Pay-per-minute bike-sharing pricing strategy nudges cyclists toward unsafe behaviours: a bicycle simulator study

Pay-per-minute bike-sharing pricing strategies can act as a monetary incentive for cyclists to minimize their travel time, potentially leading to negative consequences for road safety. This study investigates the effects of time-based fees on bike-sharing users through a bicycle simulator experiment involving 30 participants (15 females, aged 19–28). Participants rode along a path composed of roundabouts and unsignalized T-intersections under two experimental conditions presented in randomized order. In the Private Bike (PB) condition, participants were instructed to ride as they typically would in the real world. In the Bike Sharing (BS) condition, participants were informed that €0.06 would be deducted from their final payment for each minute of riding. Generalized Linear Mixed Models were employed to analyse the effects of the experimental condition on route choice at roundabouts (i.e., using the dedicated crosswalk versus riding within the roundabout ring), waiting time and crossing speed at crosswalks, riding speed on straight segments, and gap-acceptance behaviour at Tintersections. In the BS condition, participants tended to wait less before crossing, rode faster, and accepted shorter time gaps. These findings raise concerns on pay-per-minute bike-sharing pricing strategies, which can significantly nudge cyclists toward unsafe behaviours, despite the very small size of the monetary incentive.