The influence of household characteristics on the purchase of clean cars. The case of Spain

Abstract

This paper determines the socioeconomic characteristics of Spanish households that use clean cars, with the aim of identifying how these characteristics influence the market penetration of these vehicles. This study is one of the few in the literature that analyses the characteristics of car users based on a broad sample of data, that is representative of 11.5 million households. The results allow us to identify socioeconomic challenges and opportunities regarding the goal of replacing combustion vehicles with clean vehicles. We estimate a logit model finding that high-income households are 29.3% more likely to use a clean vehicle than medium–low-income households. On the contrary, the gender and age of the household’s main breadwinner present opportunities: if he is a male, it is more likely to use clean vehicles than if she is a woman, and households whose main breadwinner is over 55 or under 30 are more likely to use it. These results provide guidelines for a better design of public policies aimed at decarbonizing the transport sector through the replacement of conventional vehicles by clean ones. To do so it is important to consider the features of the social reality in which that objective is to be achieved.