How to Push Consumers’ Intention to Adopt Alternative Fuel Vehicles – An Integrative Adoption Model

Abstract

Many environmental problems caused by transportation are particularly related to the use of internal combustion engines (ICEs) (Høyer, 2008; Meyer & Winebrake, 2009). Alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs) hold the potential to solve a number of these environmental challenges (Van Bree et al., 2010). However, adoption of AFVs by the general public is still in its infancy (Yeh, 2007; Mills, 2008). From both, the consumer as well as the organizational and environmental standpoint, it becomes increasingly important to analyze and better understand the factors that influence the adoption of AFVs (Jansson et al., 2011; Lane & Potter, 2007). The aim of this research is to investigate adoption factors that positively trigger consumers’ intention to adopt alternative fuel vehicles. Previous studies only included a narrow assortment of adoption factors. Furthermore, there has been a lack of values, behavior-related variables and attitudes facilitating consumer adoption of AFVs (Jansson, 2011; Wang et al., 2008). Thus, this study provides typology of essential innovation characteristics of AFVs and supplements them by consumer factors (values, behavior-related variables) to determine the relative influence of all adoption factors on the adoption for AFVs.