Préparée à Université Paris-Dauphine Understanding Motivations and Impacts of Ridesharing: Three Essays on Two French Ridesharing Platforms Composition du jury : Soutenue par Dianzhuo ZHU Maria GUADALUPE Professeure, INSEAD Présidente Le 08 06 2020 Philippe GAGNEPAIN École doctorale no543 Professeur, Université Paris 1 Panthéon- Rapporteur École Doctorale SDOSE Sorbonne, PSE Yannick PEREZ Professeur, Centrale Supélec, Univer- Rapporteur sité Paris-Saclay Spécialité Julien JOURDAN Sciences de Gestion Professeur, Université Paris-Dauphine, Examinateur PSL Stéphanie SOUCHE-LE CORVEC Professeure, Université de Lyon Examinatrice Éric Brousseau Professeur, Université Paris-Dauphine Directeur de thèse L’Université n’entend donner aucune approbation ou improbation aux opinions émises dans les thèses. Ces opinions doivent être considérées comme propres à leurs auteurs. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is a long journey to accomplish a thesis. At the beginning of the journey, I could not imagine when and how it would end. However, while I am writing the acknowledgments, I also realize how time flies for the past four years and a few months. It has been an enriching expe- rience both in terms of building research and analytical skills and in terms of the connections with amazing people, without whom the thesis could not be accomplished. I would first like to thank my supervisor, Professor Eric Brousseau. Thank you for believing in the potential of the thesis topic that I spontaneously proposed. Thank you for being always supportive while leaving me the autonomy to follow my interests and to have the courage to fight against difficulties. Thank you for creating a great research team and for all the resources that you provide with the Governance and Regulation Chair and the Governance Analytics project. I would also like to thank the jury members, Professor Guadalupe, Professor Gagnepain, Pro- fessor Jourdan, Professor Perez and Professor Souche-Le Corvec, for your time to read and to comment on my work. Some of you have known the project before and have already given me lots of help. I express my gratitude for all the support you have provided. Special thanks to my coauthor and ex-colleague of the Chair, Timothy Yeung. I learned a lot during the writing of the third paper. Thank you for taking the time to explain to me many concepts, techniques, and writing skills. I also got to know more about a helpful person and a rigorous researcher. Other special thanks to Bruno and Faten of Governance Analytics and to Junlong, who helped me a lot in the data scraping process and the first two experiments. I am fortunate to be working with Ecov, my CIFRE contract partner, for having the vision and the courage to fund a Ph.D. project at the early stage of the company, and for the support of various research projects. Thank you, Thomas Matagne and Arnaud Bouffard, the co-founders of Ecov, for including me in the team. Thank you, Clément Barbe and Nathalie Dyèvre, my managers, during my years in Ecov. I am lucky to have managers who understand academic interests in the industrial world and are always helping for me to find a balance in both worlds. Thanks to many other colleagues who have helped me during the process that I cannot exhaust the list here. A special mention to Tarn and Panayotis. I am lucky to be surrounded by other v research profiles in the company. You have helped me a lot in LATEXand in maintaining mental health. Tarn kindly accepts to proofread the English writing of the paper and finishes in a very short notice with impressive quality. I am really grateful of your help! Another special mention to Teddy, who has introduced me to Ecov. Many thanks also to my colleagues, professors, and staff in Dauphine, both in the Chair and the M&O lab. Thank you for your comments on the papers during the internal seminars and your mental support! Thanks to the PhDs and doctors of the Chair and of the lab: Abir, Agnieszka, Alexandre, Amanda, Antoine, Arrah-Marie, Carlos, Daniel, Emmanuel, Ju, Julie, Mahdi, Maria Teresa, Nevena, Romain, Sultan, Svitlana, Théophile; and the coordinators of the Chair: Chiara, Delphine, Joanna, Marie-Hélène and Steve. I also receive support from the PSL Welcome Desk for French proofreading. Thank you Basile for correcting my French resume. The papers in the thesis have been presented at several conferences, workshops, seminars. They have received comments from participants of different domains. Special thanks to Dr. Nicolas Soulié, who initiated my interest in experimental methods. I also thank the referees and editors of the DigiWorld Economic Journal and of Revue d’Économie Industrielle for their comments. I regret not to be able to list and to recognize every one of you here, but the entire thesis is built on your help, so I take the opportunity to thank you all. I am also lucky to be surrounded by many friends (other than colleague friends) both in France and back in China, who offer me support and bring joy to my leisure time. There are so many of you that I cannot list all the names. Thank you for helping me keep an overall healthy psychological status during the thesis! I want to reserve my last acknowledgments to my parents in China. Thank you for having educated me to be curious about knowledge. Thank you for always respecting my own choices and being supportive. It is not easy for me not to be close to you for so many years. I am really grateful for all the sacrifices that you have made. I am also glad that the entire exercise of the thesis has not only made be a qualified researcher, but also a more mature person in many aspects. I am sure that it is also what you want. I dedicate my thesis to you. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments..................................... v List of Tables........................................ xii List of Figures....................................... xiv RÉSUMÉ.......................................... 1 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.............................. 11 Chapter 1: Introduction: Promoting a Sustainable Ridesharing Practice...... 21 1.1 Ridesharing: What do We Know?......................... 21 1.1.1 Emergence and Development of Ridesharing: From US to Europe . 22 1.1.2 Categorizing Ridesharing Business Models ............... 25 1.1.3 Main Ridesharing Solutions in France.................. 32 1.1.4 Mapping French Ridesharing Solutions with Other Mobility Choices . 35 1.1.5 The Impact of Ridesharing........................ 39 1.2 Promoting a Sustainable Ridesharing Practice: Business Strategies and Policy Orientations for Behavioral Changes....................... 42 1.2.1 Behavioral Intervention at Two Levels.................. 42 1.2.2 Toward a Long-Term Behavioral Change ................ 46 1.2.3 French Ridesharing Policy Advances................... 51 vii Chapter 2: More Generous for Small Favour? Exploring the Role of Monetary and Prosocial Incentives of Daily Ride Sharing Using a Field Experiment in Rural Île-de-France............................. 54 2.1 Why Focus on Short-Distance Daily Ridesharing in Rural Areas? . 56 2.2 Which Field and What Behavioral Theories May Apply? ............ 57 2.3 Hypothesis..................................... 58 2.4 Experiment Design ................................ 59 2.4.1 How Does the Service Work?....................... 59 2.4.2 Who? ................................... 59 2.4.3 When and Where? ............................ 60 2.4.4 How? ................................... 61 2.5 Data Analysis................................... 62 2.5.1 Descriptive Data ............................. 62 2.5.2 Biasness Checks ............................. 64 2.6 Hypothesis Check................................. 67 2.7 Discussion and Further Research......................... 69 2.8 Conclusion and Policy Implications ....................... 70 Chapter 3: The Limit of Money in Daily Ridesharing: Evidence from a Field Ex- periment.................................... 71 3.1 Introduction.................................... 72 3.2 Literature Review................................. 74 3.3 Introduction of the Field Set-up.......................... 76 3.4 Research Questions and Experimental Design.................. 78 3.4.1 Research Questions............................ 78 3.4.2 Experimental Design........................... 78 viii 3.4.3 Hypotheses................................ 81 3.5 Results....................................... 82 3.5.1 Summary Statistics and Randomization Check.............. 82 3.5.2 Analysis.................................. 82 3.6 Discussion..................................... 89 3.7 Conclusion .................................... 91 Chapter 4: The Impact of the SNCF Strike on Ridesharing: A Novel Approach of Consumer Surplus Estimation Using BlaBlaCar.com Data........ 97 4.1 Introduction.................................... 98 4.2 Literature Review................................. 99 4.3 Background Information .............................101 4.3.1 SNCF Strike and the Opportunity for Ridesharing . 101 4.3.2 Introduction of BlaBlaCar ........................102 4.4 Data........................................103 4.4.1 Data sources................................103 4.4.2 API Data Collection and Route Selection . 104 4.4.3 Supplementary Information from BlaBlaCar.fr and SNCF Press Releases 105 4.4.4 Data Cleaning and De-biasing ......................106 4.4.5 Summary Statistics............................107 4.5 Effects of the Strike on Ridesharing Supply ...................107 4.6 Effects of Strike on Observed Ridesharing Demand . 113 4.7 Effects of Strike