Examining travelers' acceptance towards car sharing systems-Peshawar City, Pakistan

Abstract

In recent years, car sharing has emerged as a novel alternative to private car ownership in urban areas worldwide. Potential benefits of this system include improved mobility and reduced congestion, vehicle ownership, parking issues, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This study aimed to investigate travelers' acceptance of car sharing systems through a stated preference survey in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan. The questionnaires were distributed online via a Google form. Questions were designed from numerous aspects of car sharing systems, such as awareness of car sharing systems, attributes related to travel modes in the choice set, and demographic characteristics. A total of 453 valid responses were received. The Multinomial and Nested Logit models were employed for evaluation and analysis of survey responses. Demographic characteristics including gender, job, and income were found to be significant. Service attributes including travel time, travel cost, registration fees, and capital cost, were also significant. The multinomial logit model based on both car-owners and non-car-owners fit a little better than the nested logit model. Our findings in the present study could be beneficial for transport planners and policy makers to timely implement car sharing systems in cities in order to mitigate increased car ownership and traffic congestion.