Research On The Mechanism Design And Regulation Of Ride-Hailing Platforms

The launch and development of ride-hailing platforms have greatly changed the way people ride.In recent years,after experiencing rapid expansion,the ride-hailing market has gradually entered a slowdown stage and the operational and regulatory problems in ride-hailing platforms have become increasingly prominent.On the one hand,as a representative mode in the sharing economy,ride-hailing platforms contracts with drivers in form of crowdsourcing terms.In the flexible employment mode,the drivers schedule themselves when and what to serve.The conflict between flexibility and high income can cause drivers strategically idle themselves and serve inefficient time.This results in low efficiency in matching supply and demand.On the other hand,with the rapid development of the ride-hailing industry,to increase the market share,platforms attract a large number of drivers to enter the transportation system,which has great impact on the traditional transportation,resulting in traffic congestion and can affect rider’s travel time.Researching on these operational and regulatory issues,and proposing solutions can promote the sustainable development of the ride-hailing industry.Therefore,the thesis studies mechanism design and government regulation strategy on the ride-hailing platform.The thesis first starts from the perspective of drivers.In order to solve the operational problems caused by the self-scheduling of drivers in the crowdsourcing mode,the thesis studies the mechanism design of regulating the drivers’ service behavior.Then,from the perspective of the platform,the impact of the introduction of ride-hailing platforms on the rider’s expected journey time is analyzed.Moreover,regulation schemes are explored to effectively supervise the platform.The specific research work and content of this paper are as follows:(1)Firstly,strategically idling behavior of drivers in ride-hailing platform is discussed.The service providing strategies of drivers under the assignment mode and the informing mode are discussed separately.By studying the effects of service price,arrival rate and service duration of different types of orders on the diver’s service providing strategy,the behavioral motivation of strategic idling is analyzed.Relevant incentive mechanisms are designed to eliminate the driver’s strategic idling.(2)Then,the problem of mismatch between supply and demand caused by drivers’ self-scheduling on the online hour is studied.Taking the uncertainty of market demand and the randomness of the service cost of drivers into account,the optimal online hour strategy of drivers is solved,and it is found that the driver’s self-scheduling will lead to insufficient capacity during peak hours.In response to this problem,penalty and reward mechanisms based on online hour are designed to increase the total supply of the platform during peak periods.(3)Finally,the regulatory issues are studied.A transport network consisting of a public system and a private system(operated by a ride-hailing platform)that serves a population of time-and price-sensitive customers who strategically choose between the two systems is modeled.It is found that the introduction of the ride-hailing platform,although increasing the system capacity,can increase the journey time,i.e.,the DownsThomson paradox can occur.Finally,two regulation schemes are examined,which are effective in reducing the journey time.