Taxis and crowd-taxis: sharing as a private activity and public concern

Merethe Dotterud Leiren and Jørgen Aarhaug

Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation, 2016, vol. 5, issue 2, 1-17

Abstract: The sharing economy has generated interest among economists for its customer focus and potential to enhance competition. However, it has also caused uproar in industries which have felt competitive pressure, for example among the established stakeholders in the taxi industry. While regulations currently impose considerable costs on the taxi industry, they do not cover virtual transport innovations such as Uber. The lack of a level playing field between taxis and such 'crowd-taxis' has generated media attention and conflict. Taxi owners worry about decreasing revenues and taxi drivers about poor working conditions. Other concerns are related to poor transport preparedness, accessibility issues, quality assurance and tax evasion. Despite considerable media attention, there has so far been a lack of scholarly literature addressing the consequences of the sharing economy in the transport sector. Focusing on the Norwegian taxi market, we argue that crowd-taxis will likely produce a range of unanticipated effects, necessitating regulation. For example, crowd-taxis may contribute to a loss of transport preparedness in rural areas. The findings are based on first and secondary data and 19 interviews.

Keywords: Sharing economy; Transport; Crowdworking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/214018/1/IntPolRev-2016-2-420.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:iprjir:214018

DOI: 10.14763/2016.2.420

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation from Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().