Diss. Trondheim : Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet, 2023

During the mid-2010s, China experienced immense growth in mobility services enabled by smartphone applications such as dockless bicycles and different ride-hailing services. This development sparked controversies related to public obstruction, resource use, work relations, and companies’ responsibilities vis-à-vis their users. Parallel to this criticism, several researchers, media outlets, governmental bodies, and companies found the same mobility services to be innovative, future-oriented, and sustainable. Amidst these opposing narratives, this doctoral thesis questions the extent to which these new technologies disrupted or reconfigured the urban mobility system in Beijing. The thesis qualitatively explores the two most extensively used application-based mobility services in China; dockless bicycles and ride-hailing, which I refer to as “platform mobility”. The main objective of this thesis is to understand the embedding of platform mobility in everyday life and the relations between platform mobility companies and regulatory bodies. The empirical material is based on secondary sources, user- and expert interviews conducted during a six-month fieldwork in Beijing in 2019. The empirical material is mainly analyzed by drawing upon concepts, perspectives, and theories from Science and Technology Studies (STS) as well as sustainability transitions studies and the mobilities turn. Drawing on domestication theory and perspectives from the mobilities turn, I seek to make clear how users ‘make technology their own’ through practices, symbolic and cognitive work, and the experienced and embodied practice of movement. These perspectives provide a comprehensive approach to various ways platform mobility has become embedded by analyzing it through sociotechnical configurations.