Analysis of Relative Importance on Electric Vehicle Conversion Intention: Comparing China and Korea

Abstract

The transportation sector is responsible for a large quantity of air pollutant emission. While electric vehicles are introduced as a method to dramatically reduce air pollutant emission, the sales of electric vehicles are relatively low compared to traditional vehicles running on fossil fuel. Past studies have analyzed the factors influencing the conversion intention of electric vehicles. However, they share the limitation of not being able to examine the subject in a comprehensive approach, bringing up the need for a new research. AHP analysis conducted on the data collected for Korea showed the relative effect of dimensions as product quality (40.9%), policy support (27.3%), market environment (18.1%), and consumption consciousness (13.7%). For the factors, reliability and durability (13.7%), purchase subsidies (11.1%), and performance (10.1%) showed an especially high effect on the conversion intention. For the case of China, results showed the relative effect of dimensions as policy support (54.8%), consumption consciousness (33.1%), product quality (7.4%), and market environment (4.7%). For the factors, governmental regulation(38.7%), Resource Saving(26.7%), and purchase subsidies(7.8%) showed an especially high effect compared to other factors. The study provides a guideline for policy making and the basis data for strategy establishment of automakers. Also, in contrast to former research that mainly concentrated on the eco-friendliness and economic aspect of electric vehicles, this paper was able to define the importance of reliability and durability, and resource saving as an influencing factor, providing a new direction for improvement. In addition, with the comparison of two culturally distinct groups, the study was able to provide a guideline for exporting situations.