摘要: |
The research will undertake the first side-by-side comparison of the performance of three commonly proposed policies for increasing the adoptions of clean vehicles: 1) vehicle purchase rebates, 2) guaranteed low-interest financing, and 3) incentives that lower the costs of electric vehicle miles traveled (e-VMT). For each of these policies, they will predict how drivers' propensity to purchase new or used hybrids, PEVs and BEVs varies at different incentive levels. Rather than focusing on wealthy new car buyers, which most researchers have done, they will undertake this comparative policy analysis using a representative survey sample of moderate- and low-income Californians collected in 2018, as this sub-population will likely need more substantial support to access clean vehicles.
The researchers draw on survey data that was originally conducted with the broad goal of identifying barriers to clean vehicle adoption by moderate and low-income households. Within the survey they deployed a series of conjoint choice exercises, which now will enable us to estimate a random utility model for vehicle attributes that include the vehicle purchase price, the availability of financing, and the cost per mile of travel. They can then use this estimated model to forecast how changes in policies that affect a representative driver's utility will also affect their propensity to purchase clean vehicles. With an understanding of how many additional clean vehicles each policy will induce at different incentive levels, the researchers can then ask: when there is a fixed budget for public subsidies, which of these three policies maximizes the number of additional clean vehicles purchased? They will also explore answers to the following question: how do household characteristics such as income, ethnicity, and geography attenuate the propensity to purchase associated with these rebate, loan eVMT-incentive programs? |