Abstract
The combination of electric vehicle (EV) and carsharing is expected to provide social and environmental benefits, like encouraging sustainable travel behaviors (reducing car ownership and vehicle kilometres of travel) and improving the accessibility and flexibility of urban transport. Thus, electric carsharing is encouraged to be adopted for daily trips, and the operators propose the friend-invitation promotion scheme for the membership expansion. This study explores the effectiveness of this scheme and the characteristics of the scheme participants and their invited friends (e.g., age, friend-invitation pattern, and EV rental pattern). The analysis found that 28.4% of these invited friends would make at least one EV rental after registration, whereas 30.4% of the other members who registered in the same period would do so, indicating that these invited friends were less active. Therefore, suggestions are given based on the EV rental pattern of these invited friends (preferring a longer journey using a smaller but cheaper EV) to enhance the effectiveness of the friend-invitation promotion scheme.
Highlights
Literature ReviewCarsharing, which provides car access to people for a certain period, can date back to the 1940s, and the relative commercial activities can be traced back to the mid-1990s [15]
Zhang and Lee [4] conducted a questionnaire survey to study the possible post-COVID-19 travel behavior in China and revealed that the decrease in the public transportation travels could reach 20.5%, whereas that in the private car travels was 6.4%. Carsharing service provides another option to people, which may help to control the ever-increasing car ownership [5, 6] because it can offer the needed privacy and flexibility which are similar to those provided by driving a private car
There are a number of questions waiting for exploring, such as who would be more likely to invite friends to use electric carsharing, who would be more likely to accept the friend invitation to register as an electric carsharing member, and what differences would be between the invited and not-invited new members. is study uses the electric vehicle (EV) rental records provided by the EVCARD to analyze the above questions and gives policy implications based on the analysis to further enhance the friend-invitation promotion scheme, which can contribute to the sustainable development of electric carsharing
Summary
Carsharing, which provides car access to people for a certain period, can date back to the 1940s, and the relative commercial activities can be traced back to the mid-1990s [15]. Wang and Yan [10] conducted a questionnaire survey in Shanghai and found that people’s willingness to adopt electric carsharing was higher if the people were young, male, and public transportation users with middle-level income. Is study uses the EV rental records provided by the EVCARD to analyze the above questions and gives policy implications based on the analysis to further enhance the friend-invitation promotion scheme, which can contribute to the sustainable development of electric carsharing. E data included the basic information of the EVCARD’s members who registered with his/her driving license on and before May 2016, the friend-invitation records collected from January 2016 to May 2016, and the EV rental records collected from January 2016 to August 2016. Electric carsharing patterns of different member types will be studied, such as activeness (xActiveness), the number of EV rentals (xRental), running mileage (xMileage), and type of the rented EV (xType).
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