You'll never share alone: Analyzing carsharing user group behavior

Baumgarte F, Brandt T, Keller R, Röhrich F, Schmidt L

Abstract
The rapidly developing concept of carsharing is an essential and scalable part of sustainable, multimodal mobility in urban environments. There is a clear need for carsharing operators to understand their users and how they use different transportation modes to intensify the development of carsharing and its positive impacts on the environment and urban cohabitation. We foster this understanding by analyzing usage data of carsharing in a medium-sized German city. We compare user groups based on individual characteristics and their carsharing usage behavior. We focus on a station-based two-way carsharing scheme and its relation to free-floating carsharing. Based on different clustering and segmentation approaches, we defined 20 particularly interesting user groups among the carsharing users and analyzed noticeable usage patterns. Additionally, we examined these partially overlapping user groups in the spatial dimension. With these results, we support research and operators in understanding carsharing customers and assessing users’ individual behavior.

Keywords
Carsharing; Station-based; Free-floating; Urban environment; Shared