Abstract
Many governments have begun to adopt aggressive targets for electric vehicles. However, studies of the drivers of electric vehicle (EV) adoption are scarce. Social media interactions can provide a new data-driven vantage point to explore such drivers. This study uses data from 36,000 public posts on Facebook to investigate intersectionality in EV-communication as per the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental (PESTLE) categories. A computational social science methodology was adopted using a mixed-method application of social network analysis and machine learning-based topic modelling through Latent Dirichlet Allocation algorithm on a 600,000-text corpus extracted from the Facebook posts. Results showed that political, economic, and legal posts had dense clusters around the technology policy of EV, the institutional discourse of electrification of the federal vehicle fleet, and tax and credit framework politics. The environmental and social dimensions had a higher discourse for social justice, clean air, and better health and well-being. A market shift towards EV as a service industry was observed in the technology and economics-related posts. These findings can help policymakers, and planners design contextualised energy policy for influencing EV adoption in the U.S. and other countries.
Highlights
Electric vehicles (EVs) can reduce transportation emissions, promote low-carbon mobility and a cleaner environment [1,2]
We studied EV-related social media communications through 36,000 public posts on Facebook in the U.S to extract critical policy design information using the PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technolog ical, Legal and Environmental) framework
This study extracted inferences from EV-related public pages on Facebook in the United States to inform contextualised energy policymaking based on a PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Techno logical, Legal and Environmental) category
Summary
Electric vehicles (EVs) can reduce transportation emissions, promote low-carbon mobility and a cleaner environment [1,2]. EVs are becoming more available, with sales soaring in recent years. In 2019, EV sales topped 2.1 million units globally, with 90% of sales concentrated in China, Europe and the United States [3]. Sales of all-electric light-duty vehicles (LDVs) in the U.S grew from 0 in 2010 to 242,000 in 2019 [4]. Policy instruments like direct subsidies and tax credit have been critical in stimulating EV sales in major vehicle markets in recent years. The U.S government has incentivised EVs’ uptake through a tax credit of up to $7500 per vehicle with an additional state-specific tax credit [5]
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