UWAFT’s Outreach Team Examines Consumer Attitudes and Behaviours Related to AFVs in Waterloo Region

Despite the variety of automotive manufacturers that offer alternatively fuelled options, the uptake of alternatively fuelled vehicles has been slow. Consumer expectations play a critical role when analyzing why alternatively fuelled vehicles have been so slow in penetrating the market.

UWAFT’s Outreach Team consists of five University of Waterloo Environment and Business students, who have been working on their fourth year research project over the past eight months while participating in the EcoCAR 2 competition.

The group, Synchronous Solutions, consists of Bob Michniak, Rachael Morin, Denis Pankov, Kyle Pinto and Eva Mathieu.

They wanted to explore the apparent gap that exists between consumer attitudes toward green products and their willingness to actually purchase such items. Specifically, consumers’ willingness to purchase green products is higher than the sales of those products indicate. Investigating this relationship for large purchases such as vehicles could provide insights on how to better market them to consumers.

Synchronous Solutions developed a survey that was distributed to consumers within the Region of Waterloo as well as available on the UWAFT website here. A total of 111 surveys were completed over February and March of 2012. The group noted some limitations of their findings, which included issues with the sample population being over representative of both females and students compared to the Canadian population.

The following graphs show some of the most interesting findings that the group obtained from their surveys. The first graph shows each respondent’s ranking of deterrents if they were considering an AFV purchase. Clearly, price is the most prevalent deterrent.

Figure 1 - If you were considering an AFV, what deterrents would be likely to stop you? (%)

The second graph compares how often consumers question the validity of environmental claims to the likeliness that they would trust the environmental claims of a vehicle if 3rd party certification was required. The graph indicates that those who question claims ‘All the time’ or ‘No, not if there’s a 3rd party certification’ would be the most likely to trust 3rd party certification of a vehicle’s environmental claims.

Figure 2 - How often do you question the validity of environmental claims on products compared to likeliness of trust in the environmental claims of a vehicle if 3rd party certification was required (%)

Synchronous Solutions’ Recommendations:

• Explore 3rd party certification for all vehicles and which metrics would be most useful
• Analyze the price premium on AFVs to determine how or if they can be adjusted to not deter purchases while maintaining profitability
• Better communication of AFV technology costs and benefits is needed for consumers
• Improved sampling technique for any further research on the topic

A full copy of their report is available here.