Data for: Evaluating heterogeneity in household travel response to carbon pricing: a study focusing on small and rural communities

The spike in gasoline and diesel fuel prices during the spring of 2022 provided a unique opportunity to evaluate how changes in transportation costs affect travel behavior, including changes in small and rural communities. We created an internet-based survey that asked people living in Vermont how they responded to the recent increase in gasoline and diesel fuel prices and what they plan to do if prices remain high. We included questions about changes in the vehicles they use and plans to purchase more fuel-efficient or electric vehicles. We also asked about changes made to travel for essential trips, including trips for work, education, medical appointments, and food, and less essential trips including visiting friends and family, recreational activities, and going to social events. For each trip type, essential and less-essential, respondents could make one or more selections from a list of possible actions that could have been taken in response to higher fuel costs. Actions included ..., We began by recruiting participants using a geolocated database of about 40,000 Vermont e-mail addresses (geolocated to the town level) obtained from a marketing company. The sample collected from this recruitment method skewed much older than the Vermont population but was otherwise broadly representative. We therefore recruited additional participants through Facebook and Instagram advertisements. The sample collected from the social media advertisements was, on average, 29 years younger. All participants were given a chance to enter a drawing for one of ten cash cards each worth $50, as an incentive. The survey was distributed in March 2022 and received 911 responses. After filtering out surveys that were less than 50% complete (these were mostly surveys that were started but never completed), the final size of the sample used in our analysis was 749. Missing values in the final sample were imputed in R using the MICE package. Numerical variables we imputed using Predictive Mean Matc..., , # Data for: Evaluating heterogeneity in household travel response to carbon pricing: a study focusing on small and rural communities

Dataset DOI: [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3r2280gnp](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3r2280gnp)

Response to Fuel Price Survey Metadata

University of Vermont Transportation Research Center

Metadata Producer(s): Narges Ahmadnia and Gregory Rowangould, University of Vermont
Date: February 2025

## Table of Contents

1. [Overview](#overview)
2. [Producers and Sponsers](#producers-and-sponsers)
3. [Data Collection](#data-collection)
4. [Variables List](#variables-list)
5. [Variables Description](#variables-description)

## Overview

We take advantage of the dramatic spike in gasoline and diesel fuel prices during the first half of 2022 to gain insights into the responses of residents living in diverse small cities, towns, and rural communities in Vermont. Limited existing data on how rural populations react to changes in transportation fuel prices made this...