The spatial spread of dockless bike-sharing programs among Chinese cities

In a short period of three years from 2016 to 2018, the latest generation of dockless bike-sharing programs that originated in Beijing have gone through a roller coaster ride of boom to bust. While their spatial presence has been highly visible globally, the rationale, process and outcomes of the spatial spread as well as the strategies and agents behind the spatial diffusion have so far been unknown. This paper explores the geography of diffusion of dockless bike-sharing programs by analysing data collected from multiple sources. The findings reveal that the geography of diffusion was itself a business strategy for entrepreneurs to manage competition. Dockless bike-sharing fleets were placed selectively in cities worldwide by aggressive program operators supported by profit-hungry venture capital. The push by these supply-side agents in the diffusion process makes it unique from the diffusion studies which focused on users. An uneven landscape is discernible in the diffusion outcomes characterised by the clusters of similar cities where dockless bike-sharing programs are either present or absent, and the outlier clusters which are surrounded by dissimilar neighbours. The process through which an uneven landscape was developed presents two contrasting diffusion trajectories - from large to small cities vs from small to large cities.