One-way and round-trip carsharing: A stated preference experiment in Beijing

Abstract

This study examines the factors that influence the use of carsharing systems in Beijing, as well as the potential for carsharing systems that integrate electric vehicles. Investigated variables include weather, air quality, price, vehicle attributes and "status" indicators. Additionally, we explore how the impacts of these factors differ when carsharing is utilized for one-way trips as compared with round-trips. The study relies on a pen-and-paper survey (1,010 completed survey forms with 2,023 reported trips) which uses a stated-preference pivoting design to build hypothetical choice sets around actual trips. The data are used to estimate binomial logit regression models for one-way and round-trip carsharing. Results of the analysis indicate that age, car ownership, shelter mode, the original cost for taxi users, perceived parking availability, cold weather, and relative cost differences are significant for one-way carsharing. For round-trip carsharing, significant factors include car ownership, income, gender, environmental concern, and relative cost differences. The most statistically significant factors to attract carsharing customers are the cost gap (defined as cost of original mode-cost of carshare) for both one-way and round-trip carsharing services, and car ownership, which has a positive significant effect for one-way trips and a negative significant effect for round-trips. This paper contributes to the literature by further examining the determinants that affect the use of carsharing, distinguishing between one-way trips and round-trips, and developing models that can be applied in urban environments like Beijing.

Empirical Modeling Analysis of Potential Commute Demand for Carsharing in Shanghai, China

“…Unlike previous studies in San Francisco [23], Basel, Switzerland [26], Shanghai [33], and Beijing [34], women in this study and studies in Peshawar, Pakistan [49], and Salerno, Italy [25] are found more willing to use carsharing, probably because most commuters in the sample come from families with cars, where men are often main car users. In this case, women may prefer to use carsharing if they want to use a motorized private commute mode.…”

“…The result of Martin et al's study [11] showed that the average number of vehicles per household of carsharing members in North America fell from 0.47 of people choosing EV carsharing were male, aged between 18 and 30 years old, and usually took subway and bus as the daily travel modes. In order to explore the market potential of carsharing system in Beijing, Yoon and Chery [34] developed a binary logit model on whether they would like to use carsharing in one-way and round-trip travel based on RP and SP survey data. The results showed that age, income, gender, gated apartment residence, car ownership, comfort index of subways users, shelter mode, and so on were important influential factors.…”

Examining Travelers’ Acceptance towards Car Sharing Systems—Peshawar City, Pakistan

“…Electric car sharing can provide economic and environmental benefits by reducing environmental pollution [25][26][27][28][29][30]. A stated preference experiment regarding one-way and round-trip car sharing systems was conducted in Beijing to examine which factors influence the use of car sharing systems [31]. The results showed that people who are non-car-owners preferred using car sharing for round-trips.…”

Migrating towards Using Electric Vehicles in Campus-Proposed Methods for Fleet Optimization

“…Even though the EVs' purchase price is higher than that of gasoline or diesel vehicles, other variable costs, like fuel and maintenance, and when coupled with purchase subsidies, the registration with incentives, insurance, maintenance, repairs, and the energy price of EVs are lower than those of CVs [13,14].…”

“…The constraint given by Equation (14) enforces that the minimum estimated life for k-type vehicles in year i should be longer than the break-even year, assuring that the increased capital cost of EVs are recovered in fuel and maintenance savings before resale.…”