Examining customers’ critical acceptance factors toward ridepooling services

Abstract

Ridepooling is a new mobility service mainly for people in cities and urban areas. By matching the routes of customers with similar start and end points while driving in an optimally pooled manner, meaningful reductions in road traffic and related emissions can be achieved. Such services must meet customers’ demands appropriately to achieve sustainable customer acceptance. Service providers face diverse customer expectations and prejudices that differ from those toward existing transportation modes. Today, most ridepooling trips are conducted with only one customer, confirming impressions of nonoptimal operation. Using a survey-based approach, possible relevant constructs for the acceptance of and intention to use ridepooling services are analyzed. Testing constructs from the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 and environmental awareness, partial least squares analysis was performed with the software SmartPLS to investigate a dataset of 224 respondents. Results suggest that attitude toward use, perceived usefulness, and performance expectancy have an influence on the behavioral intention to use ridepooling services. In contrast, environmental awareness, price value, and effort expectancy do not have such an influence. The study expands the literature about customer acceptance of ridepooling service as well as new mobility services in general. Further, the paper provides research implications and recommendations for the development and implementation of the ridepooling concept for service providers.