How psychological factors related to consumer preferences on plug-in electric passenger vehicles in Chinese cities?A comparison of cities with and without restrictions

This study examines the impacts of psychological factors on Chinese consumers’preferences of PEV features as well as PEV uptake intension in cities with and without license number plate restrictions. Psychological factors are relatively less investigated factors in the domestic literature, but consumers may not behave rational as researchers expected when facing such a complex choice problem. This study generates three latent psychological factors, namely knowledge of policy and PEVs, social influence, and environmental ttitudes/innovativeness, and integrates them with object-case best-worst scaling model through a hybrid choice model. Evidences show that knowledge and environmental attitudes are weaker compare to social influence and innovativeness, but these factors affect consumers’ preferences differently both at individual level and city level. To facilitate market-oriented PEV uptake, especially in areas without restrictions, improve reputation through interpersonal communication on technical features are expected. While in large cities with restrictions, through neighborhood effects and innovativeness, emphasizing air pollution and CO2 emission reduction features could be more efficient.