Cheaper gasoline prices are making consumers happy, and that could translate to a more robust holiday shopping season, a new survey found.
Two-thirds of Americans said they plan to spend the same as last year but 14 percent said they would drop more cash during the holidays thanks to falling prices at the pump, according to the National Association of Convenience Stores’ monthly survey.
Gasoline prices have tumbled 70 cents in four months, falling below $3 per gallon nationally as crude prices slump on rising oil production and weak fuel demand. The national average on Wednesday was $2.92, down from $3.22 a month ago, according to GasBuddy.com.
And those prices will likely remain that way through next year. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said Wednesday that consumers can expect to spend on average less than $3 for a gallon of gasoline in 2015.
More than one in four people surveyed said they think prices will fall even further in the next 30 days, the most positive forecast made since the association started surveying consumers in January 2013.
Consumer confidence is often tied to pump prices — for every 1 cent drop, Americans save about $3.7 million, the association reported. For the first time in two years, the monthly survey found that a majority of men, 51 percent, report feeling optimistic about the economy. That feeling was shared by 56 percent of young people, those between the ages of 18 and 34.
Those two groups are most likely to spend more on holiday shopping, the survey found.
Overall, the survey found that 46 percent of people reported feeling optimistic about the economy, a rate that has remained steady for months, the association reported.
The lingering pessimism could be linked to partisanship and gridlock in Washington — a gripe more often espoused by people over the age of 50, the survey found — but the association said that consumer sentiment is more likely being driven by “pocketbook issues and overall economic concerns.”
“Our surveys over the past two years show that gas prices clearly play a major role in consumer sentiment about the economy,” Jeff Lenard, NACS vice president of strategic initiatives, said in a statement. “However, declining gas prices alone may not take consumer sentiment much higher in the short term. It may take similarly positive news about the economy as a whole before the majority of Americans feel positive about the economy.”
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