Characterizing Ride-Hailing Driver Attrition and Supply in the City of Chicago Through the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The flexible nature of on-demand ride services provided by transportation network companies (TNC) has resulted in unique supply-side challenges as the industry deals with the COVID-19 pandemic. Early during the pandemic, there was a 70% decrease in the number of drivers accepting trips on TNC platforms, as individual drivers chose to reduce their risk of viral infection and abide by social distancing recommendations. Given the two-sided market nature of TNCs, the decrease was also the effect of reduced rider demand creating a less desirable driver experience. This paper characterizes and quantifies this change in supply as it relates to driver residency, tenure, attrition, and the number of trips provided. The distribution of drivers accepting trips shifted slightly toward the lower income and higher minority areas of Chicago. Using survival analysis methods, we find that retention among drivers who started in the early months of the pandemic was significantly lower than in reference years, after six months of driving. The results of the negative binomial regression show that drivers on a single TNC platform provided 20% less trips than drivers on multiple platforms. This difference increases to 30% during the pandemic. Additionally, new drivers joined multiple apps during COVID-19, likely to serve more trips and secure higher income. The results of this paper can be used to understand and target driver retention to accelerate the recovery of the TNC industry.

The influence of social drivers on using ride-hailing services

“…The phobia of pandemic is continuing, which has created panic among ride-hailing users, thus adversely affecting ride-hailing customers. In absence of the research on ride-hailing, our findings are consistent with the findings of Hegde et al . (2022) and Fielbaum et al .…”

“…The coronavirus-related misleading information, its transmission and its consequences have been documented by Freiling et al (2023) and preventive actions were suggested by Seetharaman (2020). The availability of a vast amount of inaccurate information (knowingly or unknowingly) on social media resulted in panic among ride-hailing users (Fielbaum et al, 2023;Hegde et al, 2022). In the absence of literature on the effect of infodemic on the intention to ride-hailing, we take the support of anecdotal evidence that the consumers keep away from these services based on the hearsay that they may be infected with the virus and it may be life-threatening.…”

“…Last 2 decades have witnessed the accelerated growth of sharing economy and collaborative consumption (Hegde et al ., 2022; Morshed et al ., 2021). The twin factors that facilitated this acceleration were digitalization and smartphone technology (Fielbaum et al ., 2023; Li et al ., 2023; Nguyen-Phuoc et al ., 2022).…”