Modelling the impact of fuel price fluctuation on individual car travel behaviour: Evidence from GPS panel data

The question whether fluctuation in fuel price leads to considerable changes in people's activity-travel behavior has been a topic of interest in travel behavior research for a number of decades. Prior studies mostly used country or sub-national level time series data, individual level cross-sectional data only or pooled time series/cross-sectional data. However, these data have different potential shortcomings in reflecting individual or household adaptation behavior. Moreover, rarely the effects of weather conditions on mode choice behavior have been taken into account at the same time. To gain insight into this issue, a panel survey recording for 3 months the activity-travel patterns of a sample of 103 car users who are living in the Eindhoven and Rotterdam areas, The Netherlands is used to analyze whether travel time by car co-varies with fluctuations in fuel price. Using GPS devices and a Web based prompted recall instrument, the space-time behaviour of the respondents was tracked semi-automatically. At the same time, daily fuel price and weather condition data were recorded separately. Results suggest that days of the week and weather conditions have significant effects on the probability of using the car. People are more likely to become engaged in out-of-home activities and drive their car on sunny days and on specific days (such as Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday). Fuel price has a significant negative effect on travel time by car when the car is used.