Mobility as a service: sharing rides in times of pandemics

This paper discusses how pandemics might shape future transport practices and affect consumer trust in shared mobility offerings such as Mobility as a Service (MaaS). MaaS is a personalized one-stop transport management platform, digitally unifying trip creation, purchase and delivery across all transport modes. The discussion draws on research into a case study featuring an electric car club. Results of the research show that consumers are more or less likely to use MaaS depending on their age and lifestyle. Relationships between users, strict protection measures and a sense of belonging to a geographically situated or a brand community could engender trust in the MaaS provider and in other users within selected pools of users. MaaS providers could therefore encourage users to aggregate around communities coalescing around sharing cities or brands. Important areas of future research are in the utility of health and safety measures and of social and symbolic cues in reassuring consumers of MaaS’ safety and in the consumer identities that are more likely to aggregate around either types of communities