An Investigation on Public Perceptions and Adoption Attitudes towards Electric Vehicles and the Roles of Government Policies in Beijing

摘要

Recent years, because of ever-fast expanding in the consumption of fossil fuel, the air quality gets increasingly bad in Beijing. In order to reduce air pollutants and improve the public living environment, the electric vehicles (EVs) were introduced and encouraged to be adopted by the public, coupled with a series of governmental incentive policies. However, the actual effects of these policies are vague. A survey was designed and conducted to investigate this problem. The survey was designed mainly to answer the following 3 questions: 1) public perceptions of EVs and related policies; 2) public adoption attitudes towards EVs and the roles of governmental policies. Total 434 valid internet responses was received, and the results show that people in Beijing believe that popularizing the EVs can effectively improve the air quality. Although most of the people are not very familiar with EVs, they say they know something In regarding to the adoption attitudes towards EVs, more than half of the ones who plan to buy a new car say they want to buy an EV, that mainly because of the environmental wellness of driving an EV. The effects of the governmental policies on increasing the private adoption willingness of an EV depend on what value can the EV bring to them. Suggestions for the future governmental policies for effectively promoting the public adoption of EVs are provided include reinforcing the public perceptions of EVs, constructing more charging facilities for EVs and investing in the research and development of domestic EVs' technologies.