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Research Projects

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STATUS: In Progress YEAR: 2024 TOPIC AREA: Sustainability, energy, and health Vehicles and infrastructure CENTER: PSR

Household Demand for Clean Vehicles in California: Individual Attitudes, Current Car Ownership, and Future Car Ownership

Project Summary

Project number: PSR-23-20
Funding source: USDOT
Contract number: 69A3552348309
Funding amount: $65,000
Performance period: 3/1/2024 to 5/15/2025

Project description

The purpose of this proposal is to investigate the key factors (such as attitudes towards electric vehicles, household characteristics, and past experiences) of vehicle purchase intention (future car ownership), and then to determine whether eco-friendly vehicles (e.g., battery electric vehicles (BEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs)) have the potential in California based on a three-stage analysis. The data used here are the 2017 and 2019 California Energy Commission (CEC) vehicle surveys. The objective of the first stage is to explore behavioral attitudes, including both positive and negative attitudes toward battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). The second stage attempts to categorize respondents based on their household characteristics, current or future car ownership. The third stage will construct a multi-group Structural Equations Model (SEM) with household classification outcomes serving as moderators. The project tasks are: Task 1 Conceptual Framework: In this task the conceptual framework of household demand for clean vehicles is finalized to guide the data analysis and choice model specifications in the other tasks; Task 2 Attitudes towards Clean Vehicles: In this task CEC data 2017 and 2019 will be analyzed to understand household attitudes towards clean vehicles using factor analysis; Task 3 Classification of Household Characteristics: In this task techniques of reducing data dimensionality, such as principal component analysis and/or clustering analysis, will be used to classify survey respondents based on their household characteristics; Task 4 Current and Future Ownership: This task will investigate the current and future ownership of individuals/households based on their fuel types, number of vehicles, vehicle body sizes, purchasing vs leasing, new vs used conditions, vehicle efficiency (miles per gallon equivalent), and expected prices. Task 5 SEM: In this task a multi-group SEM will be developed with household factors as moderators. Task 6 Findings and Policy Recommendations: This task provides synthesis and summaries of findings and develops policy recommendations for public agencies and private automakers to support a more active market penetration of environmentally friendly vehicles. In a final report and three refereed journal articles, lessons learned from the computation and guidelines will be presented. All of these steps will be performed for both 2017 and 2019 surveys for comparison.

P.I. NAME & ADDRESS

Konstadinos Goulias
Professor , Geographic Information Science, Transportation
5706 Ellison Hall
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
United States
[email protected]