Bicycle-sharing in Beijing: An Assessment of Economic, Environmental, and Health Effects, and Identification of Key Drivers of Environmental Performance

The emergence of Bicycle-Sharing Systems (BSSs) has brought about changes in traffic systems and generated economic, environmental, and human health effects. This study took Beijing as the research object, and aimed to examine the economic, environmental, and human health effects of BSSs and the key drivers affecting the environmental performance of shared bicycles. Questionnaire surveys were carried out to provide an overview of BSSs in Beijing by referring to the original data in the impact assessment, and the identification of key drivers. Based on the relationship between leisure-time and economic growth, the economic effects resulted in a statistically significant increase of 79.3 US dollars (612.3 RMB) and 44.4 US dollars (342.7 RMB) per capita GDP per day in the baseline of the United States and Denmark, respectively. The environmental and human health effects were evaluated using the life cycle assessment method to study the substitution of different transport modes during the entire life cycle of bicycle-sharing. The results revealed that reduced adverse environmental effects were proved to be significant and positive on all impact categories and the reduction in human health damage were positive, approximately equal to 500,000 DALYs. The sensitivity analysis demonstrated that the increase of usage rate in sharing bicycle will bring more environment benefits and human health damage reduction. The identification of key drivers was determined by the binary logistic model, and included the following: gender, monthly income, the low cost of BSSs, the location of BSSs in relation to bus stations, metro stations, and residential areas; perceptions of a higher frequency of bicycle-sharing; damaged bicycles as a development barrier, and optimism about the future of BSSs. This study provides empirical evidence for BSS management and policy making by the administrative department.