Exploring self-organisation for car-sharing systems

Exploring self-organisation for car-sharing systems: An agent-based approach

Stork, Casper (TU Delft Technology, Policy and Management)

Warnier, Martijn (graduation committee)
Ghorbani, A. (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Complex Systems Engineering and Management (CoSEM)

2020-08-20

Cities are getting more congested and polluted as they grow; transportation is one of the contributors to this. Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) could revolutionise the transportation sector for people. In MaaS, the car-sharing schemes will play a vital role and can help in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, in the long-term, these services will decrease congestion in the cities. Nevertheless, business models that have evolved around car-sharing have not always proven to be economically sustainable. In this research, the current institutional settings and characteristics of the car-sharing system are reviewed. After that, car-sharing is examined as a Common-Pool Resource so that they can be managed as such resources. Ostrom has proved that there are many cases where the common pool resources are sustained through the self-organisation of the management of these resources. This self-organisation will be explored for the car-sharing system by testing the influence of the presence of the design principle. The design principles are similarities that are found in self-organising systems and can serve as guidance for the robust management of common-pool resources. To explore the effects of the design principles, an Agent-Based Model is constructed of a car-sharing service. The model was built based on literature, and the design principles on boundaries, equivalence between benefits and costs, collective choice arrangements, monitoring, and graduated sanctions are implemented in the model. The results were analysed with correlation tables and show that the design principle of having collective choice arrangements have a positive effect on the profit of the companies. However, the satisfaction of the users has not been improved by the presence of this design principle. The design principle on graduated sanctioning was implemented and decreased the profit but did not affect the satisfaction rate of users. With these results, it was concluded that there is reason to believe that the car-sharing system can benefit, depending on the rules that are created, from the implementation of the design principles. Furthermore, therefore, further research on the systems institutional settings centred around on self-organisation can be done with the application of the design principles as guidance. The scientific contribution of this thesis is studying of car-sharing as a common-pool resource. This fulfils the knowledge gap that existed in the current research on common-pool resources. Next to that the exploration of the possibilities for self-organisation of car-sharing by implementing the design principles in an agent-based model of a car-sharing system is done. From a social perspective, the study explores the car-sharing system, which has the potential to solve problems with congestion and emissions in cities. In future research, the model could be extended and based on actual data to reveal more in-depth knowledge on the influence of the design principles of a real-world car-sharing system. This could encourage car-sharing companies to investigate the possibilities for self-organisation. Moreover, the Smart-CPR concept could be further implemented in the model of car-sharing and explore the effects of sharing resources for car-sharing.

Common-pool resources
Governance
Car-Sharing
Agent-based modelling

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:b889d3d0-a338-4cbc-9d6b-82ebbd060a6b

Student theses

master thesis

© 2020 Casper Stork