Does education play a significant role in electric vehicle adoption rates in Sweden?”

Sammanfattning: This thesis examines if education as a channel for environmental awareness affects battery electric vehicle (BEV) adoption in Sweden. It discusses how the pollution from internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV) lead to economic cost both to governments as well as citizens. It also analyzes different control variables that were aimed at capturing economic concerns, age and convenience in BEV adoption rates. The control variable was income, age, distance travelled and percentage of inhabitants living in houses. The analysis uses data from all municipalities in Sweden in order to get a diverse data set. Based on previous theory the paper makes motivated hypothesizes on how each variable will affect BEV adoption in Sweden. The results from a linear regression with robust standard errors shows that three of the variables have statistically significant results, being education, Age and distance travelled. The paper concludes that education as a proxy for environmental awareness does lead to increased adoption rates, as well as that municipalities with higher median ages have lower adoption rates. It also concludes that municipalities with inhabitants that travel further distances during a year also leads to increased BEV adoption rates. Different areas suitable for future research has also been suggested.