Estimating the effects of income inequality, information communication technology, and transport infrastructure on transport-oriented household expenditures

This study investigates the influence of transport infrastructure, income inequality, information and communication technology on transport-oriented household expenditures. For this purpose, we chose the data set period from 1997 to 2021 for the 24 OECD countries and employed the cross-sectional auto-regressive distributed lagged (CS-ARDL) approach. Therefore, the outcomes reveal that income inequality drastically upsurges transport-oriented household expenditures, especially the pre-tax income share of the 100th percentile concentration of the super-rich. Besides, there is a convex relationship between income inequality and household expenditures. The magnitudes of information and communication technology (ICT) are negative and significant, implying that ICT reduces transport-related household expenditures by allowing them to access real-time information and choose their destination as well as travel modes from the comfort of their own homes. Also, the combined effect of income inequality and ICT reduces transport-related household expenditures in the sample countries. Thus, the findings recommend some policy implications and direct future research directions based on empirical evidence.