Giulio Mattioli's presentation on households who cannot afford cars for the 2-day international workshop "Energy-related economic stress at the interface between transport poverty, fuel poverty and residential location", held at the University of Leeds, 20th – 21st May 2015.

1. Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT
Households without cars,
motoring costs and affordability
Giulio Mattioli
g.mattioli@leeds.ac.uk
(t)ERES Workshop
20 May 2015

2. Transport, access & inequalities (overall):
• transport/mobility (related/based) (social) (&) exclusion/inclusion;
transport disadvantage; socio-spatial exclusion; accessibility poverty;
mobility/transport poverty, etc.
Transport costs and affordability (more specifically):
• forced car ownership; transport poverty; oil vulnerability; energy
precarity/vulnerability of transport; commuter fuel poverty, etc.
 car-related economic stress
Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT

3. Transport & social exclusion research - issues:
• Confusing variety of terms
• Broad, generic notions: essentially different exclusionary processes are
conflated (e.g. mobility difficulties, affordability, time poverty, etc.)
• Underdeveloped connections with wider debates on car dependence,
sustainable transport, travel & the built environment
Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT

4. Two forms of car-related transport disadvantage:
• Car deprivation: lack of accessibility that might arise from not having
access to a car - the most investigated
• Car-related economic stress: car-owning households who need to
spend a disproportionately high share of their income to get where they
need to go, with negative consequences in terms of restricted activity
spaces and/or spending cuts in other essential areas
Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT

5. Complementary relationship
Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT
Source: Mattioli (2013)

6. Spatial patterns of economic stress / oil vulnerability:
• Greater incidence and intensity in suburban and rural areas: greater
car dependence, longer travel distances
• Households trade-off transport and housing costs – might ‘choose’ to
spend a lot on transport in order to be able to afford housing (residential
location choice)…
• …but often end up spending too much anyway (underestimate increase
in transport costs, buy larger house, exogenous increase in fuel prices)
Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT

7. What about those who cannot afford car-ownership?
• Well-known link between income and car ownership
• Variety of reasons for non-car ownership little investigated. Focus
mostly on socio-psychological determinants of non-car ownership, pro-
environmental attitudes (ABC ‘attitude, behaviour & choice’ approach,
cfr. Shove, 2010)
• Lack of insights into spatial patterns of variation in reasons for not
owning cars (notably affordability)
 The object of this study
Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT

8. Data:
• German National Travel Survey, 2008 (MiD 2008)
• 25,922 households, 2,953 without cars (17.7%)
• Question on the “reasons for not owning cars”: 6 binary items
• Considered additional variable: ‘no driving licence in households’
• 27
= 128 possible patterns of response
Methods:
• Latent Class Analysis: model-based classification technique for
categorical variables
• Output: classification of households based on full set of stated reasons,
adequately representing observed patterns of association
Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT

9. Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT
Source: MiD 2008

10. Car
Abstinence
Too Old
to Drive
Economically
Car Deprived
No
Driving
Licence
Car
Free
Health
Impaired
Total
(carless )
Cluster size 35 19 17 14 10 5 100
Not necessary 67 29 27 12 100 0 45
Deliberate
abstinence 100 39 0 4 0 0 43
Too expensive 56 39 100 20 27 17 50
Health
reasons 13 49 6 0 8 100 20
Age reasons 5 100 0 5 0 0 21
Other reasons 17 17 0 100 9 14 25
No driving
licence 38 65 19 84 60 69 50
School of something
FACULTY OF OTHER
Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT

11. Car
Abstinence
Too Old
to Drive
Economically
Car Deprived
No
Driving
Licence
Car
Free
Health
Impaired
Total
(carless )
Cluster size 35 19 17 14 10 5 100
Not necessary 67 29 27 12 100 0 45
Deliberate
abstinence 100 39 0 4 0 0 43
Too expensive 56 39 100 20 27 17 50
Health
reasons 13 49 6 0 8 100 20
Age reasons 5 100 0 5 0 0 21
Other reasons 17 17 0 100 9 14 25
No driving
licence 38 65 19 84 60 69 50
School of something
FACULTY OF OTHER
Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT

12. Source: Mattioli (2013)
Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT

13. Source: Mattioli (2013)
Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT

14. Multinomial logistic regression. Source: Mattioli (forthcoming)
Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT

15. Conclusions:
• Challenge to rigid opposition between choice vs. constraint in car
ownership behaviour
• Old-age related reasons: strong constraint to car ownership
• Affordability: weaker constraint – it can be bent… but the price is
economic stress
Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT

16. Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT
Complementary relationship

17. Choice between two evils (for low-income households but not
only):
1. Own a car – and deal with economic stress
2. Do without it – and deal with lack of accessibility
The degree of car dependence in the residential area influences outcome
Alternative / complementary explanations:
• Urban households face higher housing costs = less disposable
income for transport
• … or might spend more in other areas (e.g. long distance travel, holiday
flights, etc., cfr. Holz Rau et al., 2014; Ottelin et al., 2014)
• Some form of residential self-selection
Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT

18. Policy implications:
• Increasing car dependence / ownership -> decreasing number of
households who ‘cannot’ afford cars…
• …but transport disadvantage still exists - even though under more
energy-intensive disguises (car-related economic stress)
• ‘Peak car’ / successful efforts to reduce the need for car ownership ->
increasing proportion of households who find cars ‘too expensive’…
• …important that this is not interpreted as impoverishment / material
deprivation
Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT

19. Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT
Thank you for your attention
Giulio Mattioli
g.mattioli@leeds.ac.uk

20. Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT
This presentation is based on a paper
currently under review – please do not
cite!

21. References:
BMVBS (Ed.) (2012). Mobilität, Erreichbarkeit und soziale Exklusion. Fähigkeiten und
Ressourcen einer ländlichen Bevölkerung für eine angemessene Versorgung und Teilhabe
am öffentlichen Leben. BMVBS-Online-Publikation 27/2012.
Holz-Rau, C., Scheiner, J., & Sicks, K. (2014). Travel distances in daily travel and long-
distance travel: what role is played by urban form? Environment and Planning A, 46, 488-
507.
Mattioli, G. (2013). Where sustainable transport and social exclusion meet: Households
without cars and car dependence in Germany and Great Britain. Unpublished PhD thesis,
University of Milan-Bicocca.
Ottelin, J., Heinonen, J., & Junnila, S. (2014). Greenhouse gas emissions from flying can
offset the gain from reduced driving in dense urban areas. Journal of Transport
Geography, 41, 1-9.
Shove, E. (2010). Beyond the ABC: climate change policy and theories of social change.
Environment and Planning A, 42, 1273-1285.
Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT