A collaborative governance model for electric vehicle charging infrastructure incorporating policy evaluation and feedback

Abstract

The rapid growth of electric vehicles (EVs) worldwide has raised concerns about and exacerbated the undersupply of charging infrastructure (CI), highlighting an urgent need for policy support. However, there is a lack of critical research that conducts a post-implementation evaluation for the CI-related policies, considering various goals and objectives of stakeholders. Thus, the study fills the void by applying the multi-actor multi-criteria analysis (MAMCA), which aims to assess CI-related policies based on stakeholder perspectives. We selected Tianjin, China, as a case study and collected data from two focus groups and one semi-structured interview across the city’s six central districts. As revealed by the empirical evidence, the interviewed stakeholders favor subsidies in terms of their welfare, followed by electricity adjustments. The EV incentives, multi-operation mechanisms, and supportive urban planning rank lower but are still supported by the stakeholders, while supportive land use and policy advocacy are opposed. We also identified that the stakeholders’ concerns are varied, where the CI operation department prioritizes operating profit and costs, the government focuses on electricity safety, and the end-user group is concerned with all criteria except profit. Implications for future policy and practice were also discussed. This research can enrich the collaborative governance model (CGM) by incorporating policy evaluation and feedback.