What drives electric vehicle adoption? Insights from a systematic review on European transport actors and behaviours

Abstract

A sustainable transition towards a net zero emission economy is a primary goal of climate change mitigation. Such a transition should involve each socio-technical system, including the transport system. Adopting a multi-level perspective, the present study explores the behaviour of actors within the road passenger transport sector by investigating roadblocks to the shift towards electric mobility. The study focuses specifically on regime actors, i.e. the whole of consumers (car drivers), industry actors (car manufacturers, suppliers), policymakers, and civil society (citizens, workers, trade unions, environmental organisations, NGOs) acting at regime level. Although these actors provide stability to the socio-technical system, they do not always oppose change. Indeed, they can actively support the transition pushing a reform agenda that fits their interests. The reframing of their behaviour becomes therefore essential for the regime change to occur. The analysis involved the systematic literature review of studies concerning the road transport regime actors. These included 44 publications related to the European continent in the period 2015–2020. The findings reveal a recent re-orientation of regime actors, with the presence of factors supporting change along with those reinforcing resistance. The firsts include the role of electric vehicles as symbols of social status and innovativeness, their environmentally sound for decarbonising transport, and the possibility for firms to pursue new business opportunities and models. In contrast, the emerged factors of resistance include uncertainty in demand and production scalability, the risk of job losses, the rigid value chain, and the lack of charging stations that makes electric vehicles not suitable in everyday life.