| The increasingly severe dual crisis of energy security and environment pollutionaccelerates the development of new energy vehicles. However, the "praised" newenergy vehicles are facing with a promotion dilemma. As a discontinuous innovationproduct which is bearing more social benefits, the adoption of new energy vehicle isfar from being a momentary behavior, but contains a series of complex psychologicalprocess from awareness to the decision-making. However, neither the government northe industry has focused on in-depth understanding and grasping this process, and theconsumers are lacking of awareness of new energy vehicles, especially of the benefits,resulting in their decision-making process been suffered serious setbacks. Therefore,how to properly guide the psychological perception of consumers, in order toeffectively stimulate the adoption of new energy vehicles? This becomes one of thestrategic issues which needs urgent solutions for both of the government and themanufactures to improve the adoption of new energy vehicles. Existing researches onnew energy vehicles at the consumer level, domestic and overseas, focus only onexplaining and predicting the attitudes, preferences and intentions to adopt, yet littlehas been studied on the consumer’s psychological changes in the adoptiondecision-making process. Besides, although the innovation adoption researches in thepast have addressed the effects of expected consequences on the adoption behavioralintention, but the underlying mechanism of how to guide consumers’ psychologicalperceptions of the consequences to stimulate their intentions to adopt has not yet beenexplored, either.In view of these research gaps, and taking into account that new energy vehicles’core benefits can be reflected in the characteristics of different dimensions ofpsychological distance, such as the present and future benefits, pro-personal andpro-social benefits, local and national benefits and so on, the author, drawing onpsychological distance theory and introducing regulatory focus theory, focuses mainlyon the following four research objectives from a message framing perspective basedon the interactive effect of psychological distance and regulatory focus: Firstly, fromthe temporal distance dimension, to explore the underlying mechanism of how tostimulate promotion-and prevention-focused individuals’ intentions to adopt newenergy vehicles more effectively through promotion-and prevention-focused messageframing which is emphasizing on the present or future benefits; Secondly, from thesocial distance dimension, to investigate the mechanism of how to stimulate promotion-and prevention-focused individuals’ intentions to adopt new energyvehicles more effectively through promotion-and prevention-focused messageframing which is emphasizing on the pro-self or pro-social benefits; Thirdly, from thespatial distance dimension, to probe the mechanism of how to stimulate promotion-and prevention-focused individuals’ intentions to adopt new energy vehicles moreeffectively through promotion-and prevention-focused message framing which isemphasizing on the pro-local or pro-national benefits; Finally, to put forward someforward-looking and more practical marketing strategically suggestions andrecommendations, based on the above research findings, in order to improve theadoption of new energy vehicles.Applying with experimental research method, this dissertation designs three2(individuals’ regulatory focus: promotion vs. prevention) by2(message’s regulatoryfocus: promotion vs. prevention) by2(psychological distance framing: near vs.distant) between-subjects factorial experiments to test the hypotheses. Experiment1examines the synergistic fit effect of temporal distance framing of the present orfuture benefits and message’s and individuals’ regulatory focus. The results show thatthe emphasis on the present benefits through promotion-focused message framing willstimulate the most intentions to adopt new energy vehicles by the promotion-focusedconsumers, while the emphasis on the future benefits by prevention-focused messageframing appeals most to stimulate prevention focused consumers’ willingness to adopt.Experiment2further investigates from the social distance dimension, addressing thesynergistic fit effect of social distance framing of the pro-self or pro-social benefitsand message’s and individuals’ regulatory focus. The results show that the emphasison promotion-framed pro-self benefits motivates the most to promote the willingnessof the promotion focused consumer adoption of new energy vehicles, whereas theemphasis on prevention-framed pro-social benefits appeals most to stimulate theadoption intention of prevention focused consumers. Moreover, experiment3exploresthe synergistic fit effect more depthly through the spatial distance framing of thesocial benefits of the new energy vehicles (mainly environmental benefits) byfocusing on the local and national benefits. The results show that the benefits of thelocal focus in a promotion frame can promote most the promotion-focused consumers’adoption of new energy vehicles, and the benefits of the national focus in a preventionframe can stimulate prevention focused consumers’ willingness to adopt the most.What’s more, experiment3also found that the emphasis on the benefits at the national level in a promotion frame can also stimulate promotion-focused consumers’willingness to adopt.Overall, this dissertation discusses the synergy mechanism of the effects oftemporal, social and spatial distance framing and regulatory focus message framingand individuals’ regulatory focus on the adoption of new energy vehicles throughthree studies. It also reveals that the different dimensions of psychological distanceframework vary in the specific case of the impact magnitude and direction. Thetheoretical contributions lie in the following four aspects: First, it is the first time tosystematically investigate the effects of psychological distance framing on consumerbehavior in three different dimensions, i.e., temporal distance, social distance andspatial distance; Second, the author innovatively introduces the regulatory focusmessage framing and individuals’ regulatory focus to the research domain ofinnovative products adoption on energy conservation and environmental protection,and further excavates ways to stimulate different regulatory focused consumers’willingness to adopt; Third, it clarifies the function of the psychological distanceframing in three different dimensions, temporal distance, social distance and spatialdistance, as a new boundary condition of regulatory relevance effect for the first time;Fourth, it proposes a new and synergistic regulatory fit effect of the framing ofpsychological distance, message’s regulatory focus and individuals’ regulatory focus,which can stimulate consumers’ positive behavioral responses to a greater extent. Inaddition, the dissertation also brings forward a series of marketing strategies ofimproving the adoption of new energy vehicles based on psychological distance andregulatory focus, providing practical implications for the manufactures marketingpractices and the government public marketing campaigns. |
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