Who is embracing the short-term rental of electric cars? A case study on Estonia

Abstract

To achieve sustainability in the transport sector new technologies need to be complemented by new, sharing economy business models. Before launching policies to facilitate their diffusion, market segmentation and positioning needs to be considered. While the importance of innovators and early adopters in the diffusion of new technologies has already been emphasized for decades, their role and socioeconomic characteristics in the case of the diffusion of new business models remains under studied. This article investigates the socioeconomic characteristics of users of a short-term electric car rental service during a pilot phase of approximately-two years. The analysis is based on merging the service provider’s personalised user database with the National Population and Housing Census data. The results indicate that many of the observations from survey-based studies about the adoption of electric cars do not necessarily stand up in the context of a short-term rental service, particularly regarding the socioeconomic characteristics of the adopters such as age, family status, type of home and home ownership.