Public's Intention and Influencing Factors of Dockless Bike-Sharing in Central Urban Areas: A Case Study of Lanzhou City, China

Taking the main district in Lanzhou city of China as an example, the questionnaires were designed and distributed, and then the effects of five factors, i.e., behavioral attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, on the behavioral intention of dockless bike-sharing (DBS) use were empirically analyzed based on the integrated model of technology acceptance model (TAM) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB) as well as the structural equation model. Results show that the five factors all impose significantly positive effects on the public's behavioral intention of DBS use but differ in influencing degrees. Behavioral attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control can all directly affect the public's behavioral intention of DBS use, with direct influence coefficients of 0.691, 0.257 and 0.198, while perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness impose indirectly effects on behavioral intention, with indirect influence coefficients of 0.372 and 0.396. Overall, behavioral attitude imposes the most significant effect, followed by perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and subjective norm, and finally perceived behavioral control. This indicates that the public's behavioral intention of DBS use depends heavily on their behavioral attitude towards the shared bikes. In view of the limited open space of the main district in Lanzhou, the explosive growth of shared bikes, oversaturated arrangements, disordered competition, unclear and unscientific divisions of parking regions, and hindrance of traffic, this study proposes a lot of policy suggestions from the research results. A series of supporting service systems related to DBS should be formulated. The shared bikes with different characteristics should be launched for different age groups, gender groups and work groups. The corresponding feedback platform for realtime acquisition, organization, analysis and solution of data information, as well as the adequate platform feedback mechanism, should be established.