Customer incentive rebalancing plan in free-float bike-sharing system with limited information
Free-float bike-sharing (FFBS) systems have increased in popularity as a sustainable travel mode in recent years, especially in the urban areas of China. Despite the convenience such systems offer to customers, it is not easy to maintain an effective balance in the distribution of bikes. This study...
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| Format: | Article |
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Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
2020
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/125364 |
| _version_ | 1826206458489864192 |
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| author | Wu, Ruijing Liu, Shaoxuan Shi, Zhenyang |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Transportation & Logistics |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Transportation & Logistics Wu, Ruijing Liu, Shaoxuan Shi, Zhenyang |
| author_sort | Wu, Ruijing |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Free-float bike-sharing (FFBS) systems have increased in popularity as a sustainable travel mode in recent years, especially in the urban areas of China. Despite the convenience such systems offer to customers, it is not easy to maintain an effective balance in the distribution of bikes. This study considers the dynamic rebalancing problem for FFBS systems, whereby user-based tactics are employed by incentivizing users to perform repositioning activities. Motivated by the fact that the problem is frequently faced by FFBS system operators entering a new market with limited information on travel demand, we adopt the ranking and selection approach to select the optimal incentive plan. We describe the system dynamics in detail, and formulate a profit maximization problem with a constraint on customer service level. Through numerical studies, we first establish that our procedure can select the optimal incentive plan in a wide range of scenarios. Second, under our incentive plan, the profit and service level can be improved significantly compared with the scenario without incentive provision. Third, in most cases, our procedure can achieve the optimal solution with a reasonable sample size. Keywords: free-float bike-sharing; customer incentive-based rebalancing; simulation optimization; ranking and selection |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:29:52Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/125364 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:29:52Z |
| publishDate | 2020 |
| publisher | Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1253642022-09-28T14:36:26Z Customer incentive rebalancing plan in free-float bike-sharing system with limited information Wu, Ruijing Liu, Shaoxuan Shi, Zhenyang Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Transportation & Logistics Free-float bike-sharing (FFBS) systems have increased in popularity as a sustainable travel mode in recent years, especially in the urban areas of China. Despite the convenience such systems offer to customers, it is not easy to maintain an effective balance in the distribution of bikes. This study considers the dynamic rebalancing problem for FFBS systems, whereby user-based tactics are employed by incentivizing users to perform repositioning activities. Motivated by the fact that the problem is frequently faced by FFBS system operators entering a new market with limited information on travel demand, we adopt the ranking and selection approach to select the optimal incentive plan. We describe the system dynamics in detail, and formulate a profit maximization problem with a constraint on customer service level. Through numerical studies, we first establish that our procedure can select the optimal incentive plan in a wide range of scenarios. Second, under our incentive plan, the profit and service level can be improved significantly compared with the scenario without incentive provision. Third, in most cases, our procedure can achieve the optimal solution with a reasonable sample size. Keywords: free-float bike-sharing; customer incentive-based rebalancing; simulation optimization; ranking and selection 2020-05-20T20:33:44Z 2020-05-20T20:33:44Z 2019-05-31 2019-05 2020-03-02T12:52:50Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 2071-1050 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/125364 Wu, Ruijing, Shaoxuan Liu, and Zhenyang Shi, "Customer incentive rebalancing plan in free-float bike-sharing system with limited information." Sustainability 11, 11 (May 2019): no. 3088 doi 10.3390/su11113088 ©2019 Author(s) 10.3390/su11113088 Sustainability Creative Commons Attribution https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute |
| spellingShingle | Wu, Ruijing Liu, Shaoxuan Shi, Zhenyang Customer incentive rebalancing plan in free-float bike-sharing system with limited information |
| title | Customer incentive rebalancing plan in free-float bike-sharing system with limited information |
| title_full | Customer incentive rebalancing plan in free-float bike-sharing system with limited information |
| title_fullStr | Customer incentive rebalancing plan in free-float bike-sharing system with limited information |
| title_full_unstemmed | Customer incentive rebalancing plan in free-float bike-sharing system with limited information |
| title_short | Customer incentive rebalancing plan in free-float bike-sharing system with limited information |
| title_sort | customer incentive rebalancing plan in free float bike sharing system with limited information |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/125364 |
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