Regret, policy, and discontinuance of gas vehicles: a cross-national study of Malaysia and Thailand

Scientific Reports, 2025

Full text Open access: Gold Metadata (CSL-JSON)
DOI 10.1038/s41598-025-07259-0
Data confidence 70 medium
How this score is calculated

It is built from checkable properties of the record itself: whether the article has a DOI, how many independent sources confirmed its data, whether the required fields are filled in, and how recent the latest confirmation is. Disagreement between sources and a missing identifier lower it. A value of 80 or above means the record was published without further checking; 60 to 79 means it is published at reduced confidence, with a manual check advisable. A record verified by an editor by hand is never pushed below 90 by a recalculation. This scores our data about the article, not the article itself.

Abstract

As a psychological element, regret functions as a reflective emotion that motivates people to assess their past behaviors along with their decision-making processes and life paths. While previous research has shown that regret determines satisfaction and attitudes and influences discontinued intentions, there is a lack of empirical data regarding its effect on travelers' decisions to stop using gas vehicles. This research explores how regret affects satisfaction and attitudes toward discontinued intentions in Malaysia's and Thailand's gas vehicle industries and examines government policy as a moderating factor. The research team invited 700 participants split equally between Malaysia and Thailand to complete a structured questionnaire. The path analysis of data demonstrated that regret had a substantial impact on traveler satisfaction across both countries. The study found that traveler attitudes in both national contexts were affected by both regret and satisfaction. Travelers in Malaysia and Thailand discontinued their future visits based on their levels of regret and satisfaction, which also shaped their attitudes. The study showed that government policy served as a moderating factor between regret and discontinued intention in both countries, which emphasizes how regulations affect consumer behavior. The study results reveal important details about how psychological aspects combine with policy responses to drive behavioral patterns related to gas vehicle use.