General Information
Project description
This study aims to:
1) Use a Discrete Choice Experiment (or DCE) to explore and estimate Canadians’ preferences for different attributes of a potential ZEV purchase or lease.
2) Use an online RCT to explore the impact of varying messengers (government vs. personal testimonial) and varying messages (about driving range vs. affordability) on individuals' intent to switch to a ZEV
3) Explore Canadians’ knowledge of ZEVs
4) Generate baseline evidence other elements of decarbonized transport not yet explored – including support for used LDV ZEV incentives, and uptake of other zero-emission solutions supported by NRCan (e.g. e-bikes and scooters)
Analysis Plan
Pre-analysis plan: Is there a pre-analysis plan associated with this registration?
Hypothesis
Participants in the treatment conditions will demonstrate higher intent to purchase a ZEV compared to those in the control condition
Participants in the Testimonial Conditions will demonstrate higher intent to purchase a ZEV than those in the GC Conditions
Participants in the Affordability Conditions will demonstrate higher intent to purchase a ZEV than those in the Range Conditions
Participants in the Testimonial x Affordability condition will demonstrate the highest intent to purchase a ZEV compared to all other conditions
Participants in the treatment conditions will demonstrate higher policy support for ZEV policies compared to those in the control condition
How hypothesis will be tested
To better understand the impact of personal testimonial content for effectively delivering messages about the benefits of owning a zero-emission vehicle, a brief experiment seeks to test the relative effectiveness of messages that vary by their key message (Range and Affordability) and their messenger (GC vs. Testimonial) on interest in purchasing a ZEV and support for ZEV related policies. The four conditions listed below were tested against a control condition, in which participants were shown no message.
Dependent variables
Key outcome variables:
INTENT: How likely are you to choose an electric vehicle as your next vehicle? (5-point scale)
POLICY SUPPORT: How much do you support or oppose the following electric vehicle policies?
May also be collapsed in to a score.
Analyses
Both chi-square tests and ANOVAs:
Condition ~ EV intent (5 point scale – Definitely would buy – Definitely would not buy)
Condition ~ Policy Support
Sample Size. How many observations will be collected or what will determine sample size?
N=2500
Data Exclusion
Data cleaning steps undertaken by Qualtrics include:
Removal of partial responses (i.e., incomplete surveys) and removal of data from respondents who are screened out for not meeting eligibility criteria or declining to answer eligibility questions, or who fail the embedded attention check
Removal of data from respondents who complete the survey in less than 9 mins (
A professional data scrub to identify and remove poor quality responses (e.g., duplicate participants, nonsensical open-ended responses, suspicious response patterns, etc.)
Who is behind the project?
Project status:
Pre-registration
Methods
What is the project about?
Date published:
12 May 2025