Electric Vehicles Ready for Breakthrough in MaaS? Consumer Adoption of E-Car Sharing and E-Scooter Sharing as a Part of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS)

Current mobility trends indicate that the popularity of privately-owned cars will decrease in the near future. One reason for this development is the diffusion of mobility services such as car or bike sharing, or Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) bundles. Especially, MaaS bundles have the potential to respond to environmental issues and provide reliable mobility to users, thus illustrating the possibilities of being mobile without owning a car. Most of the past research on MaaS bundles, however, has focused on bigger cities that already have good infrastructural bases. Building on previous work in the MaaS field, we conducted a choice-based conjoint survey (n = 247) in Austria to investigate consumer preferences for MaaS packages in a suburban area. Further, we gathered data on the consumers' willingness to pay, especially for including electric vehicles in the form of e-car sharing and e-scooter sharing in MaaS packages. The results highlight the importance of package price as the attribute with the highest impact on purchase intention. Further, participants in our study most preferred MaaS packages that included e-car sharing to ones with e-scooter sharing. Using latent class analysis, we classified the respondents into three different segments with varying preferences for MaaS bundle features, and conducted market simulations.

Automated summary

Current trends suggest a decrease in the popularity of privately-owned cars due to the diffusion of mobility services like MaaS bundles. A study in Austria investigated consumer preferences for MaaS packages in suburban areas, showing that package price is the most important attribute impacting purchase intention. Participants in the study showed a preference for MaaS packages that included e-car sharing.