These results indicate that two groups with quite disparate tastes have been identified.
People in Segment 1 tend to be more concerned about the performance and price of an EV
before making a purchase decision. Therefore, if the government’s strategy for
next-generation vehicle usage and the long-term goal of carbon dioxide reduction are to be
achieved, more effort has to be made to make sure consumers are well aware of the benefits
an EV brings to them as well as to the future vision of an environmentally friendly life.
To summarize, some concrete proposals are made here. First, compared to encouraging
the purchase of an EV as an additional car, promoting the replacement of an old car seems to
be a fast and efficient way for the Japanese government and auto industry to increase EV use
in Japan. Encouraging consumers to adopt a positive attitude toward EVs would be worth a
try to achieve this. We would recommend the government and industry to organize publicity
campaigns involving television programmes, online newspapers and seminars that draw the
attention of potential customers to EVs, increase familiarity with them, and encourage pride
in owning one. As a consequence, these people will find EVs a good topic to talk about
among friends. In addition, projects such as EV trials should be conducted to provide
consumers with an opportunity to experience their benefits first-hand, thereby encouraging
more interest and allowing them to see how a low-emission car could work in their life.
Furthermore, our results indicate that if better performance (greater range on a full charge and
more seats), as well as more acceptable and reasonable pricing could be offered, more people
would buy EVs.
Interesting to note is that, in spite of the complexity of the associations between
covariates and latent factors as described in the MIMIC model, the correlations between
exogenous variables and observed indicators are extremely low, and most of the indicators
were predicted by more than one factor. Thus we would recommend extending this research to
further develop the proposed psychological constructs and confirm the findings in a broader
setting.
In any case, our empirical results do support the hypothesis that environmental
consciousness and attitudes to transportation are important with respect to EV purchase
intentions. With regard to the Japanese auto market, this is something that has not been
reported before to our knowledge and we believe it will prove useful for marketing planners
aiming to achieve the goal of establishing a low-carbon society and explore the market for
next-generation vehicles.