Micromobility in Smart Cities: A Closer Look at Shared Dockless\n E-Scooters via Big Social Data

Abstract

The micromobility is shaping first- and last-mile travels in urban areas.\nRecently, shared dockless electric scooters (e-scooters) have emerged as a\ndaily alternative to driving for short-distance commuters in large cities due\nto the affordability, easy accessibility via an app, and zero emissions.\nMeanwhile, e-scooters come with challenges in city management, such as traffic\nrules, public safety, parking regulations, and liability issues. In this paper,\nwe collected and investigated 5.8 million scooter-tagged tweets and 144,197\nimages, generated by 2.7 million users from October 2018 to March 2020, to take\na closer look at shared e-scooters via crowdsourcing data analytics. We\nprofiled e-scooter usages from spatial-temporal perspectives, explored\ndifferent business roles (i.e., riders, gig workers, and ridesharing\ncompanies), examined operation patterns (e.g., injury types, and parking\nbehaviors), and conducted sentiment analysis. To our best knowledge, this paper\nis the first large-scale systematic study on shared e-scooters using big social\ndata.\n