How Did You Like This Ride? An Analysis of User Preferences in
Ridesharing Assignments
S
¨
oren Schleibaum
1 a
, Maike Greve
2
, Tim-Benjamin Lembcke
2 b
, Amos Azaria
3
, Jelena Fiosina
1
,
Noam Hazon
3
, Lutz Kolbe
2
, Sarit Kraus
4
, J
¨
org P. M
¨
uller
1 c
and Mark Vollrath
5
1
Department of Informatics, Clausthal University of Technology, Julius-Albert Straße 4, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany
2
Chair of Information Management, University of G
¨
ottingen, Platz der G
¨
ottinger Sieben 5, G
¨
ottingen, Germany
3
Department of Computer Science, Ariel University, Israel
4
Department of Computer Science, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
5
Chair of Engineering and Traffic Psychology, TU Braunschweig, Germany
Keywords:
User Preferences, Ridesharing, Assignment, Shared Mobility, Platform Economy.
Abstract:
Ridesharing can significantly reduce individual passenger transport and thus greenhouse gas emissions gen-
erated by traffic. Although ridesharing offers great potential, it is not yet popular enough to be seen as an
important contribution to solving the aforementioned problems. Our hypothesis suggests that we need to
make the assignment mechanism of ridesharing systems more human-centric and comprehensible in order to
popularise ridesharing. Therefore, we investigate factors that influence the choice of users and their satisfac-
tion with the assigned ride. Most of today’s ridesharing assignment algorithms focus solely on features such as
time, distance and price. Contrarily, this paper examines additional factors that influence customer decisions
to increase their satisfaction. Therefore, we first conduct a literature study to identify previous preferences
relevant for ridesharing from a research perspective. Subsequently, we extract the relevant preferences for an
assignment process. From these we secondly conduct a survey. Last, we analyse the obtained survey data and
order the preferences based on their importance for participants overall and among demographic subgroups.
1 INTRODUCTION
The impact of increasing greenhouse gas emissions
on our environment has been scientifically proven
(Parmesan and Yohe, 2003) and we are facing the
fastest global warming phase since the beginning of
the weather records. One of the most significant
contributors to emissions is the individualized trans-
portation of people, mostly through personal vehi-
cles. By sharing personal vehicles with other trav-
elers (i.e. ridesharing), improved vehicle utiliza-
tion can lead to substantial fuel savings and re-
duced emissions (Jacobson and King, 2009). Schol-
ars have researched the acceptance of ridesharing for
decades; nonetheless, there are still factors that limit
a widespread adoption of ridesharing, including pric-
ing, high-dimensional assignment, trust and reputa-
tion, as well as institutional design of such services
a
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7181-5336
b
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3092-5277
c
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7533-3852
(Furuhata et al., 2013). One of the fundamental chal-
lenges in ridesharing is to bring driver (supply) and
riders (demand) together. Therefore, a market mech-
anism is necessary to enable ridesharing services on a
larger scale. Advancements in information technolo-
gies enabled new information systems (IS) in form
of web platforms with assignment facilities for sup-
ply and demand. However, to be successful, the
chicken-and-egg problem inherent to these platforms
must be overcome, namely suitable rides offered and
demanded. Conceptually, these platforms have two
phases: First, users announce their ride offerings and
requests, and second, these offerings and requests are
assigned. Since the assignment is the core activity
of the ridesharing IS platform, it is of particular in-
terest to understand if users perceive the assignment
as satisfactory. In this paper, we understand rideshar-
ing as at least two individuals sharing a common ride
in the same vehicle. Furthermore, we consider the as-
signment process as bringing two individuals together
based on certain criteria like a route, price or the con-
Schleibaum, S., Greve, M., Lembcke, T., Azaria, A., Fiosina, J., Hazon, N., Kolbe, L., Kraus, S., Müller, J. and Vollrath, M.
How Did You Like This Ride? An Analysis of User Preferences in Ridesharing Assignments.
DOI: 10.5220/0009324401570168
In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Vehicle Technology and Intelligent Transport Systems (VEHITS 2020), pages 157-168
ISBN: 978-989-758-419-0
Copyright
c
2020 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
157
sideration of user’s preferences for a trip. This can
also contain the allocation of vehicles.
In principle, assignments in ridesharing can be ac-
complished in two ways: First, the provider could
do the assignment according to their own discretion.
From a user perspective, such assignments happen “as
is”, in a non-transparent fashion. User needs may or
may not be reflected by the assignment, potentially
rendering users dissatisfied. Second, the provider
could do the assignment in a transparent way, al-
lowing users to understand the assignment. Further-
more, user preferences and needs may be prompted
in advance and influence the assignment to maximize
the joint satisfaction of a driver and the according
rider(s). To align such user preferences on a large
scale in an automated and flexible way, artificial intel-
ligence (AI) technologies may be helpful. Nonethe-
less, to feed such AI, it is necessary to understand
which user preferences exist that influence a user’s
satisfaction with the ridesharing assignment. In cur-
rent research, such assignment preferences are only
addressed in limited amount. For example, (Bian and
Liu, 2019), (Neoh et al., 2018), (Yousaf et al., 2014)
and (Chaube et al., 2010) considers only a handful of
individual preference factors such as price and social
relations of travelers that influence personal satisfac-
tion with ridesharing experience. To the best of our
knowledge, none of the present studies have reviewed
a great number of factors to provide insight into the
satisfaction function of users within ridesharing as-
signment processes. Therefore, our study considers
several factors simultaneously, leading to our main re-
search questions:
Which preferences influencing ridesharing users
prevail in current literature?
Which preferences influence a users’ satisfaction
within the assignment process of ridesharing?
Does the order of importance for these prefer-
ences differ for subsets of people who vary in age,
gender, country, etc.?
In this study, we firstly provide the research back-
ground in Section 2 and describe the methods used in
this paper in Section 3 to enable more human-centric
assignments in ridesharing. We perform a literature
study in Section 4 to extract preferences and conduct
an online questionnaire with more than 290 partici-
pants to investigate their relevance. The results of the
latter is described in Section 5 and combined with the
findings from the literature study in Section 6. Finally,
we conclude our overall contributions in Section 7.
2 RESEARCH BACKGROUND
Ridesharing Terms. In context of this study, we de-
fine ridesharing as “the formal or informal sharing
of rides between drivers and passengers with sim-
ilar origin-destination pairings” (Shared and Digi-
tal Mobility Committee, 2018). Within this defin-
itory framework, multiple archetypes of ridesharing
are conceivable, from employees commuting together
to ridesharing as a service solution, providing on-
demand and door-to-door ride services. Historically,
during the Second World War the first organized
ridesharing was implemented by the U.S. government
as a regulation to save fuel (Furuhata et al., 2013).
Later, as a result of the oil crisis several rideshar-
ing methods emerged in the 1970s. Afterwards, the
popularity of ridesharing decreased due to more com-
plex travel patterns caused by demographic changes
(Ferguson, 1997). Then, with the rise of the inter-
net ridesharing services that assign riders and drivers
became apparent (Furuhata et al., 2013) and with
technological advancements like GPS-enabled smart-
phones dynamic ridesharing services such as Uber-
Pool became possible. Dynamic services let users of-
fer rides as a driver or request rides as a passenger at
any time (Nourinejad and Roorda, 2016). Nowadays,
ridesharing offers economic, environmental and so-
cial benefits by reducing the number of vehicles and
travel cost (Neoh et al., 2018).
Human-centric Assignment in Ridesharing. De-
spite the increasing traffic in cities and the potential of
ridesharing to reduce the pollution caused by traffic,
ridesharing in Germany is particularly not very pop-
ular (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2019). Previous liter-
ature indicates that one reason for this reluctance lies
in the assignments. In order to design a shared ride in
such a way that travelers need to make minimal effort,
a system should automate the assignment to satisfy
the customer’s needs (Agatz et al., 2012). However,
this deliberation appears to be easier to implement
than it is in practice. The configuration of a selection-
based assignment process is not trivial (Washbrook
et al., 2006). Nowadays, most business models only
consider the desired route and price in their assign-
ment engine. Other factors, including personal pref-
erences such as comfort or safety of the vehicle, re-
ceive none or limited attention. Nevertheless, we ar-
gue that more personalized assignments can increase
the popularity of ridesharing and, thus, its actual use.
Research has shown that riders only feel comfortable
if they are assigned to a ride with a specific group of
people, and that the group’s preferences may be moti-
vated by personal safety or social aspects (Agatz et al.,
VEHITS 2020 - 6th International Conference on Vehicle Technology and Intelligent Transport Systems
158
Figure 1: Categorization of Ridesharing Factors (Neoh
et al., 2018).
2012). At nighttime, for example, a shy person may
not be willing to share a trip with a complete stranger
and may only want to share trips with friends and col-
leagues. Clearly, the more restrictions a potential user
imposes on his pool of potential ride companions, the
more difficult it will be to find successful assignments
for that user (Dailey et al., 1999).
Systematisation of Preference Factors. To date,
few studies have focused on user preferences in
ridesharing. Instead, many studies include some pref-
erence factors, but rather as a supplement to their
primary study design. To reach a unified systemati-
sation of the influence individual decisions on share
rides, (Neoh et al., 2017) has developed a categori-
sation model shown in Figure 1. On the first level,
influencing factors are differentiated between exter-
nal and internal factors. On the second level, inter-
nal factors are separated into socio-demographic and
judgmental factors such as users’ reasons to share
rides (Neoh et al., 2017). Previous studies assume
that demographic factors have only a very small im-
pact (Vanoutrive et al., 2012) while - in combination
with other factors - they may have an influence (Cor-
reia and Viegas, 2011). Under the judgmental fac-
tors, all psychological factors like social aspects and
feeling of independence while driving the own car are
considered (Neoh et al., 2018). On the contrary, ex-
ternal factors include situational factors and interven-
tions and take place at the environmental level of the
ridesharing user (Neoh et al., 2017). Thereby, situa-
tional factors affect the location as well as all waiting
times such as waiting time for other passengers. Usu-
ally, it makes ridesharing less attractive when one or
more of these factors lead to long journeys (Tsao and
Lin, 1999). In contrast, interventional factors like me-
diating actions that are implemented by a facilitator,
e.g. a facility which encourages people to share rides
with a parking discount, yet partner assignment sys-
tems also belong to this category. Studies lean to say
penalising single occupied vehicles are more effective
than rewards for ridesharing (Neoh et al., 2018).
3 METHOD
To identify relevant preferences for assignments in
ridesharing, we first review current literature. We de-
cided to conduct a survey afterwards because it is an
effective and popular method for gathering informa-
tion about people. Next, the process of gathering the
literature, the design of the study and used data anal-
ysis techniques are described.
3.1 Literature Study
To systematically review existing research in the area
of ridesharing preference factors, we followed a lit-
erature review process based on (Webster and Wat-
son, 2002) and (vom Brocke et al., 2009). Accord-
ingly, we first gathered literature from IS journals and
conferences as well as general databases to include
transportation outlets by a generalized search string.
Second, we identified the mentioned factors in each
article and third, we summarized these factors with
regard to their commonness.
To find relevant literature, a search query was
created in phase three, using the term ridesharing
and possible synonyms: ride sharing, ridesharing,
ride pooling, ridepooling, car pooling, or carpool-
ing. This was used to search the most popular IS
journals (basket of eight), the ten mostly cited trans-
portation journals according to the scientific journal
ranking (SJR) and the IS conferences. The search
was limited to literature published between 2015 and
2019. The search query had to be found in the title or
abstract of the literature. Afterwards, the left articles
are read and relevant preferences are selected.
3.2 Empirical Study
Overall, we conducted a questionnaire consisting of
68 questions, which were provided in English and
German. Two of the questions are for attention checks
to enable a high-data quality; one is an open-ended
question enabling users to provide preferences not
considered by us. Besides that, the questionnaire
consists of four parts: 1. Present and future usage
of ridesharing (6 questions); 2. Preferences of pas-
sengers (41 questions); 3. Information for an assign-
ment algorithm (10 questions); 4. Demographic data
(8 questions).
Because five-point Likert scales are typical (Sul-
livan and Artino, 2013), we used that for the second
and third part. We prefer Likert scale questions over a
conjoint analysis because the number of preferences
to investigate is relatively high. For every question
the participants had the option to provide no answer.
How Did You Like This Ride? An Analysis of User Preferences in Ridesharing Assignments
159
The questionnaire was provided online to enable fast
conducting around the world and to reduce cost. The
downside of enabling easy access is that we were not
able to observe preferences like trust objectively via
an observation. We used LimeSurvey (see (Schmitz
and Team, 2012)) to create and host the questionnaire.
We shared the questionnaire via email-lists of our uni-
versities and among our social networks. The data is
stored anonymously and there were no incentives to
participate. All questions and the structure is avail-
able in an online repository
1
.
3.3 Techniques for Analysis
Order Preferences by Importance. Our approach to
create an order of preferences by importance is three-
fold:
Firstly, to get to an initial order of importance for
the preferences, we transform the answers to nu-
meric values with similar distance and sum up all
answers for each preference. The comparison of
these sums leads to an initial ordering.
Secondly, we limit the preferences for further
analysis to later be able to verify the order statisti-
cally in the third step and focus on the relevant re-
sults. For the limitation, we apply hierarchical ag-
glomerative clustering to cluster the preferences.
We favour this technique over partitioning, like k-
means, because thereby we use a deterministic al-
gorithm and we do not have to choose a number
of clusters in the first place. For the concrete al-
gorithm, we chose the Ward’s method.
Thirdly, we apply a Friedman test to get a sta-
tistically verified order of preferences to the first
and second cluster. We apply this test to compare
all preferences of leftover importances with each
other. For this procedure we orientate on (Derrac
et al., 2011), who describe the N × N compari-
son of algorithms performances. As a post-hoc
procedure we choose Shaffer’s method. Based on
the resulting p-values (p) we construct the order.
We set the significance level α to 0.01 to cover all
common significance levels.
Importance Order in Demographic Groups. In this
part of the analysis we split the valid samples into
subgroups based on the collected demographic data
and again create an order based on the importance
of preferences. Thereby, we are able to identify dif-
ferences between subgroups. We consider subgroups
that appear at least 21 times in the data. To statisti-
cally verify differences between subgroups, we apply
1
https://gitlab.tu-clausthal.de/ss16/questionnaire-
analysis-public/
a Mann-Whitney rank test (see (Mann and Whitney,
1947)). We favour this test over the Wilcoxon signed-
rank test, because the compared groups are indepen-
dent. Similar to before we set α to 0.01.
Software. For the Wilcoxon signed-rank, the Mann-
Whitney rank test and clustering of preferences we
use the implementation provided by (Jones et al.,
2001). The complete source code used for our analy-
sis in Section 5 is available online in a repository
1
.
4 PREFERENCE ANALYSIS -
LITERATURE OVERVIEW
The method described in Section 3.1 results in 63 rel-
evant articles. The detailed results can be found in
our online repository
1
. After having analysed the fi-
nal sample, based on the 63 articles, 73 factors im-
pacting human attitude towards ridesharing were de-
termined. These factors were categorized in the cate-
gories recommended by (Neoh et al., 2017). To make
concise comparisons between categories, factors of
similar nature were merged into subcategories lead-
ing to the overview presented in Table 1.
4.1 Selection of Preferences for Our
Survey
Based on the results of the literature review, we
selected the preference factors that were assessed
though a survey. Thereby, we limited the scope so
the participants could clearly understand the setting
of the study. The literature review had resulted in a
wide scope of preferences, of which not all are plau-
sible in the context of assignment. Hence, we de-
cided to focus on factors influencing the individual
judgement and, in turn, the actual behaviour: to share
a ride or not. This leads to focusing on the prefer-
ences of the passengers and excludes preferences of
the driver. In addition, we only include factors that
are relevant for assignments when a user has already
overcome the first barrier of using ridesharing. There-
fore, preferences such as peer pressure or living in
rural areas are excluded. Privacy is only included in-
directly, because when a person has decided to par-
ticipate in ridesharing, we assume that this person is
already willing to give up his/her privacy to a certain
degree. Going along with the categorisation of (Neoh
et al., 2017), we mainly consider judgmental factors,
as well as some situational factors. Demographic fac-
tors are surveyed separately in the last part of the sur-
vey, while interventional factors are not considered
since they refer to third-party interventions that play
VEHITS 2020 - 6th International Conference on Vehicle Technology and Intelligent Transport Systems
160
Table 1: Overview of preference factors from literature.
Demographic % Judgmental % Situational % Interventional %
Gender 7.9 Economic benefits 84.1 Time related 61.9 HOVL 28.6
Education 7.9 ESB 77.8 Flexibility 28.6 Parking space 20.6
Age 6.3 Convenience 61.9 Availability 15.9 Parking fee 15.9
Ethnicity 6.3 Privacy 36.5 Meeting point 9.5
Income 6.3 Safety 22.2 Finding rides 7.9
Employment type 3.2 Trust 19.0 Living location 6.3
Sexuality 1.6 Security 17.5
Peer/family pressure 1.6 Pleasure 11.1
a superior role in ridesharing, but do not affect the as-
signment process.
Based on the results of our literature review, we
derived the list of preferences shown in Table 2 to be
considered in the survey. The table describes all judg-
mental and situational factors as well as the surveyed
preferences of these. To easily identify the factor of a
preference, we introduce an abbreviation of the factor,
which will be used in later graphics. In the following
subsections, the judgmental and situational factors are
outlined in greater detail.
4.2 Judgmental Factors
This category refers to internal and judgmental factors
of ridesharing users, which include the judgement of
economic benefits, environmental and social benefits,
convenience, privacy and safety concerns, trust, secu-
rity and pleasure in ridesharing opportunities.
Economical Benefits. The most prevalent factors in
regarded research are the ones that are economically
or environmentally and socially beneficial for drivers
and passengers. Economically beneficial factors like
reduced cost are referenced in 53 articles of the re-
viewed literature. The fact that ridesharing can reduce
the travel cost is the most stated factor in the analysed
literature, being mentioned 48 times. While rideshar-
ing services can operate at a lower cost compared to
traditional taxi organisations (Schweitzer and Bren-
del, 2018), private ridesharing can reduce the travel
cost by splitting it up between driver and passengers
(Wang et al., 2018). Along these lines, saving fuel
was indicated as a factor 21 times. Because this also
saves money and therefore is economically beneficial
(Mourad et al., 2019), saving fuel belongs to this cat-
egory. Aside from that, saving fuel also is environ-
mental beneficial (Li et al., 2017).
Environmental/Social Benefits. Overall, ridesharing
does offer environmental and social benefits (ESB),
which are common benefits that all parties profit from
like reducing the instances of drunk driving (Green-
wood and Wattal, 2017). Environmental benefits like
reducing the overall energy waste or increasing sus-
tainability can also be of altruistic nature (Wang et al.,
2019). Saving CO
2
emissions (Li et al., 2017) and re-
ducing congestion (Mahmoudi and Zhou, 2016) can
be achieved because ridesharing increases the utiliza-
tion of a vehicle’s capacity (Lavieri and Bhat, 2019a).
This in turn saves fuel and therefore ridesharing can
play a certain role in reducing overall energy con-
sumption (Wang et al., 2019). The fact rideshar-
ing reduces traffic congestion was mentioned in 30
of the analysed articles. Ridesharing can signifi-
cantly reduce the number of cars on the road and
therefore limit traffic congestion (Stiglic et al., 2015).
Ridesharing also reduces car ownership because it
serves as a convenient and cost efficient alternative to
owning a car without the financial and social burdens
of ownership (Liu et al., 2017).
Convenience. Factors that impact the convenience of
ridesharing are referenced in 39 of the reviewed arti-
cles. Convenience is a factor that can positively or
negatively impact human attitude towards rideshar-
ing, depending on which kind of transportation it is
compared to. Compared to driving with a private
car, ridesharing is perceived as rather inconvenient
(Xiao et al., 2016). However, ridesharing can offer
the convenience of a private car while paying a sim-
ilar amount when compared with public transporta-
tion (S
´
anchez et al., 2016; Nielsen et al., 2015; Wang
et al., 2019). Further factors supporting rideshar-
ing convenience are availability of different payment
methods for ridesharing-services (Hong, 2017), the
ease of use of these services (Greenwood and Wattal,
2017), avoiding transfers (Yan et al., 2019) and reduc-
ing driver stress (Mahmoudi and Zhou, 2016). Ser-
vice quality, which can also benefit the convenience of
ridesharing, was only named twice in the present lit-
erature. Moreover, clear policies can reduce the con-
cerns about service surcharges (Zhang et al., 2018),
the condition of the car (Mirsadikov et al., 2016) and
options like non-smoking vehicles benefit the comfort
of the ride.
How Did You Like This Ride? An Analysis of User Preferences in Ridesharing Assignments
161
Table 2: Overview of preference factors in survey.
Judgmental factors Preferences
Economic benefits (ECB) Paid price
Environmental/social benefits (ESB) Vehicle congestion and power
Convenience (CON) Payment method, short breaks during ride on longer journeys (longer
than two hours), mainly motorway usage or rural road usage, short
duration of journey, pets allowed in vehicle
Privacy Indirect
Safety (SAF) Driver’s competence, previously information about driver, calm driv-
ing or sporty driving style, track location for security, safety and con-
dition of the vehicle
Trust (TRU) Trust in other people
Security (SEC) No trip cancelling from the driver, saying no if cancel of trip, insur-
ance of passengers during the ride
Pleasure (PLE) Small number of fellow passenger (low occupied), smoking while driv-
ing (whether desired or undesired), friendliness of other people, tem-
perature in the vehicle, interpersonal climate, volume of music (in-
cluding no music), type of music and conversation topics during the
journey, similar interests of passengers, trips pass on sightseeing loca-
tions, smell in and cleanliness of the vehicle, amount of space on seat,
space in trunk, existence of air conditioning, comfort of the vehicle
Situational factors Preferences
Time related (TIR) Low delay at start and low delay by pickup of other passengers (both
less than 10 minutes), short distance
Flexibility (FLE) Drivers respondance to wishes of passengers
Availability/accessibility Not relevant for assignment
Meeting point (MEP) Small detours to be collected or dropped off
Finding rides/ high assignment rate Not relevant for assignment
Living location Not relevant for assignment
Privacy, Safety and Security. Other factors regard-
ing perceived ridesharing risks include privacy, safety
or security concerns. The perceived privacy risk is
referenced as the utmost barrier in ridesharing (Xiao
et al., 2016). It is shown that privacy sensitive in-
dividuals are less likely to have experience in using
ridesharing services (Lavieri and Bhat, 2019b). Pri-
vacy concerns mostly are about the intentional mis-
use or disclosure of private data to third parties, which
is required for using ridesharing services, like credit
card information or the user’s living location (Hong,
2017). In recent literature the loss of privacy is of-
ten seen as a tradeoff for the financial benefits that
come with ridesharing (Tian et al., 2019). Individu-
als using ridesharing are also faced with safety con-
cerns and security risks: It is indicated that travelers
are hesitant about being in a vehicle with unfamil-
iar people (Lavieri and Bhat, 2019a). The passenger
could be worried about getting kidnapped or attacked,
while drivers could be concerned with riders damag-
ing their car (Mirsadikov et al., 2016). As a resolution
a concept is proposed using meeting points to pre-
serve the users privacy and security (A
¨
ıvodji et al.,
2016). In this approach ridesharing users do not share
their starting point or destination and therefore the
users’ patterns of mobility cannot be traced.
Trust. Such factors are referenced in 12 of the
analysed articles. For example, existing commercial
driver’s license can have a positive influence on users
attitude towards ridesharing (Hong, 2017). Besides,
driver screening, tracking systems and rating systems
give ridesharing users a feeling of safety. For riders
a rating system can show them what service quality
they can expect and it also is a safety and security
measure (Mirsadikov et al., 2016). However, a rat-
ing system can be exploited by riders and used as a
lever to manipulate drivers into providing extra ser-
vices, because drivers often will be excluded from a
ridesharing service if their ratings are too low (Mir-
sadikov et al., 2016).
Pleasure. Under the term pleasure, we summarise all
mellow factors mentioned in the literature which have
VEHITS 2020 - 6th International Conference on Vehicle Technology and Intelligent Transport Systems
162
an influence on the positive/negative state of mind of
the user. The number of passengers, for example, is
an indicator associated with social inconvenience and
positive social interactions. Expected social discom-
fort or awkwardness is one of the negative perceptions
that individuals have about sharing a ride (Nielsen
et al., 2015). But ridesharing is not only seen as so-
cially unpleasant, but also as an opportunity for posi-
tive social interactions such as fun or emotional plea-
sure by making friends and learning new knowledge
(Wang et al., 2019). A variety of factors, such as the
desire for diversity, the desire to meet with strangers,
or the equipment in the car with telephone chargers
or water (Mirsadikov et al., 2016) can influence the
person’s opinion of ridesharing opportunities and the
possible enjoyment and pleasure of a ride (Lavieri and
Bhat, 2019b).
4.3 Situational Factors
The third category refers to factors which are exter-
nal and mostly location-based (Neoh et al., 2017).
The location can influence the travel distance, travel
time and the likelihood to find ridesharing partners
(Neoh et al., 2018). Therefore, we derived factors that
are time-related, concern the flexibility or availabil-
ity/accessibility, refer to the meeting point or the rate
of finding a ride or the living location.
Time Related Preferences. The reviewed literature
reveals, with time related factors being the most men-
tioned situational factors (39 times mentioned), that
users seem to be time sensitive when it comes to
ridesharing. Waiting times are perceived as incon-
venient by ridesharing users (S
´
anchez et al., 2016;
Stiglic et al., 2015), however waiting at a meeting
point as a group may facilitate the safety perception
of riders (Stiglic et al., 2015).
Meeting Points. The ability to choose a pick-up and
drop-off location can offer some degree of anonymity
and safety for the rider when using a ridesharing ser-
vice because it provides the option to not share per-
sonal information such as the individual’s living loca-
tion (Mirsadikov et al., 2016).
Availability/Accessibility. The distance to a meet-
ing point can also be linked to the availability of
ridesharing, which was mentioned 7 times as well as
to the individual’s living location. Existing informa-
tion technology is an underlying prerequisite and cel-
lular phone service is mandatory for most rideshar-
ing services to work (Joseph, 2018). The availability
of ridesharing also influences the assignment rate on
ridesharing services, since a higher availability im-
plies an increased amount of people using rideshar-
ing in an area. A high assignment rate is a critical
success factor for a ridesharing service because only
successfully matched users will have a positive expe-
rience and promote the service to others (Stiglic et al.,
2015).
Flexibility. 18 articles mentioned flexibility as a
factor that influences people to use ridesharing.
Ridesharing services can provide increased flexibility
compared to taxi services such as types of vehicles
and pricing prior to the trip (Joseph, 2018). However,
this cannot offer the same flexibility as a personally
owned car (Schweitzer and Brendel, 2018). This in-
dicates that passengers of public transportation like
train or bus are more likely to substitute with rideshar-
ing than drivers who own cars (Schweitzer and Bren-
del, 2018).
5 ANALYSIS AND RESULTS OF
SURVEY
In the first paragraph of this section, we make our pro-
cess of cleaning the data based on attention checks
transparent. After that, we list the characteristics of
the collected sample. Then, we show our analysis re-
sults of our observed overall order of preferences and
the differences in demographic subgroups. For the
second, we list results for age, gender, education and
country of residence in separate paragraphs. After-
wards, results for working status, car owners and pet
owners are summarized in one paragraph.
Clearing of the Dataset. We exclude 17 samples
from the analysis because they did not understand
the given definition of ridesharing, failed an attention
check, or answered less than 25 percent of the ques-
tions. This results in 291 valid samples. For further
analysis we also extract the preferences of the passen-
ger part from the questionnaire and replace the text-
based answers (important, rather important, neutral,
rather unimportant, unimportant) by numeric values
(1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
Sample Characteristic. The 291 participants com-
pleted the questionnaire on average in nine minutes.
The mean of the age was 29 years with a standard de-
viation of 12. 135 of the participants were female,
149 male and seven reported no gender. Most of them
come from Germany (242), 23 from Israel, two from
the Netherlands and China each; from France, Hun-
gary, Senegal, Spain and Turkey we had one partici-
pant each. Moreover, 17 people did not provide their
country of residence. The data points where collected
from August to October 2019.
Overall Importance. To initially order the pref-
erences by their importance we apply a simple ap-
proach: We sum the values of all data points for one
How Did You Like This Ride? An Analysis of User Preferences in Ridesharing Assignments
163
preference and compare this with the others. The
smaller its sum, the more important a preference is.
Together with the proportions of answers, this order
is shown in Figure 2. This is combined with Ward’s
method for clustering of the preferences (not the peo-
ple), which results in four clusters shown as colors
and with a dendrogram above. The fact that the clus-
ters do not disrupt this initial order of the preferences
is remarkable.
Together, both approaches already give a good
idea about the relative importance of the preferences.
Nevertheless, this result has to be interpreted with
care because for its creation important has ve times
more influence than unimportant for instance.
Therefore, we further apply a Friedman test with
Shaffer’s correction method to the first (green) and
second (black) cluster. We excluded the third (blue)
and fourth (red) cluster to be computationally able to
apply the test and focus on the relevant results. The
resulting groups of the test are included in Figure 3 in
the labels of the x-axis. The concrete p-values of the
Friedman test are shown in a heatmap available in our
online repository
1
.
The results clearly show that no trip cancelling is
in group (a) based on the Friedman test results and
therefore is the most important preference. After-
wards, we have a group of say no if cancel, safety,
driver’s competence and smell, which slightly over-
laps with group (c). In contrast to the order by
the simple approach, short duration and low delay
by pickups appear between the preferences currently
on sixth and seventh position. Overall, it is hard to
provide a clear order because the groups heavily in-
terfere. Nevertheless, the groups can be used more
clearly to provide 1 × N comparisons. This shows for
instance, that comfort is less important than all pref-
erences before friendliness and low delay at pickup.
Importance in Demographic Groups. The orders
for age and other demographic subgroups are shown
in Figure 3 and computed with the simple approach.
On the y-axis, the condition for each subset is listed
together with the number of samples matching this
condition; the x-axis lists all preferences. Each cell
of the matrix contains the calculated rank for a sub-
set/preference combination based on the simple ap-
proach. The colors represent the sum used to calcu-
late the importance order divided by the sum for all
answers of the considered preference. After naming
the subgroups, we summarize in the following the sta-
tistical differences among them.
Age. Concerning the age of participants, firstly we
create three subgroups: younger than 21, from 21 to
35 and older than 35 years. We observed that insur-
ance, calm driving, volume of music, breaks during
ride and congestion are more important for people
older than 35 compared to the middle-aged group. On
the other hand, people between 21 and 35 care more
about a friendliness and price. Compared to people
older than 35, trust and friendliness are more impor-
tant for people younger than 21. On the contrary, calm
driving, space in trunk and volume of music matter
more for the middle-aged group. Comparing people
between 21 to 35 to people younger than 21 shows
that only space in the trunk matters more. In contrast,
insurance, track location and congestion are more im-
portant for the youngest group.
Genders. Distinguishing between genders shows that
for women information about driver, trust, respon-
dance to wishes, tracking location and congestion are
more important for women.
Education. To compare certain levels of education,
we consider four subgroups: Matriculation standard,
bachelor pr master’s or degree and doctorates. Com-
pared to people holding a matriculation standard, for
people with a bachelor, information about driver and
friendliness are less important. Relative to master’s
degree holders, people with matriculation standard
care less about time (short duration, motorway us-
age), space in trunk and air conditioning. However,
sporty driving, insurance and track location is more
important for them. Compared to people with a ma-
triculation standard, for doctorates smoking, low oc-
cupied and motorway usage are more important. On
the other hand, friendliness is more important for
people holding a matriculation standard or master’s
degree. Comparing doctorates with bachelor degree
holders shows that smoking and calm driving is more
important for the former.
Country of Residence. Comparing the importance
of preferences for Germans with the small number of
Israelis, shows that say no if cancel, safety, condi-
tion and friendliness is more important for German
residents. Conversely, temperature, air condition-
ing, sightseeing, low delay at start and smoking are
more important for Israeli residents. In contrast to
all other subgroups, for Israeli residents, smoking is
most important. Moreover, say no if cancel, safety
and driver’s competence, which are among the top
five for all other subgroups, are relatively unimpor-
tant.
Leftover Subgroups. When comparing students with
employed people, we observe that no trip canceling
of a trip is more important for employed people. On
the other hand, students seem to care more about in-
surance and track location during the ride. We were
not able to verify a difference between car owners and
those who do not own a car; similarly, there was no
influence by owning a pet. For smokers, condition,
VEHITS 2020 - 6th International Conference on Vehicle Technology and Intelligent Transport Systems
164
Figure 2: Showing the proportion of answers for the preferences. The preferences are marked with the factors described in
Section 4. The order is based on the simple approach.
cleanliness and power are more important; for non-
smokers smoking is more important.
6 DISCUSSION AND SUMMARY
OF FINDINGS
Overall Importance. The five most important prefer-
ences, that being safety, habits concerning cancelling
of rides and smell seem to represent the essentials for
participation in ridesharing. After that, it is compli-
cated to make a boundary for other preferences be-
cause their importance decreases approximately lin-
ear. Nevertheless, looking from the insignificant side,
the last seven can be neglected in an assignment pro-
cess. Interestingly, among these are power and sporty
driving. Comparing the ranks observed in the survey
with the attention a judgmental factor gets in the lit-
erature shows interesting differences. For instance,
the economic benefit price occurs most often in the
literature but is not in the group or cluster of most im-
portant preferences. Environmental and social bene-
fits (congestion and power), that show up secondly in
the literature, end up in the third and fourth most im-
portant cluster. The convenience factor group appears
in all clusters except for the first one, and our results
show that short duration of the trip is the most im-
portant among its preferences. The factor safety, with
preferences such as driver’s competence and condi-
tion of the vehicle, appears in the first and second
cluster, showing a relatively highly observed impor-
tance. The same applies for the factor security. The
factor pleasure occurs mostly in the third and fourth
cluster, which is similar to its received attention in
the literature. However, our survey shows that space
on seat, cleanliness and especially smell are far more
important than their occurrence in research. Consid-
ering situational factors: The time related factor with
preferences such as low delay at start are with 61.9
percent relatively important in the literature and ac-
cordingly occur in our second most important cluster.
The same goes for the factors flexibility and meeting
point.
Besides being underrepresented in the literature
compared to our survey results, we believe that these
differences are based on two reasons: Firstly, some
preferences like the price of a ride are easier to ad-
just in reality than preferences like smell in the vehi-
cle. Secondly, people might care about the safety of
a vehicle, but in reality, you can assume that all vehi-
cles are safe to a certain degree. Nevertheless, our re-
sults indicate that the preferences safety of a vehicle,
driver’s competence and smell are highly underrep-
resented in the current research. On the other hand,
the preferences price, power and congestion are over-
represented. Based on our findings we therefore rec-
ommend to shift the focus for assignment processes
in ridesharing towards the underrepresented prefer-
ences.
Importance in Demographic Groups. Regarding
age we can contribute the following: Interestingly,
How Did You Like This Ride? An Analysis of User Preferences in Ridesharing Assignments
165
Figure 3: One row shows the observed order of preferences for a demographic subset based on the simple ordering approach.
in addition to younger people, those over the age of
34 care most about congestion. For younger people,
safety and security related factors are more important.
Regarding gender: Generally, women find security
factors such as information about driver and environ-
mental aspects more important.
Regarding education level: People holding a ma-
triculation standard or a master’s degree care more
about friendliness. However, for people with a matric-
ulation standard safety related preferences are more
important, whereas for master’s degree holders, time
and pleasure related preferences are more important.
Regarding country of residence: We believe that the
temperature in a car and its ability to regulate the tem-
perature such are more important for Israelis due to
higher temperatures in Israel. Moreover, we believe
that smoking is most important for Israeli residents
due to religious reasons. However, this cannot be
proven, because we did not collect the corresponding
demographic data. Our results indicate that the prefer-
ences of people highly depend on their cultural back-
ground. Nevertheless, because the number of Israeli
residents is relatively small, almost all of our results
are limited to German residents. Regarding smoking:
we observe a high difference concerning the rank of
smoking between smokers and non-smokers. This in-
dicates the importance of smoking for non-smokers
because they want to avoid it. Likewise, the propor-
tions in Figure 2 show an irregularity at smoking. We
believe this is caused by two things: The answers are
bipolar distributed and the question is partly misun-
derstood.
Limitations. In the questionnaire, we asked the par-
ticipants to list preferences not considered. Three
people mentioned services like free internet connec-
tion, snack food and providing electricity to passen-
gers, which could be considered in the future for
ridesharing in general and for assigning rides to pas-
sengers. The same applies to rules regarding food
during a ride, which was also mentioned three times.
Besides not including these additional preferences, it
should be noted that this paper only considered prefer-
ences of passengers and excludes the ones of drivers.
This could be investigated in the future. The results
from the questionnaire might be wrong for some pref-
erences because a mismatch between observed (im-
plicit) and self-reported (explicit) importance of cer-
tain factors, such as trust (Papenmeier et al., 2019),
can appear. Moreover, our results indicate that the
conclusions drawn in this section are limited to Ger-
man people.
Future Research. To foster human-centric rideshar-
ing, we propose two directions for future research:
First, user preferences could be simulated based
on the gathered data. Taxi trip data such as New
York City taxi (see (Donovan and Work, 2016))
data are already publicly available, but these do
not include preference characteristics of users.
We want to apply generative models that are able
to generate synthetic results based on provided
training data to add user preferences to existing
datasets.
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166
Second, these preference characteristics could
be considered to enable more human-centric
ridesharing. To do so on a larger scale, we assume
that AI algorithms would be necessary.
7 CONCLUSION
After analyzing factors and preferences that influence
ridesharing based on the current literature, we con-
ducted a survey to identify the preferences important
for users to be satisfied within a ridesharing assign-
ment process. Based on the literature study and the
survey, we were able to provide a comprehensive list
of preferences relevant for ridesharing and we con-
tribute an order of preferences based on relative im-
portance. In addition, we compared the importance in
demographic subgroups and collected significant dif-
ferences among them.
In summary, comparing the observed importance
and the preferences occurrence in the literature, we
could not identify differences in situational factors.
Nevertheless, we observed high differences in judg-
mental factors that should be considered in future re-
search and applications. Based on our findings re-
garding the assignment process in ridesharing, we
recommend focussing on underrepresented prefer-
ences such as safety of a vehicle, driver’s compe-
tence and smell and to not focus on the overrepre-
sented preferences price, power and congestion too
much. Comparing different demographic subgroups,
we showed some additional findings, but overall and
similar to previous work the differences are relatively
small. However, our results indicate a high influence
of the country of residence to the relative importance
of preferences.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported in part by EC-RIDER, a
research project funded by the VolkswagenStiftung,
and Mobility Opportunities Valuable to Everyone
(MOVE), an Interreg project funded by the North
Sea Program of the European Regional Development
Fund of the European Union.
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