Affective geographies of e-scooter travel: Infrastructure, emotions, and adaptive strategies

Despite their popularity, limited attention has been given to understanding what captivates e-scooter riders and sustains their interest in the device. While surveys consistently rank e-scooters as a highly satisfying transport mode, such evaluations often reduce complex experiences to a single numeric score, leaving much unexplored. Using a video-recorded ride-along interview methodology, this study examines how infrastructure and spatial configurations influence the affective experiences of 12 e-scooter riders in Barcelona. Our observations reveal that trips encompass a wide range of emotional registers, from positive activation to negative deactivation emotions, often contingent on the quality of the infrastructure. Furthermore, by combining observational material with participants’ interview narratives, we show that the intrinsic characteristics of these devices—lightness, manoeuvrability, and quiet operation—play a key role in how participants define relationships with infrastructure and the situations encountered. Across these accounts, a recurring ideal of frictionless mobility emerged, with riders expressing a strong expectation for uninterrupted travel that shaped both their behaviours and their emotional responses. By uncovering the interplay between cycling infrastructure, emotions, adaptive strategies and the pursuit of frictionless mobility, this paper shed light on the processes underpinning e-scooter satisfaction and underscores the importance of integrating affective dimensions into urban design. • Affective experiences of e-cooter travel are shaped by infrastructural conditions and the spatial dynamics of the city. • Riders engage in continuous affective negotiations, adapting to perceived risks, discomforts, and affordances. • E-scooter use reveals ambivalent emotional geographies, where enjoyment coexists with unease. • Informal and illegal strategies often emerge as affective responses to infrastructural shortcomings. • Infrastructure is not just a physical backdrop but actively co-constitutes emotional experiences of urban travel.