Individuals perceptions of electric vehicles and related policy : Findings from an online experiment

We use an online experiment and survey to establish that consumers are misinformed about electric vehicles and that correcting misinformation has little impact on preferences for electric vehicles but some impact on electric vehicle policy preferences. Specifically, correcting misperceptions does not change consumers’ willingness to support pro-electric vehicle government initiatives but does cause specific EV policies to be preferred more or less. We estimate the effect of correcting misinformation by employing two information treatments : an informative narrative and a fact sheet. These treatments successfully make electric vehicle perceptions more accurate, but neither narratives nor fact sheets are more successful at correcting misperceptions. We determine preferences using survey questions, relying on indirect and incentivised questions to rule out the influence of social desirability bias on participants’ responses.