Carsharing: the impact of system characteristics on its potential to replace private car trips and reduce car ownership

This paper aims to explore the potential of carsharing in replacing private car trips and reducing car ownership and how this is affected by its attributes. To that affect, a stated choice experiment is conducted and the data are analyzed by latent class models in order to incorporate preference heterogeneity. The results show that around 40% of car drivers indicated that they are willing to replace some of their private car trips by carsharing, and 20% indicated that they may forego a planned purchase or shed a current car if carsharing becomes available near to them. The results further suggest that people vary significantly with respect to these two stated intentions, and that a higher intention of trip replacement does not necessarily correspond to higher intention of reducing car ownership. Our results also imply that changing the system attributes does not have a substantial impact on people’s intention, which suggests that the decision to use carsharing are mainly determined by other factors. Furthermore, deploying electric vehicles in carsharing fleet is preferred to fossil-fuel cars by some segments of the population, while it has no negative impact for other segments.