UVM Theses and Dissertations
Format:
Print
Author:
Krupa, Joseph S.
Dept./Program:
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Year:
2013
Degree:
MS
Abstract:
Across the globe, issues related to energy, its sources, its uses, and its impacts on climate change are at the forefront of political and environmental debates. Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) show potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while offering driving ranges that are not limited by battery capacity (since these vehicles can also utilize gasoline). However, it is not clear where to focus governmental policies and manufacturer marketing strategies to efficiently promote consumer adoption of PREYs. In this thesis, we explore a large consumer survey administered using Amazon Mechanical Turk's (AMT) on-line crowdsourcing platform to better predict the market penetration of PHEVs. We analyze the survey data to provide better understanding of the attributes associated with people more likely to consider a PHEV, the influences that might affect a person's decision to buy a PHEV, and how consumers weigh the tradeoffs between short and long-term financial and environmental priorities or concerns.
Challenges arise when exploring the survey due to the size and nature of the data (ordinal and categorical responses of 1000 survey participants to 105 questions regarding consumer demographics, purchasing influences, environmental attitudes, and perceptions regarding PHEV technology); exhaustive search of variable combinations is not computationally feasible. To circumvent exhaustive exploration, we use a Genetic Algorithm (GA) as a preliminary mining tool to identify combinations of survey questions that offer strong predictive power of consumers' willingness to consider a PHEV. The GA results show consumers to be best classified based on questions pertaining to reduction in fuel costs, the inconvenience of battery recharging, their political seating, and the influence of observing the products that others purchase.
In a subsequent more extensive statistical analysis, we found that consumers willing to consider a PHEV, assuming they could afford it, were also highly motivated by the potential to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and their desire to reduce U.S. transportation energy consumption. They also feel strongly that climate change is a threat to humanity, want to be portrayed as environmentally conscious, currently drive smaller vehicles, and politically sit to the left. We found no association between participants' willingness to consider a PHEV and their age, gender, income, or education. However, even the most inclined to consider a PHEV were not willing to pay a price premium even close to that of first generation compact PHEVs. Similar to other research, we show that hurdles for PHEV adoption focus on vehicle price, concerns over battery reliability and battery replacement costs.
These findings will be used to better inform our existing agent based market penetration model and to assist policy makers and manufactures in identifying leverage points to most efficiently promote market adoption of PHEVs.
Challenges arise when exploring the survey due to the size and nature of the data (ordinal and categorical responses of 1000 survey participants to 105 questions regarding consumer demographics, purchasing influences, environmental attitudes, and perceptions regarding PHEV technology); exhaustive search of variable combinations is not computationally feasible. To circumvent exhaustive exploration, we use a Genetic Algorithm (GA) as a preliminary mining tool to identify combinations of survey questions that offer strong predictive power of consumers' willingness to consider a PHEV. The GA results show consumers to be best classified based on questions pertaining to reduction in fuel costs, the inconvenience of battery recharging, their political seating, and the influence of observing the products that others purchase.
In a subsequent more extensive statistical analysis, we found that consumers willing to consider a PHEV, assuming they could afford it, were also highly motivated by the potential to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and their desire to reduce U.S. transportation energy consumption. They also feel strongly that climate change is a threat to humanity, want to be portrayed as environmentally conscious, currently drive smaller vehicles, and politically sit to the left. We found no association between participants' willingness to consider a PHEV and their age, gender, income, or education. However, even the most inclined to consider a PHEV were not willing to pay a price premium even close to that of first generation compact PHEVs. Similar to other research, we show that hurdles for PHEV adoption focus on vehicle price, concerns over battery reliability and battery replacement costs.
These findings will be used to better inform our existing agent based market penetration model and to assist policy makers and manufactures in identifying leverage points to most efficiently promote market adoption of PHEVs.