Analyzing Prospective Owners’ Choice Decision towards Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles in Urban India: A Stated Preference Discrete Choice Experiment

Reema Bera and Bhargab Maitra
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Reema Bera: Civil Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, India
Bhargab Maitra: Civil Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, India

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 14, 1-24

Abstract: Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) can help decarbonize road transport in urban India. To accelerate the diffusion of PHEVs, investigation of commuter preferences towards the attributes of PHEVs is necessary. Therefore, the present study analyzes prospective owners’ choice decisions towards PHEVs in a typical Indian context. A stated preference survey was designed to collect responses from the current owners of conventional vehicles (CVs) in Delhi, India, and Mixed Logit (ML) models were developed to estimate commuters’ Willingness To Pay (WTP) for a set of key PHEV-specific attributes. The decomposition effect of prospective owners’ sociodemographic characteristics and trip characteristics on the mean estimates of random parameters was investigated by developing ML models with heterogeneity. Subsequently, the influence of improvement of each PHEV-specific attribute on prospective owners’ choice probability was investigated by calculating marginal effects. Among the various PHEV-specific attributes considered in the present study, high WTPs are observed for decrease in battery recharging time, reduction in tailpipe emission and increase in electric range. Therefore, an added emphasis on these attributes by vehicle manufacturers is likely to enhance the attractiveness of PHEVs to Indian commuters. The results also highlight the importance of government subsidy for promoting PHEVs in the Indian market. Prospective owners’ income, availability of home-based parking space, and average daily trip length are found to significantly influence the choice decision of Indian commuters towards PHEVs.

Keywords: plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV); stated preference (SP) survey; mixed logit (ML); heterogeneity; willingness to pay (WTP); marginal effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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