Competition and cooperation mechanism of new energy vehicle policies in China’s key regions

New energy vehicles (NEVs) are crucial in addressing environmental pollution and energy shortages. Their widespread adoption has been hindered by challenges such as inadequate infrastructure and limited market competitiveness. To promote the development of NEV, local governments in China have implemented various policies. However, resource constraints within regions have created inherent conflicts among policy objectives, while regional disparities have emerged due to differences in development status and characteristics. This study aims to model the complex competitive and cooperative mechanisms among different NEV policy objectives and compare their variations across three key regions: the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH), Guangdong-Guangxi-Fujian (GGF), and Yangtze-River-Delta (YRD). Firstly, topic model Latent Dirichlet Allocation is applied on 857 local NEV policies from 2010 to 2021, identifying six core policy objectives, namely production technology, infrastructure, financial support, demonstration, industrial management and environmental protection. Then, the Lotka-Volterra model is employed to examine competitive and cooperative mechanism among these policy objectives. Key findings are: (1) infrastructure policies prevail across all regions; (2) regulation policies exhibit a comparative advantage in the BTH region, while implementation policies dominate in the GGF region and promotion policies in the YRD region; (3) cooperation among objectives is primarily observed in the BTH region, whereas competition plays a more dominant role in the other regions. This study fills a previous research gap and provides insights for researchers and policymakers, highlighting the development of customized strategies that consider the unique characteristics and requirements of each region.