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.”
One of the challenges was that there wasn’t an existing panel dataset the pair could access. As co-authors they could divide the tasks of gathering and scrubbing data.
“We gathered everything from various sources, and we each focused on the components where we had comparative advantages,” Wang said. “We wanted our findings to provide actionable insights for both charging station operators and policymakers to improve infrastructure planning and better understand consumer behavior.”
The co-authors are proud of their work but emphasize that their findings are limited.
“Our report has implications, though there’s still room to improve before it can be used for real‑world recommendations,” said Yuwei Cai, now a master’s student at the Hong Kong University School of Business, “but it can still inform charging companies.”
The co-authors met at a mutual friends’ birthday party, discovered they had taken similar courses and had similar majors.
“We kept in contact, and whenever we found ourselves in the same new courses, we’d say, ‘Wow, you’re here too!’ Then we’d discuss the coursework and study together,” Cai remembered.
It was during those study sessions that they realized they could be great collaborators.
“I knew that Yuwei was really good, he has a minor in computer science,” Wang said. “The paper was going to be a big project, and we wanted to make it a big deal.”
Both students are thrilled with the recognition that comes with the award.
“Honestly, it’s a milestone in my research journey,” Wang said. “This award recognizes the work itself, especially the invisible parts like data construction and refinement. That was where we put a huge amount of effort, and it’s usually unseen.”
For Cai, whose graduate degree focus is on Fintech, the scholarship is also an opportunity to reflect.
“When I was doing this project, I discovered several shortcomings in my skills,” he said. “That made me want to apply for my current program even more. Still, I put this project on my résumé, and recruiters asked about it. They wanted to know what I was thinking about while we worked on it and, what models I used. It helped me a lot.”
Read about the winner of the Arthur Hosios Scholarship in Economics.
Return to the Department of Economics website.
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