Exploring factors affecting ridesharing users in academic institutes in the region of Attica, Greece

ABSTRACT

The advent of ridesharing introduced changes in transportation planning and raised issues regarding its acceptance and usage by potential users. This study contributes to the existing ridesharing literature by focusing on the implementation of ridesharing services in academic institutes. An online survey is deployed in the Region of Attica, Greece to explore the factors that may contribute towards using ridesharing to travel to and from academic institutes by using a service that is hosted by the institute and offered only to its registered students and employees. In total 844 respondents completed the survey. Identified factors for ridesharing passengers are grouped into: (1) reasons, (2) motives, and (3) constraints, and three models are developed by using ordinal logistic regression. An additional model is built for ridesharing drivers. Results for passengers suggest that reasons for ridesharing, such as, sustainability, socializing, and travel cost, and motives for ridesharing, such as the payment method, passenger awards, and number of passengers, are among significant factors that affect passengers to rideshare. Security and driver experience may hinder participation in ridesharing services in academic institutes. The study concludes with a discussion for transportation planners and service providers for implementing successful ridesharing services.

KEYWORDS:

• Ridesharing
• carpooling
• academic institutes
• factors
• ridesharing planning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.