Price elasticity of demand for petrol

[anonymous-user]

...in plain English, if the price of petrol goes up 10% how much does consumption go down by?

The last decade or so has seen some crazy swings in fuel prices, both up and down. Has there been any data measured on how this has affected demand?

[boxst]

I have no data but it isn’t a luxury item so I doubt that unless there is an astronomical immediate swing (price doubles overnight for example) that price changing by a few percent does not effect consumption.

[utgjon]

google is your friend

[Camoradi]

relatively inelastic. Hence the ability to impose huge duties on it

[Gecko1978]

I would add while inelastic demand per car liely has gone down as cars get better MPG but more cars on the road so my guess is fuel broadly flat but swings between petrol an derv over last 20 years

[anonymous-user]

boxst said:

it (petrol) isn’t a luxury item

Yes and no. Petrol in itself isn't a luxury item, but you do have a certain amount of discretion about some of the things you do with it.

eg walk to the local for pub grub vs driving to a posher restaurant in the country. Driving to the cinema or watching Netflix at home etc etc

Obviously not all journeys are discretionary, and the degree of discretion varies.

[Allanv]

In 2019 I filled my 330i 4 times in total, one of those times was for a trip to North Wales. And it is my Daily, and only car. It does spend most of the week on a battery maintainer.

Next week will see the first refill of 2020 even though the 1/2 tank i still have will last a long time, I walk if I need to go anywhere and it is only if I go shopping that I take the car and that is only 2 miles but 5 bags of shopping can be heavy. Home deliveries do not work for me as I like to wander around the supermarket or wander to the farm shops.

I work from home so do not need to drive that much. And to be fair I spent the first 3 months of 2019 working on the IOM.

Gawd knows what the price of fuel was last year to this year.

Edited by Allanv on Friday 3rd January 19:31

[Fundoreen]

cheaper leading up to xmas so you feel like spending big on all the xmas stuff due to saving 3-4p a ltr.
Goes up soon after as some conflict or other is engineered.