Why Do They Ride with Others? Meta-Analysis of Factors Influencing Travelers to Carpool

Abstract

Carpooling can be viewed as a simple intervention to reduce congestion, environmental problems, and land use for parking spaces. The present study assembled 18 studies on carpooling from all over the world that were published during the last five years (2014–2018) for a meta-analysis. By calculating effect sizes of 20 different factors, the study aimed to understand user characteristics, motives, and barriers to carpooling, and to gain insights about carpool interventions. Our results indicate that carpooling is very weakly related to socio-demographic variables, and that psychological factors are becoming more important, including monetary and time benefits, reducing congestion, and environmental concerns. Policy-makers can increase carpooling by offering cheaper parking or special parking spaces for carpoolers and introducing high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes. Not surprisingly, fuel prices influence mode choice. The overall findings support previous results, but we found judgmental factors becoming more important for the choice to carpool. We conclude that carpooling services still fail to include many potential users and to serve users adequately. The challenge of meeting the needs of all users requires new approaches to designing carpool concepts, systems, and encounters.

Trains in the Land of the Car: A Case Study of Mobility as Agency in the United States

“…He termed this personal agency, and the conceptual dimensions and pathways of agency according to TRC are visualized in Figure 1. or local policy frameworks that prioritize environmental concerns, or high-density cities with established or expanding public transport infrastructure to implement more sustainable travel (see for example [9,10,14,17]). However, what happens in contexts where the relevant values, policies, or infrastructure associated with sustainable travel are absent or have been superseded?…”

“…In line with the soft approach, interventions often focus on reinforcing beliefs aligned with sustainable travel via group discussions, role-play, and information campaigns [14][15][16]. In recent years, many innovative projects have capitalized on evolving sustainability values, national or local policy frameworks that prioritize environmental concerns, or high-density cities with established or expanding public transport infrastructure to implement more sustainable travel (see for example [9,10,14,17]). However, what happens in contexts where the relevant values, policies, or infrastructure associated with sustainable travel are absent or have been superseded?…”

“…According to Banister and colleagues [5] (p. 7), the car is culturally rooted: "Free roads, free parking, cheap petrol, and universal, cheap driver licensing are widely viewed as a natural right". Unsurprisingly, private car use continues to increase annually [26], average occupancy continues to decline [27], and as purchasing choices continue to shift toward light trucks and SUVs [28] it presents a formidable challenge to addressing the transport sectors' triple C's-climate change, congestion, and casualties [1,17,29]. The urgency for change is widely discussed [1,5,20,21,30], yet investigations examining the agency potential for sustainable travel in the US context are rare.…”

Demand Prediction of Ride-Hailing Pick-Up Location Using Ensemble Learning Methods

“…Emerging studies [3] demonstrate psychological factors such as monetary and time benefits becoming more dominant factors in decisions to use ride-hailing and carpooling services. In relation to rider satisfaction, [4] found surge pricing not to bias Uber towards riders of higher income threshold, but rather, homophilous matching that is, matching riders to drivers of a similar age resulted in higher ratings and further went on to use these insights to predict driver and/or rider retention.…”

Park and Pool Lots’ Impact on Promoting Shared Mobility and Carpooling on Highways: The Case of Slovenia

“…Using a campus travel pattern survey at Ohio State University, Park et al [14] found that safety, flexibility, and parking cost-savings were the most important factors for people willing to be a passenger; while the convenience and opportunities for socializing through a carpool trip were the most influential factors for people willing to take the role of driver. Olsson et al [15] also mentioned that psychological factors, namely monetary and time benefits, reducing congestion, and environmental concerns are more important than socio-demographic variables. In a case study in Lisbon, Correia and Viegas [9] concluded that the passengers joining in carpooling were mostly concerned with travel budgets, namely saving fuel costs, toll costs, and workplace parking costs.…”