Understanding of determinants of household vehicle ownership level toward urban sustainable transportation in southeast Asia - A case study in Metro Manila

Southeast Asia is one of the world's fastest growing economic regions. Many metropolitan areas meanwhile have suffered from unsustainable transportation system, mainly owning to exploding private vehicle dependency. The prerequisite of designing policy having a negative impact on car dependency is to ascertain determinants of household vehicle ownership level. This study aims to investigate the impact of socio-economic characteristics and urban structure factors on a number of vehicles owned by households in Metro Manila at the disaggregate level, using the Multinomial Logit (MNL) regression. The empirical findings highlight that households getting higher accessibility to railway stations are less car-dependent, while households living close to a central business district (CBD) are likely to own more vehicles. Another finding indicates that households residing in the high-density area have the highest propensity to hold more vehicles, contrary to existing studies conducted in developed countries. For scenario analysis, improvement of accessibility of residential areas to railway stations throughout the metropolis would have reduced vehicle fleet, energy demand, and CO₂ emissions by about 50% if it had been introduced earlier.