Why do many shared mobility providers struggle to attract car drivers?
The transport sector is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union, with road transportation accounting for most of these emissions.
03/23/2025
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The European Parliament notes that passenger cars accounted for over half of total CO2 emissions from EU road transport in 2019. And with an average car occupancy rate of 1.6, one of the avenues that has been explored to reduce car emissions is shared mobility schemes that offer alternative travel modes such as micromobility (e.g., Lime or Tier scooters), carsharing (e.g., ShareNow), or ridehailing (e.g., Uber).
However, previous research has highlighted that some shared mobility solutions can struggle to attract car users, the very group that must change their travel mode choice for sustainable transport policies to be effective.
Estimates of cost can be subjective
Cost is one of the principal factors that consumers use to make decisions about the means of transport they use. However, creating cost-based incentives for car users to switch from their cars to more sustainable shared mobility offers can be challenging. One reason is because the way that we mentally estimate and compare our travel costs is often rather subjective: many commuters don’t take fully into account costs related to vehicle depreciation, insurance, in addition to fuel and maintenance costs, whereas other forms of transport (public transport) often incur a fixed cost.
Against this backdrop, a team of *researchers set out to explore how consumers’ perceptions and travel choices affect the way they mentally calculate costs. They carried out an experiment with more than 800 travelers in Germany to find out how they calculate costs and select modes of transport.
Purpose and distance can impact cost perceptions
“Overall, we found that both the purpose (e.g. leisure versus work) and the distance of the planned travel can alter how we perceive costs in comparison to the real costs involved. Short trips related to leisure are perceived as being cheaper (per km) than longer journeys and also cheaper than business-related travel “, explains Jan KLEIN, professor at IÉSEG and one of the coauthors of the study.
But did this skewed perception of costs apply to all respondents or to specific segments of car users? “Our analysis shows that regular car users (e.g. commuters) and those who are hesitant about using technology are more likely to underestimate the costs involved whereas people who use cars less frequently, or use other forms of transport, tend to calculate more rationally. “
“Commuters generally decide from the outset on how they will travel to work, balancing comfort, reliability, speed, cost, and social and environmental concerns. Subsequently, the chosen mode becomes habitual, and other alternatives are considered less,” adds Professor KLEIN.
How to attract more car drivers? Avenues to explore…
Their findings confirm, therefore, that shared mobility services are likely to face greater challenges in attracting car commuters to use their services, than users of other forms of transport. That is, shared mobility services often attract transit users more than car drivers, leaving the core issue unresolved. Following their experiment, the researchers compared their findings with the strategies of several shared mobility schemes in a German city, in order to explore this challenge further.
They believe there are several avenues that shared mobility and policymakers can investigate to address the challenge of attracting car drivers: educating consumers further about the real costs of transport choices, enhancing the attractivity of these schemes (to this group), and also the way they are marketed to car users.
Educating car users on the true costs of using cars for commuting has promise. “Our study shows that car users respond to simple information or reminders about the costs of car ownership. When presented with this simple cost education, they assessed expenses more rationally. For short leisure trips, this led to a 29% increase in their estimated costs—bringing them much closer to the actual expense “, adds Jan KLEIN .
The authors suggest for example that requiring car dealerships and insurers to provide full transparency on total cost of ownership (similar to fuel consumption and emission labels) could play a more prominent role in ensuring that car owners understand the true costs of running a vehicle, enabling more rational decision-making.
In terms of attractivity of shared services, the authors note that mobility schemes can seek to ensure that residential areas and commuting destinations are very well served, and that the service quality is sufficiently high (e.g., predictable availability during peak hours) to respond to commuters’ needs.
“Shared mobility providers could also increase attractiveness of commuting trips through targeted communication or cooperation with large employers and educators,” they note. Measures could also include subsidized rates on trips to and from selected destinations and campaigns targeting for example people who have recently moved to cities.
In terms of financial attractiveness, shared mobility schemes with degressive pricing mechanisms covering both distance and total usage could help better align with perceived costs (e.g., package subscriptions, partial ownership models).
“The urban mobility challenge can’t be solved with a simple policy change,” concludes Jan KLEIN . “Commuters -whether train or car users- are not a uniform group; they perceive costs differently and respond in varied ways to new initiatives. Thus, to drive real change, transport policies and shared mobility providers must better take into account their specific needs.”
Find out more by reading the full study here:
*Understanding the urban mobility challenge: Why shared mobility providers fail to attract car drivers (Transport Policy, Volume 158, November 2024):Philip Fitschen (EBS Universität für Wirtschaft und Recht) , Katrin Merfeld (Utrecht University School of Economics) , Jan F. Klein (IESEG School of Management, Univ. Lille, CNRS, UMR 9221, LEM- Lille Economie Management), Sven Henkel (EBS Universität für Wirtschaft und Recht).
