Digital Service through Sharing Economy to Sustainability : A car sharing case in Suzhou, China

Abstract: The rapid increase in car ownership has caused rigorous issues for people living in the major cities in China, which is observe from traffic pressure, the inconvenience of city travelling, and air pollution. While the fast development of digital service platforms based on the Internet provides an alternative approach to touch the problems, leading a researchable phenomenon, online car-sharing service in China. This paper strives to explore the impact of car sharing on millennial sustainability attitudes by using the daily service on apps to ‘drive less, share more’. The paper is conducted using mixed research methods in Suzhou, China. Principally, the researchers interviewed ten car- sharing consumers during shared ride. To ensure the creditability and reliability, the paper collected 326 online survey responses from local car-sharing platforms as comparable data. The results show that most millennials agree car-sharing service makes their traffic modes more convenient, and taking shared ride more compared to self-driving has a significant influence on social and environmental issues in cities. Also, some respondents present willingness or already take actions on giving up car ownerships. However, the result also emphasises the fundamental reasons for millennials to participate in car-sharing service, which is personalised service and reasonable price. The paper closes with three outcomes, sharing economy as ‘Development’, digital service as ‘Innovation’, and sustainability as ‘The future’. They not only enrich the current literature research between Millennials and sharing economy, but also promote further strategies for car-sharing companies with empirical data.