What Makes Travelers Use Ridehailing? Exploring the Latent Constructs behind the Adoption and Frequency of Use of Ridehailing Services, and Their Impacts on the Use of Other Travel Modes

US Transportation Collection2018PDFDissertationAlemi, FarzadUniversity of California, Davis, Institute of Transportation StudiesUniversity of California, Davis. Institute of Transportation StudiesUnited StatesCaliforniaAttitudesChoice modelsDemographicsImpactsMode choiceRidesourcingSurveysTravel behaviorIn this dissertation, the author investigated the factors affecting the adoption and frequency of ridehailing services and the impacts that these services have on different components of travel behavior using California Millennials Dataset, a rich dataset collected in fall 2015 with a comprehensive online survey administered to a sample of 2400 California residents, including millennials (i.e. young adults born between 1981 and 1997) and members of the preceding Generation X (i.e. middle-aged adults born between 1965 and 1980). To investigate the factors that affect the adoption of ridehailing, the author estimated several models that help assess the role of individual characteristics and residential location in affecting these choices. The results of two binary logit models confirmed that highly educated, older millennials are more likely to use on-demand ride services than other groups. The researcher also find that greater land-use mix and regional accessibility by car are associated with greater likelihood of adopting on-demand ride services. Respondents who report higher numbers of long-distance business trips and have a higher share of long-distance trips made by plane are also more likely to have used these services, as are frequent users of smartphone transportation-related apps, and those who have previously used taxi and carsharing services. Among various attitudinal factors that were investigated, individuals with stronger pro-environmental, technology-embracing, and variety-seeking attitudes are more inclined to ridehailing.120