ABSTRACT

Governments are interested in incentivizing e-bike adoption, due to potential benefits from displacing travel by private automobile. To inform the development of e-bike purchase incentive programs, the objective of this paper is to determine how key elements of program design (particularly rebate amounts and structure) are expected to affect new e-bike purchases. An aggregate demand model is developed and applied to rebate scenarios to examine incentive effectiveness. Results show that rebate programs are expected to be bound by available rebates, not e-bike demand, and additional bike shop revenues exceed rebate costs. At a fixed program budget, fewer, larger rebates yield fewer additional sales, but a larger share of rebates go to low-income and new (marginal) purchasers. Flat and proportional rebate structures yield similar sales, although flat rebates are more income-equitable. Flat rebates are recommended for new e-bike incentive programs, with robust program evaluations to inform future program designs.

摘要

由于取代私人汽车出行的潜在好处，政府对鼓励采用电动自行车很感兴趣。为了为电动自行车购买激励计划的发展提供信息，本文的目的是确定计划设计的关键要素（特别是回扣金额和结构）将如何影响新的电动自行车购买。开发了一个总需求模型并将其应用于回扣方案以检查激励有效性。结果表明，返利计划预计将受可用返利而非电动自行车需求的约束，并且额外的自行车商店收入超过返利成本。在固定的计划预算下，较少、较大的回扣产生的额外销售额较少，但大部分回扣流向低收入和新（边际）购买者。固定和成比例的回扣结构产生相似的销售额，尽管固定回扣在收入上更加公平。建议为新的电动自行车激励计划提供固定折扣，并通过强有力的计划评估为未来的计划设计提供信息。