YOUNGERS' PREFERENCES FOR ELECTRIC CARS IN ITALY AND CHINA: A STATED CHOICE ANALYSIS

center dot This paper compares drivers' car preferences in Italy and China to discover differences and commonalities in the car choice determinants. We per- formed a stated-choice experiment and collected data from a sample of Italian (N = 436) and Chinese (N = 358) young respondents by carrying out a web based questionnaire administered from March to November 2021. We estimated a mixed logit (MXL) model to investigate the roles of purchase price, driving range, and socio-economic variables in the choice of electric vehicles (EVs). We found that financial and non-financial attributes played a relevant role in both countries. Italians had a stronger sensitivity about the EV range than the Chi- nese respondents. The availability of garage charging points positively affected the choice of BEVs for Italians, while no significant result was found in China. We then used the estimated model to evaluate the impact of policy variable changes on the selection of BEVs. We found that incentivizing policies that si- multaneously target the price and driving range could stimulate EVs' uptake more than a single policy.