Abstract/Description

Since the emergence of ride-hailing platforms like Uber, conventional taxi ridership has taken a severe hit. Taxi-hailing apps like Curb and Arro have allowed conventional taxis to jump on the platform economy bandwagon and offer a similar service to ride-hailing platforms. Despite the emergence of these taxi-hailing apps, strong lock-in effects and high switching costs of popular ride-hailing platforms (Uber, Lyft, etc.) restrict the ridership volumes of conventional taxis. Recently, the ride-hailing platform, Uber has started to add conventional taxis on its app under increasing pressure from Cities and conventional taxi associations. Such integrations have the potential of increasing conventional taxi ridership by providing Uber users with information about an additional travel option. In this paper, I investigate the impacts of conventional taxi integration on the Uber app in New York City and Chicago using a differences-in-differences approach. Results show that the integration of conventional taxis to the Uber app leads to a statistically significant increase in conventional taxi ridership in both cities. The paper provides insights into how Cities can regulate ridehailing platforms by tackling their strong lock-in effects and hence enable conventional taxis to compete with these platforms more efficiently.

Keywords

ride-hailing platforms, conventional taxi integration, lock-in effects, differencesin-differences analysis, urban mobility regulation, taxi ridership trends

JEL Codes

L91; L86

Location

S2 room, Adamjee building

Session Theme

Digital Transformation: Insights from Complex Economic Data

Session Type

Parallel Technical Session

Session Chair

Hadia Majid, Lahore University of Management Sciences

Session Discussant

Wali Ullah, Institute of Business Administration ; Zehra Aftab, Prince Muhammad University

Start Date

9-12-2024 2:30 PM

End Date

9-12-2024 4:30 PM

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Dec 9th, 2:30 PM Dec 9th, 4:30 PM

If You Can’t Beat Them Join Them: Empirical Assessment into How Integrating Conventional Taxis on the Uber App Impacts Conventional Taxi Ridership

S2 room, Adamjee building

Since the emergence of ride-hailing platforms like Uber, conventional taxi ridership has taken a severe hit. Taxi-hailing apps like Curb and Arro have allowed conventional taxis to jump on the platform economy bandwagon and offer a similar service to ride-hailing platforms. Despite the emergence of these taxi-hailing apps, strong lock-in effects and high switching costs of popular ride-hailing platforms (Uber, Lyft, etc.) restrict the ridership volumes of conventional taxis. Recently, the ride-hailing platform, Uber has started to add conventional taxis on its app under increasing pressure from Cities and conventional taxi associations. Such integrations have the potential of increasing conventional taxi ridership by providing Uber users with information about an additional travel option. In this paper, I investigate the impacts of conventional taxi integration on the Uber app in New York City and Chicago using a differences-in-differences approach. Results show that the integration of conventional taxis to the Uber app leads to a statistically significant increase in conventional taxi ridership in both cities. The paper provides insights into how Cities can regulate ridehailing platforms by tackling their strong lock-in effects and hence enable conventional taxis to compete with these platforms more efficiently.