Factors Influencing the Frequency of Use of Free-Floating Bike-Sharing Services among University Students in Nanjing, China

In the past decade, free-floating bike-sharing services (FFBSS) have expanded rapidly in China. The use of these services in that country is no longer an issue, with more than 200 million Chinese now using FFBSS. Instead, researchers and operators need to pay more attention to the frequency of use of these new services. This paper therefore examines the factors that influence the frequency of use of FFBSS among university students in Nanjing, China. The results of a generalized ordered logit model reveal that socio-economic characteristics, bike ownership, intensity of mobile Internet usage and frequency of daily travel, and FFBSS usage behaviors have a significant impact on the frequency of use of FFBSS. In addition, it should be noted that factors relating to the level of education, monthly income, and time of adoption only have a partial impact on the frequency of use, on account of the violation of the proportional odds assumption.