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The rise of technology-enabled ride-hailing services has affected individuals’ transportation-related decisions. The impact of these ride-hailing services likely varies across traveler segments that differ in their usage of various modes of transportation. In this paper, we develop and leverage a framework that allows us to examine the impact of ride-hailing services on the transportation mode choice for three traveler segments: drivers (who primarily use a personal automobile to travel), riders (who primarily use public transit to travel), and walkers (who primarily use non-motorized modes of transport). We first develop a framework outlining how the behavior of different traveler segments would be impacted by the introduction of ride-hailing services and show how this affects traffic congestion and public transportation ridership. To test the framework, we compiled a rich dataset, combining data on public transportation ridership, traffic congestion, and individual transportation mode choice. Employing a difference-in-differences methodology, we show that the Uber entry in a market enabled those who were walkers and riders prior to the entry of Uber to travel more conveniently, leading to an increase in traffic congestion, and induced those who were drivers to substitute their use of private automobiles with a combination of Uber and public transit. We introduced urban compactness to assess the heterogeneous impact of ride-hailing services for cities that differ in their distribution of traveler segments. We found that Uber entry increases traffic congestion and reduces public transit demand more in cities with higher levels of urban compactness, i.e., where the proportion of riders and walkers is higher than that of drivers. This work provides a holistic framework to understand the mechanism underlying the impact of ride-hailing services on public transit and traffic congestion. Urban planners and policy makers can leverage our framework, methodology, and empirical results to guide city planning decisions that have implications for sustainability.

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Although researchers have examined the role of dyadic dynamics (i.e., interactions between the acquirer and the target firm) in the success of acquisitions, little attention has been devoted to the role of information technology (IT). In this study, we extend this literature by examining how pre-acquisition IT distance (i.e., the difference between the enterprise IT systems of the two firms that reflects the system incompatibility and resulting costs of system integration) affects the acquirer’s post-acquisition performance. To measure IT distance, we used a word-embedding technique to map each firm’s IT systems portfolio to a low-dimensional embedding space and calculate the distance between the firms in that space. Using data on U.S. firms’ acquisition activities over seven years, we found that IT distance is negatively associated with the acquirer’s post-acquisition performance. Also, the adverse effect of IT distance is stronger for acquisitions motivated by operational synergies, compared to those seeking non-operational synergies. This finding supports our fundamental premise that IT distance disrupts post-acquisition synergy creation, and more so when the combined firm has a greater need for tight integration to create acquisition synergies. This research contributes to the merger and acquisition (M&A) literature in management and IS by introducing a novel concept of IT distance and by theorizing and empirically examining its performance implications in acquisitions. The findings of this study can inform practitioners on how to devise IT strategies in corporate acquisitions to mitigate IT risks and achieve greater post-acquisition performance.