Car-sharing users' intended and actual behaviour of giving up car ownership

Abstract

Car-sharing is becoming an increasingly popular transportation mode in cities around the world. New housing projects in urban dense areas in the Netherlands implement car-sharing as an alternative to car ownership and to reduce parking requirements. This transition away from car ownership is mainly driven by spatial concerns: in many Dutch cities, roughly half of all public space is reserved for cars (roads and parking facilities). Car-sharing offers a solution for the spatial and environmental concerns regarding car use and ownership. However, car-sharing services are often used in addition to car ownership, rather than providing an alternative mode. While car-sharing users often have the intention to give up car ownership, does this not necessarily lead to actual behaviour. To assess the critical differences between users’ actual and intended behaviour of giving up car ownership, this research answers the question; ‘How do principled, functional and experiential motives influence actual and intended behaviour of giving up car ownership among car-sharing users in the Netherlands?’ . The Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1991) provides the framework to analyse how underlying motives influence mobility behaviour. Principled motives touch upon environmental and value-based motives for using car-sharing services, functional motives are instrumental and efficiency-related, and experiential motives entail the subjective user experience. A large survey conducted among Greenwheels users provided the dataset for this research (N=1.393). An Exploratory Factor Analysis formulated three factors (principled, functional, experiential) and two Binary Logit Models were used to analyse the differences between actual and intended behaviour of giving up car ownership. The results suggest that principled motives are the most significantly associated with both actual and intended behaviour of giving up car ownership. Functional motives only influence actual behaviour, indicating that practical and instrumental considerations only play part in the decision to truly give up car ownership, not in the intrinsic intention to do so in the future. Age was also a strong predictor, the older the car-sharing user, the more likely they are to give up car ownership or have the intention to do so. The findings of this study suggest that, in order to have car-sharing users transition away from car ownership, and policymakers should actively promote the principled benefits of car-sharing - such as environmental and societal gains - while redesigning public space to sustain long-term car-free lifestyles. Additionally, this research offers practical guidance for both policymakers and car-sharing providers by distinguishing between actual and intended behaviour and by identifying which motives can promote behavioural change.