Is car sharing a sustainable strategy?

In the sense of a comprehensive understanding of sustainability, the economic and social ramifications of car sharing are analysed in addition to its environmental consequences in an innovative way. An integrated input-output model is developed and applied to assess the impact of an increase in car sharing to 10% of the licence holders in Germany until 2020 on pollution, production, sectoral changes, employment, job qualification, working conditions, and regional industrial concentration. The modelling approach complies with the idea of a life-cycle assessment, since indirect effects from inter-sectoral production relations are also taken into account. The scenario results indicate that increased car sharing leads to small production gains since the reductions in the losing sectors such as car producers, garages, oil processing, or insurance services, are more than compensated by the production increases in the winning sectors such as car sharing services or public transportation. Since labour intensity is higher in the winning sectors than in the losing sectors, car sharing also leads to higher employment. In addition, increased car sharing tends to require average job qualifications but more flexible working times. It further results in a regionally more evenly distributed industry structure, but some regions face considerable pressure for adjustment. The shift in the modal split in favour of public transportation results in emission reductions for most, but not all pollutants. Finally, insights from political economy theory suggest that measures to foster car sharing may not easily be attainable.