Non-linear characteristics in switching intention to use a docked bike-sharing system

Bike-sharing systems have been popular in addressing the “last mile” problem in public transit. However, service providers have found challenges when soliciting travellers to shift from their private vehicles: more stations do not always mean higher switching by private vehicle users. Considering the possible non-linear relationship between service provision and intention to use, this study utilises the cusp catastrophe model to analyse travellers’ intentions to use a bike-sharing system. The proposed model employs usage intention as the state variable, while switching barriers and accessibility are used as splitting factor and normal factor, respectively. This study measures participants’ usage intentions for two trip purposes and nine accessibility scenarios for CityBike, a public docked bike-sharing system in an Asian city where the majority of travellers use private vehicles. The results support a non-linear relationship between service provision and intention to use with the catastrophe characteristics including divergence, sudden transitions, and hysteresis of usage intention. In particular, travellers with higher switching barriers show a sudden, yet delayed response to improvements in a service only when it reaches a threshold in accessibility (e.g., 100 m away from the station and the lead time for rental within 3 min), whereas those with low switching barriers respond immediately to service improvements. We discuss marketing implications in facilitating switching to docked bike-sharing services among different segments. This research has made theoretical and empirical contributions, by supporting the non-linearity between accessibility and usage intention, along with diverse marketing materials and service provision catering to different usage occasions.