Racial discrimination in transportation network companies

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ge, Yanbo; Knittel, Christopher R.; MacKenzie, Don; Zoepf, Stephen
• 署名单位: United States Department of Energy (DOE); National Renewable Energy Laboratory - USA; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Washington; University of Washington Seattle; Stanford University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104205
• 发表日期: 2020
• 关键词: discrimination; Audit study; field experiment; Transportation network company; Peer economy; Sharing economy

摘要

In a randomized audit study, we sent passengers in Boston, MA on nearly 1000 rides on controlled routes using the Uber and Lyft smartphone apps, recording key performance metrics. Passengers randomly selected between accounts that used African American-sounding and white-sounding names. We find that the probability an Uber driver accepts a ride, sees the name, and then cancels doubles when passengers used the account attached to the African American-sounding name. In contrast, Lyft drivers observe the name before accepting a ride and, as expected, we find no effect of name on cancellations. We do not, however, find that the increase in cancellations leads to measurably longer wait times for Uber. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.