Identifying key relationships among electric vehicle adoption success factors in India: A DEMATEL-ISM-ANP approach

The transition to electric vehicles (EVs) is pivotal for achieving sustainable mobility, yet adoption rates remain uneven. Past studies have identified a few success factors, enablers, drivers and hindrances on EV adoption and their relationships using siloed multi-criterion decision models. Building on state-of-the-art, this paper aim at understanding intricate relationships between these factors in Indian context. Rigorous literature survey and semi-structured interviews are first conducted to identify fourteen enablers of EV adoption. Thereby, causal relationships, hierarchical structures, and strategic priorities are analyzed using DEMATEL-ISM-ANP. The findings highlight that policy interventions serve as foundational drivers, exerting top-down influence on technological advancements and infrastructure readiness. However, the ANP results suggest that while policies are structurally critical, their direct perceptual impact on consumers is limited. Instead, market mechanisms and social influence dominate adoption decisions, implying that policies must be designed to catalyze these downstream enablers rather than operate in isolation.