Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Mar 2024)
Ride-hailing service availability and private transportation mode usage in a motorcycle-based city: Evidence from Hanoi
Abstract
Ride-hailing services (RHS) are widely expected to serve as an alternative to conventional private transportation modes. However, numerous studies on RHS’s impact on private modes’ usage provide inconclusive evidence. Notably, few studies have analyzed RHS’s impacts on modal changes in the context of motorcycle-based societies. This study attempts to identify the critical factors affecting RHS users’ private mode usage (private cars and motorcycles) in response to RHS appearance in Hanoi, Vietnam, a motorcycle-based society. Two empirical analyses were performed with sample data of 642 individuals collected from face-to-face interviews using paper-based questionnaire sheets in Hanoi from December 19 to 21, 2020. The first analysis employed a linear regression model to explain the changes in individuals’ private mode usage before and after RHS adoption. The second analysis estimated a logistic regression model to examine an individual’s private mode choice when RHS are unavailable. Robustness tests were also performed. The results revealed that RHS users’ future vehicle ownership intentions, reasons for using RHS instead of private modes, motorcycle ownership, and public transport usage significantly reduce the impacts of RHS on private mode usage. The reasons for using RHS rather than private modes were found not strong enough to make an essential change to reduce the frequency of private modes usage. The results also showed there is a difference between the RHS’s impacts on motorcycle use and car use. They suggested that policy makers should be aware of the unique factors in motorcycle-based societies such as Hanoi when formulating urban transportation strategies. Finally, the findings further supported an idea that multivariate analyses are more suitable than the simple descriptive statistics method to understand how the motivation for using RHS influences the impacts of RHS on private mode usage.
