Framing Effects on EV Policy Support in China Environmental Behavior and Support for Climate Policies

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_96How to use a DOI?

Keywords

green travel; information framing; prospect theory; NEV polic; randomized experiment; purchase intention

Abstract

This study employs a randomized controlled trial with a 2×2 factorial design to examine how information framing (gain vs. loss) and policy incentive type (monetary vs. non-monetary) jointly influence Chinese consumers’ purchase intentions toward new energy vehicles (NEVs). Grounded in prospect theory, we hypothesized that: (H1) loss framing would generate higher purchase intention than gain framing; (H2) monetary incentives would outperform non-monetary incentives; and (H3) monetary incentives would be especially effective under loss framing, producing a positive interaction effect. We distributed an online questionnaire to residents across multiple Chinese provinces and collected 198 valid responses. Policy conditions were randomly assigned across five groups: Gain & Monetary, Gain & Non-Monetary, Loss & Monetary, Loss & Non-Monetary, and a pure control group. Purchase intention was measured on a five-point Likert scale. OLS regression with robust standard errors yielded uniformly null results: none of the three hypotheses was supported at conventional significance levels. The null findings persisted after inclusion of demographic and attitudinal control variables. Government trust was the sole variable significantly associated with purchase intention. We interpret these results as reflecting a ceiling/familiarity effect among a highly educated urban sample, limited statistical power (≈40 per group), and the hypothetical nature of the survey instrument. These findings highlight important boundary conditions for the application of prospect theory in mature consumer markets with high policy awareness.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Tianyu Yang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/07
TI  - Framing Effects on EV Policy Support in China Environmental Behavior and Support for Climate Policies
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 12th International Conference on Digital Humanities and Frontiers in Social Sciences (DHFSS 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 891
EP  - 899
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_96
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_96
ID  - Yang2026
ER  -