Study on Influencing Factors of China's Private Car Consumption Demand: Based on Multiple Linear Regression Model

Abstract

With the economic development and the improvement of residents' living standards in China, the number of private cars has achieved leapfrog growth. While promoting the development of the automobile industry and the national economy, it has also caused related problems such as environmental pollution and traffic congestion. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to reasonably regulate the number of private cars. Taking China's statistical data from 2005 to 2023 as the research sample, this paper selects the number of private cars as the explained variable, and per capita disposable income of residents, total energy consumption and crude steel output as the explanatory variables. A multiple linear regression model is constructed by using EViews software, and ordinary least squares (OLS) is adopted for empirical analysis. The model is optimized through multicollinearity, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation tests, and the reliability of the results is improved by generalized least squares (GLS). The research shows that per capita disposable income of residents is the core factor affecting the number of private cars, and there is a significant positive linear correlation between them. For every 1 unit increase in per capita disposable income, the number of private cars increases by 0.883852 units accordingly. Total energy consumption and crude steel output have no significant impact on the number of private cars, and there is a strong multicollinearity among the three variables, which cannot form a substantial driving effect. The optimized model has an extremely high goodness of fit (R²=0.996329), and the empirical results are highly reliable. Based on this, this paper puts forward suggestions from four aspects: increasing residents' income, regulating production capacity, governing derivative problems and strengthening policy supervision, so as to promote the healthy and sustainable development of the private car market and realize the coordinated win-win situation between private cars, economy, ecology and people's livelihood.