Abstract

Car sharing, an innovative mobility service complementary to the local public transport, helps, through the sharing of a fleet of cars among users, to reduce individual and social costs of private transport, at the same time avoiding the rigidity of traditional public transport as well. This paper intends to explain the nature and development of car sharing through three key directions: 1) the critical analysis of literature, through which it was possible to identify how car sharing is still not very extensive; 2) the overview of the Italian context; 3) the analysis of car sharing service in detail, through a case study of the experience in the city of Genoa. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the few existing studies on car sharing in an effort to increase academic and managerial attention on this sustainable mobility service.