Abstract
E-scooters have conquered urban areas as a means for individual mobility and compete with other modes of transportation. While some studies endorse e-scooters as eco-friendly solution for crowded cities, others report contradictory findings and highlight safety issues. To reveal factors affecting e-scooter usage from a consumer’s perspective, a study using an adapted Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) is conducted. Based on random sampling among German public transportation services, 749 responses were collected and analyzed. E-scooters are studied in the context of mobility alternatives, revealing that they are mostly viewed as fun objects, and perceived safety indeed impedes their usage. Additionally, environmental concerns and individual convenience (i.e., performance expectancy) evince to represent the main drivers for using e-scooter. Besides, differences in the motivation for (potential) usage were found between owners and non-owners. Regarding the ecological assessment of e-scooters, they may, in fact, substitute walking over short distances.
Highlights
Transportation in urban environments is experiencing changes “in favor of eco-friendly, compact, and light vehicles” (Zagorskas and Burinskiene, 2020, p. 273)
Respondents from the first quartile were compared to participants from the last quartile using a series of t-tests, revealing no significant results. These findings were further corroborated by calculating a multi-group analysis (MGA) to compare the PLS model of the first quartile to the model of the last quartile
Our results show that e-scooters may replace walking rather than other means of transportation; they have a slight impact on bus, car, and streetcar/metro usage as well
Summary
Transportation in urban environments is experiencing changes “in favor of eco-friendly, compact, and light vehicles” (Zagorskas and Burinskiene, 2020, p. 273). E-scooters (electricityfueled scooters) have conquered cities around the world, promising a solution to the last-mile problem since their introduction in 2017 (Gössling, 2020; McKenzie, 2020; Nisson et al, 2020; Yang et al, 2020). They are discussed as alternatives to automobiles, potentially reducing traffic congestion, noise, and pollution (Che et al, 2020; Degele et al, 2018; Gössling, 2020), thereby helping to fight climate change. It is important to include safety concerns in the examination of technology acceptance of e-scooters
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