A Study of Electric Vehicle Purchase Intention in Urumqi Based on a Latent Class Model

To explore the mechanism of consumers’ battery electric vehicle (BEV) purchase behavior in depth and address research gaps related to insufficient consideration of psychological latent variables and neglect of consumer heterogeneity in existing studies, this study constructs a latent class model (LCM) that integrates personal attributes, vehicle attributes, and six psychological latent variables: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived risk, environmental awareness, purchase attitude, and purchase intention. Based on 1044 valid questionnaires collected from Urumqi, latent profile analysis (LPA) is used to classify consumers. The results indicate that BEV consumers can be divided into five distinct latent profiles with significant differences in purchase preferences: the risk-avoidance type, the moderate–low intention wait-and-see type, the utility-oriented and low environmental concern type, the high utility cognition and low-risk proactive type, and the all-dimensional high-intention core type. Socioeconomic and vehicle-related factors exert heterogeneous impacts on the psychological variables and purchase decisions of each profile. This study clarifies the intrinsic psychological mechanism of BEV purchase behavior, providing a theoretical basis and targeted strategy references for the government and enterprises to promote BEV adoption and advance sustainable transportation development.