The drivers behind Electric Vehicle adoption. A quantitative study of EV owners in Norway

BACKGROUND: The electric vehicle is an environmental innovation that is perceived by many governments and organizations as a valuable zero-emission replacement of traditional fuel cars. The adoption of electric vehicles differs across countries. Norway is the only country where EV adoption rate is outstanding and therefore many scholars try to explain the reasons for such a successful result. However, most of them focus on national and regional level thus leaving the individuals as an important unit of analysis. OBJECTIVE: The adoption rate in many countries is very low compared to Norway. Scholars point several factors that influence the EV adoption rate and explain the differences among the countries. However, none of them examined individuals’ attitude to these aspects. People differ when it comes to their characteristics and values. It is therefore my goal to determine quantitatively what can explain the reasons for buying an electric vehicle by individuals. METHOD: The study uses a cross-sectional analysis of secondary data about EV owners in Norway. In the analysis, the independent variables describing the characteristics of individuals are regressed on five dependent variables that represent the main reasons for EV adoption determined by theories. In addition to independent variables, several control variables describing the characteristics of EV owners are used in the analysis. RESULTS: It was found that early adopters put more importance on environmental friendliness of EV when making a purchase decision. However, they do not care about relative advantage of EV. Individuals with higher income put less importance on incentives and eco-friendliness of EV when adopting an EV. Environmentalists are interested in ecofriendliness of EV and their degree of interest in new technologies when buying an EV. Opinion leaders are less interested in eco-friendliness of EV than its popularity and their degree of interest in new technologies. Those who can take advantage of incentives are less interested in eco-friendliness of EV, its popularity and their degree of interest in new technologies when adopting an EV. They are interested in relative advantage of EV when making a purchase decision. CONCLUSION: Environmental friendliness of electric cars is a very important factor when deciding to adopt it, especially for earlier adopters. Also, it was found that relative advantage of electric cars is closely related to incentives and therefore incentives must be kept in order to sustain the diffusion process. Also it was found that incentives do not necessarily have to be a wrong decision, since they do not affect the structure of diffusion process to a large degree