Incentive measures to avoid the illegal parking of dockless shared bikes: the relationships among incentive forms, intensity and policy compliance

The recent development of shared-bike systems in China has brought convenience for users, as well as great pressure on bicycle parking management. There is limited empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of incentive measures from the perspective of guiding people to park their shared bikes regularly. By defining a mixed logit model based on the theory of planned behaviour, this study focuses on exploring the conformity effects of policy compliance among dockless shared-bike users in the behavioural decisions of bicycle parking. A total of 453 respondents who had just finished parking a shared bike were invited to provide intentional information by participating in a stated preference survey. The empirical results indicated that, as a positive and negative incentive measure, both monetary rewards and financial penalties can motivate people to park the shared bikes in an unsaturated place near their destinations. However, the significant difference is that, with increasing incentive intensity, a monetary reward can motivate shared-bike users to shift the bicycles away more effectively than a financial penalty, especially when the shifting distance requires more than 10 min of walking. In addition, some factors used to characterize the individual heterogeneity, such as gender, education and searching time for dockless shared bikes, also have obvious impacts on policy compliance regarding bicycle parking guidance. These findings can help policy makers to create appropriate measures in the form of incentives to reduce illegal parking by shared-bike users.