What drives public support for policies to enhance electric vehicle adoption?

Abstract

Decarbonizing the transportation sector is crucial to limiting global warming, but faces severe political feasibility challenges due to widespread opposition by those who incur the costs. With respect to private motorized vehicles, which account for the largest share of emissions from transportation, various studies show that pull measures, such as subsidies for electric vehicles (EVs) and charging infrastructure, attract more public support than push measures, such as carbon taxes or regulation to phase out fossil fuel cars. Based on a choice experiment with a large, representative sample (N = 5325) of car holders in Switzerland, we reassess and add to these findings. We empirically focus on Switzerland because its newly registered cars have the worst emissions record in Europe. First, we reassess the presumably stronger support for pull measures by studying whether such support is (negatively) affected by revealing the cost implications in terms of means for funding these policy measures. Second, a unique feature of our study is that we examine support for policies to promote EVs both amongst non-EV and EV holders. Our hypothesis is that EV holders are likely to be more supportive of such policies, even when cost implications become apparent. Our key finding is that support for pull measures, which is high amongst non-EV holders, and even higher among technology adopters (EV holders), remains stable even when policy funding is revealed. This suggests that more ambitious pull measures in this area are politically feasible, even more so as the share of EV-adopters increases. Our research also provides a methodological template for similar research in other countries.