Who uses shared micro-mobility services?: Empirical evidence from Zurich, Switzerland

Abstract

Shared micro-mobility services have rapidly gained popularity yet challenged city administrations to develop adequate policies while scientific insight is largely missing. From a transportation equity perspective, it is particularly important to understand user correlates, as they are the beneficiaries from public investment and reallocation of public space. This paper provides an up-to-date account of shared micro-mobility adoption and user characteristics in Zurich, Switzerland. Our results suggest that shared micro-mobility users tend to be young, university-educated males with full-time employment living in affluent households without children or cars. Shared e-scooter users, in particular, are younger, yet more representative of the general population in terms of education, full-time employment, income and gender than bike-sharing users. This suggests that shared e-scooters may contribute to transportation equity, yet their promotion should be handled with care as life-cycle emissions exceed those of bike-sharing and equity contributions might be skewed as many users are students.