IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/easeco/v51y2025i2d10.1057_s41302-024-00292-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do Declining Vehicle Attributes Eliminate the Direct Rebound Effect?

Author

Listed:
  • Fidel Gonzalez

    (Sam Houston State University Huntsville)

  • Diya Mazumder

    (Soka University of America)

Abstract

Improvements in vehicle fuel economy are often made by reducing vehicle attributes that consumers care about. We estimate the magnitude of the dampening effect of these declining vehicle attributes on the direct rebound effect. We assemble a comprehensive dataset including household-level information, vehicle attributes, gasoline prices, and state-level data. We find that the attribute adjustment mitigates the direct rebound effect by 18–23%. Our estimate of the direct rebound effect is about 0.64 to 0.66 and lies at the upper bound of most prior estimates, resulting in an overall rebound effect between 0.45 and 0.47. Our results provide a best-case scenario for the efficacy of fuel economy standards as a policy instrument to combat climate change.

Suggested Citation

  • Fidel Gonzalez & Diya Mazumder, 2025. "Do Declining Vehicle Attributes Eliminate the Direct Rebound Effect?," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 51(2), pages 198-224, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:easeco:v:51:y:2025:i:2:d:10.1057_s41302-024-00292-3
    DOI: 10.1057/s41302-024-00292-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41302-024-00292-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41302-024-00292-3?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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Transportation; Rebound effect; Vehicle attributes; Gas tax elasticity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • R41 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - Transportation: Demand, Supply, and Congestion; Travel Time; Safety and Accidents; Transportation Noise
    • Q52 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Pollution Control Adoption and Costs; Distributional Effects; Employment Effects

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:pal:easeco:v:51:y:2025:i:2:d:10.1057_s41302-024-00292-3. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    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.