A truthful subsidy scheme for a peer-to-peer ridesharing market with incomplete information

Amirmahdi Tafreshian and Neda Masoud

Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 2022, vol. 162, issue C, 130-161

Abstract: Traffic congestion during peak periods has become a serious issue around the globe, partly due to the high number of single-occupancy commuter trips. Peer-to-peer (P2P) ridesharing platforms can present a suitable alternative for serving commuter trips. However, they face a major obstacle that prevents them from being a viable mode of transportation in practice: ridesharing users often provide tight time windows, which ultimately leads to a low matching rate. This study addresses this issue by introducing a subsidy scheme that allocates incentives to encourage a few carefully selected set of travelers to change their desired departure or arrival times, and thereby form successful matches. In order to implement this scheme for a ridesharing platform in the existence of private information, we propose an auction-based mechanism that guarantees truthfulness, individual rationality, budget-balance, and computational efficiency. Using numerical experiments, we show the merits of the proposed subsidy scheme when compared to its no-deficit variant as well as the conventional VCG mechanism.

Keywords: Peer-to-peer ridesharing; Subsidy scheme; Incentive design; Double auction with heterogeneous items (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019126152200087X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:transb:v:162:y:2022:i:c:p:130-161

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.trb.2022.05.010

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Research Part B: Methodological is currently edited by Fred Mannering

More articles in Transportation Research Part B: Methodological from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().