TY - JOUR

T1 - Consumer purchase intentions for electric vehicles

T2 - Is green more important than price and range?

AU - Degirmenci, Kenan

AU - Breitner, Michael H.

N1 - Funding information: The authors are grateful for the constructive comments provided by the associate editor and the three anonymous reviewers. They would like to thank Raphael Kaut for conducting the interviews, Sören Meyer for his support in arranging the test drives, and Bernadette Nüß for supervising and executing the test drives and survey completion. They also thank Professor Jan Recker for the encouragement to write this paper. This research was funded by a grant provided by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (16SNI011B). Dr Degirmenci's contributions were supported by a grant from the Australian Research Council (DP150100163).

PY - 2017/3/1

Y1 - 2017/3/1

N2 - In view of global warming and climate change, a transition from combustion to electric vehicles (EVs) can help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality. However, high acquisition costs and short driving ranges are considered to be main factors which impede the diffusion of EVs. Since electricity needs to be produced from renewable energy sources for EVs to be a true green alternative, the environmental performance of EVs is also presumed to be an important factor. This paper investigates the role of environmental performance compared to price value and range confidence regarding consumer purchase intentions for EVs. To develop our hypothesis, we interview 40 end-user subjects about their beliefs toward EVs. Then, we perform 167 test drives with a plug-in battery EV and conduct a survey with the participants to test the hypothesis. Results of a structural equation modeling support the hypothesis that the environmental performance of EVs is a stronger predictor of attitude and thus purchase intention than price value and range confidence.

AB - In view of global warming and climate change, a transition from combustion to electric vehicles (EVs) can help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality. However, high acquisition costs and short driving ranges are considered to be main factors which impede the diffusion of EVs. Since electricity needs to be produced from renewable energy sources for EVs to be a true green alternative, the environmental performance of EVs is also presumed to be an important factor. This paper investigates the role of environmental performance compared to price value and range confidence regarding consumer purchase intentions for EVs. To develop our hypothesis, we interview 40 end-user subjects about their beliefs toward EVs. Then, we perform 167 test drives with a plug-in battery EV and conduct a survey with the participants to test the hypothesis. Results of a structural equation modeling support the hypothesis that the environmental performance of EVs is a stronger predictor of attitude and thus purchase intention than price value and range confidence.

KW - Electric vehicles

KW - Environmental performance

KW - Price value

KW - Purchase intention

KW - Range confidence

KW - Structural equation modeling

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85011824736&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.trd.2017.01.001

DO - 10.1016/j.trd.2017.01.001

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85011824736

VL - 51

SP - 250

EP - 260

JO - Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment

JF - Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment

SN - 1361-9209

ER -