Motivations and Barriers Associated with the Adoption of Battery Electric Vehicles in Beijing: A Multinomial Logit Model Approach

The recent surge of the Chinese Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PEV) market makes China the world’s largest PEV stock. A series of supportive policies in China contributed greatly to the rapid PEV adoption by limiting regular vehicles and reducing the price of PEVs. However, the role these policies play in changing references and encouraging consumers to purchase PEVs rather than conventional vehicles is not fully known. Other factors, rather than incentives, that could help maintain the current adoption trend are still unclear. The latter is especially critical in understanding how the market reacts to a gradually decreasing level of incentives to achieve the next goal of 5 million PEVs on the road by 2020 in China. Therefore, in this study the authors explored these research questions through a cross-sectional study of the current PEV market on consumers in Beijing by employing a multinomial logit model. Beijing has high levels of PEV adoptions in addition to a specific policy stimulus. The model results show significant influences of stimuli, individual socio-demographics, attitudes, charging infrastructure, and charging experiences on the adoption of PEVs over conventional vehicles. The results may help find out key interventions for policy makers to promote more PEV adoptions in China as well as other countries