Vehicle Ownership Analysis Based on GDP per Capita in China: 1963–2050

Sustainability

Tian Wu²  Hongmei Zhao¹ 

[1] Institute of Econometrics and Statistics, School of Economics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China; E-Mail:;School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China; E-Mail:

关键词: vehicle ownership;    per capita GDP;    Gompertz function;    MARMA model;   

DOI  :  10.3390/su6084877

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

This paper presents the Gompertz function of per capita GDP and vehicle stock to forecast the vehicle ownership of China through to 2050 against a background of increasing energy use and CO₂ emissions associated with the potential demands of on-road vehicles. We forecast the level of vehicle stock in China based on the extant patterns of vehicle development in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, Europe, the United States and Japan. The results show that the OECD pattern and European pattern are more suitable for describing China’s vehicle stock growth when compared with Japanese and U.S. patterns. The study finds that China’s vehicle stock has developed as an S-shaped curve. During the forecast period, the inflection point of the increasing curve appears around the year 2030, with the annual growth of vehicle ownership increasing from 6.13% to 9.50% in the prior period prior and subsequently dropping to 0.45% in 2050. Based on the sensitivity analysis and robustness check, the impact of different Gompertz curve parameters and GDP growth rates on vehicle stock projection are analyzed.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.