Exploring driver and user perspectives of service quality in sharing economy transport platforms

Abstract

With the rise of the sharing economy, companies such as Uber have emerged as an alternative to traditional transport methods. Digital sharing economy platforms enable the encounter of two types of ‘users’: peer providers (i.e. drivers) and travellers (commonly referred as users). To acknowledge the needs of both the user and the provider, we must understand their perceptions of service quality (SQ) in this new context. However, existing research about SQ in platform-based transport focuses only on the users’ perspective. Given that peer providers are an essential part of peer-to-peer transport services, this exploratory study aims to capture the perceptions of SQ from the perspective of users and drivers. Relying on service quality theory, two quality assessment scales are designed for the users and the providers, respectively. Based on the data obtained from 646 users and drivers, Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is used to validate the proposed scales. This study contributes to the literature of quality management in the sharing economy and provides valuable insights for platform managers.

Keywords:

• digital platforms
• peer-to-peer transport
• service quality
• quality management
• sharing economy

Acknowledgement

This article was written as part of a research project titled ‘improvement of quality in collaborative consumption companies: model, scale and loyalty (CC-Qual)’ (ref: rti 2018-096279-b-i00) funded by the ministry of science, innovation and universities of Spain within the aid programme for R&D ‘Retos de Investigación’ project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades: [Grant Number ref. RTI2018-096279-B-I00].