Exploring the factors affecting bike-sharing demand: evidence from student perceptions, usage patterns and adoption barriers

Shared mobility is an innovative transportation strategy defined as the shared use of a vehicle, bicycle or other mode which enables users to gain short-term access to transportation modes on an as-needed basis. Bike-sharing systems have rapidly expanded around the world with important implications for urban areas. Considering the benefits regarding cycling and implications deriving from bike-sharing services implementation, this paper presents an in-depth analysis to investigate a variety of determinants, barriers and motivation that can influence the willingness to cycling and join bike-sharing. The study focuses on a specific target group represented by university students and their preferences have been collected through a structured questionnaire in applying the Likert Scale. A statistical analysis has been realized based on a chi-squared test, deriving the difference between expected and observed frequencies for several combinations of the analyzed attributes. First results highlight the differences between the impact of economic, environmental and social factors for students cycling and provide useful suggestion to define the way for a well-thought-out design of a bike-sharing transport service.