E-bike ownership and use determinants and their trends in the Netherlands

Abstract

The global e-bike market has been growing significantly in recent years and is expected to keep expanding in the coming years. While many scholars have looked into e-bikes from operations management and user perspectives, the roles of different socio-demographic and built environment factors in e-bike ownership and use are less studied. Especially, how this role changes over time is rarely investigated. This paper explores i) how e-bike ownership and use have changed over time in the Netherlands, ii) how e-bike ownership and use relate to different socio-economic and built environment determinants, and iii) how these relationships have changed over time. Ten binary multinomial logistic regression models are developed to analyze how various determinants affect e-bike ownership and e-bike use respectively, using eight years of travel data from the Dutch national mobility surveys (2014–2021). The results show that e-bike ownership and use in the Netherlands have experienced consistent growth over time. Throughout the study period, e-bikes are becoming more widely adopted across diverse socio-demographic groups, and the influence of household size, household income, age, gender and education on e-bike ownership and use is decreasing. Interestingly, the penetration of e-bikes in non-urban areas is growing. Future urban and transport policies are recommended to take advantage of the growing e-bike adoption and the shifts in the socio-demographics and the residential locations of its adopters.