Abstract The Hall thruster is an electromagnetic plasma accelerator widely used in spacecraft propulsion. In the thruster channel exit region, where the strong E×B field exists, high-frequency electron drift instability (EDI) arises, driving anomalous axial electron transport. While the physical characteristics of EDI have been extensively studied, the impact of radial magnetic field intensity and gradient within the radial–azimuthal configuration remains largely unexplored. In this study, two-d