User characteristics and service satisfaction of car sharing systems: Evidence from Hangzhou, China

PLoS One. 2022 Feb 2;17(2):e0263476. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0263476. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Car sharing has become a new mode of transport during the past two decades in the world. Its rapid growth in China has attracted a wide range of users and posed some problems. The main focus is on service efficiency and user satisfaction. To explore possible service enhancement and management intervention, this study aims at capturing the user characteristics according to different user types and scrutinizing their satisfaction with station-based one-way car sharing service. The study firstly illustrates descriptive statistics of user profile. This is followed by a study of user satisfaction influenced by user rates on staffs, the efficiency of rental process, vehicle situation, the use of credit card and their familiarity towards rental station. Furthermore, by clustering users according to the total travel time and distance during one rent, two different types of users are identified and defined as User Group A (UGA) and User Group B (UGB). To examine how fully do users utilize the shared cars, ANOVA was conducted implying family car ownership, total travel distance and main travel purpose have strong impact on total rental time for UGB, while for UGA, travel purpose and age have strong impact. Finally, ordinal logistic regression was introduced to find that for UGB, "shopping" is the main travel purpose with longer rental time, whereas for UGA, "out for business", "shopping", "visit friends" or "pick up others" are the main travel purposes with longer total travel time. Based on the findings, advices for operators on how to improve service quality and suggestions for government management strategy are discussed, respectively.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Automobiles / statistics & numerical data*
  • China
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Personal Satisfaction*
  • Transportation / methods*
  • Travel / statistics & numerical data*
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

This work is supported by the [Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province] under Grant [number LY21E080027] (received by YS; funder supported data collection); [2021 Independent Project of Center for Balance Architecture] (received by YS; funders supported data analysis); and [Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province] under Grant [number LQ19E080017] (relied by KZ; funders helped with data analysis).