Final report: eco-friendly car purchase and travel behavior in the Brussels Capital Region.

    Onderzoeksoutput: Commissioned report

    Samenvatting

    In this project, we seek answers to three main questions: (1) what do consumers find important when buying a car, (2) do they care about the car's about environmental aspects and (3) what can the government do to promote the purchase of cleaner cars or to shift transport modes? Extensive research combining both psychological and economical approaches provided the following answers:

    1) what do consumers find important when buying a car?
    Primarily, consumers make car purchase decision on product-related and budget-related dimensions. With respect to the first, vehicle quality such as reliability, safety and comfort are the most important determinants of car purchase. Budget-related attributes such as purchase costs and operating costs come in a close second, and when taken together as the car's life-cycle cost, they even outweigh qualitative aspects. Consumers also express a high willingness to pay - way above current taxes, tariffs and charges- to keep using conventionally fueled vehicles over often in the long run, less expensive cleaner cars or alternative transport modes. This suggests that despite financial aspects being decisive, other attributes, less prone to be affected by pricing policies, still govern car purchase behavior.

    2) do consumers care about the car's about environmental aspects?
    Environmental characteristics seem to be more related to economical aspects, and when they are not, they play only a little role in purchase decisions. Nevertheless, a majority of consumers express a positive attitude towards environmental aspects, but they are simply outweighed by qualitative and financial car aspects; which ultimately translates in a relative little interest in cleaner cars.


    3) what can the government do to promote the purchase of cleaner cars or to shift transport modes?
    Lowering excises for clean duels, introducing a registration tax based on environmental performance (e.g. by means of the ECOSCORE), setting standards for clean fuel distributors, defining mandates for a green public fleet and introducing a kilometer charge are perceived to be the most effective measures to promote the purchase of cleaner cars. Acting on fuel prices, road pricing and/or vehicle taxes produce the largest switch to low CO2 emitting vehicles, alternatively fueled vehicles and alternative wheeled transport modes (train, tram, bus, bike). Parking tariffs have a relatively lower impact on green car purchases than other pricing measures, but impacts modal shifting more than vehicle taxes. Similarly, urban congestion charging will have a larger influence on modal shifting than on green car purchases, and proportionally effect modal shifting more than vehicle fees. Overall, a mix a policies which integrates pricing measures ("sticks"), incentives ("carrots") and regulations works best. Moreover, combining several policy instruments might have mutual reinforcing effects highlighting the strengths, whilst overcoming the barriers of each individual policy instrument which might enhance the acceptance of the whole policy package. On the longer term, changing the consumer's (implicit) attitudes towards environmental friendly vehicles might be of particular relevance. If, by a shift in mentality, environmental performance becomes a basic car attribute (like purchase price, fuel consumption today), it may be translated in the actual purchase of a green vehicle.

    To conclude, it is important to note that these results were obtained by surveying inhabitants of the Brussels Capital Region as well as commuters from Flanders and Wallonia. In general, little or no statistical between-differences were found in purchase or travel behavior. Nevertheless, specific scenarios for the BCR should be evaluated in further research. The policy based vehicle demand model could be used for the design of policy scenarios. In first instance, our data could be integrated in the MOSI-T/ETEC multi-actor project (Nele Sergeant & Joeri Van Mierlo: parallel PRB project: "Eco-efficiency of the Brussels mobility based on the Ecoscore methodology") to predict the share and usage of cleaner cars to assess the financial and environmental impact of personal transportation in the Brussels Capital Region. Afterwards, based on the joint findings of both projects realistic policy scenarios could be designed and subjected to a multi-actor multi criteria analysis (MAMCA, Macharis, 2004) for evaluation. The MAMCA leads to a classification of the proposed scenarios. More important than the ranking, the multi criteria analysis allows revealing the critical stakeholders and their criteria. The multi actor multi criteria analysis provides a comparison of different strategic alternatives and supports the decision maker in making his final decision by pointing out for each stakeholder which elements have a clearly positive or a clearly negative impact on the sustainability of the considered alternatives. Based on this integrated approach, effective combined policy measures could be implemented by the Brussel Capital Region to reduce the socio-ecological impact of personal transportation, reduce traffic and eventually increase the well-being of its inhabitants.
    Originele taal-2English
    UitgeverijUnknown
    Aantal pagina's163
    UitgaveInnoviris
    StatusPublished - 2010

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