How does extreme temperature affect shared travel? Evidence from bike-sharing order flow in China

Abstract

Due to its flexibility, pro-environmental characteristics, and its contribution to solving the first or last kilometer’ problem, sharing bike has become a popular travel option for many residents, especially for short trips. This study analyses the impact of extreme temperatures on residents' shared travel and the bike-sharing industry by combining the full-sample travel data, meteorological data, and POI data in Hohhot, China. Based on the temporal and spatial characteristics of residents' travel, five patterns are distinguished by K-means clustering: basic trips, short-distance trips, round trips, time tolerance trips and distance tolerance trips. The main conclusions of the research are as follows: i) extremely low temperatures can increase the possibility of short-distance trips and round trips but reduce long-duration or long-distance travel. Extremely high temperature has a positive effect on residents' round trips and time tolerance trips but suppress short-distance trips and distance tolerance trips; ii) for long-duration or long-distance shared travel, extremely low temperature enhance the connection between sharing bikes and other modes of transportation, but the extremely high temperature has the opposite impact; iii) extreme temperature causes less substitution of sharing bikes for other vehicles in round trips. However, residents in basic trip mode prefer to use sharing bikes instead of vehicles at extremely high temperatures; iv) the total annual economic loss of shared travel caused by extreme temperatures reached 31,393.82 CNY. In addition, many residents abandon sharing bikes in favor of cars at extreme temperatures, leading to additional carbon emissions of 2585.29 kg/year. The study also provides profound policy implications for the bike-sharing industry and green travel.