Determining an Optimal Government Subsidy Scheme for Shared Parking Management via a Bi-Level Programming Approach

A bi-level programming model is formulated to determine a government subsidy scheme for shared parking management. The government, as the upper-level decision-maker, seeks to maximize the social benefit by providing subsidy to the shared parking platform, incentivizing the platform to rent more shared parking slots, which can increase the utilization rate of idle parking slots and reduce the curbside parking cruising time of parking demanders. At the lower-level formulation, the shared parking platform, as a reseller, not only matches shared parking slot demanders but also determines which shared parking slots to rent, which is approached by a two-sided decision-making process. A “one-to-many” matching principle is adopted for the platform to maximize its revenue. A modified genetic algorithm is designed to solve the proposed model. Results indicate that the government subsidy has a positive impact on stimulating the shared parking market. Specifically, from the perspective of the government, the subsidy can increase the number of matched shared parking demanders, improve the supply of parking slots, and reduce curbside parking cruising time. From the perspective of the shared parking platform, the subsidy can lead to higher revenue.