Business-to-business carsharing: evidence from Britain of factors associated with employer-based carsharing membership and its impacts

Carsharing organizations (known as car clubs in Britain) are today evolving in new ways. One noteworthy development is the growth of the business-to-business (B2B) market, which is motivated in part by operators’ desire to smooth the temporal profile of overall carsharing demand and thereby increase aggregate fleet-utilization rates. In contrast to the widely-studied business-to-consumer (B2C) market, however, comparatively little is known about the B2B segment. This study fills this gap by drawing on a national survey of both Britain’s B2B carsharing members (n = 682) and employers’ corporate travel administrators that oversee an organization’s B2B carsharing membership (n = 127). Analytical methods included both descriptive statistics and multivariate regression techniques. We find that two-thirds (68 %) of B2B members use carsharing for their usual business travel, and that half (51 %) of them previously used their own car for such travel. Approximately one in seven (15 %) respondents indicated that their carsharing membership through their employer has changed their travel habits by allowing them to commute to work less often by private car, as they do not require their own personal car for work-related travel during their workday. It appears that car use for (non-commuting) business purposes may increase, however. This paper concludes with a discussion of open questions that are suggested to motivate the future research agenda.