Cities xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Cities
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cities

Ridesourcing, the sharing economy, and the future of cities

⁎
Scarlett T. Jina, , Hui Konga, Rachel Wub, Daniel Z. Suia,c
a
Department of Geography, The Ohio State University, 1036 Derby Hall, 154 North Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210-1361, USA
b
Department of Economics, Yale University, New Haven, USA
c
Division of Social and Economic Sciences, The U.S. National Science Foundation

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: As an integral part of the emerging sharing economy, ridesourcing refers to transportation services that connect
Ridesourcing community drivers with passengers via mobile devices and applications. The spectacular growth of ridesourcing
Shared mobility has sparked a burgeoning literature discussing how it affects the future of cities. This paper presents a systematic
The sharing economy review of the existing literature concerning the impact of ridesourcing on the efficiency, equity, and sustain-
On-demand work
ability of urban development. Ridesourcing has a positive impact on economic efficiency. It both complements
Future cities
and competes with public transit, but its influence on traffic congestions near city centers is still unclear.
Regarding urban equity, ridesourcing further amplifies the issue of the digital divide and raises concerns over the
issues of discrimination and data privacy and security. It is also hotly contested whether prosumers (producers/
consumers) are exploited by the sharing economy platforms, whether ridesourcing drivers are reasonably
compensated, and how to better protect on-demand workers' rights. Even though ridesourcing has been pro-
moting a green image, its true environmental impact has not been thoroughly investigated. According to the
evidence reported in the literature so far, it is unlikely that ridesourcing will reduce private car ownership.
Ridesourcing's impacts on energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are uncertain based on existing
research. This paper outlines the danger of conceptual confusion and the methodological issues in the existing
literature. Further research is sorely needed as the future of cities is indisputably tied to the sharing economy and
its impacts on shared mobility.

1. Introduction and bikesharing facilitate the sharing of a vehicle; whereas ridesharing,

The explosive growth of ridesourcing has sparked heated debate
over its impacts on future urban development (Rayle, Dai, Chan, et al.,
2016). Ridesourcing refers to transportation services that connect
community drivers – people who drive private cars instead of com-
mercial vehicles - with passengers via mobile devices and applications.
There are many different terms used to describe this emerging trans-
portation option. Academic transportation researchers use ‘ridesour-
cing’; practitioners describe themselves as ‘transportation network
companies (TNCs) or mobility service providers (MSPs)’; the popular
press calls it ‘ride-sharing’ or ‘ride-hailing’ (Shaheen & Chan, 2016).
Ridesourcing services have been expanding rapidly across the world,
with a number of successful TNCs, such as Uber and Lyft in the U.S.,
Didi Express in China, Ola in India, and even UberMOTO (for motor-
cycle rides) in Thailand.
Ridesourcing is a particular form of shared mobility. Shaheen and
Chan (2016) offer a classification of shared mobility based upon what is
being shared (Fig. 1). Carsharing, motorcycle sharing, scooter sharing,
on-demand ride services, and microtransit enable the sharing of pas-
senger rides. Ridesharing, including carpooling and vanpooling, allows
drivers and passengers with similar origins and destinations to share a
ride. Traditional ridesharing on a personal, organizational, or ad hoc
basis has existed for decades. There are also mobile apps based ride-
sharing, such as BlaBlaCar in France and Didi Hitch in China. On-de-
mand ride services involve the adoption of mobile technology to re-
quest and dispatch vehicles upon passengers' requests. There are three
major forms of on-demand ride services. Ridesourcing is the largest
segment in on-demand ride services. Ridesplitting is a variation of ri-
desourcing, which allows passengers with a similar route to share a ride
and split the fare. Many TNCs operate both ridesourcing and rides-
plitting. For instance, Uber has UberPOOL and Lyft has Lyft Line. E-hail
is taxi service equipped with mobile apps. It is different from ride-
sourcing as the vehicles are taxicabs instead of private vehicles. Lastly,
microtransit is a form of private transit enabled by mobile technology.
It mainly provides commuting services that connect residential areas
with urban and suburban working and commercial areas, such as

⁎
Corresponding author at: Department of Geography, The Ohio State University, 1036 Derby Hall, 154 North Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
E-mail address: jin.760@osu.edu (S.T. Jin).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2018.01.012
Received 19 October 2017; Received in revised form 9 January 2018; Accepted 10 January 2018
0264-2751/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Jin, S.T., Cities (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2018.01.012
S.T. Jin et al. Cities xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

Carsharing paper contributes to a better and clear understanding of ridesourcing,

Motorcycle Sharing
Sharing a Vehicle
Scooter Sharing
Bikesharing
Shared Mobility
Ridesharing
Sharing a
Passenger Ride
On-Demand Ride
Services
Microtransit
Fig. 1. Categories of shared mobility.
[Source: modified from Shaheen & Chan, 2016]
Chariot in the U.S.
Shared mobility is a fast-growing sector of the emerging sharing
economy. The sharing economy has a number of different names such
as on-demand economy, gig economy, collaborative consumption, and
collaborative economy. This paper uses “the sharing economy” to de-
scribe the economic activities and “on-demand work” to describe the
type of jobs provided by the sharing economy. There have been an
increasing number of studies discussing the social, economic, and en-
vironmental impact of the sharing economy (e.g., Cockayne, 2016;
Frenken & Schor, 2017; Martin, 2016). Undoubtedly, the sharing
economy is quickly becoming an important component of the economy,
penetrating a growing number of economic activities (such as Airbnb,
TaskRabbit etc.) in both developing and developed countries. The
sharing economy is transforming business operations and models in
many profound ways.
With accelerated urbanization in the developing world, more and
more people will be living in our crowded cities worldwide. How to
make our cities more efficient, equitable, and sustainable has been the
focus of interdisciplinary research during the past half century (e.g.,
Graham & Marvin, 2001; Vasconcellos, 2001). The rapidly growing
sharing economy will inevitably exert its due impacts on the future of
cities, and yet we have seen little work linking the sharing economy
explicitly with urban studies, although most of the sharing economic
activities are implicitly taking place in cities. More importantly, most
studies examine the sharing economy in general, even though different
types of sharing economy platforms or shared modes of transportation
exhibit distinct characteristics and impose diverse impacts on cities. By
focusing on one aspect of the sharing economy – ridesourcing – this
as a first step to comprehend the convoluted relationship between the
sharing economy and urban development.
More specifically, this paper will conduct a systematic review of the
existing literature concerning how ridesourcing affects the efficiency,
equity, and sustainability of urban development – three key goals that
urban scholars and policy makers aspire to achieve for our future cities.
In addition to academic literature, this article also reviews a variety of
Carpooling materials such as news and magazine articles, blogs, websites, and re-
ports produced by non-academic sources, considering that research on
Vanpooling the sharing economy is in its infancy, and not many studies have been
done specifically about ridesourcing. Given that Uber is the most suc-
cessful TNC, it is used as an example by most literature analyzed in this
Ridesourcing
paper. It is worth mentioning that, even though we didn't intend to limit
our review to any specific country, the majority of the literature written
Ridesplitting
in English focused exclusively on the U.S., which in turn constrained the
scope of our review. That said, the goal of this paper is not to draw a
E-Hail broad conclusion on how ridesourcing may impact urban development,
but rather to synthesize current understanding, identify problems, and
point out directions for future research.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 discusses
how ridesourcing affects urban transportation efficiency and economic
efficiency. Section 3 examines the impact of ridesourcing on urban
equity. Section 4 analyzes how ridesourcing influences urban sustain-
ability through altering private car ownership, energy consumption,
and emissions. This is followed by a discussion section that outlines
problems in existing research and prospects of future urban develop-
ment influenced by ridesourcing and the sharing economy. The last
section offers a summary and points out future research directions.
2. Urban efficiency
To assess how ridesourcing changes urban transportation efficiency
and economic efficiency compared to the status quo, it is essential to
identify what mode of transportation ridesourcing is replacing – known
as the modal shift (Light, 2017). Ridesourcing is most conspicuously
competing with taxis. From March 2012 to July 2014, the number of
taxi trips per month in San Francisco decreased by more than a half
(San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, 2014). In Manhattan
of New York City between April to June in 2015, taxi pickups dropped
by 3.83 million compared to the same period in 2014 (Fischer-Baum &
Bialik, 2015). Many scholars and the popular press made comparative
studies on taxi and ridesourcing (Anderson, 2014; Bialik, Flowers,
Fischer-Baum, et al., 2015; Glöss, McGregor, & Brown, 2016), all of
which seemed to confirm this significant modal shift. Another major
modal shift caused by the emergence of ridesourcing is from public
transit (Rayle et al., 2016), even though there are also situations in
which ridesourcing complements public transportation networks
(American Public Transportation Association, 2016). In this section, we
will examine these two modal shifts in detail and discuss how they

Table 1
Uber's impact on urban efficiency.
[Source: Compiled by the authors]

Transportation efficiency Economic efficiency

Congestion Accessibility Safety

Ridesourcing vs. taxi
Ridesourcing vs. public
transit
(?) Reduces or increases
congestion in the city center?
(−) High-density area:
competes with public transit
(+) Reaches poor neighborhoods
with insufficient taxi services
(+) Temporal: complements public
transit at night and weekends
(+) Spatial: serves as feeders for
public transit
(+) Drivers and passengers
feel safer than when in taxis
(−) Insufficient driver training
and insurance gap
(+) Better matching demand and supply
(+) Reduces transaction cost
(+) Low-density area: cost efficient to
substitute certain transit routes with
ridesourcing

Note: “+” denotes positive impact on urban efficiency, “-” denotes negative impact, and “?” denotes uncertain impact.

2
S.T. Jin et al.
affect urban efficiency. Table 1 provides a summary of the positive and
negative impacts of ridesourcing on urban transportation and economic
efficiency under these two primary forms of modal shift.
2.1. Ridesourcing vs. taxi
Ridesourcing is believed to provide higher economic efficiency than
taxis. Taking Uber as an example, its surge pricing (a dynamic pricing
mechanism, in which fares increase when demand is high) efficiently
meets the fluctuating transportation demand through the day (Edelman
& Geradin, 2016). Uber also significantly reduces transaction costs
through lowering the costs of searching for a ride, since passengers no
longer need to call a dispatcher or stand on the street to hail a taxi, and
instead, they can reserve a car from indoors (Rogers, 2015). Moreover,
passengers can monitor the vehicles' real time GPS locations, which
largely reduces the uncertainty and anxiety of waiting for a cab
(Edelman & Geradin, 2016).
Whether such economic efficiency can be translated into congestion
reduction is another story. Anderson (2014) observed that ridesourcing
brought more cars into the cities and has worsened congestion in the
city center, as people living outside San Francisco drove to the city to
work for ridesourcing, while taxi drivers could not do the same thing
due to regulations. However, a study conducted by the popular media
website FiveThirtyEight based on data of Uber trips in 2014 found that
Uber was not substantially worsening the traffic congestion in New
York during rush hours, because on average Uber created 682 addi-
tional trips between 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. per non-holiday weekday in
Manhattan, which was a very small amount comparing to the total
number of vehicles on the streets (Bialik, Fischer-Baum, & Mehta,
2015). Similarly, Nie (2017) estimated that ridesourcing imposed a
relatively mild impact on the traffic congestion in Shenzhen, China,
using taxi GPS trajectory data during 2013 to 2015. Given that ride-
sourcing is growing at an exponential speed, more research with up-
dated data is needed to examine the impact of ridesourcing on con-
gestions in central urban areas. It is also crucial to take into
consideration the modal shift from public transit to ridesourcing, which
is more likely to worsen congestions.
In the popular media, ridesourcing has a positive image of im-
proving transportation accessibility in low-income or low-density areas
with insufficient taxi services (McArdle, 2015). This image is to a large
extent fueled by a study commissioned by Uber. In this rider experiment
study, riders were dispatched to low-income neighborhoods in Los
Angeles and traveled along predetermined routes in pairs using UberX
and taxi to compare costs and waiting time (Smart, Rowe, Hawken,
et al., 2015). Their results indicated that UberX was cheaper and faster
than taxis: on average, an UberX ride cost less than a half of a cab ride,
and the waiting time of UberX was also less than half of taxis (Smart
et al., 2015).
FiveThirtyEight's study offered similar results: using data of nearly
93 million rides taken by Uber and taxi during April to September 2014,
it found that 22% of the 4.4 million Uber trips started outside of
Manhattan, in contrast to 14% of the 88.4 million taxi rides (Bialik,
Flowers, et al., 2015). According to Pucher and Renne (2003) and
Renne and Bennett (2014), low-income households used taxis more
often than middle-income households in the U.S., probably due to a
lower level of car ownership. If ridesourcing provides services similar to
taxis but with lower costs and shorter waiting time in low-income
neighborhoods, it could meaningfully improve the accessibility of low-
income individuals (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and
Medicine, 2016). Nevertheless, it could also be argued that for low
income neighborhoods, the availability of taxi services might be less
important than the availability of public transit, considering the issue of
affordability. Instead of promoting ridesourcing, it might be more
worthwhile to improve public transit coverage and service frequency in
low-income neighborhoods.
The safety issue surrounding ridesourcing is still contested.
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According to the interviews conducted by Glöss et al. (2016) with Uber
drivers and passengers, both drivers and passengers felt safer because of
Uber's rating and tracking system. Uber drivers, especially female dri-
vers, perceived an increased sense of control and security, because
customers were registered and rated, and the vehicle was tracked (Glöss
et al., 2016). Uber passengers also gained an extra sense of safety and
reliability knowing who the driver was and that the system was mon-
itoring the real-time location of the vehicle (Glöss et al., 2016).
Nevertheless, Edelman and Geradin (2016) contended that Uber drivers
lacked sufficient training, even though there was no empirical evidence
quantifying the correlation between lack of training with accident fre-
quency. Edelman and Geradin (2016) also pointed out that Uber cars
did not have mandatory regular inspections, and some of them were
uninsured or underinsured.
2.2. Ridesourcing vs. public transit
Existing literature suggests that ridesourcing both complements and
competes with public transit. On the one hand, ridesourcing fills in the
temporal and spatial gaps in urban public transit networks and by doing
so improves transportation accessibility. Temporally, ridesourcing is
most commonly used during late night hours and weekends (American
Public Transportation Association, 2016), when public transit services
are less frequent or waiting for transit makes people feel unsafe. Spa-
tially, ridesourcing might serve as feeders for public transits, alleviating
the first-mile/last-mile problem. Notably, quantitative evidence for this
claim mainly came from studies conducted by Uber's own policy re-
search team, as they have the full access to Uber's rich trip data. For
instance, one of their recent studies in Los Angeles found that Uber
pickups surged when new train stations open, indicating that rail pas-
sengers used Uber to bridge between these new stations and their
destinations (Williams, 2017). Their data showed that weekly Uber
pickups within 100 m of the new stations increased significantly one
month after the Expo Line extension opened on March 20, 2016
(Williams, 2017). However, without additional information on the ac-
tual trip origins, we cannot distinguish whether the trips were con-
necting to the new train stations or the new commercial or residential
developments in the vicinity of the new stations.
On the other hand, ridesourcing also competes with public transit,
especially in high-density areas. One survey with ridesourcing users in
San Francisco found that 33% of the ridesourcing users would have
taken public transit if ridesourcing were not available, and that per-
centage (41%) was even higher for non-car owners (Rayle et al., 2016).
Henao's (2017) study found that 22.2% of the passengers would travel
with public transportation if Lyft/Uber were not an option. The
American Public Transportation Association's (APTA, 2016) survey
with shared mobility users in seven U.S. cities (including San Francisco)
offered a lower percentage: if ridesourcing were not available, only
14% of respondents would use public transit. The difference amongst
these three studies stems from their slightly different ways of asking the
questions and their diverse sampling strategies. Clewlow and Mishra
(2017), on the other hand, argued that the relationship between ride-
sourcing and public transit depended on the type of transit in question.
They found that ridesourcing pulled people away from public bus and
light rail, but complemented heavy rail (Clewlow & Mishra, 2017). In
addition to ridesourcing, many TNCs have developed ridesplitting ser-
vices to enlarge their market share in commuting trips. For instance, in
2016, Uber's ridesplitting service UberPool offered a summer deal for
New York inhabitants that allowed riders to pay $49 for two weeks or
$79 for four weeks of unlimited rides within Manhattan during com-
muting hours (Powers, 2016). UberPool's rate in this promotion cam-
paign was lower than public transit because a 30-day unlimited MTA
pass in New York City cost $116.50.
Even though some cities and public agencies attempted to prohibit
or regulate ridesourcing operations, many agencies started to cooperate
with TNCs to supplement public transportation networks or even
S.T. Jin et al.
substitute some bus routes with subsidized or free ridesourcing rides
(Shaheen & Chan, 2016). For example, in August 2016, the Pinnellas
Suncoast Transit Authority (PSTA) in Pinnellas County, Florida, began
providing subsidies for Uber rides that end at nearly 20 designated
transit stops in the county (Brustein, 2016). The PSTA also launched a
separate program offering low-income residents free Uber rides after
9 p.m. when buses stop running (Brustein, 2016). In a similar example,
in July 2016, Miami-Dade County in Florida applied for grants to
subsidize Uber and Lyft rides connecting to two train stations (Brustein,
2016). Moreover, some transportation agencies saw the potential of
cost saving in replacing bus routes with ridesourcing trips. Running bus
routes in areas with low density and low ridership is particularly ex-
pensive, making ridesourcing an attractive and cost efficient alter-
native. For instance, Centennial, a suburb of Denver, Colorado, part-
nered with Lyft in August 2016 to replace a shuttle bus route
connecting the Dry Creek light-rail station with free Lyft rides using
public funds (Aguilar, 2016; Brustein, 2016).
3. Urban equity
In this section, we examine the social impacts of ridesourcing from
three distinct and interrelated perspectives. Firstly, from consumers'
perspective, we analyze how ridesourcing serves different segments of
the society and discuss discrimination and data privacy and security
issues. Secondly, from the prosumers' (consumers/producers) perspec-
tive, we discuss how consumers are turned into co-producers and the
meaning of such transformation. Finally, from producers' perspective,
we further examine the nature of on-demand work, with a particular
focus on ridesourcing drivers.
3.1. Transportation equity, discrimination, and data privacy and security
It is acknowledged by many studies that younger, better-educated,
and more affluent individuals are more likely to be ridesourcing users
(Clewlow & Mishra, 2017; McGrath, 2015; Rayle et al., 2016; and A.
Smith, 2016). This is not surprising as research found that young people
were more interested in shared-based transportation services (Davis &
Dutzik, 2012; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and
Medicine, 2013). Such a user profile raises the question of transporta-
tion equity – who are enjoying this new transportation option and who
are excluded from it. This question becomes more worrying when ri-
desourcing substitutes public transit, a public service that supposes to
be available and accessible to all community members.
The younger, better-educated, and more-affluent user character-
istics remind us of the digital divide, which originally referred to the
unequal access to information and communication technology (ICT)
and the requisite skills to use it amongst community members (Selwyn,
2004) and nowadays expands to the unequal access to smartphone and
mobile data access. According to a survey conducted by Pew Research
Center in 14 advanced countries in 2016, nearly all people in these
countries owned a mobile phone, but not everyone had a smartphone
(Poushter, 2017). Amongst the countries surveyed, Sweden, the Neth-
erlands, Spain and Australia had the highest smartphone ownership
rates (79% to 80%). 77% of Americans owned a smartphone. The
smartphone ownership rates in France, Japan, Poland, Hungary, and
Greece were below 60% (46% to 58%). In addition, the survey identi-
fied sharp digital divide, as smartphone ownership rates were higher in
people who were younger, with higher education, and with income
higher than the country median (Poushter, 2017). Such digital divide
also existed in developing countries, where smartphone ownership rate
was much lower than the developed countries but was catching up
swiftly (Poushter, 2016).
There have been mixed perspectives regarding how ridesourcing
serves low-income populations. As mentioned in the previous section,
the study by Smart et al. (2015) showed that UberX offered cheaper and
faster services than taxis in low-income neighborhoods in Los Angeles.
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Hughes and MacKenzie's (2016) study tested whether people in areas
with lower average income experienced longer waiting time for ride-
sourcing services than people in other areas, using the data of around 1
million estimated waiting times for UberX vehicles in Seattle in 2015.
Their results indicated that waiting time for UberX was more dependent
upon the population and employment density of the area rather than
the income level, and on average, waiting time was actually shorter in
areas with lower income. Nevertheless, most ridesourcing apps require
users to have a credit card or at least a bank account to register and pay
for the rides, which excludes the financially underserved population
(National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2016).
According to the World Bank Global Findex database (Demirgüç-Kunt,
Klapper, Singer, et al., 2015), globally, 38% of adults did not have a
bank account in 2014; in OECD countries, 6% of the adult population
were unbanked; in developing countries, 45% of adults did not own a
bank account. Credit card ownership is even lower: in 2014, 47% of
adults in OECD countries reported not owning a credit card, a figure
which rose to 90% in developing countries (Demirgüç-Kunt et al.,
2015).
Discrimination is another controversial issue surrounding the bur-
geoning TNCs. Ge, Knittel, MacKenzie, et al. (2016) carried out a study
on racial and gender discrimination of Uber and Lyft through sending
passengers to take nearly 1500 rides on controlled routes in Seattle and
Boston in 2015. They identified discrimination against African Amer-
ican riders: in Seattle, African American passengers experienced longer
waiting times, while in Boston passengers using African American-
sounding names experienced higher cancelation rates (Ge et al., 2016).
They also noticed that female passengers were given extended rides and
hence excessive fares in Boston, confirming the anecdotes that female
riders were exposed to profiteering and flirting (Ge et al., 2016). In
addition to racial and gender discrimination, how ridesourcing serves
people with disabilities also brings up concerns. There used to be
lawsuits against TNCs for discriminating against disabled passengers in
2014 and 2015 (Rosenthal, 2014; Stempel, 2015; Wieczner, 2015).
Nowadays Uber and Lyft offer special services for people with dis-
abilities (Lyft, 2017; Uber, 2017). Nonetheless, discrimination against
riders is not a practice invented by ridesourcing (Rogers, 2015). The
taxi industry has long been criticized for racial or ethnic discrimination
(National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2016).
Still, the taxi industry is highly regulated and in many cities taxis need
to follow non-discrimination requirements. It is argued that, since many
TNCs receive monetary or non-monetary support from public agencies,
the non-discrimination requirements should be extended to TNCs re-
ceiving such support (Shaheen, Cohen, & Zohdy, 2016). Yet if the non-
discrimination requirements are ineffective for taxis, extending them to
TNCs does not make much sense. We should probably focus on making
these requirements effective first.
Lastly, data privacy and security have been key concerns of ride-
sourcing users, researchers and public agencies (Shaheen, Cohen,
Zohdy, et al., 2016). TNCs maintain highly sensitive personal data of
their users and drivers, such as names, phone numbers, email addresses,
driver's licenses, credit card information, and trip information. Users
and drivers worry about the possible monitoring, exploitation, and
leakage of their personal data (Rogers, 2015; Shaheen, Cohen, & Zohdy,
2016). TNCs' data collection policies (such as location tracking) often
receive criticism from users and privacy advocates, which constantly
pressures TNCs to make adjustments on their privacy policies (Volz,
2017). Data leakage, on the other hand, draws more attention from
public agencies. For instance, in response to Uber's data breach in 2016,
which exposed personal information of around 57 million users around
the world, the European Union privacy regulators recently announced
plans to create a task-force to coordinate investigations (Fioretti, 2017).
3.2. Prosumerism
The term prosumer originates from Alvin Toffler. In his book The
S.T. Jin et al.
Third Wave, Toffler (1981) contended that during the pre-industrial era
(the first wave) most people consumed what they produced by them-
selves, and thus might be called prosumers. It was followed by the
second wave, in which the industrial revolution separated the functions
of production and consumption and thereby gave birth to producers
and consumers. The contemporary society is moving towards the third
wave that brings back the prosumers. In the third wave, more and more
companies are externalizing labor by asking customers to perform tasks
that had been previously done by employees, and most importantly,
customers do not get paid for doing them (Toffler, 2013). In ridesour-
cing, consumers are turned into prosumers by the rating system, which
gathers ratings from consumers and tallies them up to monitor drivers'
performance – consumers become TNCs' unpaid middle managers
(Dzieza, 2015).
There are mixed opinions upon whether prosumers are exploited:
some view prosumers as liberating figures; whereas others consider
prosumerism as a new form of exploitation. In management and mar-
keting literature, prosumption is labeled as ‘value co-creation’
(Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004) or ‘service-dominant logic of mar-
keting’ (Vargo & Lusch, 2004). Both labels center on the idea that
consumers transform from passive recipients of information and com-
modities to active interpreters and co-producers of both, representing
consumer empowerment and more equal relationships between pro-
ducers and consumers. Another key argument contributing to the po-
sitive image of prosumerism is that prosumers engage in the co-pro-
ducing activities voluntarily and they seem to enjoy the work (Ritzer &
Jurgenson, 2010). In contrast, scholars on the opposite side offer a more
critical assessment on the idea of putting consumers to work. Zwick,
Bonsu, and Darmody (2008), drawing upon Foucauldian and neo-
Marxian theory, posit that the true meaning of co-creation is to exploit
the creative and valuable consumer labor. Even though the idea of co-
creation releases consumers' creativity and know-how, it also ex-
propriates surplus value from unpaid consumer labor (Zwick et al.,
2008). As consumer labor is recoded as an enjoyable consumption ex-
perience, the exploitative nature of prosumption is made less obvious
(Zwick et al., 2008). Similarly, Pauwels (2015) asserts that prosu-
merism obscures power struggles and labor issues through replacing the
old production model of coerced exploitative working conditions with a
more insidious but just as exploitative model.
3.3. The nature of on-demand work
There has been heated debate over the nature of on-demand work in
both popular media and academia. Advocates view on-demand work as
the rise of micro-entrepreneurs, a new generation of self-employed
workers who enjoy flexible work schedules, ideal work-life balance, and
family-friendly lifestyles; whereas critics perceive the on-demand
economy as a disparaging race to the bottom, in which companies shift
risks to individual micro-entrepreneurs, and workers work more hours
for less money and receive minimal job security and benefits (Reich,
2015). There are two key issues embedded in the debate. The first one
concerns compensation – whether ridesourcing and the sharing
economy provide adequate compensation for workers compared to
regular full-time jobs. The second issue is the tradeoffs between flex-
ibility and employment status.
Criticisms of the low compensation of on-demand work have been
concentrated on one particular type of on-demand job – crowdsourcing.
Crowdsourcing refers to the practice in which companies divide jobs
into discrete micro-tasks and outsource these micro-tasks to workers via
business-to-peer platforms, such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk. It is
argued that the online marketplaces increase competition on a global
scale and lower workers' wages, creating a new, digital generation of
sweatshops that make the public ignore the often-desperate conditions
of on-demand workers (Aytes, 2012; Ettlinger, 2016). Nonetheless, the
compensation of on-demand work varies depending on the nature of
work performed and on the nature of the platforms (business-to-peer or
5
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peer-to-peer). An Uber-funded study observed that Uber drivers earned
at least the same as and in many cases more than taxi drivers and
chauffeurs through comparing their earnings per hour (Hall & Krueger,
2015). Nevertheless, Hall and Krueger's (2015) study didn't take into
consideration the benefits (such as healthcare insurance and paid leave)
and expense reimbursement (such as car insurance and gasoline) en-
joyed by taxi drivers and chauffeurs but not by Uber drivers. Moreover,
the fluctuation of wages is threatening the income stability of on-de-
mand workers. For instance, when Uber launched price-cutting cam-
paigns to enlarge market share and stimulate demand, drivers' earnings
dropped significantly and even below minimum wages, which hap-
pened in multiple cities at multiple times (Kosoff, 2014; Lazzaro, 2016).
The problem is Uber can easily make changes to its pricing mechanism
without seeking opinions from the drivers, while taxi companies cannot
easily change their drivers' wages. This problem also relates to our next
question on flexibility and security.
As independent contractors or micro-entrepreneurs, on-demand
workers enjoy the flexible working schedule but sacrifice the benefits
that come with employee status – minimum wage, health insurance,
overtime payment, paid sick days, paid family leave, protection from
discrimination, unemployment insurance, and workers' compensation
and contribution to Social Security (R. Smith, 2016). Some agree that
ridesourcing drivers do indeed enjoy the flexibility of arranging their
own schedules (Glöss et al., 2016; Hall & Krueger, 2015), which en-
hances their adaptability to handle unpredictable shocks in everyday
life, such as a sick child (Chen, Chevalier, Rossi, et al., 2017). Others
question the magnitude of flexibility on-demand workers actually have.
For instance, Chen and Sheldon (2015) noticed that Uber drivers tend
to utilize the flexibility to increase their hourly earnings. Similarly,
Cockayne (2016) found that drivers needed to work when the price is
high, so they still worked on the schedule set by consumer demand and
the algorithm, not themselves. Cockayne (2016) also emphasized that
TNCs had strong control over drivers because they could regulate the
behavior of drivers with the algorithm and the rating system and easily
deactivate drivers that did not follow their instructions.
4. Urban sustainability
Even though there is widespread belief that the sharing economy
helps to improve sustainability, very little empirical evidence has been
provided to support such belief (Schor, 2016). Ridesourcing imposes
both direct and indirect impacts on urban sustainability. Indirectly,
ridesourcing has a potential to alter consumer behavior towards pos-
sessing fewer private vehicles. Directly, ridesourcing might reduce the
energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of urban transpor-
tation.
4.1. Private car ownership
The sharing economy is thought to be green or environmentally
friendly because it can increase the use of pre-existing goods and reduce
the demand for new products (Botsman & Rogers, 2010; Cervero,
Golub, & Nee, 2007; Frenken & Schor, 2017). Following this line of
thought, shared mobility is assumed to reduce private car ownership, as
it encourages consumers to use shared mode of transportation rather
than purchase private vehicles. This assumption has been confirmed for
carsharing (Firnkorn & Müller, 2015; Martin & Shaheen, 2016; Martin,
Shaheen, & Lidicker, 2010), but not for ridesourcing. Rayle et al. (2016)
observed that the presence of ridesourcing might not affect car own-
ership behavior, based on the result that 90% of survey respondents did
not change car ownership levels since they started to use ridesourcing,
and those who did change ownership split into two even groups: one
group owned more cars, the other owned fewer cars. Similarly, in
Clewlow and Mishra's (2017) study, 91% of ridesourcing users did not
make any changes to car ownership. Anderson (2014) raised that ri-
desourcing might even encourage private car ownership because some
S.T. Jin et al.
of the drivers used the ridesourcing income to subsidize their use of
private vehicles, or even to buy cars.
4.2. Energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions
Apart from private car ownership, researchers have paid attention
to the comparison of energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions
between ridesourcing and taxi. Using taxi and Uber trip data in five
cities in the U.S., Cramer and Krueger (2016) found that Uber had a
higher mileage-based capacity utilization rate (61%) than taxis
(49.1%). The capacity utilization rate was calculated as the ratio be-
tween the miles drivers had fare-paying passengers in the vehicles and
their total working miles. Notably, Cramer and Krueger's (2016) cal-
culation did not account for the mileage traveled by drivers to and from
the working area from home when the ridesourcing app was not turned
on. In Anderson's (2014) study, 16 out of 20 drivers interviewed lived in
the outer areas of San Francisco and drove deadheading long distances
to and from the city to work as ridesourcing drivers. Under such cir-
cumstances, Cramer and Krueger (2016) might overestimate the capa-
city utilization rate of Uber. A later study conducted by Henao (2017)
partially solved this problem by taking into consideration the com-
muting distance of drivers after logging off from the apps and achieved
a slightly lower capacity utilization rate (59.2%). Yet Henao's (2017)
calculation was based on his own rides as an Uber and Lyft driver and
he had a careful research design that minimized the cruising time for
ride requests, refused rides that required long pickup distance, and
planed for conservative commuting distance at the end of shifts, making
his driving experience less representative of the general driver popu-
lation. More research is needed to study whether ridesourcing has
higher energy efficiency. In addition, there is a lack of study measuring
and comparing the exact level of emissions produced by ridesourcing
and taxis. Instead, researchers express concerns over the lack of reg-
ulatory control on the emissions of ridesourcing vehicles comparing to
taxicabs (Light, 2017). For instance, Anderson (2014) contended that in
San Francisco, nearly 100% licensed taxis were “clean air” vehicles,
owing to the local regulator's “Clean Taxi” program, in contrast to the
estimation made by the San Francisco Police Department that only 17%
of the ridesourcing cars reprimanded for dropping passengers at the
airport were clean air vehicles.
However, ridesourcing replaces not only taxicabs, but also other
modes of transportation, such as public transit, walking, biking,
driving, and ridesharing. It is essential to make distinctions between
different forms of modal shift when evaluating how ridesourcing affects
energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Henao (2017) ac-
counted for the different modal shifts through combining driving in-
formation with passenger surveys. Driving information keeps records of
the total vehicle miles traveled (VMT), while a passenger survey in-
dicates what mode of transportation ridesourcing is replacing. Through
comparing the total VMT of ridesourcing and the modes of transpor-
tation being replaced, Henao (2017) found that ridesourcing lead to an
84.6% increase in VMT compared to the status quo.
Existing literature also discusses the extent of rebound effects. In
1865, William Stanley Jevons raised the argument that improvement in
energy efficiency will increase instead of reduce energy consumption
(Jevons, 1906). This happens because there are various mechanisms –
the so-called rebound effects – that offset the predicted energy savings
(Sorrell, 2009). There are direct and indirect rebound effects. A direct
rebound effect, in the case of transportation, indicates that improve-
ment in energy efficiency reduces the marginal cost of travel, thus the
quantity of travel may be expected to increase (Sorrell, 2009). This
means ridesourcing might generate additional travel demands, rather
than merely replacing existing transportation modes. Rayle et al.'s
(2016) study found that 8% of the ridesourcing trips were induced
travel, which is a small but not insignificant amount. Henao (2017)
identified an even higher induced travel rate (12.2%). In terms of the
indirect effects, the re-spending effect is most closely related to
6
Cities xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
ridesourcing: consumers might use the cost saving from transportation
to purchase other high-impact goods or services (Schor, 2016).
5. Discussions: problems and prospects
As the business models of TNCs are becoming increasingly sophis-
ticated, it is easy to confuse different forms of shared mobility, which
might lead to misleading study results. Amongst various types of shared
mobility, the most easily confused pair is ridesharing and ridesourcing.
While ridesharing (both traditional and app-based) is proved to be re-
ducing VMT and greenhouse gas emissions (BlaBlaCar, 2015; Jacobson
& King, 2009; Minett & Pearce, 2011), the environmental impact of
ridesourcing is uncertain. Ridesharing improves energy efficiency and
reduces emissions because the drivers will travel to the destinations
regardless of the presence of passengers, whereas ridesourcing has no
such synergy effect, as drivers do not have destinations by themselves –
they provide taxi-like transportation services to passengers. The pop-
ular media often use ridesharing to refer to the services provided by
Uber and Lyft, which is harmless as long as the readers understand it.
However, confusion of these two concepts in research can produce in-
accurate results. For instance, mistakenly defining all trips of Didi
Chuxing as ridesharing trips, Yu, Ma, Xue, et al.'s (2017) study assumed
that Didi Chuxing trips cause no additional energy consumption and
emissions because the drivers will drive to their destinations even with
no request for ridesharing. Therefore, they calculated the environ-
mental benefits of Didi Chuxing as the sum of energy consumption and
emissions of the alternative travel modes that passengers would have
chosen if Didi Chuxing were not available. However, as can be seen
from Fig. 2, Didi Chuxing offers a great variety of shared mobility op-
tions, ranging from ridesharing, ridesourcing, ridesplitting, E-hail, to
microtransit. Only trips made through Didi Hitch could be defined as
ridesharing. Therefore, Yu et al.'s (2017) study largely overestimated
the environmental benefits of Didi Chuxing in Beijing. Future studies
should exercise special caution to distinguish between different types of
shared mobility (especially those provided by a single TNC) when
measuring their environmental impacts.
In addition to concept confusion, methodological issues warrant
caution over the conclusions made by existing literature. Studies on
ridesourcing primarily utilize three types of data: big data, rider/driver
surveys and interviews, and rider/driver experiment. Big data (trip
related information) kept by TNCs are the most crucial and valuable
data used by ridesourcing research, while data from government
agencies (such as taxi and limousine commission) often serve as com-
plementary information. However, TNCs are often reluctant to release
their data for independent research due to concerns about privacy and
trade secrets (Frenken, 2017). Many TNCs commissioned their own
studies (e.g. BlaBlaCar, 2015; Hall & Krueger, 2015) or participated in
the research team (e.g. Yu et al., 2017), but we need more independent
studies, independent research questions, and objective results. Open
access to high-quality big data is key to a better understanding of ri-
desourcing and the sharing economy. Nevertheless, the prevalence of
big data raises concerns over the risk of a new positivist and quanti-
tative turn that favors generality – universal laws independent of space
Didi Chuxing
Didi Hitch Didi Express Didi Chauffeur Didi Taxi Didi Bus &
Minibus
Ridesharing Ridesourcing High-End E-Hail
Ridesourcing Microtransit
Didi Express
Pool
Ridesplitting
Fig. 2. Transportation services provided by Didi Chuxing.
[Source: Compiled by the authors]
S.T. Jin et al.
and time – over particularity that varies across place and time
(Schwanen, 2016). Location does matter in ridesourcing studies. For
instance, FiveThirtyEight's study shows that Uber is not substantially
worsening the traffic congestion in New York during rush hours (Bialik,
Fischer-Baum, & Mehta, 2015), but such a conclusion cannot be applied
to cities like Los Angeles, where the public transit network is far less
sophisticated and car dependency is high. Rider/driver surveys and
interviews could offer rich information for research on ridesourcing,
but caution needs to be exercised on the data collection procedures and
the implications made from the results. For example, Rayle et al. (2016)
oversampled people who were likely to be present in the survey loca-
tions during night time and thus oversampled social and recreational
trips. Lastly, rider/driver experiments face the problem of representa-
tiveness. For instance, Smart et al.'s (2015) rider experiment found that
Uber provided faster and cheaper services than taxis in low-income
neighborhoods in Los Angeles. However, in this study, riders were
provided with mobile devices, trained to use Uber's app, and supplied
with the ride fares to conduct the experiment, which made these riders
different from residents in those low-income neighborhoods who might
not have smartphones, know how to use the app, or have a credit card
to use the ridesourcing app. Therefore, Uber might not serve the low-
income neighborhoods as well as the study depicts. Future studies
should make careful design of the experiments so that the rider/driver's
demographic profile is representative of the research population.
Looking into the future of ridesourcing, two major trends might
significantly change urban transportation configuration: the further
integration of ridesourcing and public transit and the adoption of au-
tomated vehicles by TNCs. Regarding the first trend, a deepening
public-private partnership in urban transportation networks or even a
fully privatized public transit by TNCs would have a substantial impact
on transit accessibility, equity, and reliability (Brustein, 2016). As for
the second trend, autonomous driving technology is a key competition
area for TNCs as robots can work tirelessly, do not demand a salary, and
don't care for employment status or benefits (Dudash, 2017). Having
fleets of driverless cars on the street will not only affect congestion and
transportation accessibility and safety, but also have a strong impact on
the livelihoods of ridesourcing drivers, and even drivers working for the
traditional transportation and logistics industry.
Considering the future of the sharing economy as a whole, Frenken
(2017) articulates three possible scenarios depending on who will
regulate the sharing economy and who will benefit from it. The first
scenario is platform capitalism, a capitalist future in which mono-
polistic large-scale sharing platforms (such as Uber and Airbnb) in-
tegrate multiple businesses models to offer seamless services. The
second one is platform redistribution, a state-led future which redis-
tributes the gains of the sharing economy from capitalists to labor
through taxation. The last one is platform cooperativism, a citizen-led
future with cooperative ownership and democratic control over the
sharing platforms. Each scenario has a distinct institutional logic, but
they may coexist in different sectors or spatial contexts (Frenken,
2017).
6. Conclusions
In view of the substantial transformations that ridesourcing and the
sharing economy bring to the everyday life of urban inhabitants and
urban development, this paper systematically reviews the existing lit-
erature on ridesourcing's impacts on urban efficiency, equity, and sus-
tainability. Table 2 provides a summary of the positive, negative, as
well as uncertain impacts of ridesourcing on urban development. The
impact of ridesourcing on urban efficiency is more straightforward than
on the other two aspects. Ridesourcing improves economic efficiency. It
reaches low-income neighborhoods with insufficient taxi services. Ri-
desourcing both complements and competes with public transit. It is
uncertain whether ridesourcing worsens congestion in city centers, and
if yes, to what extent, especially under the circumstances of the
7
Cities xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
increasing popularity of ridesplitting services that compete with public
transit. Regarding the safety issue, ridesourcing increases trust between
drivers and passengers but faces the problems of insufficient driver
training and uninsured or underinsured vehicles.
Even though ridesourcing improves the availability of transporta-
tion in poor and remote areas, it does not seem to provide equal access
to all community members – people without a smartphone, mobile data
access, a credit card, or at least a banking account are excluded from
this transportation option. The problem of digital divide is not limited
to ridesourcing and the sharing economy; it is closely related to the
smart city mentality, as urban governance shifted its focus from social
well-being towards economic competitiveness energized by technology
advancement, which leads to social polarization and exclusion (Graham
& Marvin, 2001; Hollands, 2008). Issues of discrimination against riders
and data privacy and security have raised concerns amongst ridesour-
cing users, researchers, and policy makers. How to prevent dis-
crimination and protect users' privacy is a continuing inquiry. The
question of whether ridesourcing (and the whole sharing economy)
empowers or exploits prosumers probably cannot be answered by em-
pirical analysis, but it remains a critical question under the circum-
stances of a swiftly growing sharing economy. On the contrary, the
question regarding the compensation level of on-demand workers can
and should be answered empirically. In addition, the nature of the
flexibility and the problems of insecurity in on-demand work should be
scrutinized by not only researchers but also policymakers. As argued by
R. Smith (2016), flexibility and employment status are not in-
compatible.
Even though ridesourcing and the sharing economy have been
promoting a green image, their environmental impacts have not been
robustly quantified. According to the very limited evidence offered by
literature, it is unlikely that ridesourcing can reduce private car own-
ership. Other forms of shared mobility such as carsharing or ridesharing
have a higher potential to alter consumer behavior and discourage
vehicle ownership. Ridesourcing's impact on energy consumption and
greenhouse emissions is uncertain. The calculation of VMT and emis-
sions should consider different modal shifts and the rebound effects.
The availability of high-quality big data and rider surveys are key to the
evaluating of ridesourcing's environmental impact.
As can be seen from Table 2, many questions remain unanswered in
existing literature, calling for further research into the current as well as
the potential impacts of ridesourcing and the sharing economy on urban
development. Empirically, future studies should investigate whether
ridesourcing worsens congestion in central urban areas, quantify the
relationship between ridesourcing and public transit, assess the com-
pensation conditions of on-demand workers, and measure the energy
consumption and emissions of ridesourcing. Theoretically, future re-
search should critically analyze the issue of social exclusion in the
sharing economy, the nature and future of prosumption, the pre-
cariousness of on-demand work, and the transforming nature of capit-
alism under the growing sharing economy. Lastly, as most existing lit-
erature on ridesourcing focused on what happened in the U.S.,
conclusions drawn by existing research might not be applicable to other
contexts. Future research should pay attention to the development of
ridesourcing in other countries to bring in international perspectives on
the understanding of ridesourcing as well as the sharing economy.
Perhaps even more importantly, we hope this paper will stimulate more
discussions on our policy options in light of these empirical findings so
that we can make our future cities towards achieving the goals of
economic efficiency, social equity, and environmental sustainability
with the growth of the sharing economy.
Funding
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding
agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
S.T. Jin et al.
Table 2
Impacts of ridesourcing on urban development.
[Source: Compiled by the authors]
Positive impacts Negative impacts
Efficiency • Reaches poor neighborhoods with
insufficient taxi services
• Competes with public transit, especially in high-
density areas
• Complements public transit during late
night hours and weekends
• Safety concerns: insufficient driver training and
uninsured/underinsured vehicle
• Improves economic efficiency
• Increases
passengers
trust between drivers and
Equity • Digital divide: some segments of society have
difficulty accessing ridesourcing services
Sustainability
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