Source: The Conversation – Shared e-scooters are becoming common in major cities around the world. Initial safety concerns about e-scooters left some national administrations wary, but early results from a research survey shows major benefits from e-scooters for tourists and local economies.

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It is already known that visitors and local residents use bike-sharing schemes differently. The effects for tourist attractions and visitors – an increase in visits and better experience – are complementary. But that’s cycles.

Until now there has been limited evidence that e-scooters help tourists either visit more local attractions or spend more. Australia’s first e-scooter trials began in Brisbane as recently as 2018. Services have since been launched in South Australia, the ACT, North Queensland and the NT.

While e-scooters may offer a low-carbon option for post-COVID tourism, do these schemes benefit tourist cities?

The research team at Griffith University’s Cities Research Institute partnered with Neuron Mobility to conduct a survey of Townsville tourists between December 2020 and February 2021. The survey collected shopping and travel patterns of 140 visiting e-scooter users, as well as the patterns of 80 Townsville residents. Some of these users had bought multi-day subscription passes.

The researchers have analysed the visiting e-scooter users’ travel and spending behaviours. Though their e-scooter hire costs were identical, the visitors who rode the e-scooters the most spent more money in Townsville each day. The more avid e-scooter users (the top third by distance travelled) spent 41% more per day than those in the bottom third for use.

The avid users completed on median 11 e-scooter trips, covering nearly 26km each, while in Townsville. Many of these trips (60%) would have been completed by walking if e-scooters were unavailable. They would have taken longer to complete each trip on foot, thus limiting the total number of destinations visited. Other trips wouldn’t have occurred at all.

Find the complete article at The Conversation.

Photo credits Christina Spinnen on Unsplash.