Analysis of Taxi Drivers’ Behaviors Withina Battle Between Two Taxi Apps
A battle between two Chinese taxi booking mobile apps,namely, Didi and Kuaidadi, had recently occurred in early 2014. Thesetwo apps, which are backed by Internet giants Tencent and Alipay, gavepromotion fees to taxi drivers for each deal made and also allowed eachtaxi passenger to save some money, when a customer had taken a taxithrough the app and paid the fare through the mobile payment method.As expected, the taxi service pattern had been greatly changed during thisbattle. To address the debates on social justice, equity, and improvementsof taxi service, we collect 37-day trip data of over 9000 taxis in Beijing tostudy the influence of this pattern change. In the first 18 days, the battlehad not occurred and in the remaining 19 days, the battle is white-hot.We quantitatively demonstrate how several important service indices (e.g.,the traveling distances and idle time lengths) of taxi drivers had beenchanged. The spatial–temporal traveling patterns of taxis are then studied.Based on comprehensive analysis, the benefits and drawbacks broughtby money promotion are finally discussed. The obtained results indicatethat productively employing big data can help answer some importantquestions attracting the interest of the whole society
Taxis service offers great benefits and convenience to our daily life.However, in many cities, the taxi service supplies fail to meet thetraveling demands especially in rush hours. To balance the supply anddemand, different measures had been executed in the last few years.On one hand, the authorities of many cities continuously estimatethe quantity of taxis and make dynamic adjustments in accordancewith the ever-increasing demand. On the other hand, some companiesprovide innovative services to connect passengers with drivers viabooking apps installed on mobile phones. These mobile booking appsbecome highly attractive around the world, since taxis are notoriouslydifficult to catch in metropolises.At first, these apps allowed users to bid for taxis by offering addi-tional bonus fees to drivers. This strategy could arouse the initiativeof drivers and make them become more active to serve passengers.The “invisible hand” would then help match the supply and demand.However, this bidding mechanism is clearly unfair for many peopleand was soon banned by the authorities.Along with the exponentially booming mobile payment market inChina, a new mechanism:money promotion, was implemented toreshape the supply and demand of taxis recently. For example, a battlebetween two Chinese taxi booking mobile apps: Didi [1] and Kuaidadi[2], had recently occurred in early 2014. These two apps, which arebacked by Internet giants Tencent and Alipay, gave promotion fees totaxi drivers for each deal made and also helped each taxi passengersave some money, when a customer had taken a taxi through the appand paid the fare through the mobile payment method.The hidden force in such battles is the players’ ambition to extendtheir territories in mobile payments, since mobile payment is one of themost important factor for any company wishing to dominate the era ofmobile Internet. Notice that money promotion for taxis booking is anefficient way to securing as many people as possible who use mobilepayments, the wrestling match between the rivals Tencent and Alibababecomes more and more intensive.
Taxi drivers had highly welcomed this battle and had tried their bestto pick up every driver who is calling taxi through these apps. Thus,the taxi service pattern had been greatly changed during this battle.Many people began to complain that they cannot find a taxi to takeif they do not use such apps. Although these apps brings conveniencefor young high-tech people, they meanwhile make catching taxis moredifficult for senior citizens who are not familiar with mobile phone,foreign travelers who do not have a mainland Chinese bank account tolink up with the mobile payment system, and low-income citizens whocannot afford mobile phone or mobile service.Since March, 2014, the authorities of many Chinese cities had toset up new rules to ban the use of taxi booking apps during rushhour periods. For instance, the authorities of Shanghai halt the on-demand taxis booking mobile apps during morning peak (7:30A.M.to9:30A.M.) and evening peak (4:30A.M. to 6:30A.M.).However, a debate on whether such money promotion strategyshould be banned is not ended with such bans. The opinions fromdifferent people can be categorized into two groups.The first group of opinions claimed that the money promotion ben-efits the society, because the following changes optimize the suppliesof taxi service
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