Modeling household electric vehicle adoption stages through intention formation in the Philippines

Introduction Electric vehicle (EV) adoption in the Philippines is growing but remains far below national targets, underscoring the need to understand the psychological determinants that shape household readiness to adopt EVs, in a country whose archipelagic geography, disaster exposure, and coal-dependent grid bound the practical and climate stakes of that transition. This study applies a stage-based behavioral framework to examine how Filipino households progress from Pre-contemplation to Action. Methods Using survey data from 204 households, we combine ordinal logistic regression (OLR), which identifies the direct predictors of adoption stage, with path analysis, which traces the hierarchical pathways through which beliefs and perceptions form intention. Results Across both methods, intention is the most proximal and dominant determinant of adoption stage, outweighing every other predictor in the model. Path analysis further uncovers the mechanism behind this finding: technical and practical beliefs — including confidence in an EV's flood- and road-performance and in public charging access — combine into a composite construct, Range Confidence, that strongly predicts a precursor intention; this precursor, together with environmental attitudes, social norms, policy support, and technical convenience, then feeds into adoption intention, which predicts stage membership in turn. Financial feasibility and service availability also exert direct effects on adoption readiness, reflecting practical constraints that persist even as psychological readiness builds; notably, perceived public charging access showed a marginal, counterintuitive negative association with stage in the OLR, consistent with the uneven state of charging infrastructure in a disaster-exposed archipelago. Discussion The convergence of the OLR and path-analysis results supports a cumulative-strengthening interpretation of stage progression: the same psychological determinants grow steadily more favorable as households move toward adoption, rather than different factors taking over at different stages. For policymakers and industry stakeholders in the Philippines and similar emerging EV markets, this points to a clear lever — strengthen intention directly, rather than treating it as a byproduct of solving affordability or infrastructure problems alone. Because the national grid remains coal-dependent, however, translating household-level adoption into real climate benefit will also depend on parallel progress in decarbonizing the country's energy-resource base.