IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/transa/v61y2014icp178-185.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A volatile relationship: The effect of changing gasoline prices on public support for mass transit

Author

Listed:
  • Smart, Michael J.

Abstract

The determinants of public opinion toward public transit is a little-researched topic, though a better understanding of what makes consumers willing to support transit may reveal which attributes of transit consumers value most. One determinant of people’s willingness to support investments in mass transit may be the price of fuel for transit’s principal competition, the private automobile. In this paper, I examine the relationship between the cost of gasoline and stated willingness to invest public money in mass transit improvements. I hypothesize that fuel price volatility—in addition to price itself—is a determinant of support for more mass transit funding, controlling for other factors. As the price of gasoline becomes more uncertain, the public should, all else equal, support investment in mass transportation, a form of transportation that may provide some measure of protection from the price of fuel. Results suggest a strong effect of price volatility on consumers’ willingness to support transit expenditures.

Suggested Citation

  • Smart, Michael J., 2014. "A volatile relationship: The effect of changing gasoline prices on public support for mass transit," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 178-185.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:61:y:2014:i:c:p:178-185
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2014.01.011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856414000433
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tra.2014.01.011?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marcus Cunha Jr. & Jeffrey D. Shulman, 2011. "Assimilation and Contrast in Price Evaluations," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 37(5), pages 822-835.
    2. Boyd-Swan, Casey & Herbst, Chris M., 2012. "Pain at the pump: Gasoline prices and subjective well-being," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 160-175.
    3. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. Cynthia Chen & Don Varley & Jason Chen, 2011. "What Affects Transit Ridership? A Dynamic Analysis involving Multiple Factors, Lags and Asymmetric Behaviour," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 48(9), pages 1893-1908, July.
    5. Kenneth Train, 1980. "A Structured Logit Model of Auto Ownership and Mode Choice," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(2), pages 357-370.
    6. Heisz, Andrew & Schellenberg, Grant, 2004. "Public Transit Use Among Immigrants," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2004224e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    7. Douglas D. Heckathorn, 1998. "Collective Action, Social Dilemmas And Ideology," Rationality and Society, , vol. 10(4), pages 451-479, November.
    8. Goldman, Todd & Wachs, Martin, 2003. "A Quiet Revolution in Transportation Finance: The Rise of Local Option Transportation Taxes," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt2gp4m4xq, University of California Transportation Center.
    9. Adaval, Rashmi & Monroe, Kent B, 2002. "Automatic Construction and Use of Contextual Information for Product and Price Evaluations," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 28(4), pages 572-588, March.
    10. Lane, Bradley W., 2012. "A time-series analysis of gasoline prices and public transportation in US metropolitan areas," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 221-235.
    11. Blumenberg, Evelyn & Donahue, Moira & Handy, Susan L & Lovejoy, Kristin & Rodier, Caroline J. & Shaheen, Susan & Volker, James, 2007. "Travel of Diverse Populations: Literature Review," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt9217t43p, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Prakash, Kushneel & Awaworyi Churchill, Sefa & Smyth, Russell, 2020. "Petrol prices and subjective wellbeing," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    2. Michael Manville & Benjamin Cummins, 2015. "Why do voters support public transportation? Public choices and private behavior," Transportation, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 303-332, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lillian L. Cheng & Kent B. Monroe, 2013. "An appraisal of behavioral price research (part 1): price as a physical stimulus," AMS Review, Springer;Academy of Marketing Science, vol. 3(3), pages 103-129, September.
    2. Ahmed Daqrouq & Ardeshir Anjomani, 2019. "Public Transit Ridership and Car-Oriented Cities: The Case of the Dallas Region," Economies, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-17, August.
    3. Donna, Javier D., 2018. "Measuring Long-Run Price Elasticities in Urban Travel Demand," MPRA Paper 90059, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Hunneman, Auke & Verhoef, Peter C. & Sloot, Laurens M., 2021. "The impact of hard discounter presence on store satisfaction and store loyalty," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    5. Choi, Pilsik & Coulter, Keith S., 2012. "It's Not All Relative: The Effects of Mental and Physical Positioning of Comparative Prices on Absolute versus Relative Discount Assessment," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 88(4), pages 512-527.
    6. Duncan, Michael & Christensen, Robert K., 2013. "An analysis of park-and-ride provision at light rail stations across the US," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 148-157.
    7. Ralf Elbert & Lowis Seikowsky, 2017. "The influences of behavioral biases, barriers and facilitators on the willingness of forwarders’ decision makers to modal shift from unimodal road freight transport to intermodal road–rail freight tra," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 87(8), pages 1083-1123, November.
    8. Wedad Elmaghraby & Wolfgang Jank & Shu Zhang & Itir Z. Karaesmen, 2015. "Sales Force Behavior, Pricing Information, and Pricing Decisions," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 17(4), pages 495-510, October.
    9. Nicole Koschate-Fischer & Katharina Wüllner, 2017. "New developments in behavioral pricing research," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 87(6), pages 809-875, August.
    10. Utpal M. Dholakia & Itamar Simonson, 2005. "The Effect of Explicit Reference Points on Consumer Choice and Online Bidding Behavior," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(2), pages 206-217, October.
    11. Jaikumar, Saravana & Sahay, Arvind, 2016. "Effect of Overlapping Price Ranges on Price Perception: Revisiting the Range Theory of Price Perception," IIMA Working Papers WP2016-02-02, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Research and Publication Department.
    12. Michaelides, Panayotis G. & Konstantakis, Konstantinos N. & Milioti, Christina & Karlaftis, Matthew G., 2015. "Modelling spillover effects of public transportation means: An intra-modal GVAR approach for Athens," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 1-18.
    13. De Bruyn, Arnaud & Prokopec, Sonja, 2017. "Assimilation-contrast theory in action: Operationalization and managerial impact in a fundraising context," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 367-381.
    14. Hu, Ye & Li, Xinxin, 2011. "Context-Dependent Product Evaluations: An Empirical Analysis of Internet Book Reviews," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 123-133.
    15. Caputo, Vincenzina & Lusk, Jayson L. & Nayga, Rodolfo M., 2018. "Choice experiments are not conducted in a vacuum: The effects of external price information on choice behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 335-351.
    16. Wang, Shenhao & Mo, Baichuan & Zhao, Jinhua, 2021. "Theory-based residual neural networks: A synergy of discrete choice models and deep neural networks," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 333-358.
    17. Milioti, Christina P. & Karlaftis, Matthew G., 2014. "Estimating multimodal public transport mode shares in Athens, Greece," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 88-95.
    18. Aku-Ville Lehtimäki & Kent B. Monroe & Outi Somervuori, 2019. "The influence of regular price level (low, medium, or high) and framing of discount (monetary or percentage) on perceived attractiveness of discount amount," Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 18(1), pages 76-85, February.
    19. Chakour, Vincent & Eluru, Naveen, 2016. "Examining the influence of stop level infrastructure and built environment on bus ridership in Montreal," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 205-217.
    20. Matthew Palm & Susan Handy, 2018. "Sustainable transportation at the ballot box: a disaggregate analysis of the relative importance of user travel mode, attitudes and self-interest," Transportation, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 121-141, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:61:y:2014:i:c:p:178-185. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/547/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.