Comillas Pontifical University. Madrid (Spain)
June 30th, 2025
Summary:
This dissertation investigates the evolution of Sustainable Business Models (SBMs), a topic that has received limited attention in the literature. Most studies focus on how conventional business models can evolve to become sustainable, tacitly assuming that SBMs remain static. Challenging this assumption, we examine the role of customer misbehaviour and vandalism as a key driver of business model evolution in Access-Based Services (ABS), a type of SBM. Focusing on shared mobility as a subset of ABS, this research explores the micro and macro-level impacts of misbehaviour. At the micro level, it analyses how business model adaptations in response to misbehaviour affect sustainability goals. At the macro level, it investigates how these behaviors hinder the transition to sustainable urban mobility, disrupting efforts to move beyond the car-dependent transportation regime. By integrating the Business Model Framework, the Triple Bottom Line approach, and the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) on socio-technical transitions, the thesis adopts a multimethod approach.
This thesis comprises two distinct studies. Study 1 employs deductive quantitative analysis to examine the factors contributing to crashes in carsharing and their relationship with different forms of customer misbehaviour, such as speeding and alcohol abuse. The analysis is based on a unique dataset of 2.2 million carsharing trips and is complemented by interviews with key managers and users of the carsharing service. Study 2 adopts a qualitative approach, utilizing interviews with managers from electric carsharing, motosharing, scootersharing, and bikesharing services, along with archival data, to assess companies' strategic responses to misbehaviour. It explores how these adaptations reshape business models, ultimately impacting operators’ ability to balance economic viability, environmental sustainability, and social responsibility. The evidence gathered is also analysed to examine how these transformations influence the broader role of shared mobility operators in challenging the car-dependent transportation regime in cities.
The findings reveal that SBMs evolve in response to interconnected changes in consumer behavior, industry lifecycle, shareholder priorities, technological advancements, and regulatory shifts. With the exception of public bikesharing schemes, most operators transition from offering “shared mobility for all” to “premium niche mobility solutions,” highlighting the challenges misbehaviour poses for niche innovators striving to scale and replace the car-centric regime. We call this process, the degradation of SBM.
This thesis makes theoretical contributions to the literature on SBMs, customer deviance, and socio-technical transitions. It demonstrates that SBMs can degrade when they fail to uphold their sustainability goals while remaining economically viable. Furthermore, it highlights customer misbehaviour and vandalism, an overlooked factor in previous research, as a key driver of this degradation. Additionally, this study reveals that the strategies companies adopt to address misbehaviour are not static, as suggested by the literature, but rather evolve over time, shaped by internal factors such as management capabilities and external forces including technological advancements, regulatory changes, and industry competition. Finally, this thesis advances socio-technical transition theory by demonstrating how customer misbehaviour obstructs the scaling of niche innovations, limiting their ability to disrupt existing transportation paradigms.
Empirically, it provides unique insights through interviews with industry executives, who rarely discuss these issues openly, an extensive review of media and industry reports, and a large dataset of carsharing accidents covering 2.2 million trips in Madrid.
Spanish layman's summary:
Analiza cómo el mal comportamiento de clientes impulsa la evolución y degradación de modelos de negocio sostenibles en movilidad compartida. Con 2,2 M de viajes y entrevistas, muestra cómo el vandalismo lleva al modelo a un nicho, frenando la transición urbana.
English layman's summary:
Examines how customer misbehaviour drives evolution—and degradation—of sustainable business models in shared mobility. Using 2.2M carsharing trips + interviews, shows how vandalism shifts firms from broad to niche, hindering urban mobility transitions.
Descriptors: Organization and management of enterprises, Transport and communication
Keywords: Customer misbehaviour, vandalism, business model, process, sustainability, shared mobility, transitions.
Citation:
A. Camacho, "The degradation of sustainable business models: customer misbehavior and shared mobility", PhD. dissertation, Comillas Pontifical University, Madrid, Spain, 2025.
