decision unit. The specification and results of the SP car ownership model are discussed. The observed and predicted values matched reasonably when the validity of the SP car ownership model was tested against revealed preference ( RP) data. The car ownership models developed in this study exhibit a satisfactory goodness of fit. It is concluded that the SP modelling approach can be successfully used for modelling car ownership decisions of households in developing countries.