Study on the Intention of Private Parking Space Owners of Different Levels of Cities to Participate in Shared Parking in China

The implementation of shared parking program can effectively increase the utilization rate of existing parking space resources. At present, shared parking program has not been widely practiced in China, and the prerequisite for this prospect to be implemented is whether the private parking space owner group can quickly and widely accept shared parking program. In this study, considering the differences in the economic development, urban planning, and parking pressure in cities of different levels, the theory of planned behavior and the benefit-risk perception model (C-TPB-BRA) are combined as the theoretical framework to explore the intention to share parking space from the perspective of the owners of private parking spaces in cities of different levels. Based on China’s empirical data, structural equation models are built to verify the hypotheses proposed. Our results show that (a) the intention of private parking space owners in different levels of cities to participate in shared parking and the mechanism of action of the psychological factors are different, and not all psychological factors have a direct impact on the intention to share. In first-tier, second-tier, and third-tier cities, Subjective Norm (SN) and Perceived Behavioral Control (PBC) indirectly affect Behavior Intention (BI) through Attitude (ATT), Perceived Benefit (PB), and Perceived Risk (PR). In the fourth-tier cities, SN and PBC directly affect BI. Except for BI, other psychological factors influence each other significantly; (b) the psychological factors affecting the intention to supply shared parking spaces in first-tier, second-tier, third-tier, and fourth-tier cities, respectively, are PB > ATT > PR, PB > PR > ATT, PB > PR > ATT, and PB > SN > PBC > ATT > PR. Our research results could help determine the internal factors that affect the intention of parking space suppliers and their mechanisms of action to participate in shared parking, and on that basis, our findings could also help governments and platform operators to promote shared parking development plans.