Abstract
This study aims to find the comparability between Japan and Taiwan by examining their long-term growth patterns of aggregate travel demands from 1967 to 2004. It is found that travelers both in Japan and in Taiwan see bus as inferior goods, and passenger car ownership and domestic air as more luxurious than rail and bus. Nevertheless, a number of differences between Japan and Taiwan are even more noticeable. First, travelers in Taiwan see public transportation as inferior goods, and rely more on private transportation, while travelers in Japan rely on both private and public transportation. Second, to travelers in Taiwan, passenger car is luxurious goods, while to those in Japan, it is necessity goods. Third, in Japan the private mode (car and motorcycle) ownership demand demonstrates overall substitutive effect, instead of complementary one, with public transportation, while in Taiwan no such evidence is found.
