Social and urban form determinants of vehicle ownership; evidence from a developing country

The car is the most preferred mode of travel among middle and high-income urban residents in Iran, where the car ownership has been growing at a rate of 15% per year and the evidence shows that vehicle ownership and use are strongly supported by urban development patterns. However, the specification of this relationship is not the same as western societies. Thus, this paper investigates the vehicle ownership and usage in three residential neighborhoods of Shiraz, a city in the southwest of Iran and its association to urban form characteristics and development pattern. The data on land use and urban form characteristics were primarily extracted from the existing secondary sources and GIS but in a disaggregated fine-grain method, whereas the data on household characteristics and vehicle ownership were purposefully collected through a household questionnaire survey. A nested logit model (NLM) based on the Discrete Choice Theory (DCT) was then applied to explore the impacts of socio-economic status (SES) and urban form factors on the car ownership choices of households. The results and the associated policy implications can be helpful in defining a strategic framework for community planning and design in order to reduce the level of car ownership and usage.