Are French households car-use addicts? A microeconomic perspective

•The car-use dependence issue is addressed using theoretical microeconomic models of demand.•The myopic and rational addiction models are estimated to characterize household car use in France.•The estimates do not reject the microeconomic addiction hypothesis regarding household car use behavior.•The rational version of the addiction model proves to be more relevant than the myopic version in representing the annual car mileage of households.•Original in this context, the rational addiction model lives up to expectations and yields elasticities of car use which are in line with the literature.

This article presents a microeconometric analysis of household car use in France. To characterize car use dependence, the myopic and rational addiction models are estimated using panel data drawn from the French “Car Fleet” survey. Significantly, the assumption of rational addiction to car use cannot be rejected, and is even supported by a plausible estimate of the intertemporal rate of substitution (17%). Furthermore, the rational model yields realistic estimates of the fuel cost- and income-elasticities of household car use, respectively − 0.23 and + 0.10 for the short run, and − 0.37 and + 0.16 for the long run.