Shared e-scooter service providers with large fleet size have a competitive advantage: Findings from e-scooter demand and supply analysis of Nashville, Tennessee

Shared e-scooter systems are one of the fastest-growing micromobility modes in the United States. In response to service providers' rapid deployment of e-scooter vehicles, several city governments have regulated shared e-scooters through permits and pilot programs, including the number of service providers, their fleet size, and provisions for expanding/downsizing the fleet size. How-ever, the literature lacks an empirical analysis of the demand elasticity of shared e-scooters. We used a Poisson fixed effects regression to evaluate the demand elasticity of e-scooter vehicle deployment using the Shared Urban Mobility Device (SUMD) dataset from Nashville, Tennessee, between March 1, 2019 and February 2020. This dataset included disaggregated e-scooter trip summary data and vehicle location data that updates approximately every five minutes. We also estimated land-use specific demand elasticity of e-scooter vehicle deployment by clustering Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZs) using the K-means algorithm. We found that the average daily demand elasticity of e-scooter vehicle deployment is inelastic (0.64). Service providers with large fleet sizes (>500 average daily e-scooters) have a demand elasticity of e-scooter deployment that is 1.8 times higher than that of medium fleet-sized service providers (250-500 average daily e -scooters). Fleet size is likely correlated to service provider-specific attributes such as vendor popularity, brand loyalty, and rideshare services. We also found a significant difference in de-mand elasticity of e-scooter deployment for land use types, with university and park & waterfront land uses having the highest elasticity values. These findings could be helpful for city govern-ments to identify the optimal number of service providers and fleet sizes to permit so that demand is fulfilled without an oversupply of e-scooter vehicles in public spaces.