ABC NEWS/WASHINGTON POST POLL: GAS AND ITS IMPACT EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE AFTER 7 a.m. Thursday, May 24, 2007
Gas Prices Could Slam Summer Travel; Tipping Point for Daily Driving is $4.38
Three in 10 Americans say the soaring price of gasoline will keep them from taking a vacation road trip this summer, and the tipping point for most people to cut back on their routine driving is within sight – on average, a bit more than $1 a gallon away. With gas now averaging $3.22 for a gallon of regular unleaded, Americans on average say that at $4.38 they'll significantly cut back on the amount of driving they do. And the median, or midpoint – at which half say they'll take action – is a bit lower, $4.00, just 78 cents from today's average price. Gas is up by $1.05 a gallon since February.
Another apparent impact is already at hand – a potentially damaging one for segments of the tourism industry. Twenty-nine percent of Americans in this ABC News/Washington Post poll say that – specifically because of the price of gasoline – they're not planning a long-distance driving holiday this summer.
The economic impact may be broader still, reaching out across the retail industry that powers much of the nation's economy. To pay the higher price of gas, 43 percent of Americans say they're cutting back on other spending, by far the most common strategy. Half as many, 22 percent, are saving less, with other mentions in the single digits.
HURT and BLAME – None of this has people pleased. Ninety-two percent are dissatisfied with the price of gasoline, and more than four in 10 – 43 percent – are downright angry about it. Fifty-eight percent say it's causing financial hardship in their homes, and just over a quarter, 27 percent, call that "serious" hardship.
Blame falls heaviest on the nation's oil companies, which have been posting record profits – $29.5 billion in profit in the first quarter of 2007, the equivalent of $222,569 a minute, or $97.71 for every man, woman and child in the United States. Asked the main reason gas prices are rising, a third of Americans blame oil companies – a high level of agreement on an open-ended question.
Fifteen percent blame the Iraq war, with other answers in the single digits, including seven percent who blame the Bush administration. Even among Democrats – no admirers of George W. Bush – three times as many blame the oil companies as blame the president.
IMPACT – The impact of $3.22 gas falls unevenly, depending heavily on personal resources. Gas prices are hammering less well-off Americans; among those with less than $25,000 in annual income (one in four adults), three-quarters report financial hardship, and nearly half – 46 percent – report serious hardship.
Serious hardship drops to less than half that level, 21 percent, in middle-income households, and falls further, to just 13 percent, among people with family incomes of $75,000 or more.
People who report serious hardship are far more likely than others to be reducing their spending on other things in order to pay for gas – 59 percent are doing so, nearly twice the rate as among those who report no hardship. And naturally, people experiencing hardship, especially serious hardship, are far more likely to be angry about gas prices.
Cutting back Angry about
on other spending gas prices
All 43% 43%
Gas prices a serious hardship 59 65
Gas a hardship, not serious 45 47
No hardship 32 26
SUVs – Contrary to conventional wisdom, SUV drivers are no more likely than others to report serious hardship because of gas prices, even though they presumably use more gas. That's because they're better-off financially, and so better able to handle the cost. In fact SUV drivers are more likely than car drivers to say they're planning a long- distance driving vacation this summer, 39 percent to 28 percent. Again, they can better afford it: SUV owners have median household incomes in the $50,000 to $75,000 range, compared with $30,000 to $40,000 for car drivers.
But even if SUV owners are better able to pay the price of gas, that doesn't mean they're happy about it. Fifty-three percent of SUV drivers say they're angry about gas prices, compared with 42 percent of car drivers.
Drive:
SUV Car
Plan a long-distance
summer vacation 39% 28
Angry about gas prices 53 42
Serious financial hardship 22 29
Average price of gas to
cut back on driving $4.66 $4.44
About one in six Americans drives an SUV. About half drive cars, with the rest dividing among pickups, vans or minivans, and the few who don't drive at all.
ADAPTING and DRIVING – Interestingly, the level of financial hardship Americans report has subsided a bit (by nine points) since mid-April, even as prices have continued to rise. It could be that people are yet again adapting, however unhappily.
Adaptation may be a necessity, given the inelasticity of driving: For many people it's simply a necessity of life. As things stand, thinking about the weeks ahead, the vast majority of Americans say they'll be driving as much as (61 percent) or even more than (12 percent) they usually do. Just 18 percent say they'll be driving less, and just 11 percent say they'll be driving less specifically because of the price of gasoline. Plans to cut driving have been far higher in the past – in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, 50 percent said they'd be driving less; as gas prices spiked last spring, it was 30 percent. It dropped to 15 percent in midsummer 2006 and remains at about that level now – a further indication that people are adapting.
Other poll questions, asking people if they're driving less because of the high price of gasoline, have found many more saying they've cut back. This poll doesn't introduce a motivation; it simply asks people whether, in the weeks ahead, they'll be driving more, less or about the same amount as they usually do. If less, they're asked why.
There are age differences in driving intentions: Young people are particularly unlikely to say they'll be driving less than they usually do; that rises with age, peaking at nearly three in 10 retirement-aged adults. Three-quarters of them blame the price of gas.
THE ROAD AHEAD – Behavior is hard to predict; while $4.38 a gallon is the average price at which Americans say they'll significantly cut back on driving (and $4.00 the median), what ultimately happens remains to be seen, especially since driving less is no easy task for many people in today's society.
Another variable, naturally, is the price of gas itself. After rising sharply last spring, it leveled off and then eased before heading up again.
Still, the average tipping point price seems fairly firm, since it's not far from the figure Americans cited in an ABC/Post poll last July as the point at which they'd cut back – $4.16. (There are good reasons for that to have risen by five percent – inflation's up 2.6 percent, weekly wages are up 3.4 percent, and it's sensible that some people simply are adjusting to more expensive gasoline.)
There are differences in the tipping point, notably by region. While $4.38 is the average price at which drivers say they'd significantly cut back, that ranges from a low of $3.97 in the Midwest to a high of $5.12 in the West, a region know both for its wide-open spaces – and its especially high gas prices.
This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone May 17-21, 2007, among a random national sample of 1,007 adults. The results have a three-point error margin. Sampling, data collection and tabulation by ICR-International Communications Research of Media, Pa.
Analysis by Gary Langer.
ABC News polls can be found at ABCNEWS.com at http://abcnews.com/ pollvault.html.