Mode choice behaviour in developing countries

Quantifying factors affecting mode choice behaviour in developing countries and explore the ways and the potentials of promoting bike sharing and car sharing schemes via examining the past, the present and future mobility opportunities

Overview

China’s increasing overall wealth, especially the expansion of private car ownership, has raised severe challenges to energy independence and climate change, as well as air pollution and congestion in urban area. Car sharing, as a promising substitute to owning a private car, although has had a successful history in the west, it is only an infant concept in China. Bike sharing, although it has entered China for years, consumers’ acceptances are still not desirable in many cities. Against this background, the scope of this project is to quantify the factors affecting mode choice behaviour in developing countries and explore the ways and the potentials of promoting bike sharing and car sharing schemes via examining the following dimensions:

• Past habits, to find out how life milestones dynamically influence mode choice behaviour throughout the years and its implications to the present;
• Today’s progress, to find out current factors that might be influencing mode choice behaviour, particularly focusing on the choice of existing bike sharing schemes;
• Future opportunities, to find out effective pathways to introduce car-sharing schemes.

The data originate from a transport survey in Taiyuan, the capital city of Shanxi province. Discrete choice models (DCM) and advanced Hybrid Choice Models (HCM) are adopted to model the impact of factors affecting the choice of car sharing and bike sharing. By having the results on magnitude and significance of the factors affecting mode choice, scenarios based on various transport and urban planning policies are developed to forecast the potential change in transport patterns at urban level and the possible impact on energy savings and climate change mitigation.

Key findings

• As air pollution levels increase, the possibilities of choosing walk, bike-sharing and electric bike decrease. The slower the mode, the more it will be affected by air pollution.
• Negative willingness to pay for transport services (i.e. bike-sharing, car-sharing and bus) is discovered; in order words, travellers are willing to pay extra travel time in order to gain further reduction on travel cost.
• Shared modes (i.e. bike-sharing and car-sharing) are not preferred for commute trips due to the concern of time uncertainty during vehicle rent/return process.
• Lower income groups prefer bike-sharing and car-sharing.
• The younger generation in China do not prefer bike-sharing, walk or electric bike and would rather choose car-sharing or bus for short distance trips. The phenomenon can possibly be explained by their habits of avoiding discomfort.
• Travellers with higher educational levels are more likely to choose new mobility services perhaps due to their openness to new opportunities.