Does Shared Housing Among Students Encourage Carpooling for Home-to-Campus Commuting? Interactions Between Sharing Economy Practices

Abstract

Over the past fifteen years, collaborative practices have expanded rapidly, driven by digital technologies and changes in urban lifestyles, they have contributed to the rise of the sharing economy, of which home-sharing and carpooling are two examples that are particularly widespread among students. This study analyzes the influence of student shared housing on the use of carpooling for home–campus commuting. While these two practices may be complementary, their relationship remains theoretically ambiguous due to coordination constraints, rebound effects, or moral licensing mechanisms. The analysis relies on original data from the MobiCampus-UdL survey conducted among around 9,000 students in the Lyon metropolitan area, using a recursive bivariate discrete choice model based on a copula approach to address the endogeneity. Results show a positive causal effect of shared housing on carpooling, but also reveal strong self-selection, suggesting shared housing alone is insufficient to generalize carpooling.