Taxi sharing service in China. Analyzing of current service and suggestion for future developing based on drivers’ and customers’ satisfaction



The purpose of this study aims to show the operating of taxi sharing service in China and identify what factors play important role in decision making process.

Key words: car sharing, taxi sharing, shared economy, customers’ satisfaction

Introduction

Nowadays the population of the world is increasing and the demand for resources as well. However as the resources are limited, there is greater pressure on existing resources. Scientists from all over the world are looking for innovative solutions to address these challenges by building «Sharing Economy», where people are willing to share their goods with others for charge. Nowadays there are some big brands such as AirBnB (Sharing House), Uber (Sharing Rides), ZipCar (Sharing Cars), TaskRabbit (Sharing Services) and many more... In the transportation space the new level is Cab or Taxi-sharing. Cities around the world are facing a lot of challenges to increase economy, and mobility is one of them. There is a lot of interest in the transportation industry to provide new options for the city dwellers and new ways of reducing costs. As cities become more crowded and polluted, the idea of taxi sharing is catching around the world. Taxi-sharing means sharing your cab or taxi with other passengers (mainly strangers) who are heading in same direction.

An example of car sharing system shows The USA system. It is well known that public transportation in America is not very common, so people prefer to use their own cars. But the problem of traffic jam and congestion became very important, not only in the USA, but in the world. To reduce level of using cars, the rational decision is to share car with other people who head in the same direction. But the question is: “How to promote a satisfied service for both: drivers and passengers in order to people give up their own assets?” To answer this question we have to analyze current position of taxi sharing service. Taxi sharing is now provided in China but however it is not very popular yet. There are some aspects that influence the decision of share a cab with a stranger:

1. Time. If you share a cab with another person there is a possibility of spending more time by dropping off that person than if you would take a ride by yourself.
2. Convenience. Some people don’t feel comfortable in company with a person they don’t know.
3. Safety. Unfortunately, the world’s level of crime is also growing so no wonder why people are concerned about their safety. However China is one of the safest countries in the world people are still aware of complete strangers, especially young adults.
4. Travel cost. Sharing a taxi ride helps to save money.

Providing a good service of taxi sharing plays an important role in the economy of country. Problems of congestion may be solved by decreasing the amount of cars on the roads.

Literature review

The studying of car sharing method has been applied frequently for the past few years. The system had been successfully provided in The United States of America and some European countries.

Achieving of successful results in providing car sharing in China is the goal of many researchers and technologists. A taxi sharing system typically involves multiple users with the same or geographically similar (i.e. within a small distance from each other) destinations [1]. These users coordinate through some platform to share the same taxi. This platform could be a physical or online message board, taxi stand at an airport, mobile SMS based service, or shared electronic screen in a central location [2]. The financial considerations of taxi sharing include decreased direct and indirect costs. Direct costs are those “to the users and operators”; indirect costs are those to the society and include things like “pollution costs” [4]. Other advantages include safety (e.g. as compared to busses that do not have seatbelts) and efficiency (e.g. minimal number of stops, no transfers) and driven by individual need [3].

Some important questions that should be observed are:

1. What factors effect whether users chose to participate in taxi sharing service?
2. What are benefits and costs of taxi sharing?
3. What are taxi driver considerations necessary for a successful taxi sharing service?

These and other questions have been plenty observed in “Analogy of fixed route shared taxi and bus services under various demand density and economic conditions” (Gholami A. & Mohaymany A. S.), “Promoting social inclusion in a deregulated environment: Extending accessibility using collective taxi-based service” (Mulley C.), “User requirements and constrains for on-demand taxi sharing technology” (Sun X.,Golightly D., Sharoies S. & Bedwell B.)

Survey and results

The survey includes 37 questions about trips of city residences. The survey consists of questions about kind of transportation that is used more often, the purpose of trips, periodicity and expenses of trips, preferable taxi service, satisfaction with service, using shared transportation. The survey was provided online during February-April 2017. During this period 400 responds were collected, including both: drivers and customers (those who responded about socio demographic information). Also, we divided all responders into 4 categories according to the data:

1. Drivers with experience in taxi sharing system;
2. Drivers with no experience in taxi sharing system;
3. Customers with experience in taxi sharing system;
4. Customers with no experience in the taxi sharing system.

General information about all responders is introduced in table 1.

Table 1

Socio-demographic information about responders

		Responders
Gender	Male	202
	Female	194
Age	<18	2
	18–24	96
	25–29	79
	30–34	75
	35–44	87
	45–54	30
	>55	25
Education	Primary school	1
	Junior middle	18
	High school	30
	Junior college	38
	Undegraduate	145
	Master	119
	Doctor ans above	42
Ocupation	Student	103
	State-owned enterprise	49
	Private enterprise	55
	Foreign enterprise	18
	Civil servant	87
	Government-affiliated institutions	25
	individual	26
	Unemployed	7
	Retire	0
Personal monthly income	999 and below	77
	1000~2999	68
	3000~4999	69
	5000~7999	91
	8000~9999	34
	10000~14999	27
	15000~19999	8
	20000 and above	17

For better understanding how to provide satisfied car sharing service we have to count customers’ and drivers’ preferences. That is why it is rational to analyze data separately in 4 groups. From 400 responds 206 people have already used car sharing system and 194 haven’t, what means that there are 206 experienced customers and 194 potential customers. The general information about customers is shown in table 2.

Table 2

Socio-demographic information about customers

		Experienced customers	Potential customers
Gender	Male	76	72
	Female	87	76
Age	<18	1	1
	18–24	55	39
	25–29	29	43
	30–34	23	25
	35–44	29	22
	45–54	13	11
	>55	13	7
Education	Primary school	0	1
	Junior middle	10	5
	High school	9	12
	Junior college	12	15
	Undegraduate	60	61
	Master	53	46
	Doctor ans above	19	7
Ocupation	Student	59	40
	State-owned enterprise	25	15
	Private enterprise	11	28
	Foreign enterprise	7	7
	Civil servant	30	27
	Government-affiliated institutions	9	11
	individual	9	9
	Unemployed	7	0
	retire	0	0
Personal monthly income	999 and below	46	28
	1000~2999	32	28
	3000~4999	27	30
	5000~7999	30	33
	8000~9999	11	11
	10000~14999	7	8
	15000~19999	4	1
	20000 and above	6	7

Personal information about customers is not fully completed because some responders refrained from answers.

Besides customers we also have drivers that had used or may use car sharing service. Among 156 drivers 91 had already experienced taxi sharing and 65 had not. Personal information about drivers is shown in table 3. Like in case with customers some drivers refrained from replying.

Table 3

Socio-demographic information about drivers

		Experienced drivers	Potential drivers
Gender	Male	31	23
	female	14	10
Age	<18	0	0
	18–24	1	0
	25–29	3	4
	30–34	16	14
	35–44	19	12
	45–54	4	2
	>55	2	1
Education	Primary school	0	0
	Junior middle	2	1
	High school	4	3
	Junior college	4	5
	Undegraduate	8	17
	Master	14	4
	Doctor ans above	13	3
Ocupation	Student	2	1
	State-owned enterprise	5	7
	Private enterprise	10	5
	Foreign enterprise	2	2
	Civil servant	20	7
	Government-affiliated institutions	2	3
	individual	2	3
	Unemployed	0	0
	retire	0	0
Personal monthly income	999 and below	2	0
	1000~2999	4	3
	3000~4999	3	5
	5000~7999	16	13
	8000~9999	5	6
	10000~14999	9	2
	15000~19999	2	2
	20000 and above	3	2

Result analyzing shows that a lot of participants didn’t answer the personal questions what leads to uncompleted information. However, according to the current data we can make some assumptions:

1. Female customers in the age of 18–24 are more willing to use car sharing service because of financial status. Most of them are undergraduate students with monthly income less than 1000RMB.
2. Potential customers are people with income less than 8000RMB what means that people are willing to share a cab to save money.
3. Male drivers are satisfied with sharing taxi more than female drivers that may be explained by safety concern of women.
4. Most of the drivers are in the age between 30 and 44 years.
5. Drivers with monthly income less than 8000RMB are willing to use car sharing service.

In order to improve car sharing system in China and get more customers and drivers who willing to use the service, we have to provide car sharing system which will satisfy all classes of population.

Beside personal socio-demographic information we also have completed information about:

‒ Travel purpose;

‒ Travel time;

‒ Online booked car type;

‒ General access towards online booked car;

‒ Experience;

‒ Drawback and risk;

‒ Future use;

‒ Order condition;

‒ Service condition;

‒ Advantage of car sharing;

‒ Car sharing function;

‒ Advantages.

Important aspect of providing car sharing service is satisfaction of both: customers and drivers. According to the entire results of our survey from 680 responders 111 people used to walk to their destination, 290 people use public transportation (bus, subway, shuttle bus),172 self-rides, 38 ride a private car, 20 people use taxi, 49 people use all sorts of net cars outside taxi and 16 responders use any other way of transportation. The reason why people don’t use taxi rides is because public transportation in China is very developed, convenient and cheap. Yu (Marco) Nie payed attention to this problem in his article “How can the taxi industry survive the tide of ride sourcing? Evidence from Shenzhen, China”. According to that article the taxi industry in Shenzhen has experienced a significant loss in its ridership that can be indisputably credited to the competition from ride sourcing. However taxis are still competitive during rush hours (6–10 AM, 5–8 PM) and in areas with high population density. The author proposed a conclusion that taxis in Shenzhen could compete more effectively because they, thanks to Didi Dache, had used to e-haling long before the arrival of ride sourcing. In contrast, taxi drivers in NYC had had no access to e-hailing until the summer of 2015, according to Garcia (2015). To make taxi more competitive in order to people prefer use it we have to improve shared taxi rides.

People in china are always moving and purpose if this can be different. In our experiment we payed attention to this aspect of traveling and we identified that from all responders 296 people have to go to work, 118 study, 293 people take a ride to go shopping or any other kinds of amusement, 79 responds about visiting relatives or friends, 70 about sightseeing, 37 people have to pick up children from school, kindergarten etc. and 26 responds about other business. Based on the entire results we can see that the main purpose of traveling is work, what means that most people have to get to their destination during pick hours. To get to work in time people are willing to use a cab and sharing the cab with someone else. That also leads to saving money.

Most of people travel 2–3 times per day in general and spend more than 1000 yuan every month for their trips. From all responds 175 people spend more than 1000 yuan what we can assume is cost for fuel, 76 people spend less than 200 yuan those who use public transportation, 140 people pay 200–400 yuan for monthly trip cost what probably includes combination of public transportation and taxi, 50 people spend 600–1000 yuan those who prefer taxi ride.

“Wechat” is a widely used information and communication platform in China with access to wallet and ordering movie tickets, food delivery, care service, etc. One of the provided services is ordering taxi. From the list of cabs you have option of 快车(kuaiche) what is a ride offered by private drivers, 出租车(chuzuche) is a regular taxi cab and 顺风车(shunfengche) is a shared cab offered by private drivers for customers with the same origin and destination. Among all responds 11 refers to kuaiche, 194 to chuzuche and 198 to shunfengche. Also there are 10 responds about not having an experience of ordering taxi. People are motivated to use online ordering by different reasons, such as: saving cost (165), easy operating (149), high on-schedule rate (131), no available taxi (159) and others.

To improve the current service of online ordering taxi and involve more customers and drivers we have to analyze consumers’ satisfaction about service and operating. Questions about personal opinion of online taxi ordering were included in our survey.

Survey shows that in general people use taxi service 1–2 times per week. The results are introduced in table 4.

Table 4

Level of using taxi during aweek

Using taxi during aweek (times)	Number of people
0	27
1	54
2	44
3	20
4	18
5	5
6	2
7 and more	24

While ordering taxi a customer can choose either agree with sharing the cab with a stranger or not. Results of willing to share taxi ride are shown in table 5.

Table 5

Level of using shared ride during aweek

Using car-sharing (times)	Number of people
0	59
1	58
2	32
3	18
4	9
5	4
6	3
7 and more	10

As you can see most people have not used shared ride yet or have used it just once.

The average time of waiting for the ordered taxi is 9,8mins. People who are in rush, should expect to wait even longer if they agreed to the shared service.

Conclusion

According to entire results of our survey we can see that people in china do not use taxi service often. That might be explained by well-developed public transportation service. However people who use taxi in their daily life usually are not willing to share their ride with a stranger. Potential customers of shared taxi service are mostly students who are willing to share their ride to save money. Safety aspect also affects the decision of share a cab; current customers are mostly men who are more confident in their safety than women. On the other side we also have to pay attention to taxi drivers. The main factor for drivers to offer a shared ride is money; it helps to ern more money during one trip.

The current position of taxi sharing service in China is now only on the stage of development and improvement. But with well-operated service that will fit needs of both: drivers and customers taxi service will become more popular and will be able to compete with other ways of transportation.

References:

1. «Study on Urban Transport Development», The World Bank, 2000.
2. Tao, C. «Dynamic Taxi-Sharing Service Using Intelligent Transportation System Technologies», Wireless Communications,Networking and Mobile Computing, 2007. WiCom 2007.International Conference on, vol., no., pp.3209–3212, 21–25, Sept. 2007.
3. Elissa Redmiles “Human factors and requirements for a successful mobile platform dynamic taxi-share system in the USA”
4. Gholami, A.; Mohaymany, A.S.; «Analogy of fixed route shared taxi (taxi khattee) and bus services under various demand density and economical conditions», Journal of AdvancedTransportation, vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 177–187, 2012.