Research on evaluation of the urban car sharing environment in China based on factor analysis

Car sharing plays an important role in resolving the contradiction between the growing urban travel demand and the lack of supply capacity. Scientific and accurate evaluation of the urban car sharing environment is of great significance for urban development in China. This paper built the evaluation index system from four aspects, namely, the overall economic environment, consuming ability, demand potential and supply capacity. Then, the factor analysis and entropy weight method were used to conduct an empirical analysis on the car sharing environment evaluation for the 25 second-tier cities in China. Finally, the clustering analysis method was utilized to conduct further research on the characteristics of the differences and similarities between sample cities. This method shows that there is a big difference among the secondary cities of China in the car sharing environment, which can be divided into four categories. These categories are significantly different from each other in all dimensions, and measures should be taken according to actual situations to promote the healthy and sustainable development of the car sharing business model.