Research On Diffusion Mechanism Of Electric Vehicles Based On Customers' Adoption Behaviors

Aiming to accelerate the development of electric vehicles(EVs),Chinese government has successively issued a series of strategic planning and relevant policies,such as “Development of the Energy-Saving and New Energy Automobile Industry(2012-2020)”.The adoption of EVs in the fields of public transportation and logistics is promoted and encouraged with these planning and policies.However,EVs have encountered the bottleneck of development in private vehicles market.Relevant enterprises in the industrial chain and individual customers have a wait-and-see attitude toward the commercial investment and adoption of EVs,resulting in the "egg chicken,chicken and eggs" dilemma.Only by fully understanding customers' adoption behavior and the diffusion process of EV,as well as promoting EVs effectively,can we break through the existing stalemate and solve the realistic problems of low EV adoption rate and the difficulty in expanding the market of EVs.The diffusion of EVs is a long-period dynamic process involving multi-level factors of product,customer and policy environment.This process is impacted by many complex effects such as the multiple conjunctural causation among influencing factors,the interactions between adopters and the information feedback between adopters and environment.All these effects are not fully explained by existing researches of technology adoption and product diffusion,which study adoption and diffusion from the perspectives of product and customer respectively.In addition,the adoption and diffusion problem of EVs in China should be studied based on the specific market characteristics and policy environment,due to the difference in culture and social environment.However,current researches lack of exploration of the internal relationships and diffusion mechanism,and exist limitations like contradict conclusions,monotonous research methods.Hence,this research studies the adoption and diffusion problem of EVs in Chinese private vehicles market from a comprehensive perspective of product and customer.Several innovative works are conducted by integrating multiple methods of system dynamics,fuzzy logic,scenario experiments,qualitative comparison analysis based on fuzzy sets.Firstly,the system dynamics model of EV adoption and diffusion is constructed,with the consideration of customer's fuzzy perception on EV attributes.The influence of two kinds of attributes,the vehicle attributes and the unique attributes brought from the application of ICT,on the adoption behavior and diffusion process is analyzed from the individual level with the perspective of “cost-utility analysis”.The study has found that the adoption behavior based on customer fuzzy perception has a delay effect on the diffusion process of EVs.In addition,the cost difference of fuel vehicles and EVs play an important role in the effects of other EV attributes on EV diffusion.Secondly,a system dynamics model of EV adoption and diffusion with customer heterogeneity and word-of-mouth is constructed,based on the integration of technology acceptance model and Bass diffusion model.With this dynamic model,we analyze the effects of the diversity of customers' perceptions about EV attributes and the interactive relationship of word-of-mouth on the market diffusion process of EVs.By comparing the simulation results with different customer structures,this research has found that the first-time vehicle buyers are beneficial to EV adoption and diffusion by enhancing the effect of word-of-mouth and economies of scale.Meanwhile,they could also amplify the positive effect of perceived ease of use on the EV diffusion.Thirdly,the system dynamics model of EV adoption and diffusion with the influence of policy environment and network externalities is constructed.The effects of contextual factors like incentive policies on EV diffusion is analyzed at the macro level and the optimal policy strategies in terms of time and investment are also provided.The research has found that policy settings with network externalities can better promote the adoption and diffusion of EVs.However,they depend on more financial supports and the allocation of funds has an important impact on policy collaboration.Moreover,the trade-off between the policy of infrastructure and other policies is critical for the horizontal policy integration,while using the incentive policies with small amount appropriately is beneficial to the policy integration in time dimension.Fourthly,a configurational analysis with holistic perspective on the different influencing factors of EV adoption and diffusion is conducted to handle the multiple conjunctural causation among influencing factors.With the method of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis(fsQCA),the market diffusion strategies that comprehensively consider customer characteristics,EV attributes and policy environment are provided.The results of the study explain to some extent the contradictory conclusions about factors such as gender and income.Moreover,the research has found that high-high-intensity/low-high-intensity policy combinations and monetary/non-monetary policy combinations are effective in facilitating EV adoption.Meanwhile,the research provides the business focus and target customers for the automotive companies under different policy environments.This research has three key contributions:(1)On the theoretical level,the complex causal relationship between various influencing factors and the adoption behavior of EV customers,as well as the complex mechanism of market diffusion are analyzed from the comprehensive perspective of product and customer.It provides theoretical guidance for solving the practical problems of low adoption rate and slow diffusion of EV,which is related to the development of the national strategic industry.(2)At the method level,aiming at the complexity and dynamics of the research problems,comprehensively applying various frontier research methods such as system dynamics and fuzzy logic.It provides method support for the future research in this field.(3)At the application level,based on the research results,this study provides comprehensive managerial insights for the government and automotive companies from the perspectives of different stages of development,customer structure and policy environment.