Ride-Sharing Efficiency and Level of Service under Alternative Demand , Behavioral and 1 Pricing Settings

1 Previous studies examining ride-sharing potential assumed that rides can be shared as long as the 2 incurred delay does not exceed a certain threshold. Conversely, we formulate willingness to share 3 as a compensatory cost function at the individual passenger level. The latter considers trade-offs 4 between delays caused by detours, travel discomfort related to sharing a vehicle and a fare discount 5 associated with a shared ride. Next to finding how these behavioral preferences and the offered 6 discount structure affect the efficiency and level of service of ride-sharing services, the effect of 7 directionality in demand is considered. A graph-based approach is applied to perform an efficient 8 assignment of vehicles to requests. We test the model on an experiment representing an urban 9 context. Our findings suggest that service performance is strongly dependent on users’ willingness 10 to share and somewhat less strongly on users’ tolerance to delays. Implementation of a ride-sharing 11 service is most successful when directionality in demand is low, while ride-specific discounts can 12 be effective in maximizing societal benefits. 13 14