John and I have spent a lot of time trying to understand the relationship between what people say they are going to do and what they actually do. In fact, we're currently working on (with our friend Ju-Chin Huang) a highly anticipated and sure to be best-seller book on ways to combine what we in the know call stated and revealed preference data--yes that whole sentence is sarcastic except the part about us working on a book--and actually John is doing most of the work, I'm just taking credit like usual.
Anyway, one problem we have in understanding the relationship between what people say they will do and what they actually do is that there is usually a very long time gap between the two. For example, if I ask you how many more recreation trips you will take to your favorite lake if water quality improved by 20%, you can take a guess, but we won't be able to measure the accuracy of that guess for years because the improvement may take a long time. So we're always on the look out for stated preference surveys that can be tested by watching what people actually do, in a relatively short period of time. This might be just such a chance.
Some 40 percent of Americans would curb their driving habits if retail gasoline prices shot up to $3.50 a gallon, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.
Surging energy costs have already forced many Americans to consider cutting back on travel, retail, and entertainment spending to ease sticker shock at the pump, according to the poll of 524 people across the country.
Gasoline prices in the United States, the world's largest energy consumer, hit a record average in late May of $3.23 a gallon but have since slipped back to just above $3 a gallon, according to auto and travel association AAA.
"It's so hard to read what consumer behavior is going to be at higher price points -- be that $3.50 per gallon or $4 per gallon -- because we're all in uncharted territory," said Geoff Sundstrom, a spokesperson for AAA.
Price thresholds for cutting time on the road varied, with about 19 percent of participants responding they would cut back at $4 per gallon. Another 9 percent said it would take $4.50, while 7 percent said prices would have to reach $5 a gallon before they would scale back.
Some 19 percent indicated that they could not cut their road travel no matter how high prices climb.
I have a feeling we can test this within the next year. No real evidence, just a slightly educated gut feeling.
