Public Travel Preference,behavioral Intention And Carbon Emission Mitigation Potential Of Urban Shared Mobility Behavior In Shanghai,China

With the rapid growth of urbanization and mechanization,the number of vehicle ownership has increased fast in China in the recent decades which led to increasing traffic energy consumption.Increased traffic modes,especially increased automobiles,caused severe environmental issues such as global warming,traffic congestion,air pollution,hazy weather and so on,which threatened human health.At this moment,shared economy boomed in China against the background of“Internet plus”pattern.As the supplement of urban public transportation,shared mobility,especially bike-sharing,which makes the replacement of private car travel possible,solved the“Last Mile Trip”problem and changed people’s travel idea from individual ownership to sharing service.Though shared mobility still existed some problems such as disorderly parking and bikes waste accumulation,it provides the opportunity for sustainable and low-carbon development of urban transportation.From the perspective of public attitude and behavior,this paper focuses on public travel preference,behavioral intention and carbon emission mitigation potential of urban shared mobility in Shanghai,China.Shanghai is an important economic center and one of the foremost areas of economic development with high population density in China.This paper aims to answer three questions:1)what is public travel preference and which sharing travel mode is the most concerned one when respondents make choice;2)why most respondents decide to choose bike-sharing travel and which influential factors result in bike-sharing behavior and intention;3)how the influential factors affect urban carbon reduction and how many carbon mitigation potential comes from bike-sharing development.This paper firstly demonstrated that shared mobility is a kind of pro-environmental behaviors（PEBs）which can contribute to reduction of current environmental burdens.Then it identified the influential factors of behavioral preference and behavioral intention of shared mobility based on Theory of Planned Behavior（TPB）method.Two face-to-face questionnaire surveys about public travel preference and behavioral intention were conducted inside the outer ring in Shanghai.On this basis,public travel preference and behavioral models were built by Analytic Hierarchy Process（AHP）and Structural Equation Model（SEM）methods,respectively.Then a coupling model（TPB and System Dynamics models）was built to simulate CO₂ emissions mitigation potential under this circumstance of booming shared mobility.Some strategies from multi-stakeholder perspectives were put forward for low-carbon shared-mobility travel.The main results of this paper are as follows.1.Shared mobility behavior is a kind of PEBs.Individual environmental factor（such as environmental concern,environmental education and moral norms）and environmental sociology factor（lifestyles such as status seeker,time sense,money consumption sense,innovativeness,Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability）were added into SEM model as two latent variables to interpret shared mobility travel behavior and intention based on the extended TPB method.From both environmental psychology and sociology perspective,this paper identified the influential factors to interpret public travel preference and behavioral intention,which can make up the shortfall of previous researches and optimize SEM model structure.2.Based on the results of public travel preference questionnaire survey,the most preferred public travel mode was metro and the most preferred sharing travel mode was bike-sharing by using AHP method.Safety was considered as the most important travel factor before a trip,followed by health,speed and environmental protection.And it widely considered that bike-sharing was the most environmental-friendly,cheap and healthy travel mode.Individual and family attributes can significantly affect public travel preference.Female,young people,highly-income people and people who lived in Shanghai shorter preferred bike-sharing travel;low-education people preferred bus travel;people with driving license or not preferred electric vehicles and car rental,respectively;people without private cars preferred carpooling;people with more family members preferred metro travel.Respondents with different attributes made different environmental-friendly mode choice.Male,highly-income people and people who lived in Shanghai longer preferred electric vehicles as the most eco-friendly one;female,young people and highly-education people preferred bike-sharing;civil servants,doctors,lawyers and enterprise executives preferred carpooling;people with driving license preferred metro;people with private cars preferred electric vehicles;people with more family members preferred bike-sharing travel.3.Take the most preferred sharing mode（bike-sharing）as an example,questionnaire survey was done inside the outer ring in Shanghai on October,2017.Three SEM models about bike-sharing behavior and intention were built based on the extended TPB method.Take model 3 as an example,the results showed that the individual environmental factor and environmental sociology factor optimized SEM model structure and improved model interpretation（from 46%to 72%）.Environmental concern had an indirect effect on bike-sharing intention through behavioral attitude.Model 3 showed that behavioral experience（EX,0.626）was the most significant factor on bike-sharing intention,followed by moral norms（MN,0.286）,behavioral attitude（BA,0.240）,environmental concern（EC,0.176）,subjective norms（SN,0.145）,environmental education（EE,0.037）and perceived behavioral control（PBC,-0.009）.Model 3 also showed that environmental sociology factor can affect bike-sharing behavior significantly.Status seeker（-0.053*）,time sense（-0.686**）and money consumption sense（-0.150**）factors had a negative effect on bike-sharing behavior;while innovativeness（0.114**）,Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability（LOHAS,0.126**）factors had a positive effect.Respondents with different attitudes and behaviors had different lifestyles.People with high EC,EE and MN preferred to try new things and had high LOHAS attitude instead of material wealth.Respondents’attributes had a significant influence on bike-sharing attitude,and people with different attributes had different lifestyles.Female,young people and highly-income people had higher EC and environmental responsibility,more positive travel attitude and higher LOHAS,and had more bike-sharing travel experience.4.A coupled model of urban low-carbon transportation system was built by adding TPB factors into SD model.The addition of bike-sharing behavioral factors（EC,EE,BA,SN,PBC,EX,lifestyles）can give a feedback to bike-sharing utilization,which can result in transportation carbon reduction.Six scenarios（BAU,S1,S2,S3,S4,S5）were designed to simulate traffic carbon reduction in the coupled model.The results showed that S4 had the larger CO₂reduction potential（3.83Mt）,followed by S2（1.83Mt）,S1（1.55Mt）,S5（1.30Mt）and S3（1.24Mt）,which indicated that the replacement of private car travel and the increment of urban shared place can bring obvious reduction effect.The simulation results also showed that there will be 9.75Mt CO₂ emission reduction in 2030 under all the superimposed scenarios.Some strategies were proposed for low-carbon bike-sharing development from multi-stakeholder perspectives.Government leaders could incorporate bike-sharing development into future public transportation planning,develop sufficient shared places or community spaces,normalize bike-sharing utilization and management,increase the investment on environmental protection,and reinforce environmental public education.Enterprise executives should promote comfortability and durability of public bikes,optimize online and offline services of B2C bikes,encourage and guide green bike-sharing travel from public figures to common residents.Public consumers should enhance individual environmental concern and eco-friendly sensitivity,reduce bad travel habits and break travel preference limits,accumulate positive attitude of green travel,maintain higher innovation consciousness and LOHAS attitude.