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

Journal article (2021)

Authors

Prateek Bansal Imperial College London
Rajeev Kumar XLRI Xavier School of Management
Alok Raj XLRI Xavier School of Management
S.K. Dubey Transport and Planning - CEG
Daniel J. Graham Imperial College London
Research Group
Transport and Planning (CEG) (TU Delft)
Hybrid choice model Electric vehicle, Willingness to pay Indian consumers Reference dependence
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Published Date

2021

Language

English

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Faculty

Civil Engineering & Geosciences

Department

Transport and Planning

Research Group

Transport and Planning

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.