Pricing Approach to Balance Demands for One-way Car-sharing Systems*

Abstract

Carsharing is an alternative transportation mode for urban mobility. One-way carsharing model presents possible imbalance problem in fleet distribution and demands. Dynamic pricing approach can affect users’ behavior to change the users’ demands and the moving of vehicles in order to keep the system in balance. This paper presents a method to determine the pricing schemes. Firstly the paper reveals the mechanism of reaction of users who had received the variable pricing offers, and establishes a price-demand model. The price-demand model takes into account both the elasticity price-demand effect and the changing of departure and destination station of users. Subsequently, we formulate an optimization model to find out proper pricing schemes which can keep the station vehicle inventory at a proper range. Finally the paper presents a numerical example by adopting the pricing scheme method we put forward.