Consumers' Preference And Willingness To Pay For Electric Vehicles Based On Discrete Choice Model

As an important way to solve the problems of energy shortage and environmental pollution,developing electric vehicles(EVs)have developed into a national strategy.However,the current market share of EVs in China is still low.Therefore,it is necessary to meet the needs of consumers and promote their intention to purchase,the key of which is understanding consumers'preferences and willingness to pay.In this paper,choice experiment is adopted to simulate purchase scenarios and analyze the importance of different attributes of EVs.Firstly,finding out the attributes of EVs that Chinese consumers are most concerned about by means of questionnaire survey.Secondly,the questionnaire for the choice experiment is designed according to orthogonal experiment.Finally,the multinomial logit model and mixed logit model are used to analyze the data.In addition,demographic variables such as age,gender and driving experience are added to the mixed logit model to study the factors that affect consumer heterogeneity preferences.The results show that:(i)Chinese consumers'willingness to pay for EVs from high to low are:the reduction of charging time>the increase of driving range>the increase in the number of charging stations>the use of vehicle networking equipment>the reduction of CO₂ emissions;(ii)there is a diminishing marginal utility of the willingness to pay for the improvement of such attributes as mileage,the number of charging stations and CO₂ emissions;(iii)as for consumers'heterogeneous preferences,driving range is affected by age and occupation;charging time by gender and driving experience;the number of charging stations by gender,age,education level and driving experience;the equipment of internet of vehicles by age.The findings not only provide scientific evidence for government and enterprises in decision-making,but also provide guidance for the mitigation of environmental and energy problems.