Bridging the behavioral valuation gap: A prosumer perspective on discrepancies between willingness to accept and willingness to pay in shared parking

Amid rising car ownership and limited urban parking, shared parking has emerged as a promising solution to address mismatches between parking supply and demand. However, the widespread adoption of shared parking services remains limited, primarily due to a divergence in valuation between providers and users within the sharing economy. This study explores the adoption behaviors of prosumers of shared parking from both the provider and user perspectives, aiming to address the behavioral mechanisms with the willingness to accept (WTA)-willingness to pay (WTP) discrepancy. A sequential stated preference survey was conducted among current shared parking prosumers in Seoul, Korea, where each respondent completed both provider and user scenarios in randomized order to capture role-specific preferences. The mixed logit model approach with latent variables (social and hedonist innovativeness) is employed to account for unobserved heterogeneity. Model results reveal that providers are more strongly influenced by social factors than users, and social innovativeness has a larger behavioral impact than hedonist innovativeness across both roles. For deeper insights, this study applies personalized taste weights to enable the identification of heterogeneous discrepancies in WTA-WTP across individuals. A notable discrepancy was found between WTA and WTP, and a personalized taste weights approach reveals substantial variability in the magnitude of valuation asymmetries among individuals, especially concerning shared parking time usage. Notably, this gap was mitigated among those with higher personal innovativeness, indicating an impact of social and hedonist innovativeness in reducing the discrepancy. These findings necessitate a shift from simplistic financial incentives to strategies that harness social influence and cater to diverse psychological profiles, emphasizing the importance of addressing the WTA-WTP discrepancy through comprehensive incentive structures and social recognition mechanisms to foster broader participation in shared parking services.