A city-level analysis of one-way vehicle sharing in the Netherlands

Abstract

Vehicle sharing has the potential to reduce social and environmental impacts of traffic. Vehicle sharing services are offered by digital platforms, who operate in cities with different characteristics and these services employ different business models. The understanding of the location decisions of vehicle sharing platforms remains limited. While prior studies on vehicle sharing address consumer adoption, vehicle supply and conceptual frameworks of vehicle sharing’s markets and business models, this research extents existing knowledge on the one-way vehicle sharing business model specifically by proposing a theory of local imitation. Imitation is caused by the presence of a vehicle sharing business models within a location, attracting vehicle sharing platforms that offer other mobility types to that location. Imitation of practices was addressed by scholars as the idea that firms adopt new practices more presumably after observing others adopting these practices first. This thesis extends existing knowledge by focusing on the geography of these practices and empirically tests the occurrence of imitation on a local level. The findings suggest that location choice of vehicle sharing platforms could be driven by such an imitation process. Moreover, the results confirm that vehicle sharing platforms are dependent on demographic city characteristics as the literature suggests, and advances that such demographics are important for one-way vehicle sharing platforms specifically.