The Design of a Decision Support System for Computation of Carsharing Pricing Areas and Its Influence on Vehicle Distribution

Carsharing offers an ecologically friendly alternative to private car ownership, helping alleviate urban mobility problems and pave the way to a sustainable future for transportation. However, several obstacles in carsharing service management must be overcome in order to take full advantage of its potential as a mainstream mode of transportation. Among others, substantial barriers to involvement include challenges of vehicle supply and demand management. Against this background, in this article, we develop decision support system for the construction of pricing areas via a design science research approach. The pricing areas influence user rental behavior by adding a fee for returning vehicles in low-demand areas and granting a discount for returning vehicles in high-demand areas. To evaluate the output of the decision support system, a set of constructed pricing areas was tested for one year in a real-world car sharing system. The results reveal that pricing areas reduce the need for vehicle relocations while facilitating better vehicle availability.