Using Reputation Scores to Foster Car-Sharing Activities

In the near future, the growth of personal mobility is expected to continue all over the world and to cause impacts such as increased levels of traffic congestion and worsened quality of life, mainly in highly populated urban areas. Alternative solutions for individual mobility have been promoted to dissuade people from using private cars. Particularly, renting private vehicles scarcely used by their owners would result in several benefits, including environmental ones, and traffic reduction. This type of solution, based on the willingness of individuals to rent their own vehicles, is called Peer-to-Peer Car-Sharing (P2P-CS). This study proposes a methodological approach focused on the adoption of both a reputation system and blockchain technology to support P2P-CS activities. Reputation scores are introduced to meet CS actors' expectations of dealing with trusted partners, by allowing both access to service and the opportunity to customize CS fares, while the blockchain makes reputation scores publicly accessible and unchangeable and allows the P2P-CS transport solution to be managed without third parties. The effectiveness of the proposed approach has been verified by several tests carried out on real and simulated data. The obtained results are satisfactory and encourage the adoption of these further sustainable travel mode opportunities.