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Since its introduction in South Africa during 2009, the ability of vehicle emissions tax to reduce CO₂ emissions has been questioned, but not yet assessed. The purpose of this paper is to attempt such an assessment by considering tax designs to reduce passenger vehicle CO₂ emissions.

In this exploratory study, the authors reviewed literature on tax designs to reduce CO₂ emissions, and compared the design of current taxes on passenger vehicles in South Africa to the tax designs most advocated in the literature to evaluate the effectiveness of the current South African design for this purpose.

Tax designs refer to the stage when taxes are levied (purchase/ownership/usage taxes) – levying taxes at one stage may more effectively reduce emissions than levying them at another. The current tax focus on consumers may indeed affect taxes' ability to reduce emissions, and in the current tax mix, taxes on passenger vehicles may not be the most effective way of reducing emissions. The investigation of a “feebate” policy as an alternative initiative to address increased passenger vehicle CO₂ emissions is recommended.

Only anecdotal evidence questions the ability of the vehicle emissions tax to reduce CO₂ emissions. This study is intended to elicit further discussions on other fiscal reform initiatives aimed at reducing CO₂ emissions by passenger vehicles in South Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to explore automobile fuel efficiency policies in the presence of two externalities: a global environmental problem and international innovation spillovers.

Using a simple model with two regions, the authors show that both a fuel tax and a tax on vehicles based on their fuel economy rating are needed to decentralize the first best.

If standards are used instead of taxes, the authors find that spillovers may alleviate free-riding. Under some conditions, a strict standard in one region may favor the adoption of a strict standard in the other one.

The authors also show that if policies are not coordinated between regions, the resulting gas taxes will be set too low and each region will use the tax on fuel rating to reduce the damage caused by foreign drivers.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse to what extent financial incentives under the green tax reform introduced in Portugal in 2014 drive behaviours of acquiring a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV).

The existent literature identifies a number of factors that influence the interest for PHEV acquisition, including access to financial incentives. However, empirical evidence is not clear as to which factors are more relevant. The authors extend an existent theoretical model of five factors by including ten factors. On this basis, the study carries out a survey and develops a structural equation model to investigate what drives the interest to acquire a PHEV.

Financial incentives are superior to other factors in explaining the interest in acquiring a PHEV. Education, lower income levels, living in larger cities and driving smaller vehicles shape the interest on these vehicles differently. Financial incentives were found to closely offset the difference in price between conventional vehicles and plug-in hybrids.

This study finds that public policies can be powerful in shaping consumers’ behaviour, although the amount of the financial incentive is key to triggering a large-scale effect.

The survey in this study allows an in-depth and ex ante analysis of the interest in acquiring PHEV under a green tax reform, taking into account other dimensions and socio-economic variables not accounted for in existent studies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the diffusion dynamics of electric and hybrid commercial vans and its enabling factors in the city logistics (CL) contexts. The case of parcel delivery in Torino, Italy, is considered. Attention is paid to the influence on the choice of low impact vehicles of not only public strategies but also operational aspects characterizing urban freight distribution systems.

A System Dynamics model based on the Bass diffusion theory computes the number of adopters of low-emission vehicles together with the quantity of vans required and the associated economic savings. The model includes variables about freight demand, delivery frequency, van carrying capacity, routes, stops, distances traveled, and vehicle charging stations. A sensitivity analysis has been completed to identify the main diffusion levers. The focus is on advertising and other drivers, such as public contributions, taxes traditional polluting vehicles are subjected to, as well as on routing optimization strategies.

Advertising programs, green image, and word-of-mouth drive market saturation, although in a long time period. In fact, low-impact vehicles do not offer any economic advantage over traditional ones requiring higher investment and operating costs. Public incentives to purchase both green vehicles and charging stations, together with carbon taxes and a congestion charge affecting polluting vehicles, are able to shorten the adoption time. In particular, public intervention reveals to be effective only when it unfolds through a number of measures that both facilitate the use of environmentally friendly vehicles and discourage the adoption of traditional commercial vans. Route optimization also hastens the complete market saturation.

This work fosters research about the mutual relationships between the diffusion of low-emission commercial vehicles and the operational and contextual CL factors. It provides a structured approach for investigating the feasibility of innovative good vehicles that might be part of assessments of CL measures and requirements. Finally, the model supports studies about the cooperation among stakeholders to identify effective commercial vehicle fleets.

This study fosters collaboration among CL players by providing a roadmap to identify the key factors for the diffusion of environmentally friendly freight vehicles. It also enables freight carriers to assess the operational and economic feasibility of adopting low-impact vehicles. Finally, it might assist public authorities in capturing the effects of new urban transportation policies prior to their implementation.

Most of the current CL literature defines policies and analyzes their effects. Also, there are several contributions on the diffusion of low emission cars. The present study is one of the first works on the diffusion of low-impact commercial vehicles in urban areas by considering the associated key operational factors. A further value is that the proposed model combines operational variables with economic and environmental issues.

In the organizational technology acceptance (TA) decision-making process, stakeholders have many divergence opinions. Sometimes, an opposing stakeholder of a decision can stop the whole process of decision-making. In such a case, consensus may take a long time followed by a high risk. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, to find the best model with the least prediction error for the simulation of the consensus process in TA decisions. Second, to investigate the time required for the consensus process to yield the TA decision in different scenarios and to propose solutions to reduce the required time in a case study.

This study uses real-world data containing 1,186 actual observations. Stakeholders are decision-maker agents, and the observations are derived from survey data and used for simulation. Data were obtained from 126 experts in the Iranian rail freight industry. Opinion dynamics theory was used for agent-based simulation of stakeholders’ behavior. The agents interacted over time and their effects on other agents’ opinions were investigated.

The results illustrate an appropriate opinion changing model, a data-gathering method and a simulation scenario for TA consensus. The suitable model was selected after examining the advantages and disadvantages of and comparing the prediction results for different models with the real database of opinions. To reduce the consensus process time, the results suggest gathering the team members and networking with some leaders as advocators. A large number of advocators with high acceptability and continuous exchanging messages with other agents can improve the acceptance rate and have the most significant impact on other stakeholders’ opinions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, previous studies simulate individual TA processes. However, there is a difference between the individual TA and the organizational TA. The organizational TA requires the simultaneous decision-making of different stakeholders. In this research, the organizational TA was investigated.

Green brands are those brands that obtain attributes and benefits related to the reduction of the brands’ environmental impact. Green brand love is a very important issue for marketing managers. One of the main reasons for this degree of importance is because of the many positive outcomes that green brand love will have for organizations. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of green brand image, trust and attitude on green brand love among Muslim consumers.

In this study, a cross-sectional survey is conducted based on the questionnaire method to collect data from a sample of 201 consumers of various automobile brands in Isfahan, Iran. Structural equation modeling is used to test the research hypotheses.

The findings show that green brand image has a significant direct effect on green brand attitude, love and trust. In addition, the results indicate that green brand attitude and trust have a significant direct effect on green brand love.

Considering the importance of the issue of automobility and environmental harm, this paper offers new insights to marketing managers of the automotive industry in Iran.

This study is among the first to explore the effect of green brand image, trust and attitude on green brand love.

In the wake of growing environmental issues, active public and corporate interventions are inevitable to reduce the negative impact of human activities on global environments. Building on the Norm Activation Model and Value-Belief-Norm Theory, the purpose of this paper is to report on research exploring consumers’ eco-socially conscious behaviours related to the choice and use of personal cars in a developing country, Pakistan.

To test a moderated-mediation model of environmental values, perceived consumer effectiveness (PCE), spirituality and eco-socially conscious consumer behaviours (ESCCBs), data were collected from 447 customers of three automobile manufacturing firms from eight different cities of Pakistan. The data collection was undertaken by using a self-administered questionnaire based on key themes in the literature.

Analysis of the data revealed that altruistic and egoistic values were negatively while biospheric values were positively associated with eco-ESCCB. PCE mediated all the relationships and spirituality moderated the mediated paths.

Although there are several models that explain purchase and use of personal cars in isolation or in conjunction with other general pro-environmental behaviours, an explanation of the eco-social aspects of purchase and use of personal cars in one theoretical model is rare to find. Second, among the many theoretical predictors and intervening factors explaining several pro-environmental behaviours, some culture-specific factors have been ignored – spirituality being one of them. This study contributes to the body of knowledge related to pro-environmental behaviours by conceptualising and testing the impact of spirituality in a moderated-mediation model.