Electrifying the company car: Identifying hard and soft barriers among fleet managers in Switzerland

Electric mobility has an important role to play in the transition to a more sustainable transportation system. However, adoption is still relatively slow in most countries, also within organizations and their corporate fleets. Much cited hard barriers such as the limited availability of charging infrastructure do not fully explain this slow uptake. Consequently, the research field of social acceptance of electric mobility with a focus on acceptance related soft barriers has emerged. This paper adds new theoretical as well as practical insights to the debate. Methodologically, the paper is based on a multi-method approach. Firstly, an online survey with Swiss fleet managers (n = 30) supports the importance of acceptance related soft barriers. 63% of the participants assessed the lack of knowledge as an important barrier and the lack of demand from employees was considered an important barrier by 56% of the participants. Secondly, a behavioral intervention campaign to address those barriers was developed and assessed in a field experiment with carpool users (n = 10) in the city of St. Gallen. The behavioral intervention campaign consisted of a one-week trial period with EVs in the normal course of business life, free of charge, and without obligation. The results of the field experiment indicate that acceptance levels of both hard and soft barriers evolved positively from before (T0) to after (T1) the trial period. This suggests that designing a campaign to address acceptance related soft barriers might help increase social acceptance and the adoption of EVs in corporate fleets.