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Energy Use Inside and Outside the Dwelling – 2007 Survey of Household Energy Use – Supplemental Report

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Outdoor equipment

Sport recreation vehicles

SHEU-2007 collected data on the use of sport recreation vehicles by households. These vehicles included all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), snowmobiles, dirt bikes or motocross motorcycles, personal water crafts and motorboats (with an inboard or outboard motor).

Penetration rates

The survey found that 17 percent of Canadian households owned at least one sport recreation vehicle in 2007 (see Table 12). In general, these vehicles were more common with rural households (39 percent penetration rate) than urban households (11 percent penetration rate).

Table 12. Penetration rate of selected sport recreation vehicles, 2007

Vehicle type Canada (%) Population centre (%)
Urban Rural
Household owned at least one sport recreation vehicle 17 11 39
All-terrain vehicle (ATV) 8 4 25
Motorboat (with an inboard or outboard motor) 8 6 16
Snowmobile 5 3 16
Dirt bike or motocross motorcycle 3 2 6
Personal watercraft 1 1 2

The most common sport recreation vehicles owned by Canadian households in 2007 were ATVs and motorboats. The penetration rates for these vehicles were both 8 percent. Additionally, rural households were more likely to own these vehicles than urban households. In fact, one quarter of rural households in Canada owned an ATV, while only 4 percent of urban households owned one. As for motorboats, 16 percent of rural households owned one, while only 6 percent of urban households owned one. Moreover, every sport recreation vehicle covered by SHEU-2007 had a higher penetration rate of ownership among rural households than among urban households.

Fuel use

As rural areas usually provide more opportunities for using sport recreation vehicles, it could be expected that rural households would report using higher amounts of fuel to operate these vehicles. However, SHEU-2007 found that this expectation was not the case. Surprisingly, urban and rural households that owned at least one sport recreation vehicle reported similar fuel use in 2007 (see Figure 47). For example, among households that owned a sport recreation vehicle, 42 percent of urban households reported the use of less than 50 litres of fuel, as did 43 percent of rural households. For each successive fuel-use category, the difference between urban and rural households was only two percentage points or less.

Figure 47. Household fuel use for sport recreation vehicles among households that used a sport recreation vehicle, by population centre, 2007.

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