Citation

Li D, Song Y, Liu D, Cao Q, Chen J. Transportation (Amst) 2023; 50(3): 929-958.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s11116-022-10268-x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Carpooling, as an increasingly popular ridesharing service available in China, offers car access to those who do not own a private vehicle. However, disclosing passengers' personal information to drivers, especially their photos and gender, may encourage facial discrimination or violent crimes. In this paper, we explore the passenger choice behavior of carpool drivers in China. A stated preference survey was designed to collect drivers' choices. An ordered choice model considering drivers' observed taste heterogeneity and random effects within panel data was employed to find the associations between passengers' personal information and drivers' choice behavior. Behavioral findings show that carpool drivers' passenger choice behavior is significantly affected by not only the attributes that are trip specific, but also the characteristics of drivers and passengers, and the interactions among these characteristics. Value of facial attractiveness (VOFA) and value of credit (VOC) are both defined and calculated to show that the charges are less important to carpool drivers in China. We then discuss research questions in depth, i.e., the drivers' purposes, the implications of drivers' passenger choices on equality, operational suggestions, and the reflection of discrimination and risk problems on the management of Internet companies, the government regulatory system, and the social ethics concerns.

Language: en

Keywords

Carpooling; Information provision; Ordered choice model; Passenger choice behavior; Privacy and equality issues