Abstract
Car sharing is an emerging innovation that may contribute to a transition to a more sustainable mobility system. Although it does not represent a radically new technology, car sharing challenges the foundations of the current mobility system, which is based on private ownership. Much of the literature on sustainability transitions uses socio-technical tools like the multi-level perspective and transition pathways typology, which have been useful for analyzing innovation from a macro, top-down perspective, but are less useful for analyzing micro-phenomena and capturing user perspectives. Practice theory is an alternative approach to studying human behavior and societal change that decenters the human agent and focuses on everyday activities and the formation of habits. Using practice theory, this thesis investigates mobility behavior and user adoption of car sharing platforms in Oslo to gain insights into critical aspects of a socio-technical transition in its nascent stages. Based on in-depth interviews with seven households living in Oslo, this thesis provides new understandings related to the materials, competences and meanings associated with car sharing. Car sharing is also contextualized among other important practices, chief among them, residency. I argue that the strength of car sharing is that it maintains many of the practices prevalent in the incumbent regime, and that, in Oslo, it is a distinctively urban phenomenon that attracts distinctively urban users who engage in the practice because it helps them achieve a preferred lifestyle. Although this thesis does not provide a blueprint for car sharing promotion or the enactment of a transition, its comprehensive analysis of innovation adoption and real-world use offers useful insights to inform future research and policy.