Six years of CO2-based tax incentives for new passenger cars in The Netherlands: Impacts on purchasing behavior trends and CO2 effectiveness

Robert Kok

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 2015, vol. 77, issue C, 137-153

Abstract: There is growing evidence that consumers respond more effectively to upfront price signals, such as vehicle purchase taxes and feebate policies, and to tax incentives that are more salient than others, such as company car taxes graded by CO2 emissions. This paper examines tax changes in The Netherlands, which are among the most stringent and most salient in Europe, and assesses the ex-post purchasing impacts and CO2 effectiveness of six years of CO2-based tax incentives for low-carbon cars in The Netherlands. Dutch tax incentives resulted in 13g/km, or 11% lower average CO2 emissions in 2013. The Netherlands has moved from the 12th position before the tax changes in 2007 to become Europe’s number one in terms of the lowest average new car CO2 emissions and highest share of electric vehicles in 2013. Tax incentives for new cars sold between 2008 and 2013 have resulted in 4.6 million tons of potential lifetime CO2 abatement at the cost of a drop in tax revenues of 30–50%. However, when corrected for the Dutch policy-induced increasing real-world fuel-economy shortfall and leakage of carbon reduction potential through vehicle export of low-carbon cars, only 3.5 million tons or 75% of the CO2 reduction remains. CO2-based tax incentives for company cars seem to have contributed the most to the observed turnaround in purchasing behavior towards lower CO2-emitting passenger cars.

Keywords: Transport policy; Passenger cars; CO2 emissions; Purchase tax; Road tax; Company car tax (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856415000877
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:transa:v:77:y:2015:i:c:p:137-153

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2015.04.009

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice is currently edited by John (J.M.) Rose

More articles in Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().