Research Insight | E-Scooters Lead to Increased Rideshares—and Crime
Cities around the world are introducing e-scooters to improve local mobility. But how is this affecting the demand for other shared mobility options, as well as consumer safety?
In a Journal of Marketing study, researchers analyzed detailed data from over 8 million rideshare trips, 750,000 bikeshare rides, and citywide crime records, revealing that e-scooters reshape how people use shared mobility services: ridesharing trips increased by 15.7%, while bikesharing trips declined by 7.6% after e-scooters became available. This pattern reflects two distinct mechanisms: category expansion for ridesharing, where e-scooters complement car-based trips by helping riders reach or return from destinations more easily, and category cannibalization for bikesharing, where scooters directly substitute for bike trips.
Importantly, the results show a 17.9% rise in crime, especially street and vehicle-related offenses such as break-ins or snatch-and-run thefts following e-scooter entry. These safety effects are worse in younger and more racially diverse neighborhoods, highlighting the need for cities to balance innovation with equity and protection.
The study results can help marketers and managers of shared mobility services anticipate how the introduction of e-scooters may reshape demand across platforms. In addition, the findings suggest that cities and policymakers should prepare for greater street-level crime and invest in lighting, secure parking, and safety education.
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What You Need to Know
- The entry of e-scooters in a city increases ridesharing but reduces bikesharing use.
- The introduction of e-scooters leads to more street and vehicle-related crimes, highlighting the need for improved infrastructure and safety enforcement.
- The effects of e-scooters differ across neighborhoods, highlighting the importance of designing mobility programs that ensure equitable access and support for diverse communities.
Abstract
New forms of shared micromobility services, such as electric scooters (i.e., e-scooters) are growing rapidly across cities. However, their impact beyond the retail and restaurant sectors is less understood in the marketing literature. We examine how the entry of e-scooters impacts other incumbent shared mobility services (i.e., ridesharing and bikesharing) and consumer safety (i.e., crimes) using data on the entry of e-scooters in parts of Chicago in 2019 and a generalized synthetic control approach. We propose and test novel mechanisms based on e-scooters’ effects on overall demand and modal relationships (i.e., complementarity vs. substitution) with ridesharing and bikesharing. The results from our analysis show that the entry of e-scooters increases the number of short rideshare trips by 15.72%, but decreases the number of bikeshare trips by 7.62%. The effects are consistent with a category expansion mechanism for ridesharing (i.e., increase in the demand for trips met by complementarities between e-scooters and ridesharing) and a category cannibalization mechanism for bikesharing (i.e., increase in the demand for trips met by substitution of bikesharing by e-scooters). Interestingly, we also find that the entry of e-scooters increases the number of crimes (e.g., vehicle break-ins) by 17.94%, mostly due to street and vehicle crimes. The effects of e-scooters are heterogeneous by the age and racial composition of a neighborhood. Overall, e-scooters contribute about $8.1 million in ridesharing revenues but they also have an unintended negative environmental effect amounting to over 800 metric ton carbon emissions per year. Our research offers an app companion for stakeholders.
Ruichun Liu and Unnati Narang, “How E-Scooters Impact Shared Mobility and Consumer Safety,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1177/00222429251393987