Congratulations to Dr Didier Soopramanien, member of the Centre for Service Management, for getting his latest research published in the prestigious journal Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice.

His paper (with Lixian Qian and Jose Grisolia), "The impact of service and government-policy attributes on consumer preferences for electric vehicles in China", focuses on the effects of different types of service attributes and context-based government policies.

Using data from Conjoint experiments involving over 1000 respondents in different cities in China, the research finds that typical product attributes are still important for potential car buyers but that service attributes matter too. More specifically, the research shows that certain types of service attributes are more important than others.

For example, the availability of a home charging facility has the strongest influence on consumers’ choice to purchase Electric vehicles compared to different speeds of charging these cars. The research also controls for the impact of different government policies and finds that, in addition to government subsidy, free licensing policy for those consumers who want to buy an electric car is very attractive to consumers, compared to the lottery-based licensing for conventional petrol vehicles, the latter is a disincentive policy to buy petrol cars.

The research findings highlight the importance of considering consumers’ perceived inconvenience associated with the use and ownership of electric cars and, importantly, the role that both service attributes and government policies play in promoting the adoption of electric cars.