Factors Affecting the Preference of Buying Hybrid and Electric Vehicles

Abstract: Electric Vehicles is regarded as an important solution for emission reduction. But, the adoption to it is still a problem in many countries. With survey data containing demographic and attitude factors of respondents, this paper proposes two classification models: logistic regression and random forest using the Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) as an intermediate step to identify the factors affecting the willingness of electric vehicles purchase. The analysis shows that the addition of MCA does enhance the explanatory power while it takes a low cost on prediction performance, and the results reveal that characteristics such as frequency of using modern transport services, car-sharing subscription, living place, mode of frequent trip do have a significant impact on EV purchases.