Impact of environmental awareness due to the COVID-19 pandemic on consumers’ intention to purchase electric vehicles: the mediating roles of rational and non-rational factors

The COVID-19 pandemic generated a growing tendency for individuals to frame the ethical dimension of their consumption behavior. This, in turn, has stimulated an increased environmental awareness (EAC-19), which may have positive effects at the societal level by leading consumers to prefer electric vehicles (EVs) to heat engine ones. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to shed light on the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic by investigating the relationships between EAC-19 and consumers’ intention to purchase electric vehicles (CIPEVs). We do so by employing Rest’s (1986) rational ethical decision making model and extending it to incorporate non-rational factors. Results of structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis, based on data collected from 464 respondents, reveal that EAC-19, rather than affecting CIPEVs directly, has a positive influence on it by both a rational and a non-rational path. The rational path proceeds through the full mediating effect of consumers’ ethical judgement concerning the choice of an EV (EJ-EV). In the non-rational path, ethical obligation to others and a subjective norm concerning the choice of an EV (EOO-EV and SN-EV, respectively) act as full mediators in a serial mediation fashion. The study has major theoretical implications for both the literature on CIPEVs and that on ethical decision making. On the practical side, it suggests that, in order to promote the diffusion of EVs, Governments and EVs companies should leverage the environmental awareness created by the Covid-19 pandemic experience.