Who uses shared mobility services?

Abstract
Shared mobility services such as bike sharing, scooter sharing, car sharing, and ride-hailing can act as a catalyst to improve the quality of urban transportation services. This includes making them more accessible, sustainable, and equitable. With proper regulations and planning, shared mobility can enable cost savings, provide convenience, and reduce vehicle ownership. For this to happen, cities need to understand the users’ behaviour – e.g., what factors are affecting this choice of travel mode.

This study focuses on investigating the willingness to use shared mobility services and evaluating the associated socio-demographic characteristics of users. Data comes from a survey conducted in Kelowna, British Columbia, which collected information regarding the usage of a wide array of shared mobility services, travel behaviour and attitude towards shared mobility, driving, land use, among others. Exploratory factor analysis results show that there are 11 attitudinal factors representing individuals’ travel characteristics. The multivariate probit model results suggest that based on the correlation coefficient values, there is a positive significant relationship with shared e-bike and shared e-scoter usage and shared e-bike and car share usage. It also suggests that there is a negative significant relationship between public transit usage and ride-hailing usage. Substitution effects confirmed by the model are that public transit usage is associated with shared e-scooter, car share, and ride-hailing modes and shared e-bike usage is associated with public transit usage.

The results of the study can be utilized by cities and transit agencies to improve the availability of shared mobility services to enable efficient usage of sustainable travel modes in our day-to-day lives.

Keywords; Micro-mobility services, Car sharing, Ride hailing, Socio-demographics, Attitudes, Mobility Tool Ownership