Modeling green vehicle adoption: An integrated approach for policy evaluation

This article employs an integrated discrete-continuous car ownership model to jointly forecast households’ future preferences on vehicle type, quantity and use, and to estimate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The model system is estimated on a dataset collected from a web-based stated preference survey conducted in Maryland in 2014. The data contain vehicle purchase decisions and sociodemographic information of 456 households who were requested to state their future preferences over a 9-year period (2014–2022). In each time period, a respondent is faced to four alternatives that include the current vehicle, a new gasoline vehicle, a new hybrid electric vehicle, and a new battery electric vehicle. Intertemporal choices between conventional and “green” vehicles such as hybrid and electric cars capture dynamics in vehicle purchase decisions. Short run and medium-long run situations were predicted and compared based on the first 4-year data and the entire 9-year data of the dynamic panel. Vehicle GHG emissions were calculated correspondingly. We find the introduction of “green” vehicles makes a positive impact on car ownership and use, especially in a medium-long run. Two “green” taxation policies, gasoline tax and ownership tax, were proposed and their impact on vehicle use and emission reductions was evaluated. Results indicate that: (a) gasoline tax is a more effective way to reduce vehicle miles traveled and GHG emissions and (b) gasoline tax makes a higher impact on car use and emission reductions in the medium-long run, while ownership tax makes a higher impact in the short run.