Do incentives make a difference? Understanding smart charging program adoption for electric vehicles

•Using a survey and choice models, we tested incentives for smart charging adoption.•Monetary incentives, free equipment, and guaranteed rides/battery spurred adoption.•Penalties for retaking control of charging discouraged participation in a program.•Heterogeneity was found for multiple attributes and different respondent groups.•Some respondents would refuse to participate, even at very high incentive levels. Climate change and environmental problems have spurred new strategies to reduce fossil fuel consumption in transportation. Two important strategies include a rapid transition to green energy and the replacement of internal combustion vehicles with electric vehicles (EVs). However, the increasing demand for electricity by EVs, especially from time-dependent green sources of energy (e.g., solar, wind), will likely overload the grid at peak hours. Smart charging programs for EVs could defer charging to off-peak times and better match demand with supply. Yet, little is currently known about people’s willingness to sign up for a program. To understand incentive effects on smart charging program adoption, we distributed a survey (n = 785) in October 2018 across the United States targeting three groups: 1) EV owners/lessees (n = 151), 2) EV interested buyers/lessees (n = 555), and 3) a general population (n = 79). We first found that a significant portion of both EV groups would be interested in the program without any incentive, but there was a participation limit. Employing three mixed logit models, we found that monetary incentives and free charging equipment increased participation for the two EV groups, although the attributes exhibited heterogeneity. Guaranteed battery level (or rides home) increased participation for all three groups and at least one random parameter was present for all three groups. Penalties deployed to discourage participants from taking back charging control decreased participation willingness in the two EV groups, although EV interested buyers/lessees responded heterogeneously. While higher monetary incentives increased participation, the effects displayed diminishing returns.