Study of car-sharing diffusion criticality conditions based on human traveling network

Abstract

Car-sharing program, like Car2go, is an innovative urban transportation mode where the car-sharing company provides a car fleet to offer people with the short-term access of car traveling. As a new traveling service, car-sharing platforms have been struggling hard to trigger initial users and speed up their diffusion process. Unlike new product spreading via geographical proximity people, car-sharing users usually drive sharing cars to different destinations and influence people there, and potential user decision also depends on previous user activity at all their destinations. Car-sharing user connections are mainly affected by their traveling behaviors. The influence of user traveling network on new service/product spreading process has been rarely studied before. Here, we find that the infective rate between users with the same destination is critical to the minimum user base of car-sharing diffusion. Moreover, a city with central user network is more appropriate for car-sharing. It leads to a small critical infective rate for diffusion, and a large stable market size of car-sharing service. Our study can impact car-sharing market strategies ranging from market expansion in one city to optimal market selection among different cities.