Moderating effects of personal innovativeness and driving experience on factors influencing adoption of BEVs in Malaysia: An integrated SEM–BSEM approach

Hamed Khazaei,Mohammad Ali Tareq

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e08072

Hamed Khazaei, Mohammad Ali Tareq

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e08072

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Journal: Heliyon	Publication Date: Sep 1, 2021
Citations: 32	License type: cc-by

Affiliation: University of Kuala Lumpur

Abstract

Electric cars are relatively in the early stage of acceptance in Malaysia, the purpose of the current research was to determine the factors affecting the adoption of battery electric vehicles in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This research utilized a quantitative method to gather and analyze the data and proposed a novel theoretical framework to explain the acceptance of battery electric vehicles. 500 surveys were distributed and 322 were gathered. Respondents of the study were University lecturers, postgraduate students, and employees in private companies. The results of SEM analysis indicated that the developed model provides a good fit for constructs used for this research. The result showed that social influence, facilitating conditions, environmental concern, and perceived enjoyment have positive effects on the adoption of BEVs. However, respondents indicated anxiety about the battery range. In conclusion, this study has contributed additional variables such as range anxiety and driving experience to the electric vehicle's acceptance literature. The findings are significant to electric car producers and policy makers who have environmental concerns to understand consumer prospective in this field.

Highlights

Governments are looking for renewable resources and try to convince individuals to use cleaner energies (Anair and Mahmassani, 2012)
The current study proposed a novel conceptual framework to explain and predict battery electric vehicle adoption
This study aimed to determine the correlations among social influence, facilitation condition, environmental concern, range anxiety, and perceived enjoyment on intention to purchase battery electric vehicles in Malaysia

Summary

Introduction

Governments are looking for renewable resources and try to convince individuals to use cleaner energies (Anair and Mahmassani, 2012). Battery electric vehicles have a direct impact on a cleaner environment, in countries with high contributions of renewable energies in electricity production (Lai et al, 2015). The usage of electric cars is one of the resolutions to decrease carbon dioxide production, their usage is still low in numerous countries including Malaysia (Khazaei and Khazaei, 2016). Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is one of the main greenhouse gases worldwide and in Malaysia (Susskind et al, 2020). Mentioning the prominence of coping with global warming, numerous governments have started policies for reducing CO2 emissions by motivating, introducing, and production of electric cars. The purpose of the current research was to determine the factors affecting the adoption of battery electric vehicles in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The current study proposed a novel conceptual framework to explain and predict battery electric vehicle adoption. The results of the study might not be generalizable for the whole Malaysian society

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