Issues of image and identity for electric vehicle drivers
Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) could play a crucial role in helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions around the world. The UK Government has highly ambitious aims for developing a strong domestic market to meet the targets of the 2008 Climate Change Act, and achieve a steep decrease in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. BEV technology has now evolved to the point where it is potentially capable of fulfilling the daily needs of a large number of people. A critical turning point is now approaching for the widespread acceptance of BEVs, but it is currently unclear how the UK market will develop. This is largely due to consumer behaviour, as the general public does not yet appear to see BEVs as particularly desirable. Much research to date has focused on the practical barriers to BEV uptake, such as the high upfront purchase costs and limited driving range. While easy to identify, however, these barriers are very difficult to remove. Comparatively little research has addressed the psychological barriers and facilitators to BEV adoption, such as issues of image and identity. These could play a key role in transforming mainstream market opinions, but findings from existing studies on this topic are diverse and fragmentary. This thesis took a primarily qualitative approach to examine data from 53 BEV drivers in the UK’s Technology Strategy Board (TSB) Ultra Low Carbon Vehicle Demonstrator programme. Application of thematic analysis to semi-structured interviews, supported by relevant questionnaire data, revealed four overarching themes: the ‘green’ image of BEVs; the ‘green’ identity of BEV drivers; the ‘innovative technology’ image of BEVs; and the ‘innovative technology adopter’ identity of BEV drivers. Together, these contained a number of complex and conflicting subthemes. Emergent subtleties sometimes contradicted the logical assumptions made by other papers; many of the TSB drivers, for example, regarded the ‘green’ image as being ambiguous or undesirable.
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