The modeling of household vehicle type choice accommodating spatial dependence effects

Household vehicle ownership and fleet composition are choice dimensions that have important implications for policy making, particularly in the energy and environmental sustainability arena. In the context of household vehicle ownership and type choice, it is conceivable that there are substantial spatial interaction effects due to both observed and unobserved factors. This paper presents a multinomial probit model formulation that incorporates spatial spillover effects arising from both observed and unobserved factors. The model is estimated on the California add-on data set of the 2009 National Household Travel Survey. Model estimation results show that spatial dependency effects are statistically significant. The findings have important implications for model development and application in the policy forecasting arena.