Car-Sharing: Current and Potential Members Behavior Analysis after the Introduction of the Service

Even though the first attempt to develop a vehicle-sharing system can be traced around 1950, only in the last decade it was possible to see an increase both in members and in service providers. This increase is mainly fostered by strong developments in the IT sector, which allow car-sharing companies to offer easier solutions to their members, such as vehicle localization and booking and electronic payments. A crucial point in setting up a car-sharing is to identify the willingness of the potential users to use the service.Aim of this study is to analyze this point through a survey, conducted on the summer of 2015, on the mobility behavior of the citizens in Turin, and their behavior toward car-sharing in particular. The main objective of this survey was to analyze how citizens changed their mobility behavior immediately after the introduction of the free-floating service mode. Furthermore, the survey was mainly focused on young persons, being this target of users more opened to innovations and more affected by budget limitations. Over a sample of about 1300 respondents (this number makes it one of the largest in the literature so far), more than 70% are male, in about 60% of the cases the age is between 18 and 24 years old, they mainly live in households of 4 persons, with 2 cars for each household.