Abstract Summary
Free-floating carsharing schemes, where members can pick-up and return cars anywhere within a certain city zone, have increasingly become more popular. Although, no significant reduction in mileage might be expected from free-floating carsharing members, research has evidenced CO2 savings due to efficiency of vehicles and suppression of vehicle purchases. One of the problems with free-floating carsharing, however, is that cars are often not available in high-demand zones and have long idle periods in low-demand zones. This leads to the need for carsharing operators to redistribute vehicles and thus reduces CO2 savings and increases operation costs. In this paper, we investigate incentive preferences for user-based redistribution with the use of a discrete choice experiment embedded in an online survey of Swiss free-floating carsharing users. In a 2 step process, we investigate the effectiveness of different incentives to motivate users to pick-up cars in low-demand zones and dropping-off cars in high-demand zones. We test the effectiveness of four incentive strategies (extra driving time, financial discount, collecting points (money) for social or environmental projects, gamification approach) to motivate users to walk further (10min/15min) to pick-up cars in low-demand zones and drop-off of cars in high-demand zones (the later includes a further incentive; guaranteed parking space). We also vary the type of car (combustion engines and electric cars) to investigate differences based on engine type. Participants are asked to first make eight picking choices followed by five dropping choices. Each choice set includes three choices, 2 incentives and 1 status quo (nearest car (2 min), combustion engine, no incentive). The talk will discuss findings and offer conclusions.
