How E-Scooters Impact Shared Mobility and Consumer Safety

Abstract

New forms of shared micromobility services, such as e-scooters, are growing rapidly across cities. However, their impact beyond the retail and restaurant sectors is less understood in the marketing literature. The authors examine how the entry of e-scooters impacts other incumbent shared mobility services (i.e., ride-sharing and bike-sharing) and consumer safety (i.e., crimes) using data on the entry of e-scooters in parts of Chicago in 2019 and a generalized synthetic control approach. The results show that the entry of e-scooters increases the number of short rideshare trips by 15.72% but decreases the number of bikeshare trips by 7.62%. The effects are consistent with a category expansion mechanism for ride-sharing and a category cannibalization mechanism for bike-sharing. The authors also find that the entry of e-scooters increases the number of crimes (e.g., vehicle break-ins) by 17.94%, mostly due to street and vehicle crimes. The effects of e-scooters are heterogeneous by the age and racial composition of a neighborhood. Overall, e-scooters contribute about $8.1 million in ride-sharing revenues, but they also have an unintended negative environmental effect amounting to over 800 metric tons of carbon emissions per year. This research offers an app companion for stakeholders.