"I just (don't) want one" – green cars get red-carded

US researcher identifies social influences hindering acceptance of sustainable mobility

Policymakers and marketers need to look beyond the convenient price and feature-benefit issues of EVs, says a California research paper.

A study from the University of California's Davis-based Institute of Transportation Studies suggests that legislators and auto makers looking to hasten public acceptance of EVs and PHEVs should take into account consumer behaviour that's not founded in reason. Because while expressions like price and range-anxiety provide convenient, rational explanations for consumer resistance, the big issue lies in the uncomfortable realms of the irrational.

Ever noticed what happens when one person imposes their idea of reason on another to goad them into doing something they want them to do? It's a fair bet the respondent will do anything but, and come up with a dozen great reasons why they can't. In the ensuing push-and-shove, irresistible force meets immovable object and everyone goes nowhere.

It's best summed up as the flip-side of HSV's clever advertising strapline: "I just don't want one".

John Axsen, a post-doctoral researcher with the university's Plug-in Hybrid & Electric Vehicle Research Centre, says that that social influence is the missing link in connecting policy with those who must live by it.

Axsen's study suggests that conventional marketing and public policy models, focused as they are on convenience for their practitioners, fail to address the vast matrix of social and emotional issues driving consumer choice. Marketers, he says, are part way to getting this, but policymakers have a long way to go.

"Our interactions with friends, families and co-workers affect the way we make decisions, how we value the environment, and how our lifestyle relates to our purchase decisions," says Axsen.

"Car buyers are not just rational automatons affected by price and the availability of product information. Social influence... is extremely powerful and needs to be explicitly addressed."

Axsen's paper, "Interpersonal Influence within Car Buyers' Social Networks: Developing Pro-Societal Values through Sustainable Mobility Policy," recently earned him the Young Researcher of the Year Award from the International Transport Forum, an OECD-based organization comprising 52 member countries.

Following a PHEV demonstration project, Axsen gathered his data from 275 'interpersonal interactions' through interviews with 40 individuals in 11 different social networks in northern California.

He gauges their responses through five different forms of interpersonal influence, adding that the strength of influence varies according to what aspects of the vehicle it applies: functional ('with five kids, we need seven seats'); symbolic ('I chose it as an expression of me'), private ('I feel safe in it') and societal ('clean diesel is better for the environment').

    Contagion describes influence transmitted one-way, through the trickle-down of information from experts and early adopters, boosting general public's awareness of the product.
    Conformity addresses the thresholds at which resistance melts away and the individual signs up. Main variables include the strength of ties with others and physical proximity.
    Dissemination in which information is 'directed and managed' through an organised group to its advantage, normally starting with a small subset — for example a technology user group — looking to create a critical mass. They're often motivated enough to put their own time and resources into spreading the word.
    Translation denotes personal cost-benefit analysis. Axsen describes it as "ongoing negotiation between yourself and individuals in your social network" – the internal and interpersonal debate pitting individual considerations like petrol costs and peer approval against wider social impact on the environment, job creation etc.
    Reflexivity denotes the way in which consumers join the dots between products and their own value systems. It's dynamic and ongoing – flying in the face of the conventional marketing and policymaking axiom that values are set in stone. "We found that, under the right conditions, consumers will start to change their values and potentially commit to a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle," Axsen says. Especially, he adds, under the influence of an important reference group, such as family or co-workers.

Axsen suggests these perspectives would prove useful as market research tools, in identifying the individuals, the households and social networks most likely to lubricate wider perceptions of the benefits of sustainable vehicle technologies.

In addressing issues with long-term impact such as sustainable mobility, conventional economic models portraying consumer values as static and rational are bound to be wrong, he asserts. Closer scrutiny of the interpersonal processes driving consumer decisions can only help policymakers to better understand of how consumer values and accommodate the factors driving resistance.

He goes a step further, suggesting that over time "the adoption of [socially beneficial innovations like the PHEV] may provide impetus for "a more fundamental shift towards a societally-conscious lifestyle".

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