Examining influence factors of Chinese electric vehicle market demand based on online reviews under moderating effect of subsidy policy

Increasing the market penetration of electric vehicles (EVs) is an important step toward reducing carbon emissions in transport and achieving the 'double carbon' target. Currently, the public acceptance of EV is significantly low in China; thus, EVs have not yet become the mainstream of the new vehicles sold. Based on online review sentiment analysis, we investigated the public's perception of EV attributes, and their impact on Chinese EV sales. The public comments on the EV attributes of four brands—Volkswagen, NIO, Xiaopeng, and BYD—were obtained from Autohome and analyzed for sentiment, with the sentiment scores of the corresponding attributes as the independent variables and the monthly sales of EV during 2019–2021 as the dependent variables. A fixed-effects regression model with panel data was constructed to analyze the relationship between the public perceptions of EV attributes and EV sales. Considering the trend of Chinese government subsidies for EV in recent years, a moderating effect model was constructed with government subsidy policy as the moderating variable, sentiment perception as the independent variable, and EV sales as the dependent variable. The results of the study showed that the public perception of the four attributes of EVs—comfort, manipulation, space, and cost performance— significantly impact EV sales. The subsidy policy moderates the relationship between the public's perception of EV attributes and EV sales. The results of this study also reflect that the public is more concerned with the four attributes of comfort, manipulation, space, and cost performance when purchasing EVs. From a practical perspective, by understanding the public perception of EV attributes, government policy makers and EV marketers can appropriately adjust and change their existing policies and marketing strategies for promoting EVs.