Consumer Preferences for Automobile Energy Efficiency Grades

Recently, increases in energy prices have made energy conservation and efficiency improvements even more essential than in the past. With the rising cost of oil, specifically, energy efficiency has become one of the principal factors relevant to the choice of an automobile. However, due to the difficulty experienced by general consumers in obtaining reliable information regarding energy efficiency, in many countries around the world energy efficiency label regulations have been implemented which enforce a system of energy efficiency grade labeling. In this study, consumer preferences regarding energy efficiency grade were analyzed by estimating the marginal willingness to pay and the relative importance of energy efficiency grade using several discrete choice methods, including the multinomial logit, mixed logit, and mixed multiple discrete-continuous extreme value models.