Decomposing Young Germans’ Altered Car Use Patterns

Since the turn of the millennium, car ownership and car travel among young German adults have decreased noticeably. This paper analyzes these changes in young Germans’ mobility behavior on the basis of a mobility diary survey and an income and expenditure survey. The decrease in car travel by young adults is linked to lower car ownership in this group. However, behavioral changes among car owners are far more important with regard to their overall decrease in car travel. Logistic regression was applied to identify the attributes of young households that are associated with low and altering car ownership. This model indicated that structural changes in the population concerning income, employment, household composition, and residential location account for the majority of the decrease in car ownership among young households. However, the model also showed that, all things being equal, the probability of car ownership has changed. Specifically, the gender gap for car ownership has almost disappeared because young men are less likely to own a car today than in the 1990s. The study also investigated changes in car use by car owners. The results showed that men have reduced their total travel and that both men and women have reduced their car mode share and exhibit increasingly multimodal behavior.