Do shared E-bikes reduce urban carbon emissions?

Qiumeng Li, Franz Fuerst and Davide Luca

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Under the threat of climate change, many global cities nowadays are promoting shared commuting modes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Shared electric bikes (e-bikes) are emerging modes that compete with bikes, cars, or public transit. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence for the net effect of shared e-bikes on carbon emissions, as shared e-bikes can substitute for both higher carbon emissions modes and cleaner commuting modes. Using a large collection of spatio-temporal trajectory data of shared e-bike trips in two provincial cities (Chengdu and Kunming) in China, this study develops a travel mode substitution model to identify the changes in travel modes due to the introduction of shared e-bike systems and to quantify the corresponding impact on net carbon emissions. We find that, on average, shared e-bikes decrease carbon emissions by 108–120 g per kilometre. More interestingly, the reduction effect is much stronger in underdeveloped non-central areas with lower density, less diversified land use, lower accessibility, and lower economic level. Although the actual carbon reduction benefits of shared e-bike schemes are far from clear, this study bears important policy implications for exploring this emerging micro-mobility mode to achieve carbon reduction impacts.

Keywords: carbon emissions; E-bikes; micro-mobility; sharing economy; substitution effects; yrban context (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q50 Q55 R00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-10-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-ene, nep-env, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Journal of Transport Geography, 1, October, 2023, 112. ISSN: 0966-6923

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/120310/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Do shared E-bikes reduce urban carbon emissions? (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:120310

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().