Analyzing Potential Age Cohort Effects in Car Ownership and Residential Location in the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam

Previous research on car ownership has described ownership using a combination of socio-economic factors, demographics, individual preferences and residential factors. However, over the years people’s attitudes towards car ownership have changed as new generations are being formed. A new generation of young adults has a different view on car ownership compared to the older generation when car ownership was still a display of status. In this research a first attempt is made to disentangle the effects of age on car ownership and residential location. A discrete choice modelling approach is used where we jointly model car ownership and residential location in the metropolitan region of Amsterdam. We will start from the multinomial logit model and from there try more complex models which capture correlation among alternatives, and introduce a cohort effect for people of a certain age using a nested panel model. The main result of the model shows that car ownership in the city shows more variation in age than car ownership outside of the city.