Heterogeneous effects of psychological factors and personality traits on the acceptance of electric micromobility-sharing services in Europe

Source abstract

Electric micromobility-sharing services (EMS) are positioned as a lever for decarbonizing short trips, whereas the adoption of EMS remains uneven across user groups and spatial contexts. This short communication highlights key comparative findings on which psychological determinants of EMS acceptance vary across countries, thereby indicating where policy and operator strategies are most relevant to local conditions. We investigate the behavioral intention to adopt EMS across four European countries, the Netherlands, Italy, France, and Spain, by integrating the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) with the Big Five personality traits. Using structural equation modeling with multi-group analyses, we find that social influence and hedonic motivation have consistent, significant positive effects on EMS adoption, and cross-country differences emerge in the strength and direction of the relationships between other psychological factors and behavioral intention. The varying effects of the five dimensions of personality traits suggest that user profiling should not be limited to the characterization of socio-demographics. Overall, the results specify which determinants are consistent versus context-dependent. This implies that tailored policies in EMS should take the form of differentiated communication framing, incentive design, and service design priorities aligned with the locally acceptance mechanisms.