Health Perception on the Adoption and Acceptance of Shared Mobility: From Now to Future

Abstract

Bikesharing has become increasingly popular in urban areas as an alternative active transportation mode that canhelp relieve congestion, mitigate negative environmental impacts, and improve public health through increasedphysical activity. To understand the benefit of bikesharing, it is important to identify the factors influencing howoften registered users use bikesharing, and assess whether and how much their bikesharing use is displacing an autotrip. A survey was conducted, and random parameters logit models were estimated to study individuals’ bikesharing usage rates and modal substitution. In addition to standard socio-demographic and travel behavior characteristicsof the survey respondents, health-related questions were also included in the survey and health-related indicatorswere considered as explanatory variables in the estimated models. It was found that gender, age, income, householdsize, commute type and length, and vehicle ownership all played significant roles in bikesharing usage and modalsubstitution decisions. Regarding health measures, respondents’ body mass index (BMI), one of the health-relatedindicators, was also a significant predictor of bikesharing usage. The outcomes of this research provide some initialinsights into the bikesharing decision-making process that can help in the development of policies to improve theperformance of bikesharing systems and making them a more viable transportation option.