Users’ recommendation intentions for shared bike services: A social exchange theory perspective

Abstract

Bike sharing has recently become very popular in China and is beginning to catch on in the USA. This has led to fierce competition in China and includes apps that enable bike sharing. Users’ recommendations have therefore become important as they can help providers attract more customers. However, little research has addressed recommendation intentions among bike-sharing consumers. Based on social exchange theory, this study examines factors affecting Chinese bike-sharing users’ recommendation intentions. Structural equation modeling is used, and data collected from 239 bike-sharing customers provided the following. First, both intrinsic benefits (enjoyment in helping others) and extrinsic benefits (economic incentives) have positive effects on recommendation intentions. Furthermore, the effect of enjoyment in helping others is larger than the effect of economic incentives. Perceived execution cost have a negative effects on users’ recommendation intentions. Secondly, tie strength can serve in a negative moderating role between economic incentives and recommendation intentions and as a positive moderator between perceived execution costs and bike-sharing app users’ recommendation intentions. Finally, the interaction effect between execution costs and economic incentives for bike sharing users’ recommendation intentions was examined and the mediating role of tie strength between costs/benefits and recommendation intentions were also evaluated.