Are people willing to pay more for sustainable energy? How does their opinion differ from EV owners?
Considering the high price of electric vehicles and the recent announcement by many car brands to further increase the cost, we look at how many EV owners consider themselves environmentalists and how many are willing to pay more for sustainable energy. EV marketers might be interested to understand the possible ways to anchor a vehicle in the perception of this target group.
Data indicates that EV owners are slightly more likely to call themselves environmentalists (59%) than global adults. However, in some markets the difference between EV owners and the general population is negligible. In Saudi Arabia (53% vs. 54%) and India (63% vs. 68%), for example, the gap is much smaller than in some other markets.
In Great Britain, electric vehicle owners (61%) are nearly twice as likely as the general population (34%) to consider themselves environmentalists. While fewer than half the population in America would say they’re concerned about the environment (42%), EV owners are far more likely to agree with the statement (66%).
It’s perhaps not surprising to see EV owners increasingly willing to pay more for sustainable energy, considering electric vehicles often cost more than gas cars to buy. While 45% of all global respondents are willing to pay more for sustainable energy, the figure rises to 58% among EV owners.
Three-quarters of American EV owners are willing to pay more for sustainable energy (75%), the highest of all markets. British EV owners are nearly twice as likely as the wider population to say they are prepared to pay more for sustainable energy (62% vs. 32%).
EV owners in Saudi Arabia – one of the world’s largest producers of petroleum - are considerably less likely to agree to pay more (49%), registering nine points lower than global EV owners and lowest of all markets in this survey. But they’re still slightly more likely than the general Saudi population to be prepared to do so.
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Methodology: YouGov Global Profiles is a globally consistent audience dataset with 1000+ questions across 48 markets. The data is based on continuously collected data from adults aged 16+ years in China and 18+ years in other markets. The sample sizes for YouGov Global Profiles will fluctuate over time, however the minimum sample size is always c.1000. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from India and UAE, which use urban representative samples, and China, Egypt, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Philippines, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam, which use online representative samples. Learn more about Global Profiles.
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