It is widely accepted that consumers underestimate the full cost of car ownership and that correcting this bias could meaningfully accelerate the adoption of shared mobility. Yet this argument fails to consider how much benefit consumers enjoy from owning their own vehicle. Here we estimate the value of private car ownership and use in four US metro areas—Chicago, Illinois; Dallas, Texas; Seattle, Washington; and Washington DC—using online discrete choice experiments. We find that, on average, people would need to be paid $11,197 to give up access to their privately owned vehicle for one year, which is at least as much as estimates of the average total private cost of vehicle ownership (~$9,000). Critically, we find that more than half of this value is non-use value—such as the option to travel whenever or wherever needed at a moment’s notice and the status that comes from owning one’s own vehicle—beyond the use value of getting from A to B. Further, this non-use value was found to be much higher during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings reframe the conversation around the transition away from private vehicle dependence, emphasizing the need to provide value and convenience if alternative mobility solutions are to be widely adopted.

人们普遍认为，消费者低估了汽车拥有的全部成本，纠正这种偏见可以有意义地加速共享出行的采用。然而，这个论点没有考虑消费者从拥有自己的汽车中获得多少好处。在这里，我们估算了美国四个都会区——伊利诺伊州芝加哥；德克萨斯州达拉斯；西雅图，华盛顿；和华盛顿特区——使用在线离散选择实验。我们发现，平均而言，人们需要支付 11,197 美元才能放弃使用他们的私人车辆一年，这至少与车辆拥有的平均私人总成本（约 9,000 美元）的估计值一样多。关键的是，我们发现，这个价值的一半以上是非使用价值——比如可以选择随时随地旅行，拥有自己的车所带来的地位——超出了从A到B的使用价值. 此外，在 COVID-19 大流行期间，发现这种非使用价值要高得多。我们的研究结果围绕摆脱对私家车依赖的转变重新构建了对话，强调如果要广泛采用替代出行解决方案，就需要提供价值和便利。