Vehicle Choice and System Performance: The Influence of a Dynamic Pricing User-Based Relocation Strategy

Abstract

Free-floating moped sharing systems are becoming more and more popular and provide new ways to travel inside urban areas. The vehicles offer the flexibility of one-way transportation, though the downside is that it creates a spatiotemporal imbalance of the vehicle distribution within the system. The operators of such systems are challenged to cope with this imbalance by either applying an operator-based relocation or user-based relocation strategy. As studies on operator-based relocation strategies are in abundance, this research focused on user-based relocation. A user-based relocation strategy assumes the participation of the user, though (monetary) incentives are required to encourage users to participate in the process of relocating vehicles. This research assessed how vehicle choice is influenced by these price deviations (dynamic pricing) through a context-related stated choice experiment. The dynamic pricing user-based relocation strategy was also tested on a real-life moped sharing system to assess the influence on the system performance. At last, an observed vehicle choice experiment was conducted to evaluate the trade-off by users between discounted vehicles and walking distance. The outcomes presented in this report ought to apply to other vehicle sharing systems with equal design and management configurations.