How Does the Public React to the Electric Vehicle Tax Incentive Policy? A Sentiment Analysis

Agung Septia Wibowo and Dovi Septiari

Journal of Tax Reform, 2023, vol. 9, issue 3, 413-429

Abstract: While there are arguments suggesting that tax incentives can expedite the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs), there are also counterarguments proposing that these incentives may exacerbate external costs. As a result, the government may need to incorporate public opinion as an input in formulating the most suitable approach to promote the adoption of electric vehicles within society. The purpose of this study is to investigate public sentiment on EV tax incentives in Indonesia through Twitter. This study utilizes text mining to examine public attitudes and sentiments toward EV using Twitter data. The sentiment analysis model employed is the Indonesian RoBERTa Base Sentiment Classifier. The data utilized in this study consists of Twitter posts spanning from May 2022 to May 2023. The final dataset for analysis comprises 99,856 tweets, each identified by a unique tweet ID. The results show that neutral sentiment dominating the tweet post from negative and positive sentiment. We also found that 56% are supporters and 44% are opposing groups. Tax incentive policies may not always be supported in terms of being considered unfair or inappropriate. Our finding shows three topics that are important for the public about EV: the price of electric vehicles, environmental issues, and EV infrastructure. This study demonstrates that tax incentives or price subsidies may not consistently receive positive perceptions or full support from society. Certain policies considered by specific stakeholders may diminish the effectiveness and expected outcomes of these measures. Our findings have several contributions for knowledge development and tax policy makers.

Keywords: public react; electric vehicle; tax incentive; sentiment analysis; tax policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H23 M48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://taxreform.ru//fileadmin/user_upload/site_1 ... ng_Septia_Wibowo.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aiy:jnljtr:v:9:y:2023:i:3:p:413-429

DOI: 10.15826/jtr.2023.9.3.150

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Tax Reform is currently edited by Igor Mayburov

More articles in Journal of Tax Reform from Graduate School of Economics and Management, Ural Federal University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Natalia Starodubets ().