Consumer-Oriented Policy towards Diffusion of Electric Vehicles: City-Level Evidence from China

Public policy is crucial for the diffusion of green innovation, and debates exist about the effects of different policies. This paper explores appropriate types of policy instruments by explaining the quick rise in sales of electric vehicles (EVs) in China. Based on a three-year longitudinal dataset across 88 cities, the study shows that consumer-oriented policies are able to significantly promote EV diffusion. Consumer-oriented policies target consumers to facilitate their usage of cars and lower the lifecycle cost, and typical examples include electricity charging and traffic management. This paper contributes to the literature of clean technology policy in two ways. Firstly, it reveals and empirically tests the importance of consumer-oriented policy instruments for the deployment of green innovation. Secondly, it is one of very few scholarly works offering a detailed review of city-level policies in China’s EV industry, which will be useful for scholars who are also interested in similar topics.