How to Share Benefits of Smart Transportation and Mobility: A Study Based on Cooperative Game Theory

Shared mobility will become an important part in the future smart transportation and contribute to sustainable development. However, recently a large number of pioneers in this market have failed in making profits, and have to declare bankrupt or give up this promising business. One main cause is that it is difficult to find a method to allocate the profits to all the partners reasonably. In other words, there is still no effective business model in smart mobility. This study discusses cooperation among all stakeholders, including four species of participants, in smart mobility business alliance based on the theory of community ecology. The leaders are the enterprises who offer business platforms for the other players. The enablers include OEMs, hardware and software suppliers who contribute to smart mobility with intelligent vehicle products and technologies. The supporters can provide infrastructure and market channels. And the parasites are able to create added value with services and contents on basis of the platforms and products from other species. This paper establishes a cooperative game model composed of profit functions for all the stakeholders, considering both car sharing and private travel in the era of intelligent vehicles. A profit distribution strategy is proposed with Shapley value method, which ensures the efficiency and fairness. A quantitative analysis based on Chinese market data is conducted. The results indicate that the leaders and enablers will gain the most of the benefits of smart mobility, accounting for more than 80 percent. The cooperation improves the whole profits by around 60 percent, compared to the situation in which each species operates alone. Thus, the supporters and parasites who can benefit more from cooperation should assist in developing the market and reducing the operating costs of the whole business alliance.