Friend-Invitation Promotion Scheme Used in Electric Carsharing: Empirical Analysis and Policy Implications

Abstract

The combination of electric vehicle (EV) and carsharing is expected to provide social and environmental benefits, like encouraging sustainable travel behaviors (reducing car ownership and vehicle kilometres of travel) and improving the accessibility and flexibility of urban transport. Thus, electric carsharing is encouraged to be adopted for daily trips, and the operators propose the friend-invitation promotion scheme for the membership expansion. This study explores the effectiveness of this scheme and the characteristics of the scheme participants and their invited friends (e.g., age, friend-invitation pattern, and EV rental pattern). The analysis found that 28.4% of these invited friends would make at least one EV rental after registration, whereas 30.4% of the other members who registered in the same period would do so, indicating that these invited friends were less active. Therefore, suggestions are given based on the EV rental pattern of these invited friends (preferring a longer journey using a smaller but cheaper EV) to enhance the effectiveness of the friend-invitation promotion scheme.