TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE ROAD TRANSPORT - Key factors on consumers’ willingness to adopt electric vehicles in Sweden

Abstract

This study aims to explore and understand key factors that influence consumers’ willingness to adopt electric vehicles in Sweden. As the world is facing the climate change reality, many initiatives are taking place in various sectors in different countries to tackle climate change. The transport sector in the EU is one of the sectors that have a serious impact on climate. This thesis study focuses on the transition of the automotive industry from conventional engine vehicles to battery electric vehicles and aims to understand what key factors drive people’s willingness to adopt electric vehicles in Sweden. The Multilevel Perspective Framework (MLP) is chosen to understand and describe socio-technical transitions, and the key components behind them from the multi-level perspective approach. Furthermore, the Rational Choice Theory (RCT) is chosen to understand and explain the rational choice process of individuals and consumer behavior. The study implements RCT on consumer behavior and, under “utility, constraint and belief” factors are defined as sub-categories and highlighted with the support of the theory and previous literature. Additionally, this study adopts a mixed qualitative and quantitative method, and the data is collected by conducted semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire. The study offers a unique integrated theory approach of MLP and RCT to the results and provides an answer to the second research question. Finally, major factors such as cost, financial incentive, consumer knowledge, range, charging stations, environment, and minor other factors as weather and battery, reliability and uncertainty, behavioral change are found to be influencing factors on EV adoption. In conclusion, the study provides a summary of the study and draws conclusions to EU policies. The thesis study concludes by revealing the limitations of the study and offers suggestions to further studies.