Beyond price and driving range: rethinking electric vehicle adoption in Bahrain through attitudinal mediation

Inroduction Electric vehicle (EV) diffusion depends not only on whether consumers recognize individual economic, performance, and environmental attributes, but also on how those evaluations are translated into an overall attitude and ultimately purchase intention. Drawing on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), this study examines a bounded belief-attitude-intention mechanism in Bahrain by integrating three economic evaluations (price, perceived economic benefits, and policy incentives), three functional-performance evaluations (driving range, acceleration, and charging time sensitivity), and environmental values. Methods A cross-sectional survey produced 366 valid responses, which were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with 10,000 bootstrap resamples. Results Policy incentives, acceleration, environmental values and consumer attitudes showed positive and significant direct relationships with EV purchase intention, whereas perceived economic benefits operated primarily through attitude. The mediation pattern was selective rather than universal, as attitudes provided indirect-only mediation for economic benefits, complementary partial mediation for policy incentives, acceleration, charging time sensitivity and environmental values, but not significant mediation for price or driving range. Additional robustness analyses materially clarified three apparently contradictory results. Price was negatively associated with intention in the simple model but became small and positive only after simultaneous adjustment for correlated determinants. Driving range was positively associated with intention at the simple level but lost unique significance in the full model. Charging time sensitivity was interpreted according to its reverse-coded measurement, distinguishing weaker endorsement of faster charging as an adoption inducement from any preference for longer charging durations. The significance pattern remained stable across alternative composite-score estimations, inclusive and restrictive measurement specifications, a non-owner EV subsample, demographic controls, and an independent bootstrap mediation analysis. Discussion The study contributes by showing that attitude is a determinant-specific transmission mechanism rather than a universal mediator and by demonstrating how integrated EV adoption models can distinguish total associations from unique multivariate effects in an emerging Bahraini market. Practically, the findings highlight the importance for policy support, performance communication, charging convenience, and environmental value in encouraging EV purchase intentions in Bahrain.