Will the perceptions to incentive policies have any effect on users' willingness to participate in Mobility-as-a-Service?

Abstract

With the increasing severity of urban traffic congestion and environmental pollution issues, Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) has garnered increasing attention as an emerging mode of transportation. Thus, how to motivate users to participate in MaaS has become an important research issue. This study first classified the incentive policies into four aspects: financial incentive policy, non-financial incentive policy, information policy, and convenience policy. Then, through online questionnaires and field interviews, 456 sets of data were collected in Beijing, and the data were analyzed by the structural equation model and latent class model. The results show that the four incentive policies are positively correlated with users' participation in MaaS, among which financial incentive policy and information policy have the greatest impact, that is, they can better encourage users by increasing direct financial subsidies and broadening the information about MaaS. In addition, Latent Class Analysis was performed to class different users and it was found that the personal characteristics of users had some influence on willingness to participate in MaaS. Therefore, incentive policies should be designed to consider the needs and characteristics of different user groups to improve their willingness to participate in MaaS. The results can provide theoretical suggestions for the government to promote the widespread application of MaaS in urban transportation.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Mobility-as-a-Service / Incentive policies / Personal traits / Latent class analysis