Communicating car costs: Results from stated and revealed preference experiments

Abstract

While many studies find that consumers consistently undervalue fuel costs when making a new car purchase, whether this information failure can be corrected through an intervention remains unclear. This paper combines the results of two nationwide experiments conducted in the Republic of Ireland − an online discrete choice experiment and a showroom randomized controlled trial which test the provision of energy cost and CO₂ information on car choices. Findings from the online experiment suggest that providing monetary energy cost information, particularly when it is framed over longer time horizons increases the probabilty of selecting a battery electric vehicle (BEV). Field trial findings however do not show an effect of information provision at the point of vehicle sale. This highlights the difficutly in influencing real-world purchases, and the importance of source and timing in information provision.