Toward climate-neutral urban mobility: understanding shared e-scooter carbon emission patterns through multi-city evidence in Europe

Ying Yang, Jiahao Zhan, Mujian Xu, Yang Liu and Xiaobo Qu

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 2026, vol. 203, issue C

Abstract: Shared e-scooters represent a promising low-carbon solution for short-distance travel, with significant potential to accelerate the urban transport transition toward climate neutrality. Based on shared e-scooter trips and carbon intensity data, we conducted a comparative analysis of 28 European cities to investigate the mechanisms linking urban characteristics with scooter-related carbon emissions. The results revealed significant variations in emissions sensitivity to specific city characteristics across the five city groups, with the Nordic city group demonstrating the lowest sensitivity. Factors such as population density, road length, and nightlight exhibited strong nonlinear positive correlations with other city groups. Temporal analysis revealed that weekday carbon emissions significantly exceeded weekend levels, with peak emissions occurring during midday and evening hours. Through Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) analysis, this study quantitatively evaluated the differentiated impacts of demographic, transportation, land use, economic, and environmental factors on carbon emissions. These findings can assist urban managers in optimizing shared e-scooter deployment strategies and provide empirical evidence for developing inclusive low-carbon transport policies, offering important implications for advancing urban transportation systems toward climate neutrality.

Keywords: Shared micromobility; Electric scooters; Carbon emissions; Urban characteristics; Spatio-temporal patterns; Explainable machine learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856425003696
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:transa:v:203:y:2026:i:c:s0965856425003696

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2025.104736

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice is currently edited by John (J.M.) Rose

More articles in Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().