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Do low-carbon rewards incentivize people to ridesplitting? Evidence from structural analysis

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Abstract

Ridesplitting is a pooled version of a ridesourcing service that can reduce emissions per trip compared with exclusive ridehailing. However, it only takes a small share of the ridesourcing market currently. Fiscal and social incentives are potential leverage tools to attract passengers from solo hailed rides. This study aims to quantitatively identify the effects of carbon credits (CC) and monetary rewards (MR) on people's willingness to adopt ridesplitting. The theory of planned behavior realized by structural equation modeling decomposes the factors which affect passengers' intention and actual action on choosing ridesplitting. Confirmatory factor analysis suggests that pro-environmental attitudes do not directly force people to ridesplitting. Path effect analysis shows that subjective norms and perceived behavioral control significantly affect ridesplitting intentions. Immediate effect regression reveals that CC has greater direct effects on ridesplitting intention than MR (4.5 times more effective). Moderating effect analysis shows the MR effect reduces while the CC effect enhances when increasing the incentive value. The results encourage policymakers and operation designers to consider better marketing schemes combining monetary and social incentives to promote ridesplitting and to gain better fiscal and environmental benefits from ridesourcing systems.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to extend their thanks to the supports provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52002280, 52002244).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Transport and Communications, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, 201306, China

    Lei Wang & Jinxian Weng

  2. Business School, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, 200093, China

    Wenxiang Li

  3. The Key Laboratory of Road and Traffic Engineering of the Ministry of Education, Tongji University, Shanghai, 201804, China

    Lei Wang & Wanjing Ma

  4. School of Transportation and Logistics, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, Liaoning, China

    Dong Zhang

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  1. Lei Wang
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Contributions

LW: Software, Data Curation, Formal analysis, Writing—Original Draft. WL: Conceptualization, Writing—Review & Editing. JW: Investigation, Supervision, Data Curation. DZ: Methodology. WM: Project administration, Resources.

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Correspondence to Wenxiang Li.

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Appendix 1

Appendix 1

This study adopted the online questionnaire approach to collect data from respondents. The data outline can be found in Tables 17 and 18.

Table 17 Demographic profile of the respondents (n = 330)
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Table 18 response distribution
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Wang, L., Li, W., Weng, J. et al. Do low-carbon rewards incentivize people to ridesplitting? Evidence from structural analysis. Transportation 50, 2077–2109 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-022-10302-y

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