Intention of consumers to adopt electric vehicle in the post-subsidy era: evidence from China

Abstract

The electric vehicle (EV) industry has been promoted by a series of incentive policy measures in China to reduce both the consumption of petroleum fuels and the emission of greenhouse gases. Nonetheless, the EV market remains small-scale. In this context, the Chinese government initiated a gradual phase-out of EV subsidies in 2018, targeting total elimination by 2022, which is undoubtedly a massive challenge to the EV market. This study proposes an extended theory of planned behavior model, in which psychological factors (attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control and perceived risk) and two categories of incentive policy measures (financial incentive policy and non-financial incentive policy) are integrated to explain intentions to adopt EV use. Moreover, two types of personality (consumer innovativeness and environmental self-identity) are added as moderating variables to assess policy effects based on different personality conditions. Primary data collected from 727 participants in China were used to test the model empirically. The results show that the psychological factors and policy measures in the model significantly influence consumers’ EVs adoption intention, and the personalities of consumers significantly moderate the impacts of policy measures on this adoption intention. The findings help increase understanding of consumers' adoption intentions in respect of EVs and contribute to promoting EV development, especially in the post-subsidy era.