1. Introduction
Dramatic reductions in anthropogenic carbon emissions, including vehicle exhausts, are indispensable in curbing global climate change and its related outcomes [
1,
2]. China, as the world’s largest vehicle production and sales market since 2009, is playing a crucial role in energy savings and environment protection, for its private vehicle population surged by 360% from 45 million in 2009 to 207 million in 2018 [
3]. The exponential growth in private vehicle ownership has triggered a plethora of problems such as energy shortage, traffic jams, and particularly exhaust emissions [
4,
5]. Based on the World Energy Outlook 2016, motor vehicles are responsible for about 25% of the aggregate of China’s carbon emissions, and in 2030, this percentage is anticipated to climb to45%. Therefore, cutting down carbon emissions from fuel-driven vehicles is critical to mitigate such grim environmental problems and to obtain the goal of emission reduction [
6,
7].
It has been acknowledged that the usage of new energy vehicles (NEVs) is a promising alternative to lower carbon emissions [
8,
9]. NEVs include various types of vehicles such as hydrogen fuel vehicles, battery electric vehicles and others, but battery electric vehicles are dominant in the current worldwide NEV market. Here, this paper refers to NEVs merely containing battery electric cars (i.e., pure electric, plug-in hybrid and hybrid). Compared to conventional fuel vehicles (CVs), NEVs bring substantial social and environmental benefits including reducing greenhouse gases and other emissions, enhancing energy security, and promoting the adoption of new technologies, among others [
10]. However, commercializing NEVs would be one arduous task. Some experiences from countries including the United States, the Netherlands, China, and Japan have revealed that the diffusion of NEVs is challenged by its prohibition price, inconvenient refueling facilities, expensive renewal battery cost, as well as performance and reliability concerns compared with CVs during the preliminary stage of NEVs [
8,
11,
12,
13].
Considering that NEVs are not only a green and sustainable technology innovation, but significant to saving energy and protecting the environment, the governments of various nations have enacted subsidy and incentive schemes to stimulate NEV consumption [
14,
15]. For instance, the Japanese and German governments have issued free charging policies for NEV users [
13]. Norway has taken the lead in developing its own NEV industry due to the government’s subsidizing the construction of public and private charging infrastructure [
5]. The US government has offered fiscal subsidy programs, and a state-wide income tax credit for NEV adopters [
12]. The Dutch government has planned to reinforce the investment of NEV technologies, with an aim to promote the development of NEVs [
11].
China has also initiated various measures to accelerate the industrialization of the NEV industry since 2009 [
16]. It is obvious that China’s execution of NEV measures is normally composed of a ‘planning-demonstration-generalization’ procedure [
17]. For example, to fulfill the national goal of approximate 550,000 units of NEV sales, which took up 5% of overall vehicle sales by 2011, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST)enacted the Regulation on Executing Energy Conservation and NEV Demonstration Scheme, and carried out the NEV pilot and demonstration project in 2009 [
18]. Such measures help China to focus on the demonstration of NEVs in public service sectors, such as government vehicles, public transportation, taxis, and particular goal vehicles in 13 tier I cities [
17]. Meanwhile, both the local and central governments offer monetary supports to the development of NEVs [
5]. Central subsidies primarily compensate a portion of costs to purchase NEVs, whereas fiscal incentives from local government not only cover the additional buying and manufacturing costs of NEVs, but also focus on infrastructure development and battery recycling [
19]. Generally, the amount of subsidy per unit that NEVs obtain depends on the battery technical level, vehicle type, and cruise ranges [
20]. For example, the central government can subsidize each PHEV (Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle) unit with 50 thousand CNY (Chinese Yuan) if the NEV electric power ratio surpasses 35% per unit, and its fuel, relative to CVs, could save less than 45%. On the other hand, subsidies for FCVs and BEVs can attain up to250 thousand and 60 thousand CNY (Chinese Yuan) per vehicle, respectively [
17,
21].
These policies typically represent the Chinese government’s goals, measurements, and procedures, and this is how they regulate all agents’ behaviors of the new energy vehicle market, such as the consumers, carmakers, retailers, and recyclers [
17,
22]. To investigate NEV industry development, such policies are normally divided into three domains [
23,
24]: (i) Supply side: to offer essential support for the manufacturing sector, including provisions for infrastructure investment, fiscal assistance, human training and technical subsidies [
8,
25]; (ii) demand side: to boost market demand from product consumers and retailers, provisions for preferential usage rules, government purchases, and direct taxation and fee reduction or exemption [
26,
27]; and (iii) environment side: to create preferential circumstances boosting thereusage, recycling and remanufacturing of NEVs such as provisions for preferential financial and legal regulations [
5].
Table 1 summarizes some of the different types of policies of China’s government, to help aid in and encourage NEV adoption.
With intensive supports from the policies issued by national and local governments, China’s NEV industry has been at a rapid-growth stage [
28]. It is reported that China produced 1.27 million units of NEVs in 2018, an increase of 59.9% year-on-year, while sales reached 1.26 million units, up 61.7% compared with a year earlier. From January to June in 2019, China’s NEV market saw a 48.5% and 49.6% increase in terms of production and sales compared with the same period of last year, which stood at 614 thousand units and 617 thousand units, respectively [
29]. In addition, global NEV sales in the first quarter of 2019 exceeded 500 thousand units, up 58% year-on-year, which implies that China has contributed almost half of the NEV sales [
29], and thereby has become the world’s largest nation in term of the accumulated NEV sales [
8,
9].
Considering that NEVs have the nature of radical innovative technologies, there may be reasons to suspect that vehicle consumers may not behave in the same pattern toward NEVs as they do towards CVs [
13]. Innovations at an initial stage typically yield higher technological risks, which brings many variations associated with functionality and quality [
30]. Since NEVs represent a totally new product different from CVs, they also result in market fluctuation and technological uncertainties [
31]. Therefore, higher uncertainties regarding NEVs thwart individuals’ willingness to purchase NEVs relative to CVs. In this regard, one phenomenon is aroused, that despite strong supports from Chinese governments, there still exists inefficiency in boosting the penetration of NEVs [
5]. Parallelly, consumers’ passion for the self-use purchase of NEVs is not expected to be relatively high in reality [
7].
To ease these volatilities and skepticism from both demand and supply side, governments have successively made adjustments to the current policies in three facets, namely production, purchase/usage and after-sales service [
7,
8]. However, in prior research conducted through analyzing the role of government policies as a whole in the diffusion of NEVs [
8,
19,
26], few have grouped government policies into three subclasses, and explored the impact of policy portfolios including production policy, purchase/usage policy and recycle policy on consumers’ purchase intention, separately [
1,
2]. To this end, the current study tries to close such gap, thus aiding policymakers to have a better and holistic understanding of the role of each subclass policy in enhancing NEV consumption, and it also offers a guideline on policy portfolios with an aim to reduce innovation and purchase uncertainties from the product life cycle policy perspective.
Based on the extant studies of NEV consumption, the current research develops a policy-perception-intention framework, in which consumer perception and product life cycle policy portfolios have incorporated to comprehensively examine the antecedents of NEV adoption intention, and we also take perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness into account using the technology acceptance model (TAM) due to that TAM is a prevalent decision-making theory and can explain consumer behavior based on technology attributes [
32,
33]. Specifically, this research tries to answer two critical questions: (1) How do product life cycle policy portfolios affect consumers’ intention to purchase NEVs? (2) Do different subclass policies play the same role in diffusing consumers’ purchase perception?
Therefore, the present research may make contributions to literature in three facets: (1) to assess policy implication of consumers’ NEV adoption from the perspective of product life cycle; (2) unlike prior research examining government policies as a whole, our paper separately investigates the impact of policy portfolios (i.e., production policy, purchase/usage policy and recycle policy) on perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness; (3) to identify the differences in three subclass policies playing roles in enhancing consumers’ purchase intention.
The remainder of the research is configured as below. The conceptual framework is formulated and its hypotheses are posited in
Section 2. After the research methodology and data collection are described in
Section 3, the research results and key findings are illustrated in
Section 4 and
Section 5.
Section 6 concludes with a discussion of academic and practical implications. Limitations and directions for future research are presented in
Section 7.
5. Discussion
This study has investigated how product life cycle policy portfolios influence consumers’ intentions to purchase NEVs with the perceptions of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness.
First, the results suggest two components of perceived usefulness are the antecedents of consumers’ intention to purchase NEVs. Within which, financial benefit positively affects consumers’ NEV purchase intention (H1), such findings confirm the results of prior research that consumers are willing to purchase NEVs under financial incentives [
15]. In addition, the result is consistent with [
19]. They argued that esteem needs are a reliable predictor of individual purchase intention toward NEVs, which implies that consumers with higher esteem needs are more inclined to purchase NEVs. It suggests that enhancing consumers’ financial benefits and esteem needs can increase their perceived usefulness, hence promoting consumers’ NEV purchase intention.
With regard to perceived ease of use, both NEV performance and infrastructure are the antecedents of NEV purchase intention. The former is supported by previous research that NEV performance is a strong driving force of consumers’ purchase intention of vehicles [
48]. Conversely, it is deemed that consumers who are highly skeptical of NEV performance would reject to purchase NEVs [
44]. This suggests that with the improvement of NEV performance, the market expansion of NEVs can be achieved. Additionally, the latter’s effect is also verified by prior study [
8]. They reported that the availability of charging infrastructure is of great importance in popularizing NEVs. Meanwhile, the positive effect of infrastructure on NEV purchase intention exceeds that of NEV performance. The conclusion demonstrates that consumers are giving priority to the factor of convenience of charging rather than the factor of NEV performance when they decide to purchase NEVs. It implies that construction of charging infrastructure is in urgent need of promoting NEV adoption at the infant stage.
Second, government policy portfolios have significant effects on consumers’ perceived usefulness and ease of use. As for perceived usefulness, production policy and recycle policy are antecedents of financial benefits, whereas purchase/usage policy is not. Production policy, purchase/usage policy and recycle policy positively affect esteem needs. Three subclass policies related to NEVs play different roles in an individual’s perception when consumers make purchase decisions. In the context of government policy portfolios, the results are consistent with prior research regarding production policy. They argued that subsidy policy related to manufacturing could improve consumers’ financial benefits and esteem needs [
8]. However, the insignificant influence of purchase/usage policy on financial benefits is inconsistent with previous study [
44]. Compared with production policy and recycle policy, consumers are more directly affected by purchase/usage policy.
In terms of perceived ease of use, purchase/usage policy and production policy are the antecedents of infrastructure. Recycle policy is the antecedent of NEV performance, whereas the effect of production policy on NEV performance is insignificant. The conclusion is partially consistent with prior work that expanding NEV production scale and market size can enhance the construction of infrastructure [
42], and that production incentives can strengthen improvement in NEV technologies [
17]. The results suggest that sound production policy and purchase/usage policy are effective and useful tools of the promotion of infrastructure construction. Meanwhile, recycle policies related to batteries should be further amended to facilitate improvement in NEV battery functionality and quality [
5].
Third, the significant positive effect of production policy on financial benefits is greater than that of infrastructure, and the positive effect of recycle policy on NEV performance is larger than that of financial benefits. It reveals that production policy plays a critical role in perceived financial benefit relative to infrastructure, and recycle policy also helps consumers more easily perceive NEV performance than financial benefits, with the results partially supported by the work from the literature [
5,
55]. Meanwhile, purchase/usage policy has a significant positive influence on infrastructure, which implies that such policy is supportive for the constructing of NEV charging infrastructures [
42]. On the contrary, the insignificant influence of purchase/usage policy on financial benefits gives the indication that financial incentives have limited effect on promoting the adoption of NEVs. Such findings are an augment to prior studies that with the implementation of the dual credit policy, an incentive subsidy does not further boost the development of NEVs [
55].
Fourth, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness are serving as mediators between government policy portfolios and NEV purchase intention. In details, production policy does have a significant positive effect on NEV purchase intention through the mediating effect of financial benefits, esteem needs and infrastructure. Esteem needs and infrastructure play mediation roles between purchase/usage policy and NEV purchase intention, whereas financial benefits have no significant mediating effect compared to the two above subclass policies, while the indirect effects of recycle policy on NEV purchase intention are significantly positive via the mediating factors of financial benefits, esteem needs and NEV performance.
6. Implications
Issuing a series of policy is a common practice to promote the diffusion of NEVs. This study examined the influence of three subclass policies (production policy, purchase/usage policy and recycle policy) on consumers’ NEV purchase intention through perceived ease of use/usefulness. Some crucial theoretical and practical implications are obtained.
The study makes several theoretical implications to research. First, this research has investigated the impact of product life cycle policy portfolios on NEV purchase intention of consumers based on TAM. Prior studies have examined the indirect moderating role of government policies in NEV adoption; but the purpose of the current study is to empirically assess the influence of different subclass policies on consumers’ purchase intention toward NEVs through perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. The present study is one of the first to examine the effect of product life cycle policy portfolios, i.e., production, purchase/usage, and recycle policy, on consumers’ willingness to purchase NEVs, hence illustrating the positive function of product life cycle policy mix. Additionally, we also find that esteem needs have the association with consumers’ purchase process under the policy portfolio scenario, thus uncovering the psychological mechanism of NEV purchasing intention.
Second, prior research has seldom focused on product life cycle policy portfolios, which is referred to how consumers’ purchase intention responds when they are exposed to the different policy mix. The present study finds that the product life cycle policy portfolios is an important factor before consumers determine to purchase NEVs. This study also enriches the literature on the role of the constitution of government policy in consumers’ purchase decision of NEVs.
Third, extant work has yet comprehensively explored the mediating role of cognitive acceptance of NEVs between different subclass policies and purchase intention. The current study finds that government policy portfolios have indirect effects on NEV purchase intention through mediating effect of financial benefits, esteem needs, NEV performance and infrastructure.
This study also has practical implications. The results indicate the guiding role of policy portfolios in the penetration of NEVs, and provide government, retailers and carmakers with an in-depth understanding of how policy portfolios can affect NEV purchase intention. First, government should have a holistic view on issuing different subclass policies and effectively constituting policy portfolios. This is because different subclass policies have unique and different roles in consumers’ perception.
Second, given the policy portfolios with three subclass policies, the perceived financial benefits, esteem needs, NEV performance and infrastructure positively affect NEV purchase intention. For such reasons, the strategies for enhancing consumers’ perception on usefulness and ease of use toward NEVs should be adopted. For instance, carmakers could propagate the symbolic meaning of driving NEVs through advertisements, and the government should encourage more social capitals invested in the amplification of infrastructure (charging stations) to alleviate consumers’ charging anxiety.
Third, given that recycle policy is the antecedent of NEV performance whereas the production policy is not, the government, on one hand, should perfect the existing NEV recycle policy, especially for spent battery recycling; meanwhile, it would be a wise move for the government to put recycle policy into other subclasses to yield a package of policies with an aim to consumers’ full understanding of perceived values toward NEVs. On the other hand, the government should reinforce the implementation of market-based dual credit policy, and carmakers should speed up the steps of upgrading and improving NEV technologies, which reverses the misconception of production policy mainly focusing on NEV production size but neglecting its quality and functionality; it is why the old-version production policy results in the insignificant effect on NEV performance in this analysis model.
Fourth, as the production policy, purchase/usage policy, and recycle policy are the antecedents of esteem needs, meanwhile, production policy and purchase/usage policy positively influence infrastructure. Therefore, the government should underline or disseminate the distinct natures of NEVs in a different subclass of policies to capture consumers’ attention. For example, self-driving and car networking technology can be highlighted in production policy, free or discount charges for public parking lots in usage policy, and the reimbursement of disposal or trade-in used battery in recycle policy. In addition, both production policy and recycle policy should include the contents regarding construction of charging infrastructure, for instance, charging infrastructure’s functions can be extended from merely electricity charging to battery replacement, even to used battery collection for recycling.
Fifth, given that production policy and recycle policy are the antecedents of financial benefit whereas purchase/usage policy is not a significant influential factor, the government should slow down the paces of shrinking subsidies for consumers’ purchase of NEVs, thus narrowing the perceived benefit gap between the previous subsidy policy and the current one, otherwise, it will curb consumers’ willingness to buy NEVs due to the dramatic drop in perceived financial benefits.
7. Conclusion, Limitations and Future Research
A policy-perception-intention framework was proposed to investigate the predictors of consumers’ NEV purchase intention from the perspective of product life cycle policy portfolios. Based on the technology acceptance model (TAM), we examined the effects of both usefulness and ease of use of consumers’ perception on purchase behavior. The former has two dimensions, i.e., financial benefit and esteem needs, whereas the latter has two facets, i.e., NEV performance and infrastructure. Meanwhile, we investigated the influence of three subclass policies (production policy, purchase/usage policy and recycle policy) on consumers’ NEV purchase intention and the mediating role of consumers’ perceptions. The results showed that product life cycle policy portfolios and consumers’ perceptions are important determinants of their NEV purchase intention. All factors of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use have positive effects on purchase intention. Meanwhile, consumers’ perceptions play a critical mediating role between policy portfolios and NEV purchase intention.
Our study also has several limitations. First, the data were collected from the online survey platform participants in China; with different cultures and preferences in various nations, the findings may alter when the analysis model extends to other nations and regions. Second, NEV purchase intention is the dependent variable in the current study, but purchase intention is not yet equivalent of actual purchase behavior; the divergence between purchase intention and actual behavior is really in existence. Hence, future research may examine NEV usage by considering actual purchase behavior as a dependent variable in the analysis model. Third, NEVs in the present work include all NEV categories and all brands, and consumers may have different perceptions toward NEVs, in terms of quality, functionality and utilities when they experience NEV products of various types and brands, thus, some specific groups of NEVs must be addressed in future research. Finally, though the current work reveals that different subclass policies and its portfolios affect consumer NEV purchase intention through their perception of usefulness and ease of use, whether perceived risks and negative utilities share exactly the critical role in the effect of policy portfolios on purchase intention was not clarified; future work can further distinguish it.