A time-dependent stated preference approach to measuring vehicle type preferences and market elasticity of conventional and green vehicles

The diversity of new vehicle technology and fuel markets, the governments' sustainable call to reduce energy consumption and air pollution lead to a change in the personal vehicle market. Considering the impact of these factors, a stated preference survey approach is adopted to analyze household future preferences for gasoline, hybrid electric, and battery electric vehicles in a dynamic marketplace. The stated choice experiment places respondents in a nine-year hypothetical time window with dynamically changing attributes including vehicle purchasing price, fuel economy, recharging range, and fuel price. A web-based survey was performed during 2014 in the state of Maryland. The collected data include household social-demographics, primary vehicle characteristics, and vehicle purchasing preferences of 456 respondents during the year of 2014-2022. Mixed Multinomial logit (MMNL) models are employed to predict vehicle preferences based on households' socio-demographics and vehicle characteristics. The estimation results show that young people are more likely to buy vehicles with new technology, especially battery electric vehicles (BEV). Women with a high education level (bachelor degree or higher) prefer to choose hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) while men with a high education level are more likely to buy BEV. The estimated vehicle market elasticities with respect to vehicle price are from −1.1 to −1.8 for HEV and BEV, higher than those for gasoline vehicles from −0.6 to −1.0. The vehicle market cross-elasticities estimated by MMNL models range from 0.2 to 0.6. In addition, willingness to pay (WTP) of vehicle characteristics estimated by MMNL models provide a good understanding of household future vehicle preferences.