Understanding members' carsharing (activity) persistency by using econometric model

Abstract

SUMMARYCarsharing is an innovative travel alternative that has recently experienced considerable growth and become part of sustainable transportation initiatives. Although carsharing is becoming increasingly a popular alternative transportation mode in North America, it is still an under-researched area. Current research is aimed at better understanding of the behavior of carsharing users. For every member, a two-stage approach microsimulates the probability of being active in any month using a binary probit model and given that a particular member is active during a month, the probability of that member using the service multiple times using a random utility-based model. The model is estimated using empirical data from one of the largest carsharing companies in North America. The model estimates reveal that the activity persistency of members is positively linked to previous behaviors for up to 4 months, and that the influence of previous months weakens over time. It also shows that some attributes of the traveler (gender, age, and language spoken at home) impact his or her behaviors.

An Explanatory Model Approach for the Spatial Distribution of Free-Floating Carsharing Bookings: A Case-Study of German Cities

“…Morency et al also identified gender and age as characteristics having a significant impact on carsharing behaviour [18]. They also found out that user behavior in the previous four months directly influences the current frequency of usage.…”

Finding Factors that Influence Carsharing Usage: Case Study in Seoul

“…For example, Morency et al analyzed carsharing transaction data without a location identifier and thus could not test neighborhood socio-economic and built environment variables [10]. With the data from the carsharing operator of Montreal, De Lorimier and El-Geneidy estimated a model that predicts the number of monthly hours-reserved per vehicle [11].…”

“…The one or two person household was mentioned as one of the characteristics of carsharing users [20] and later Celsor and Millard-Ball tested the percentage of "1-person households" [8]. The gender of carsharing users has been tested in several studies, revealing that males use carsharing services more frequently than females [10,28,29]. For this study, the average household size and percentage of male population are measured for each district and tested as an independent variable.…”

Modeling spatio-temporal diffusion of carsharing membership in Québec City

“…More recently, Shaheen et al (2009) looked back at the last decade of carsharing in North America, identifying three phases in the development of North American organizations: market insertion, from 1994 to mid-2002; growth and diversification, from mid-2002 to 2007; and a larger scale offer, from the end of 2007 until today. Carsharing continues to be of interest to researchers, in particular from the angle of impact on motorization (Cervero et al, 2007;Martin et al, 2010), the multimodal aspect of the phenomenon (Nobis, 2006(Nobis, , 2007, its effects on the environment (Alexandre, 2010;Firnkorn and Müller, 2011), and user behaviour (Jemelin and Louvet, 2007;Morency et al, 2012;Costain et al, 2012) or its potential in Shanghai (Wang et al, 2012). The present article examines the geographical and socio-economic factors underlying the deployment of the carsharing service in Québec City so as to determine their relative weight using a statistical model.…”