What Can We Learn from the ‘Wisdom of Crowds’? Drivers of (Dis)satisfaction in Shared Mobility Platforms: A Comparison of Free-Floating and Station-Based Models

Enabled by digital platforms, shared mobility holds the promise of alleviating the number of pressing social and environmental problems associated with mobility. However, shared models are neither sustainable nor circular by default, creating a need to carefully manage these platforms’ value proposition. This study analyses 17,386 reviews of 16 mobility providers (Zipcar, Turo, Car2Go, Getaround, Shrenow etc.) collected from six different online review containers (Playstore, Appstore, Trustpilot, Yelp!, etc.) over a 7-year period. Structural Topic Modelling (STM), Mean Topic Prevalence (MTP), regression analysis and perceptual mapping were applied. As a result, 14 service-related topics were extracted from the corpus and grouped into six service quality dimensions, identifying the weight of the service dimensions and their evolution over the years. Further analysis examined differences between free-floating and station-based platforms. A key finding was the recent growth in importance of sharing experiences – that is, quality interaction among peers for station-based platforms, by which loyalty can be strengthened through adopting business models that facilitate more cooperative and collaborative forms of exchange. For free-floating models, the role of the (functional) quality of the application was found to be key.