Earlier this month, Parisians took to the polls to vote on a referendum about whether to ban shared electric scooters throughout the city. Shared scooters have been available in Paris since 2018, and in those five years the city has become one of the world's largest markets for electric shared mobility. The growth in "micromobility" — the industry term for small vehicles such as electric scooters and bicycles — has coincided with a major overhaul of the city streets, led by Mayor Anne Hidalgo, to take space in city streets from cars and increase designated space and infrastructure for walking, cycling, and transit.

The results of the Paris scooter referendum were decisive: 89% of voters cast their ballots to ban the scooters. However, only 7.5% of eligible voters went to the polls. So starting on September 1, the scooter operators Lime, Dott, and Tier will remove the roughly 15,000 shared rental e-scooters currently operating in the city.

Was this a resounding victory for local democracy and a clear mandate to ban scooters, as Mayor Hidalgo has stated? Or was it instead an effort to avoid making difficult political decisions, as scooter operators or boosters might suggest? These are the two predominant narratives emerging from the vote, but perhaps the answer is deeper and more nuanced. My research on the topic suggests that much of the public discourse around scooters has to do with perceptions, both good and bad, accurate and inaccurate.

Among the reasons that Parisians voted to ban the e-scooters is the fact that many people have a negative perception about them. These negative perceptions stem from the manner in which scooters arrived in cities ("dumping" a large number of scooters on city streets at once), along with continued concerns about vandalism, safety for riders and pedestrians, reckless riding, and parking.

Among these issues, scooter parking has emerged as a persistent and persnickety challenge for cities across the globe. Every city has its own regulations about how to deal with the problem, though these regulations typically vary slightly — what's permitted in one city may not be in another. 

But even when people park their scooters according to what the city permits, pedestrians might not view the scooter as parked properly. In a recent study I published with Anne Brown and Calvin Thigpen, "Clutter and Compliance: Scooter Parking Interventions and Perceptions," we dug into the question of what counts as naughty scooter parking. We found that "public perceptions of improper parking are largely driven by concerns about pedestrian accessibility and an aesthetic sense of tidiness and order." In general, we find that when scooters are parked in a tidy manner (below, left), they are viewed more positively by the public. But when they are untidy, askew, or jumbled (below, right), even if they are not in anyone's way, people viewed them as problematic.