MEASURING AND MODELING FUTURE VEHICLE PREFERENCES: A PRELIMINARY STATED PREFERENCE SURVEY IN MARYLAND

摘要

The culmination of new vehicle technology, greater competition in energy markets, andgovernment policies to reduce pollution and energy consumption will result in changes to thepersonal vehicle marketplace. Understanding the impact of these factors, through vehicleownership modeling, is critical for achieving environmental and economic goals. This studyfocuses on analyzing future demand for battery electric, hybrid electric, plug-in hybrid electric,alternative fuel, and gasoline vehicles over the short to medium term. To do this, this projectproposes to use a novel stated preference survey design to analyze vehicle purchasing behaviorin a dynamically changing marketplace. The survey is divided into three parts: householdcharacteristics, current vehicles, and stated preference. The stated preference section presentsrespondents with various hypothetical scenarios annually over a future six-year period using oneof three experiments. The designs correspond to changing vehicle technology, fueling options,and taxation policy. Between scenarios, the vehicle and fuel attributes dynamically change tomimic marketplace conditions. A pilot web-based survey was performed during fall 2010.Mixed logit models showed that the survey design allowed for estimation of importantparameters in vehicle choice. The models showed that, among respondents in the sample, hybridvehicles had nearly the same preference as new gasoline vehicles and that battery electric andplug-in hybrid vehicles became attractive with raising gasoline price. Respondents were able todepreciate their vehicles over the five-year hypothetical period. Taxation policy measures hadsome impact on changing vehicle preferences, but when presented in isolation, taxation policycan produce inconsistent results.