As part of the increasing efforts toward the prevention and control of motor vehicle pollution, the Chinese government has practiced a range of policies to stimulate the purchase and use of battery electric vehicles (BEVs). Zhejiang Province, a key province in China, has proactively implemented and monitored an environmental protection plan. This study aims to contribute toward streamlining marketing and planning activities to introduce strategic policies that stimulate the purchase and use of BEVs. This study considers the nature of human behavior by extending the theory of planned behavior model to identify its predictors, as well as its non-linear relationship with customers' purchase intention. To better understand the predictors, a substantial literature review was given to validate the hypotheses. A quantitative study using 382 surveys completed by customers in Zhejiang Province was conducted by integrating a structural equation model (SEM) and a neural network (NN). The initial analysis results from the SEM revealed five factors that have impacted the customers' purchase intention of BEVs. In the second phase, the normalized importance among those five significant predictors was ranked using the NN. The findings have provided theoretical implications to scholars and academics, and managerial implications to enterprises, and are also helpful for decision makers to implement appropriate policies to promote the purchase intention of BEVs, thereby improving the air quality.
Purpose
Swift guanxi and trust can influence consumers’ decision making in social commerce. What factors will influence the formation of swift guanxi and trust between buyers and sellers in social commerce has not been clearly investigated. The purpose of this paper is to identify antecedents and impacts of swift guanxi and trust in social commerce.
Design/methodology/approach
An online questionnaire was used to collect the data, and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling was employed for data analysis. Social support and presence are introduced as the antecedents for swift guanxi and trust, leading to the repurchase intention (RI) and social sharing intention of customers.
Findings
The results indicate that social support and presence can influence swift guanxi and trust. Social support and presence are positively associated with swift guanxi and trust which further lead to RI and social sharing intention.
Practical implications
The findings can be used to guide sellers in social commerce platforms to improve their services and make good use of platform features to improve customers’ perception of presence. To attract new customers and retain old customers, sellers should also build swift guanxi and trust through the recommendation and experience sharing of previous buyers on social media.
Originality/value
This study combines social support theory and presence theory to investigate the factors that influence customers’ purchase decision and social sharing intention in the context of social commerce in China. The integration of social support theory and presence theory explains both the social and technical factors that influence swift guanxi and trust in social commerce.
The present study was the first attempt to test the reliability and validity of Herek's Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men Scale (ATLG; Herek, 1988) in the Chinese population. Participants (n = 2,391 for the field trials and n = 200 for test–retest reliability) were asked to complete the translated, slightly modified version of the ATLG. The resulting ATLG has a two-dimensional factor structure as well as good validity and reliability in the Chinese culture. ATLG scores followed distinct patterns according sex and level of education that were consistent with previous studies in other populations. The significance of these findings in Chinese culture is discussed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.