A Network Ridesharing Experiment with Sequential Choice of Transportation Mode

Authors

Vincent Mak, University of Cambridge
Darryl A. Seale, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow
Eyran J. Gisches, University of ArizonaFollow
Amnon Rapoport, University of Arizona
Meng Cheng, University of California, Riverside
Myounghee Moon, University of California, RiversideFollow
Rui Yang, University of California, RiversideFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-30-2018

Publication Title

Theory and Decision

First page number:

1

Last page number:

27

Abstract

Within the last decade, there has been a dramatic bloom in ridesharing businesses along with the emergence of new enabling technologies. A central issue in ridesharing, which is also important in the general domain of cost-sharing in economics and computer science, is that the sharing of cost implies positive externalities and hence coordination problems for the network users. We investigate these problems experimentally in the present study. In particular, we focus on how sequential observability of transportation mode choices can be a powerful facilitator of coordination in ridesharing. Our study abstracts the essential issues of coordination in ridesharing into a directed network game with experimentally testable predictions. In line with the theoretical analysis, our experimental evidence shows that even a limited extent of sequential choice observability might lead to efficient coordination. However, convergence to efficiency is slower with more limited observability, resulting in a significant increase in travel cost.

Keywords

Ridesharing; Traffic networks; Sequential choice; Experiment

Disciplines

Business

Language

English

Repository Citation

Mak, V., Seale, D. A., Gisches, E. J., Rapoport, A., Cheng, M., Moon, M., Yang, R. (2018). A Network Ridesharing Experiment with Sequential Choice of Transportation Mode. Theory and Decision 1-27.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11238-018-9663-y.