What drives electronic vehicle owners to choose one charging station over another? Is it proximity to other amenities? Brand? Price? Zhaoyi Wang and Yuwei Cai examined these questions in their paper, Closer, Cheaper, Better? Drivers of Electric Vehicle Charging Station Preferences for ECO418 last year. This year, the co-authors are being recognized as runners up for the Arthur Hosios Scholarship in Economics, one of the Department’s most prestigious awards. The scholarship is awarded to the authors of the best and second-best research papers submitted as course work for a 300 or 400 level course.
“We asked what makes charging stations attractive at a high level?” explained Zhaoyi Wang, who is now completing her master’s degree at UofT. “Academically, there was a literature gap. At that time, not many economics papers used real usage data to study how people choose charging stations. In other fields, like transportation, geography, and urban planning, researchers use a lot of real spatial data.” [Read more…]
