Product-service system adoption: motivational drivers for e-bike sharing

Abstract

The global environmental issues are becoming more and more pressing. These issues ask for not only changes on a product-level but also on a system-level (Ceshin, 2013). One of the potential solutions can be to facilitate more sustainable consumption. Sustainable consumption patterns can potentially be created by product-service systems (PSSs). PSSs enable “sale-of-use” instead of “sale-of-product” so these systems satisfy consumers through the delivery of functions instead of products. Unfortunately, the adoption of PSSs is still limited. Because PSSs are often radical innovations, they challenge existing consumers’ habits (cultural barriers), companies’ organizations (corporate barriers) and regulative frameworks (regulative barriers) (UNEP, 2002; Mont, 2002; Tukker and Tischner, 2006). In combination with that in literature little attention is committed to understand how the process of diffusion takes place (Tukker and Tischner, 2006; Baines et al., 2007). Additionally, there is a shortage of empirical studies focusing on the consumers’ perspective (Mont and Plepys, 2003). Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to find consumer’s motivational factors, by studying three PSS cases. The PSS cases are bike-sharing systems (BSSs): OV-fiets, Swapfiets and Mobike. The findings support a deeper understanding and stimulation of PSS adoption.
The research is carried out in a qualitative manner, eight semi-structured interviews with experts (who work at the analysed BSSs) and consumers (who uses two or more of the analysed BSSs) are conducted. The gathered data is analysed with the grounded theory (Charmaz, 2007) and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory (Rogers, 2003). This resulted in twenty-four motivational factors categorized by Rogers (2003) five innovation attributes: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability. An overview can be found in Table 7 on page 51. The research results indicate motivational drivers for consumers which can potentially increase the rate of adoption of BSSs. A new concept is created to illustrate possible design solutions to strengthen a selection of the consumer’s motivational factors. Additionally, the new concept demonstrates a promising future-oriented scenario for electrical BSSs. The new concept: Breeze aims to postpone or replace car ownership. To conclude, the findings raised in this thesis provide a deeper understanding of the consumers’ perspective on BSSs. The findings suggest what factors are more important to stimulate the rate of adoption. For future research, it is a useful base for a quantitative study to validate consumer’s motivational drivers to use a BSS in the Netherlands. The research findings are also a useful source for a more in-depth research about mobility PSSs in general.