Emerging Diffusion Barriers of Shared Mobility Services in Korea

Abstract

Korea’s shared mobility service, TADA, has been accused of violating the Passenger Transportation Services Act, despite being an innovative transportation service. A key reason for this is that TADA is yet to discover an approach to coexist with traditional transportation service companies. The TADA case shows that in addition to technical or business matters, a variety of issues can act as new barriers to the spread of innovation. Therefore, this study aims to understand the emerging barriers that need to be addressed in adopting breakthrough technologies, particularly for shared mobility services. The purpose of this study is to show that the introduction of innovative technology encounters not only technological barriers, as suggested in previous research, but also political, industrial, and legal barriers to diffusion that hinder innovation. Therefore, this study applied the text mining method to online news big data to confirm the existence of diffusion barriers for shared mobility services. The results demonstrate that not only technical efforts but also discussions with various stakeholders and efforts to minimize industrial and legal resistance are required to effectively spread innovative services.