Travellers’ willingness to share rides in autonomous mobility on demand systems depending on travel distance and detour

Abstract Autonomous mobility on demand systems (AMODS) are predicted to face a bright future for providing convenient individual mobility. Yet, increasing the occupancy rate of AMODS by ridesharing is an essential prerequisite for sustainable future mobility. The online study (N = 150) assessed travelers’ willingness to share rides with unknown fellow travelers in shared AMODS (SAMODS) depending on the factors travel distance and detour factor that are affected by the ridesharing scheme. The findings reveal great acceptability of SAMODS and underline the importance of the travel time and detour for respondents’ willingness to share rides. The cumulative distribution function of the Willingness to Accept (WTA) of sharing rides provides an indication of how much discount in price of a shared ride is needed to attract a critical mass of travelers. The findings indicate that 90% of respondents would prefer to share a ride of 10 min if the discount was 50% or more compared to a private ride. A higher discount is needed to attract travelers to share rides if travel time and detour factor increase. The results highlight the importance of a price system that is adjustable to ride-specific travel time and detour factor to attract travelers to share rides in future SAMODS.