Page 36 - 2022 Abstract Book RUICHSS_2022_11_17 after conference

University of Ruhuna ISSN: 2706-0063
Matara, Sri Lanka

Estimating the Socio-Economic Factors Influencing Passenger
Demand for Public Road Transportation Services in Sri
Lanka
Bandara H.M.K.* and Jayasekara A.J.
Department of Economics, University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka.
kalanibandara96@gmail.com

Transportation is an essential and valuable aspect of any nation. The main
objective of this study was to identify in-depth the relationship between socio-
economic factors and the demand for public road transportation. Time series
trend analysis and Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) were used to
estimate the relationship between socio-economic factors and the demand for
public road transportation using annual data from 1990 to 2020. This study
has used the passenger-kilometre rate to measure passenger demand for public
road transportation and Gross Domestic Products (GDP), average inflation
rate, employment rate, population growth rate, and government investment in
infrastructure rate, growth rate of average crude oil price, growth rate of
registered motor vehicles, and urban population growth rate as the socio-
economic factors. The time series trend analysis results confirmed that when
the time was increased by one year, the passenger-kilometres rate was
decreased by 0.459 in Sri Lanka. The empirical analysis of the ARDL model
implied that 82% variation of passenger kilometres rate was accounted for by
selected socio-economic factors in the long run. Furthermore, there were
positive relationships between passenger demand for public road
transportation and GDP, inflation, employment rate, population growth rate,
average price crude oil growth rate, and urban population growth rate, and
there are negative relationships between passenger demand for public road
transportation and government investment in infrastructure and registered
motor vehicle growth rate. However, the Corona disaster in 2019 had a severe
impact on the entire transport sector and the economic formula. Public
transportation usage in Sri Lanka should be increased considering the
economic and environmental perspectives in Sri Lanka because the majority
of Sri Lankans still meet their transportation needs through the public
transportation system.

Keywords: Demand, Passenger-kilometres rate, public road transportation,
Socio-economic, Time-series

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