Purchase process, travel behavior, and equity implications of e-bike rebates in Eugene, Oregon

Abstract

Electric bicycles, or e-bikes, offer a transformative, equitable, and eco-friendly urban transportation solution. To encourage e-bike adoption, many organizations and governments provide incentive programs, such as rebates, to defray purchase costs. Despite the rise of these rebate programs, their impact on purchase decisions and travel behaviors remains largely unevaluated. This paper examines an e-bike rebate program administered in Eugene, Oregon, where the public utility began offering $300 e-bike rebates in April 2022. Specifically, we collected online survey responses from 324 rebate recipients and employed descriptive and mixed ordinal logistic regression analyses to investigate participants’ characteristics, the rebate’s role in the purchase process, and e-bike use. Most participants use e-bikes to replace car trips, signifying the potential of e-bikes to reduce auto dependence and advance mode shift and climate goals. The study also identifies how age, e-bike cost, and car ownership shaped participants’ perceptions of the rebate’s impact on purchase behaviors. People who are young, male, earn low incomes, previously owned non-electric bicycles, and hold graduate degrees ride their e-bikes more frequently than other rebate recipients. Yet results also show that e-bike rebate recipients are disproportionately male, White, higher-income, and hold graduate degrees, suggesting that the rebate’s benefits are not evenly distributed across demographic groups. These findings inform specific and actionable policy recommendations to address the identified equity gaps, such as implementing tiered, income-based, and point-of-sale rebates. Such changes can foster a more equitable integration of e-bikes into the sustainable urban mobility system.