Shared mobility and coworking in rural areas: A vision detached from reality?

Rural areas face persistent accessibility challenges due to low population density, long travel distances, and strong dependence on private cars. Shared mobility services and coworking spaces have been promoted as potential solutions, yet their feasibility in sparsely populated areas remains uncertain. This paper evaluates the implementation of a novel mobility service introduced in four rural towns in Sweden in conjunction with local coworking spaces. Drawing on a mixed-methods design combining implementation analysis, a household survey, and semi-structured interviews, we examine adoption levels, user attitudes, and barriers to uptake. The results reveal limited adoption of both the mobility service and coworking spaces, despite generally positive attitudes toward the concepts. Regression analysis shows that car ownership strongly decreases positive attitudes, while individual innovativeness increases them. Interviews highlight the dominance of private car dependence, the reliance on informal social networks for carpooling, and low demand for coworking facilities. The paper contributes to the transport geography literature by demonstrating that the challenges of rural shared mobility lie less in attitudinal resistance and more in structural car dependence, lack of local anchoring, and the mismatch between urban-oriented mobility visions and rural everyday practices. • The shared mobility service saw only marginal use in the four rural villages. • High car ownership was linked to lower interest in the shared mobility service. • Greater innovativeness was associated with positive attitudes to shared mobility. • Interviews show car dependence can coexist with high perceived accessibility. • Rural MaaS is constrained by structural conditions that facilitates car use.