Consumers' Purchase Intention of New Energy Vehicles: Do Product-Life-Cycle Policy Portfolios Matter?

New energy vehicles have been recognized as a sustainable alternative to lower gasoline consumption and emissions in the transportation sector. To alleviate environmental pressure, a spectrum of government policies has been introduced to inspire the production and penetration of new energy vehicles (NEVs). Meanwhile, some of the incentive policies are facing renewals and modifications to meet consumers' demand of purchase and the present growth of the NEV industry. This means that the understanding of what the current and upcoming policies are, how to formulate policy portfolios, and consumers' purchasing NEV behavior in a response to these policies and its adjustment are of practical and academic importance for the NEV sector. Different from prior research which analyzed the role of government policy as a whole, we here separately examined the impact of policy portfolios (i.e., production policy, purchase/usage policy and recycle policy) on NEV adoption from the product life cycle perspective. The hypotheses were empirically tested by analyzing data collected from 299 respondents in China. The results showed that production policy has a significantly positive impact on financial benefits, esteem needs and infrastructure, whereas it insignificantly influences NEV performance; similarly, purchase/usage policy positively affects esteem needs and infrastructure, yet its effect on financial benefits is found to be insignificant; meanwhile, recycle policy has a significantly positive effect on financial benefits, and esteem needs as well as NEV performance. Furthermore, financial benefits, esteem needs, NEV performance and infrastructure are found to significantly and positively impact on consumers' purchase intention. Parallel to this, we observed perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use play partially mediating relations between policy portfolios and consumers' adoption intent. Hints for decision-makers and avenues for future study are discussed in this research.