Abstract
Ride-sharing—the combination of multiple trips into one—may substantially contribute towards sustainable urban mobility. It is most efficient at high demand locations with many similar trip requests. However, here we reveal that people’s willingness to share rides does not follow this trend. Modeling the fundamental incentives underlying individual ride-sharing decisions, we find two opposing adoption regimes, one with constant and another one with decreasing adoption as demand increases. In the high demand limit, the transition between these regimes becomes discontinuous, switching abruptly from low to high ride-sharing adoption. Analyzing over 360 million ride requests in New York City and Chicago illustrates that both regimes coexist across the cities, consistent with our model predictions. These results suggest that even a moderate increase in the financial incentives may have a disproportionately large effect on the ride-sharing adoption of individual user groups.
Highlights
Ride-sharing—the combination of multiple trips into one—may substantially contribute towards sustainable urban mobility
Analyzing ride-sharing decisions from approximately 250 million ride-requests in New York City and 110 million in Chicago suggests that both adoption regimes coexist in these cities, consistent with our theoretical predictions
Our findings indicate that a small increase in financial incentives may disproportionately increase the adoption of ride-sharing for individual user groups from a low to a high-sharing regime
Summary
Ride-sharing—the combination of multiple trips into one—may substantially contribute towards sustainable urban mobility. Analyzing over 360 million ride requests in New York City and Chicago illustrates that both regimes coexist across the cities, consistent with our model predictions These results suggest that even a moderate increase in the financial incentives may have a disproportionately large effect on the ride-sharing adoption of individual user groups. By combining different individual trips into a shared ride, ridesharing increases the average utilization per vehicle, reduces the total number of vehicles required to serve the same demand[10] and thereby mitigates congestion and negative environmental impacts of urban mobility[11,12]. Analyzing ride-sharing decisions from approximately 250 million ride-requests in New York City and 110 million in Chicago suggests that both adoption regimes coexist in these cities, consistent with our theoretical predictions. Our findings indicate that a small increase in financial incentives may disproportionately increase the adoption of ride-sharing for individual user groups from a low to a high-sharing regime
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