system linked directly to the policy target (i.e., reduction of
energy consumption and CO2 emissions, respectively) does
not encourage any changes increasing this target parameter.
However, within a relative design, a significant
proportion of the possible changes to A-labeled cars that
are within range of minor behavioral changes are
unsuccessful in reducing CO2 emissions. Such changes
leading to stagnating or increasing CO2 emissions could
occur with all four variants of behavioral change. In spite
of this, none of the variants is a priori bad; even for the
case of changes to a larger car size class, the total number
of possible changes which reduce CO2 emissions still
prevails. This underlines the importance of studying the
effects of these changes with a very disaggregated car fleet.
In the second part of this paper, we outlined the
psychological mechanisms and factors decisive for consumers’
willingness to change purchase behavior under
feebate systems (Section 3) which was empirically investigated
by a survey of Swiss households on car purchase
behavior (Section 4). The results for the relevant sample
of potential new car buyers were presented in Section 5.
In general, the respondents showed some, but limited,
willingness to change their car choice behavior in order to
obtain a rebate. Upon deeper analysis, it was revealed that
the potential new car buyers who preferred comparatively
smaller cars exhibited higher willingness to reduce engine
and car size. This is in line with our hypothesis. Contrary
to a priori expectations, respondents with preference for
larger cars tended to state higher willingness to change
to even larger cars than those with preference for smaller
cars.
There was a medium level of general acceptance of
feebates among various other measures to reduce consumption
of fuel and energy. Feebates clearly ranked above
rather unpopular measures such as increased fuel taxes.
Only measures that do not require behavioral changes of
consumers (e.g., provision of information on efficient cars,
regulations for manufacturers) scored higher acceptance.
We conclude that public acceptance for feebate systems is
comparatively high.
In line with our hypotheses, acceptance of rebates
contributed to willingness for all changes of behavior,
although the contribution was clearly smaller for the
change to larger cars. These results underline the importance
of acceptance as well as its risks. The fact that people
accept a scheme as reasonable and justified might not mean
that they totally understand the mechanisms of the scheme
in its specific design but rather that they accept both the
necessity to reduce energy consumption as well as the
applicability of feebates as a sensible tool for that aim.
Consequently, results suggest that they are more willing to
be influenced by the measure. In the case of a design
opening the door to a counterproductive changing
behavior, it is likely that people may take the incentive as
a sign that buying the corresponding product follows the
intended purpose of the feebate system without differentiating
between changes to the ‘‘good’’ and changes to the