Understanding travel preferences for user-based relocation strategies of one-way electric car-sharing services

One-way electric car-sharing services (ECS) are considered a promising solution for sustainable passenger mobility. To ensure balanced supply–demand of shared cars in the operational areas, ECS operators tend to explore user-based relocation strategies in addition to the costly operator-based ones. Through a stated preference experiment administered in the Netherlands, we study the travel preferences for ECS and user-based relocation strategies in a comprehensive framework integrating people's current mobility choices and contextual variables. Incentives for picking-up/dropping-off shared cars at distant alternative locations and sharing rides are embedded in two sub-experiments of varied trip distances. The results from an error component multinomial logit (EC-MNL) model show multi-faceted preferences. Particularly, we find that people interested in ECS are willing to collaborate with ECS operators. Alternative pick-up is the most favorite relocation strategy, followed by alternative drop-off and sharing rides. The willingness to accept the incentive for additional access and egress time is estimated as high as 0.33 EUR per walking minute. It is also found that respondents do not show significant differences in preferences for car sanitation by ECS operators or self-service during the times of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study provides useful implications for operators and policy-makers regarding the user characteristics and contextual settings favoring user-based relocation strategies.