Causal spillover effects of electric vehicle charging station placement on local businesses: a staggered adoption study

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: De Silva, M. Mavin, Clark, Callie, Nakayama, Tadachika, Yabe, Takahiro
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author De Silva, M. Mavin
Clark, Callie
Nakayama, Tadachika
Yabe, Takahiro
author_facet De Silva, M. Mavin
Clark, Callie
Nakayama, Tadachika
Yabe, Takahiro
contents Understanding the economic impacts of the placement of electric vehicle charging stations (EVCSs) is crucial for planning infrastructure systems that benefit the broader community. Theoretical models have been used to predict human behavior during charging events, however, these models have often neglected the complexity of trip patterns, and have underestimated the real-world impacts of such infrastructure on the local economy. In this paper, we design a quasi-experiment using mobile phone GPS location and EVCS deployment history data to analyze the causal impact of EVCS placement on visitation patterns to businesses. More specifically, we leverage the staggered placement of EVCSs in New York City and California Bay Area to match treated and control businesses that share similar characteristics including the business sector, location, and pre-treatment visitation count. By comparing three alternative matching strategies, we show that staggered adoption avoids selecting controls from non-treated clusters, and yields greater spatial overlap in dense urban areas. We find that EVCS installations significantly increase customer traffic, with effects concentrated in recreational venues in New York City and routine destinations such as groceries, pharmacies, and cafes in California Bay Area. Our results suggest that the economic spillovers of EVCSs vary across urban contexts and highlight the effectiveness of leveraging the staggered nature of adoption timings for evaluating infrastructure impacts in heterogeneous urban environments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_19507
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Causal spillover effects of electric vehicle charging station placement on local businesses: a staggered adoption study
De Silva, M. Mavin
Clark, Callie
Nakayama, Tadachika
Yabe, Takahiro
Physics and Society
Understanding the economic impacts of the placement of electric vehicle charging stations (EVCSs) is crucial for planning infrastructure systems that benefit the broader community. Theoretical models have been used to predict human behavior during charging events, however, these models have often neglected the complexity of trip patterns, and have underestimated the real-world impacts of such infrastructure on the local economy. In this paper, we design a quasi-experiment using mobile phone GPS location and EVCS deployment history data to analyze the causal impact of EVCS placement on visitation patterns to businesses. More specifically, we leverage the staggered placement of EVCSs in New York City and California Bay Area to match treated and control businesses that share similar characteristics including the business sector, location, and pre-treatment visitation count. By comparing three alternative matching strategies, we show that staggered adoption avoids selecting controls from non-treated clusters, and yields greater spatial overlap in dense urban areas. We find that EVCS installations significantly increase customer traffic, with effects concentrated in recreational venues in New York City and routine destinations such as groceries, pharmacies, and cafes in California Bay Area. Our results suggest that the economic spillovers of EVCSs vary across urban contexts and highlight the effectiveness of leveraging the staggered nature of adoption timings for evaluating infrastructure impacts in heterogeneous urban environments.
title Causal spillover effects of electric vehicle charging station placement on local businesses: a staggered adoption study
topic Physics and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.19507