With considerable economic growth and technology development, China is rapidly experiencing motorization and a dramatic expansion of the transportation system. This dissertation centers on exploring vehicle ownership in China with new transportation technology influencing, and addresses the sustainability implications. First, it examines household vehicle purchase decisions across 59 cities in China with broad geographic, environmental, and socio-economic characteristics, focusing on a subset of households who own e-bikes and relying on a telephone survey from an industry customer database. Second, this dissertation presents a study on public perceptions and purchase intention towards new energy vehicles (battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle), and discusses factors influencing new energy vehicle purchase and illustrates policy implications, using an intercept survey in Beijing. Third, this dissertation reveals daily use patterns and users' experience of an emerging transportation mode (micro electric vehicle) in China using a semi-structure interview. Users' purchase decision, mode choice, safety perception, vehicle status, and future usage are discussed. Lastly, a behavioral life cycle assessment (LCA) model that includes explicit, probability-based behavioral inputs that influence choices in the LCA process is built. Furthermore, an LCA model for transportation system for China is developed using China's manufacture inventory data.

Examines recent American history, from the end of the Watergate scandal to the hotly contested presidential election of 2000, describing the events, movements, and players that shaped the era.

Today there are over a billion vehicles in the world, and within twenty years, the number will double, largely a consequence of China's and India's explosive growth. Given that greenhouse gases are already creating havoc with our climate and that violent conflict in unstable oil-rich nations is on the rise, will matters only get worse? Or are there hopeful signs that effective, realistic solutions can be found? Blending a concise history of cars and their impact on the world, leading transportation experts Daniel Sperling and Deborah Gordon explain how we arrived at this state, and what we can do about it. Sperling and Gordon assign blame squarely where it belongs-on the auto-industry, short-sighted government policies, and consumers. They explore such solutions as getting beyond the gas-guzzler monoculture, re-inventing cars, searching for low-carbon fuels, and more. Promising advances in both transportation technology and fuel efficiency together with shifts in traveler behavior, they suggest, offer us a way out of our predicament. The authors conclude that the two places that have the most troublesome emissions problems--California and China--are the most likely to become world leaders on these issues. Arnold Schwarzenegger's enlightened embrace of eco-friendly fuel policies, which he discusses in the foreword, and China's forthright recognition that it needs far-reaching environmental and energy policies, suggest that if they can tackle the issue effectively and honestly, then there really is reason for hope. Updated with a new afterword that sheds light on the profound changes in the global economy in the last year, Two Billion Cars makes the case for why and how we need to transform transportation now more than ever. "Authoritatively prescriptive." --Tom Vanderbilt, Wilson Quarterly "Provocative and pleasurable, far-seeing and refreshing, fact-based and yet a page-turner, global in scope but rooted in real places. The authors make a convincing case that smart consumers driving smart electric-drive cars can find the critical path to a safer planet." --Robert Socolow, Princeton University "In this insightful and persuasive book, Sperling and Gordon highlight one of the biggest environmental challenges of this century: two billion cars. They rightly contend that we cannot avert the worst of global warming without making our cars cleaner and petroleum-free. Luckily the authors also offer a roadmap for navigating this problem that is both visionary and achievable." --Frances Beinecke, President, Natural Resources Defense Council

Master's Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Communications - Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, Tongji University (College of Arts & Communications), course: Master in Communication, language: English, abstract: In recent years, China’s Automotive Market has grown tremendously and reached the goal to be the worlds biggest. With the increase of automotive competitors, not only from local but also foreign organizations, a car brand needs to understand its audience well in order to apply its marketing communication strategies. In other words, apply the correct messages and related media to communicate with the targeted Chinese consumers successfully. China has currently 1.3billion individual consumers on the market, out of which over 350 are USD Billionaires and 500 million are below age 30. These two distinctive statistics of the consumer market are specifically pointed out, as they are the key to acknowledging that the consumers in China are changing. Recent studies have shown that the purchasing criteria, decision making process and used communication channels are quite different of the younger consumers than those of the ‘lost generation’ who acquired sudden wealth after the Cultural Revolution. Though, the newly rich, now in their 50’s, are still the main target group of luxury brands in China, a good marketer always has to be able to predict future developments. With the modernization of the Chinese society, the costumers who will inherit the fortunes of the “lost generation” and rise in line with the rise of the countries economy is namely Generation Y. Who are these successors of the post-revolution newly rich consumers and how do we communicate a product to them successfully? On the basis of my unquestionable fascination by China’s Automotive Market and German Luxury car brands, I will pursue to answer the above question in order to give an overview for a marketer as to how successfully communicate a car to Chinese Generation Y consumer. Due to research in this field still being at an embryonic stage I will personally carry out an empirical investigation and outline who this consumer is, how they process information, their usage of mass and personal communication and acknowledge their attitude towards German luxury car brands. Finally, on the basis of the research findings I will define Chinese Generation Y car purchasing behavior and create a marketing communication strategy for a German Luxury car brand in China wishing to engage with the consumer in question.

The research extended to the suppliers (auto-component manufacturers) responsibility towards the environment. The statistical tools used for this section were Chi-square (Cross-tab) and Logistic Regression with the attributes of corporate governance, product design, green procurement, environmentally friendly manufacturing, green packaging, waste management, and green inspection was used to measure their environmental responsibility

The Business of Sustainability is a core resource for policy makers, members of the development community, entrepreneurs, and corporate executives, as well as business and economics students and their professors. It contains rich analysis of how sustainability is being factored into industries across the globe, with enlightening case studies of businesses serving as agents of change. Contributing authors provide a groundbreaking body of research-based knowledge. They explain that the concept of sustainability is being re-framed to be positive about business instead of being tied to the old notion of a trade-off between business and society (that is, if business wins, society and the environment must lose), and they explore how economic development can contribute to building our common future.