An empirical investigation of the impact of behavioural and psychographic consumer characteristics on car preferences: An integrated model of car type choice

Based on the data collected from a large-scale survey research of 1622 consumers, the present paper develops a disaggregate, compensatory choice model to collectively examine the impact of under-examined factors on consumer car type choice behaviour. All existing econometric forecasting models of vehicle type choice in the literature have so far considered objective measures as determinants of vehicle type choice. The proposed choice model considers 12 car-type alternatives and is successively extended to allow for choice probability distortions resulting from individual heterogeneity across a set of 30 variables, related to objective, behavioural and psychographic consumer characteristics. The results provide clear evidence that variables such as purpose of car use, prepurchase information source used, consumer’s proneness towards buying an ecological car, consumer’s involvement with cars, and consumer’s attachment to cars, significantly affect car type choice. The results yield important implications for manufacturers, transportation planners and researchers.