Examining Travelers’ Acceptance Towards Car Sharing System’ Based On Stated Preference Survey

The rapid growth of motorization and urbanization has considered as big issues in many countries.The excessive motorization has several negative impacts,including longer delays/travel time,increased travel cost,severe congestions,serious traffic safety problems,more polluted atmosphere,increased fuel consumption and overall reduced transport system efficiency.Policy makers and transportation planner has confronted many issues regarding how to accommodate the increasing rate of car ownership in an effective way.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 aims to investigate the travelers‘ acceptance towards car sharing system in the city of Peshawar,Pakistan,as well as to analyze what factors play the most important role in the decision-making process.Stated preference(SP)survey was conducted throughout in city.The orthogonal design was used for the choice experiment and the final survey was distributed online through Google form.The questionnaire was divided into two types of carowners and non-car-owners.Questions were designed from three aspects such as awareness of car sharing systems,attributes related to alternative travel modes in the choice set,and demographic characteristics.A total of 453 valid responses were received.The Multinomial Logit model and Nested Logit model were employed for analysis and evaluation of survey responses.Demographic characteristics including gender,job,and income were found to be significant.Service attributes of alternative travel modes 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.Utility maximization models were used to identify the best travel mode with the maximum utility.The findings in the present study could be helpful for policy makers and transport planners to timely implement car sharing systems in cities in order to mitigate increased car ownership and traffic congestion...