Who can ride along? Discrimination in a German carpooling market

Abstract

Although numerous studies have focused on ethnic discrimination in the labour and housing market, carpooling has barely been covered. Yet carpooling is indispensable for many minorities because they face severe economic inequalities. In order to test for ethnic discrimination in the carpooling market, we conducted a correspondence test. We sent out requests from four fictitious user profiles to drivers listed on one of Germany's carpooling websites. All users were aged mid‐20s: two males and two females. One man and one woman had German names, the second set had Turkish names. In total, we collected 952 observations. Our field experiment reveals substantial discrimination by ethnicity and gender. Whereas women with German names are least likely to experience discrimination, men with Turkish names are the most likely to be discriminated against. At first sight, counterintuitively but in line with ethnic competition theory, users with Turkish names are not significantly more discriminated against by drivers on routes in East Germany where xenophobia is more prevalent compared with West Germany.

Ethnic and Religious Discrimination in the Wedding Venue Business: Evidence from Two Field Experiments in Germany and Austria

“…Turkish minorities in Germany and Austria are more likely to experience statistical as well as taste-based ethnic discrimination in the labor market (e.g., Kaas and Manger 2012; Sachverst€ andigenrat deutscher Stiftungen fu ¨r Integration und Migration 2014; Weichselbaumer 2016Weichselbaumer , 2017, the rental market (e.g., Auspurg et al 2017;Lu ¨tkenho ¨ner 2014;Sawert 2019), in welfare offices (Hemker and Rink 2017), online auctions (Przepiorka 2011), schools (Sprietsma 2013), carpooling (Carol et al 2019), and the dating market (e.g., Lu ¨tkenho ¨ner 2014). Two studies discovered discrimination against Turkish minorities in interaction with gender on the market for student housing (Diehl et al 2013) and in dealing with public-sector bodies when requesting information on child care and mobile homes (Grohs et al 2016).…”

Examining discrimination in everyday life: a stated choice experiment on racism in the sharing economy

“…Finally, Carol et al (2019) published a study in which providers of carpooling offers were contacted by supposedly German or Turkish users. The researchers collected 952 cases which clearly revealed that women with German names were least likely to experience discrimination, while men with Turkish names are the most likely to be discriminated against.…”

The effect of online reputation systems on intergroup inequality

“…These profiles foster a sense of personal contact (Dubois, Willinger, & Blayac, 2012;Guttentag, 2015) and to provide information that platform users use to assess the trustworthiness of their potential trading partners. However, an unintended consequence of these profiles is that they may lead to discrimination (Ahuja & Lyons, 2019;Carol, Eich, Keller, Steiner, & Storz, 2019;Cui et al, 2020;Edelman et al, 2017;Ert et al, 2016;Laouénan et al, 2017;. Names and photos convey information about users' demographic characteristics, of which ethnicity and nationality, gender, and age are the most obvious.…”