Analysis of Dockless Bike-sharing Parking Guidance Mechanism Considering Social Norms and Government Subsidies

To address the governance challenges associated with dockless bike-sharing (DBS) parking, this study aims to examine the interactive dynamics between user parking behaviour and enterprise management decisions. Given that current incentive and punishment measures are insufficient to solve parking problems, parking guidance mechanisms incorporating social norms and government subsidies have been developed. Through theoretical analysis and numerical simulations, the dynamic evolution of strategic choices made by both players was investigated. Results show that the social norm-based mechanism leads to faster convergence to the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) for users, while the government subsidy-based mechanism enables enterprises to reach ESS more rapidly. Moreover, when social norms and government subsidies are of equal strength, non-commuting users respond more quickly to guidance mechanisms and adopt orderly parking behaviours sooner than commuting users. The effects of increasing the intensity of social norms and the level of government subsidies on the evolutionary speed of both parties exhibit diminishing marginal returns. Notably, when subsidies are sufficient to offset enterprise incentive costs, the increase in the subsidy level can significantly accelerate the strategic evolution of commuting users, whereas the marginal effect on non-commuting users remains limited.