A field experiment on workplace norms and electric vehicle charging etiquette

The increase in electric vehicles as a low-carbon mobility option has driven interest from many workplaces and local governments to offer charging services for employees, customers and visitors. However, the lack of incentives to limit over-consumption in shared charging resources has led to congestion issues. In this paper, we use high-frequency data to study two deterrence mechanisms implemented at one of the largest workplace charging programs in the United States. We study both price and nonprice interventions that encourage adoption of workplace norms and charging etiquette for resource sharing in charging stations. To study these mechanisms, we use a dynamic regression discontinuity design to separately identify treatment effects with digital platform data. Our findings provide new evidence that group norms can play an important role in driving behavioral compliance when setting EV access policies. We also find that workplace norms are complements to dynamic pricing policies. We discuss the implications of this data discovery for the effective management of common pool resources in the context of workplace charging and space-constrained environments. This article met the requirements for a gold-gold JIE data openness badge described at http://jie.click/badges

Automated summary

This study examined two deterrence mechanisms implemented in workplace charging programs, analyzing the impact of price and nonprice interventions on resource sharing. The findings suggest that group norms play a crucial role in driving behavioral compliance, and workplace norms complement dynamic pricing policies in promoting efficient resource management.