Explaining Regional Adoption Differentials in Dutch Car Sharing Markets
Summary
As response to the financial crisis and global warming, a movement called the collaborative economy or sharing economy, has risen which promotes the use and enjoyment of products and services, without actual ownership. An evident example of this movement is the phenomenon car sharing. Car sharing is the organized use of a publically available car, owned by a company or private owner, which multiple persons or households can use for a monthly fee, a fee per hour, and/or a fee per mileage. This study aims to answer the question why the adoption of car sharing in The Netherlands is regionally very uneven distributed. To answer this question this study takes a spatial perspective on this phenomenon, and therefore complements the very recent literature on the geography of transitions. According to other studies the success of car sharing is highly dependent on specific regional factors. A first investigation reveals that these factors differ per region and therefore most likely explain the regional adoption differentials. By means of a negative binomial regression analysis, this research analyses to what extent these regional factors influence the adoption of car sharing, and investigates the effects of local policies on the adoption of car sharing. The results of this study indicate that especially high education and one-person households are important for the adoption of car sharing in general. Concerning policy, only the allocation of parking space and general information on the municipal website seem to have a positive influence. Distinguishing between the most prevalent forms of car sharing, i.e. traditional and peer-to-peer, the results show that traditional car sharing is much more influenced by regional factors than peer-to-peer car sharing. Especially concerning policy and density of daily facilities.