The United States (U.S.) road freight sector has continued to grow over recent decades. Growth in road freight could result in more fuel consumption and hence increased greenhouse gas emissions. Policymakers have attempted to manage the growth of energy usage through improved fuel economy based on technological advances. However, such improvements may not lead to anticipated goals because of the rebound effect, where improvements in energy efficiency trigger more travel and energy consumption that offsets energy savings. Thus, this study aims to determine the potential rebound effect from improved energy efficiency in the U.S. road freight sector. Eight fuel cost models are applied and asymmetric price response is incorporated in estimating the U.S. road freight sector’s rebound effect from 1980 to 2016. In addition, a recently developed data envelopment analysis is applied to determine the annual rebound effect in the road freight sector. The results suggest that, after accounting for the asymmetric price response, the average rebound effect of the U.S. road freight sector ranges from 6.9% to 8.8%, a level considerably less than that found for several industrialized countries and emerging economies. However, a considerable increase in the rebound effect has been seen in more recent years. The findings suggest that overlooking the rebound effect in environmental policies could impede the goal of reducing total energy consumption and accompanying emissions. Policymakers should incorporate the rebound effect from efficiency enhancement in policy development and utilize some potential programs to reduce the adverse influence of rebound effect in related policies.

在最近的几十年中，美国公路货运部门持续增长。公路货运的增长可能导致更多的燃料消耗，从而增加温室气体排放。政策制定者已尝试通过基于技术进步的燃油经济性来管理能源使用量的增长。但是，由于反弹效应，此类改进可能无法达到预期的目标，在这种情况下，提高能效会触发更多的出行和能耗，从而抵消了节能效果。因此，本研究旨在确定美国公路货运部门能源效率提高带来的潜在反弹效应。应用了八种燃料成本模型，并结合了非对称价格响应来估计美国道路货运行业从1980年到2016年的反弹效应。此外，最近开发的数据包络分析用于确定公路货运部门的年度反弹效应。结果表明，在考虑了价格响应的不对称之后，美国公路货运部门的平均反弹效应在6.9％至8.8％的范围内，远低于几个工业化国家和新兴经济体的水平。但是，近年来，反弹效果有了很大提高。研究结果表明，忽视环境政策中的反弹效应可能会阻碍降低总能耗和伴随排放的目标。决策者应将效率提高带来的反弹效应纳入政策制定之中，并利用一些潜在的计划来减少反弹效应对相关政策的不利影响。