Toward sustainable cities: An economic analysis of the impact of electric vehicle adoption on urban spatial structures

Research Project

Project/Area Number	23K18805
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Review Section	0107:Economics, business administration, and related fields
Research Institution	Hiroshima University
Principal Investigator	周義明広島大学, 人間社会科学研究科(社)東千田, 准教授 (20980303)
Project Period (FY)	2023-08-31 – 2025-03-31
Project Status	Granted (Fiscal Year 2023)
Budget Amount *help	¥1,820,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,400,000、Indirect Cost: ¥420,000) Fiscal Year 2024: ¥780,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000、Indirect Cost: ¥180,000) Fiscal Year 2023: ¥1,040,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000、Indirect Cost: ¥240,000)
Keywords	Sustainable cities / EV adoption / Urban spatial structures / Traffic pollution / Efficiency / Urban spatial structure / Electric vehicle / Monocentric urban model
Outline of Research at the Start	With the rapid adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) in cities, its impact on people's daily life and urban space has been a heated debate among scholars and policy makers. This research aims to contribute to our understanding of the long-run impact of EV adoption on urban-space economy. We build an urban economic model with land market, agglomeration economies and traffic pollution, and disclose the economic mechanisms through which EV adoption affects urban spatial structures. Moreover, we provide quantitative results and aim to analyze the urban policies that help achieve sustainable cities.
Outline of Annual Research Achievements	In the first year, I have investigated how the location patterns of electric vehicle (EV) users affect the total traffic pollution externalities and land rent revenues in monocentric cities. My research result shows that the urban spatial structure with EV users residing in the suburban districts (instead of the center) is associated with higher economic efficiency. From a perspective of policy establishment, my findings suggest that the increased land rent revenues may be taxed by local governments to subsidize suburban residents in buying EVs or to invest in building charging stations, achieving higher efficiency. The research findings have been summarized and published by highly regarded journal. [journal articles] 1. Toward sustainable cities: Where the electric vehicle users reside matters. Yiming Zhou, Economics Letters, Vol. 235, 111535, 2024
Current Status of Research Progress	Current Status of Research Progress 2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned. Reason In the first year, I have investigated how the location patterns of electric vehicle users affect the outcomes of an urban-space economy by building a monocentric urban model. By applying a linear urban economic model, and with high analytical solvability, the theoretical analysis goes smoothly. The initial results show that the location patterns of EV users exert significant impact on traffic pollution and urban land revenues. In particular, the urban spatial structure with EV users residing in the suburban districts (instead of the center) is associated with a better urban environment and higher land rent revenues.
Strategy for Future Research Activity	In the next year I plan to further investigate how the location of public charging stations affects EV adoption, land rent revenues and welfare levels in monocentric cities. Currently, I have obtained some initial results which show that the location places of public charging stations exert impact on not only EV adoption, but also the total welfare levels in equilibrium of the monocentric cities. I attempt to further calibrate the model with data to quantitatively investigate the optimal location of the public charging stations in different parameter configurations.