THESIS
2014
Abstract
Environmental issues such as climate change and energy crisis require business innovations
to satisfy consumers’ demand in a more sustainable way. This dissertation is to investigate
the challenges faced by decision makers such as governments and firms in order to align
business profitability with environmental sustainability. The dissertation is composed of
two research problems: subsidy analysis to promote clean technology products (CTPs) and
dynamic surcharging to overcome unbalanced fleet flow in car sharing systems.
CTPs, such as electric vehicles and solar photovoltaic panels, provide opportunities to
reduce fossil-fuel consumptions and thereby curb carbon emissions. However, the adoption
process of those products is often hampered by the so-called chicken-and-egg dilemma....[
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Environmental issues such as climate change and energy crisis require business innovations
to satisfy consumers’ demand in a more sustainable way. This dissertation is to investigate
the challenges faced by decision makers such as governments and firms in order to align
business profitability with environmental sustainability. The dissertation is composed of
two research problems: subsidy analysis to promote clean technology products (CTPs) and
dynamic surcharging to overcome unbalanced fleet flow in car sharing systems.
CTPs, such as electric vehicles and solar photovoltaic panels, provide opportunities to
reduce fossil-fuel consumptions and thereby curb carbon emissions. However, the adoption
process of those products is often hampered by the so-called chicken-and-egg dilemma. In
the first part of the dissertation, we study two lines of widely-discussed policy instruments
to tackle the chicken-and-egg dilemma, namely, government subsidies and mandated information
disclosure. We find that, both consumer subsidy the firm subsidy may, under certain
conditions, negatively affect adoptions, in that the former may interfere with firm’s investment
incentives and lead to reduced overall adoption levels, and the latter may cause early
adopters to delay their purchase. In addition, mandated information removing the information
asymmetry about the investment cost may lead to decreased overall adoptions under
certain conditions.
Emerging free-flowing or flexible car sharing model is becoming a popular solution
to balance individual mobility needs and sustainability. Users can pick up available vehicles and return them at any stations whenever possible. The private car ownership can
be reduced. However, the unbalanced and time-variant usage behavior makes it difficult to match driving demand and vehicle availability. That is, vehicle“stock-outs” happen frequently
in some zones, while at the same time surplus vehicles are unutilized in other zones.
In the second part of this dissertation, we propose the use of dynamic surcharging fees to
shape users driving behavior and then to reach improved vehicle utilization and more balanced
flow. The operators can dynamically choose to implement the surcharge fees or not to
adjust vehicle flow among different stations. An approximated dynamic policy is generated
based on linear programming approach.
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