Understanding Consumers’ Non-Compensatory and Heterogeneous Preferences for Electric Vehicles

摘要: Previous studies eliciting preferences for electric vehicles (EVs) assume the compensatory behavior of consumers. However, consumers might follow non-compensatory rules where EVs may become unattractive beyond certain attribute cutoffs. To investigate such non-compensatory and heterogeneous EV preferences, we estimate a latent class model with attribute cutoffs using the preferences of over 800 potential car buyers from Singapore. We identify early and late EV adopters and their behavior, underscoring the significance of our findings to expedite EV adoption at different stages. For instance, subsidizing electricity is effective for late adopters as, unlike early adopters, they value future operating cost savings of EVs at an annual discount rate of 6%. Additionally, increasing the availability of EV models from top-selling brands could effectively drive early EV adoption in Singapore because early adopters place a considerably high value on the availability of EV models from the preferred brands when it is below their cutoff.