Linking Individuals' Affective and Instrumental Motives to Their Car Use: An Application of an Integrated Choice and Latent Variable Model

Car mobility in cities differs from that in suburban or rural areas, as there usually exist alternative modes such as public transit. Nevertheless, people own and use their cars. In addition to hard factors such as sociodemographics, motives play a particularly important role in urban areas. In the context of this study, we would like to examine the influence of soft factors on car use. This leads to our research question: what influence do the affective and instrumental motives have on the use frequency of cars? The data set used in this study was collected in Berlin and San Francisco. The respondents have provided insights on their everyday travel (e.g., use frequency of cars) and motives for car use. To investigate influences of motives, we applied motives into an integrated choice and latent variable model (ICLV) with an ordered probit kernel. The results indicate a high added value by integrating these soft factors. We can explain more of the overall heterogeneity and can give further insights to the decision-making process. Results show a high influence of the affective motive, whereby the instrumental motive does not matter. Considering the direct and indirect effects, we see that the influence of gender comes almost exclusively by the affective motive. Results suggest people are more likely to use cars for affective motives despite the city's adversities. For these people it is difficult to achieve a shift to alternative means of transport. The only way to intervene here is through regulatory intervention