In 2017, the CRCLCL successfully responded to a tender from the Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) in the NSW government to lead their new Energy Efficiency Decision Making Node as part of their research programme. The OEH and the CRCLCL have both contributed resources to fund a number of projects which the CRCLCL in turn commissions from its partners and administers for the OEH.
The Energy Efficiency Decision Making in the NSW Transport Sector project aims to better understand consumer behaviour with respect to vehicle purchasing in order to more accurately anticipate responses to government interventions for energy efficient vehicles.
It proposes to investigate the vehicle purchasing behaviour of consumers in New South Wales with the aims of:
- Understanding factors that drive purchasing behaviour
- Developing a typology of consumers with respect to vehicle acquisition
- Creating a consumer choice model that allows for policy assessment.
The study will focus on decisions made by households but could be extended to other segments of the market later on. Three key activities will occur during the research. The first aims to map various actors and factors of the transport system that influence household’s purchasing decision; the second aims to identify endogenous and exogenous factors that influence vehicle purchasing decisions by various types of households; and the third aims to build a purchasing decision model that can respond to various exogenous factors and policy incentives.