What Fuels the Electric Vehicle Market? An Investigation of Macroeconomic and Sustainable Drivers of the Electric Vehicle Market

Abstract

This doctoral thesis provides an investigation of three important determinants of the electric vehicle market and their respective influences on the market. Employing a data driven approach to counteract the shortcomings of previous research that focused on electric vehicle adoption intention, this study circumvents the attitude-action gap and attempts to answer the questions whether environmental awareness, innovativeness and financial subsidies are decisive factors for the development of the electric vehicle market. The first investigation is concerned with determining whether environmental awareness is a significant factor for the electric vehicle market. Employing a macroeconomic perspective and introducing a new measurement method of environmental awareness in form of Twitter keyword analysis to gauge the society s level of environmental awareness, this research rules out the significance of this altruistic factor. Further, support for this finding is provided by altering the measurement method of environmental awareness and using Google Trends instead. Determining that the altruistic factor does not play a significant role for the development of the electric vehicle market, in the second study the variable of interest embodies rather self-centered properties. In particular, it is investigated whether innovativeness influences the electric vehicle market, using a surrogate variable that can represent the innovativeness level of a country s citizens, companies and government. In contrast to the first study, the results of different econometric approaches applied in this study imply a positive and significant influence stemming from a country s level of innovativeness. Finally, it is analysed whether subsidies are able to bridge the gap and reduce the market barrier of higher prices of electric vehicles. Applying various statistical approaches, the results of the investigation do not only provide proof for a significant influence of subsidies but also provide evidence for differences in the influence depending on the specific vehicle type.