How carpool drivers choose their passengers in Nanjing, China: effects of facial attractiveness and credit

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 t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Transportation (Dordrecht) 2023-06, Vol.50 (3), p.929-958
Main Authors: Li, Dawei, Song, Yuchen, Liu, Dongjie, Cao, Qi, Chen, Junlan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attraction
Behavior
Car pools
Credit
Decision making models
Discrimination
Drivers
Economic Geography
Economics
Economics and Finance
Engineering Economics
Equality
Ethics
Government regulations
Heterogeneity
Innovation/Technology Management
Logistics
Marketing
Organization
Panel data
Passengers
Personal information
Physical attractiveness
Random effects
Regional/Spatial Science
Sex discrimination
Social responsibility
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Summary: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.
ISSN:0049-4488
1572-9435
DOI:10.1007/s11116-022-10268-x