Determinants of car parking revenues: An econometric analysis of large European airports

Abstract

Parking facilities are a major source of commercial revenues for airports. Our paper identifies and analyzes key factors that impact parking revenues and the provision of parking facilities at the 10 largest European airports, based on data from 2011 to 2019. The econometric model consists of two equations due to the endogeneity of the number of parking spaces in the airport ‘parking revenue’ equation. We estimated the system of equations simultaneously using the generalized method of moments based on the Newey-West covariance estimator using the fixed effects model. The results indicate that the number of passengers, parking spaces, and parking fees impact airport parking revenues positively. The airport's catchment population impacts the number of airport parking spaces positively while the availability of alternative parking sites near the airport, the number of bus lines or routes serving the airport, a proxy for the ease of traveling to and from the airport, and an ownership structure that is majority private-owned tend to impact the number of parking spaces negatively.