Understanding sustainable mobility services: a customer-dominant logic perspective

Purpose This study aims to advance sustainability-oriented service research by examining how customers make sense of sustainability and integrate sustainable mobility services into their everyday use. Applying customer-dominant logic, it examines why sustainability matters to customers, how they pursue sustainability-related goals through everyday practices, with whom these efforts are coordinated across social and service actors, and when sustainable practices are enacted and embedded over time. Design/methodology/approach Using a sequential mixed-methods design, we first conducted in-depth interviews with customers of a German mobility provider (n = 20). Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using interpretive thematic analysis. Open coding generated first-order concepts, which were iteratively clustered into second-order themes. A subsequent hermeneutic interpretation revealed latent factors capturing how customers integrate sustainable mobility services within their personal ecosystems, identified interrelationships among these factors, and developed measurement scales for these factors. The research model was tested using an online survey (n = 278) and structural equation modeling. Findings The findings show that the integration of sustainable mobility services within customers' ecosystems is driven by the perceived intra- and interconnectivity of the provider's mobility services, the perceived value those services contribute to customers' sustainability, customers' multimodal integration behavior, and the perceived centrality of the provider. Structural equation modeling validates significant relationships among these factors and their effects on customer satisfaction and positive word of mouth. Originality/value This paper contributes to sustainability-oriented service research by applying a customer-dominant understanding of how sustainable mobility services are used in customers' everyday lives. It extends existing customer-oriented perspectives on sustainability by offering a more holistic, experience-driven view grounded in customers' lifeworlds, addressing how customers' sustainability-related perceptions, values, and intentions translate into the actual use of sustainable mobility services.