Based On Passenger Choice Behavior Household Consumer Discrete Choice Models

Energy and environment have become important issues around the world. Automobile industry is not only a significant industry in China, but has a close relationship with energy and environment. Ever since China became a member of WTO, automobile industry has enjoyed a boom. By2010, China’s new car market has surpassed the U.S market record high. By June2011, the total number of automobile has surpassed Japan, taking the second place in the world. In2012, the household penetration rate of automobile reached20%. China becomes a real automobile society. On one hand, automobile makes life convenient and changes people’s transportation habits, on the other hand, it gives rise to energy, pollution and traffic problems. In the past10years, the Chinese government has recognized the seriousness of these problems and tried to learn the developed countries’experience, using economic means to relieve the problems. China has made a series of regulations, technological rules and finance and taxation polices to encourage the energy-saving and emission-reduction technologies, and to guide consumers to use these technologies.This thesis studies automobile marketfrom the consumer choice behavior angle of purchasing automobile. There is a long study history and numerous literatures about consumer behavior in China and abroad, and a completed theoretical system has been formed. After reviewing the theories and their applications, this thesis decides to use discrete choices model to analyze micro consumer choice behaviors. With respect to discrete choices model, the foreign scholars have used nested Logit model very early to study consumer behavior and market decision, and have achieved a lot of results in transportation and automobile fields. The scholars in China began to use this theory late, but the earliest studies were about transportation. Under such background, this thesis constructs three layers of nested Logit model to analyze the implementation effect of current automobile industry polices, and sets a series of policy mock scenarios by adjusting policy coefficients including vehicle purchase tax rate and bunker surcharge rate to further analyze the effects of policies and the modification of the policies on consumer choice behavior of purchasing automobile and on the sales volume of automobile.This thesis concludes that:1. with respect to the modification of vehicle purchase tax, the tax increases on large, middle, and mini size automobile are effective, nevertheless, in order to achieve the goal of fuel reduction, the tax increases on high fuel consumption automobiles or the tax reduction on low fuel consumption automobiles are needed, and it is more effective if the awards and punishments are made at the same time;2. the current effects of fuel consumption tax on encouraging households to purchase low fuel consumption automobiles are relatively insignificant, and higher fuel consumption tax rate is needed to reduce more fuel consumption, even though this adjustment will have negative effects on GDP;3. with respect to encouraging consumers to choose low fuel consumption automobiles, green taxation is effective, for example, subsidizing low fuel consumption automobiles. The policies restrict each other, therefore, before adjusting the policies, it is necessary to specify the policy aims and weigh the total policy costs.