Refueling Behavior of Flexible Fuel Vehicle Drivers in the Federal Fleet

Abstract

In addition, the authors thank Denise Zele of NREL fleet management as well as NREL fleet operators for their input on the development of the survey. Fleet subject matter experts at NREL include

Hypothetical Purchase Task Questionnaires for Behavioral Economic Assessments of Value and Motivation

“…In addition, alcohol HPTs clearly discriminate between light versus heavy drinkers (Murphy and MacKillop, 2006), show significant sensitivity to situational variables (next-day responsibilities; Skidmore and Murphy, 2011;Gentile et al, 2012), and correlate significantly with selfreported levels of naturalistic drinking (Murphy et al, 2009) and acute alcohol self-administration (Amlung et al, 2012;MacKillop et al, 2014). Outcome measures from a recently developed cocaine HPT also correlate significantly with self-reported frequency of use and money spent on cocaine among regular users (Bruner and Johnson, 2014), and significant test-retest reliability has been reported for cigarette (Few et al, 2012) and alcohol (Murphy et al, 2009) HPTs.…”

“…Quantifying the proportion of respondents who would make a purchase at different prices is not uncommon in market research and consumer science (Brennan, ; Juster, ), but to our understanding, the present study is the first systematic assessment of probability of purchase as a viable HPT format and individual‐level outcome (cf. Daley et al ., ); hence, it is unknown whether or not demand curve metrics, particularly demand elasticity, vary as a function of purchase framing for the same commodity. Finally, all variables were considered across multiple commodities that differ in unit cost and frequency of consumption in order to assess generalizability of the results and possible convergence toward standard design principles for HPTs that efficiently provide informative, high‐quality data on value and motivation with minimal respondent burden.…”

Progress of and Prospects for Hypothetical Purchase Task Questionnaires in Consumer Behavior Analysis and Public Policy

“…Examining recreational driving, Reed et al, (2014) asked participants how many miles they would be willing to drive for a vacation at various prices per gallon of fuel, which produced orderly demand curves and metrics, with median intensity of demand at 1000 mi and median breakpoint for forgoing vacation altogether when fuel was $7 per gallon. Additional work comes from Daley, Nangle, Boeckman, and Miller (2014) who surveyed demand for E85 ethanol fuel among drivers in the US Federal fleet equipped with flex-fuel trucks. In this case, because fleet drivers do not pay for fuel themselves, the increasing Bprice^of the fuel was defined in terms of convenience, i.e., additional time and additional distance to an E85 station relative to a conventional fuel station, ranging from <5 min to >15 min and <1 mi to >5 mi.…”

Optimizing Federal Fleet Vehicle Acquisitions: An Eleven-Agency FY 2012 Analysis

“…There are multiple reasons for the stark difference between the percentage of the fleet that is comprised of AFVs and the percentage of fuel use that is alternative fuel. Daley (2014) investigated federal fleet fueling behavior and found that drivers consistently miss opportunities to use available alternative fuel. Additionally, AFVs have not always been located where they have access to alternative fuel infrastructure.…”