Application of Conjoint Analysis for the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment of electric mobility scenarios with a user perspective
Résumé
Mobility sector is undergoing a total shift. Public policies are pushing forward restrictive regulations in favor of energy transition and low-carbon technologies. Electric mobility has burst into market and is expected to progressively displace fossil fuel-based technologies. Users are becoming more aware not only of the environmental, but also the social and economic impacts related to their choices. Value chain actors and local authorities are, therefore, compelled to design more sustainable mobility technologies and services that fulfill user’s needs and expectations.
Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) delivers multidimensional results, including environmental impacts, economic costs, and social and socio-economic potential impacts that could perform trade-offs between the three sustainability dimensions. Using these results to support the decision-making process requires multicriteria analysis techniques. The current study proposes a combined application of Multicriteria Decision Analysis with LCSA to help choose among available mobility services from a user’s perspective.
Surveys and individual interviews are conducted to collect users’ point of views allowing the selection of the most significant decision criteria representing the three sustainability dimensions (resource depletion, economic accessibility, adaptability, etc.). Conjoint Analysis is then applied to develop weighting factors throughout a preference analysis. In a second round of surveys, users are asked to rank different attributes combinations corresponding to alternatives sustainability performance.
This approach is selected for its relevance regarding the analysis of attributes instead of a direct weighting of impacts categories. The approach is applied to a case study of daily door-to-door commuting travel scenario in France. Real-world data are used to assess sustainability indicators for selected technologies (passenger vehicles, buses, bikes) and services (shared mobility, personal vehicles, and public transportation). Further applications of this methodological framework to other case studies could support the decision-making process for end-users to better understand the effects of their choices related to mobility strategies. The global approach proposed in this work may, additionally, contribute to LCSA methodological development throughout a multicriteria analysis of the sustainability results.