The Risk Reduction and Sustainable Development of Shared Transportation: The Chinese Online Car-hailing Policy Evaluation in the Digitalization Era

Yuchen Gao,Jingrui Chen

doi:10.3390/su11092596

Abstract

Online car-hailing services (such as DiDi and Uber) are one of the typical sharing economy forms of transportation service in the digital era. Related public policies are expected to reduce the risk of online car-hailing and ensure the social sustainable development. However, the empirical evidence regarding the effect of relevant policy implementations is still scarce. This study takes an online car-hailing service in China as a research object to understand and evaluate the effect of implementing related policies. The risk related to an online car-hailing service is classified into three dimensions in this study, namely, institutional, economic and safety perspectives. The empirical results indicate that public policies have significant impacts on reducing conflicts and risk of shared transportation in China, especially the institutional risk. Furthermore, the effects of different policy factors differ for different risk types. Several insights of developing policies and regulations related to sustainable shared transportation in the digitalization era are also provided. The interaction between government authorities, private firms and citizens should be attached to great importance in policy design, which will consequently enhance the sustainable development in the transportation sector under sharing economy.

Highlights

In the digitalization era, the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has created a new pattern of transportation, which influences individual decision-making processes and sustainable development of society [1]
To prove the robustness of the empirical results, this research uses fixed effect model of negative binomial regression (Model 1 & 2), the mixed effect model (Models 3 and 4), and the fixed effect model with municipalities directly under the Central Government (Models 5 and 6) to carry on the regression, and obtains significant negative effects, which proves that the policy of online car-hailing significantly reduces the overall risk
In the further study of policy factors, it is found that some entry restrictions on drivers and vehicles of online car-hailing services cannot reduce the risk of sharing economy, whereas it increases the institutional risk and economic risk

Summary

Introduction

The use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has created a new pattern of transportation, which influences individual decision-making processes and sustainable development of society [1]. By providing transportation service with high level flexibility and efficiency, these shared mobility solutions have been blurring the boundaries of traditional public transportation systems [7]. Online car-hailing services are becoming a key component of the urban public transportation system [8] This new ICT app-based shared transportation mode is increasingly making a great sustainable impact on societies, including both under-utilized resources optimizing and users’ demand satisfying. Online car-hailing services under the sharing economy are questioned, as they may contain certain risks [10] The risks of this new transportation mode mainly stem from liability of newness incompatibility between flexibility and safety, and the influence on incumbent industries [8,11]

Results

Discussion

Conclusion