Modeling the brand choice behavior of shared micro-mobility users: A case of electric scooter sharing

The growing number of shared micro-mobility service providers coexisting in the market has diversified the market composition, leading to challenges in expanding their own-brand market share. Therefore, developing effective strategies for competition and marketing requires a deeper understanding of users' choice behavior among heterogeneous service providers. However, most previous studies often overlook the heterogeneity among service providers, resulting in limitations in precisely explaining users' choice behavior. To address this research gap, a hybrid choice modeling approach is employed to explore the brand choice behavior within the same transport service. The proposed brand choice model integrates various latent variables, such as brand attitude and shared micro-mobility usage characteristics, to capture the key factors influencing users' service provider choices. Using electric scooter sharing (ESS) as a case study, stated preference data were collected to analyze the choice behavior of ESS users. The results show that travel attributes, latent variables, and socioeconomic characteristics have significant direct effects on choice probability, whereas brand attitude has substantial mediation effects, revealing the importance of brand evaluation on users' choice behavior. The managerial insights derived will enhance the competitive and marketing strategies of ESS service providers, while the policy implications will provide direction for government planning.