Spatial and Temporal Analysis of Gas Station Prices in Mississauga, Ontario

This paper studies the spatial distribution of retail gasoline prices in the City of Mississauga, part of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), over a one-month period in spring 2022. Over the past few years, the retail gasoline market has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain shortages, inflationary pressures, and of course the Russia-Ukraine war. While these are broad pressures that influence gas prices at a macro level, this research considers whether there is local variability. This study will utilize retail gasoline price data collected from a third-party crowdsourced website (Gas Buddy) three times a day (morning, afternoon and evening periods) for a total period of 30 days. Data was analyzed at the trade-area scale for the 121 gas stations in Mississauga using Emerging Hotspot Analysis. Overall, there was evidence of spatial and temporal patterns in Mississauga. The south side of Mississauga close to Oakville and the lakeshore areas were consistently classified as hotspots whereas the area around the Streetsville and Pearson airport were consistently classified as cold spots. Demographic data suggests that higher socioeconomic status, particularly education and income, consistently results in hotspots while areas with lower socioeconomic status as well as having a higher unemployment rate consistently results in cold spots.