Consumers Purchase Intentions of Green Electric Vehicles: The Influence of Consumers Technological and Environmental Considerations

Abstract

The purpose of the current study is to explore barriers influencing consumers’ intention to adopt sustainable electric vehicles (EV) based on the modified theory of planned behavior (TPB) model. Structural equation modeling (SEM) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were employed to analyze the research model, using 262 valid responses. The findings of the current study explored how attitude (ATT), subjective norm (SN), and perceived behavioral control (PBC) significantly influenced users’ sustainable consumption intentions. The finding also explored ways in which environmental concern significantly influenced ATT, SN, PBC, and sustainable consumption intention of the users. Not only measurements of vehicle performance, namely safety, reliability, and range, but other factors, such as purchasing price, charging facility, and maintenance and battery cost also influenced consumers’ sustainable consumption intentions. The predictive power of the proposed model (R2 = 63.5) was better than the original TPB (R2 = 53.6). Results also indicated that Taiwanese are primarily concerned about the greenhouse effects on the environment, which reflected their sustainable consumption intentions. The conclusions of the current study could assist government and policymakers in designing sustainable programs, which could improve consumers’ sustainable consumption intentions to prevent further air pollution and reduce CO2 emissions from the transportation sector.