Willingness to pay and attitudinal preferences of Indian consumers for electric vehicles

Prateek Bansal, Rajeev Ranjan Kumar, Alok Raj, Subodh Dubey, Daniel J. Graham

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

35 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Consumer preference elicitation is critical to devise effective policies for the diffusion of electric vehicles (EVs) in India. This study contributes to the EV demand literature in the Indian context by (a) analysing the EV attributes and attitudinal factors of Indian car buyers that determine consumers' preferences for EVs, (b) estimating Indian consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) to buy EVs with improved attributes, and c) quantifying how the reference dependence affects the WTP estimates. We adopt a hybrid choice modelling approach for this study. The results indicate that accounting for reference dependence provides more realistic WTP estimates than the standard utility estimation approach. Our results suggest that Indian consumers are willing to pay an additional US$10–34 in the purchase price to reduce the fast charging time by 1 min, US$7–40 to add a kilometre to the driving range of EVs at 200 km, and US$104–692 to save US$1 per 100 km in operating cost. These estimates and the effect of attitudes on the likelihood to adopt EVs provide insights about EV design, marketing strategies, and pro-EV policies (e.g., specialised lanes and reserved parking for EVs) to expedite the adoption of EVs in India.

Original languageEnglish
Article number105340
Pages (from-to)1-16
Number of pages16
JournalEnergy Economics
Volume100
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Keywords

  • Electric vehicle, Willingness to pay
  • Hybrid choice model
  • Indian consumers
  • Reference dependence

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