Car ownership, carsharing, neighbourhood types and travel attitudes: A latent-cluster analysis

The availability of carsharing in cities around the world has allowed more households to take advantage of the service as an alternative or a complement to private car ownership. While most research has looked at the effect of carsharing on car ownership decisions using carsharing users’ surveys, very few have modelled the choice of car ownership and carsharing jointly using independent surveys. This paper investigates the complex relationship between this joint decision, the built environment, and travel-related attitudes. Using data from two surveys in Montreal, latent-cluster analysis is used to identify a typology of residential neighbourhoods and a segmentation of attitude profiles. Cross-analyzing the two segmentations suggests that those with more positive attitudes towards the car are more likely to own cars and less likely to join carsharing across all neighbourhood types compared to less car-oriented profiles. However, people from all attitude profiles own fewer cars in more central neighbourhoods than in more suburban locations. Finally, a MNL model where sociodemographics and residential parking are controlled for confirms that both the built environment and attitudes independently influence the joint decision. Results also suggest that attitudes are associated with residential location choice, hinting at the presence of residential self-selection or environmental determinism. In summary, the analysis indicates that policy measures aimed at expanding carsharing vehicle availability for promoting carsharing as an alternative to car ownership may primarily impact individuals who are less drawn to the symbolic and emotional aspects of traditional cars.