Introduction

Ride-sharing aims to minimize negative impacts related to emissions, reduce

travelling costs and congestion [5], and increase passenger vehicle occupancy and
public transit ridership. During the last decade, innovative mobility solutions were
introduced, including on-demand mobility services and Mobility as a Service (MaaS),
that focused on daily travel needs to promote sustainable transport [5].

The literature uses the term “ride-sharing” to describe various mobility sharing
concepts. Ride-sharing refers to the common use of a motor vehicle by a driver and
one or several passengers, in order to share the costs (non-profit) or to compensate the
driver (i.e., paid service) using billing information provided by the participants (for
profit). In this study the term is used to describe the common use of a motor vehicle
for cost compensation, in the context of a ride, that the driver performs for its own
account (referred also as Carpooling); thus, it is not intended to result in any financial
gain [5].

Literature Review

This research focuses on a state-of-the-art analysis of ride-sharing that constitutes the

basis for understanding different aspects, including online platforms and user factors
and discusses potential barriers that prevent the successful implementation of ride-
sharing systems. To achieve its purpose, the methodological approach builds on the
principles of systematic literature review. A systematic review method helps
researchers to develop a high-level overview of knowledge on a particular research
area [13]. A systematic review means adopting a replicable, scientific and transparent
process, in other words a detailed process that minimizes bias, through exhaustive
literature searches of published and unpublished studies and by providing an audit
trail of the reviewers’ decisions, procedures and conclusions [16].

The methodology focuses on the content of the publications, the research per se, rather
than on their metrics. Although, more information regarding local ride-sharing
systems may exist in different languages, we have limited the scope of this study to
English-speaking publications, and we focus only on papers published in academic
journals and conference proceedings, excluding books, chapters of books, thesis and
dissertations. Following Moustaghfir [1], the methodological approach adopted,
comprises of six parts (Fig. 1), as follows:

Identification of objectives
Adapting the paper’s goal and the steps for performing a systematic literature review,
the research questions (RQ) are shaped before starting to perform the review . These
are:
RQ1: What are the research efforts so far?
RQ2: What is the state of the art (SoTA) techniques of ride sharing
RQ3: What factors affect passenger and drivers to use ride-sharing?
Based on these four questions—four main objectives were identified as of high
relevance to the understanding of ride-sharing services:
Definition of a ride-sharing;
State-of-the-art analysis of ride-sharing online platforms;
Identification of factors affecting current and potential ride-sharing passenger and
drivers.
Synthesis and discussion of barriers for implementing a successful ride-sharing
system.
Identification of data sources and databases
The purpose of data collection is to collect the most representing research material and
use the most recent information available. This step is composed of three sub-steps:
Primary studies, search keywords, search database. Primary studies refer to the
identification of relevant studies, to ensure first that the set research questions-
objectives are valid, avoid duplication of previous work, and ensure that enough
material is available to conduct the analysis. An initial search in “Google Scholars”
and “science direct” by using the term “ridesharing” AND “review” resulted to three
relevant studies, that review dynamic ride-sharing concept [2], ridesharing and
matching criteria [9], and a meta-analysis exploring the factors that affect ride-
sharing, which included 19 papers in the analysis [14]; however, none of them
includes a review on ride-sharing platforms, user factors and barriers.
As a first step the keywords were identified to enable the conceptualization of the
research and helped to target relevant articles. Prior selecting keywords, a shortlist of
sharing mobility services was made. The keywords were defined by the authors based
on their professional experience. Keywords related to shared mobility definition
included: ride-sharing, carpooling, mobility as a service, MaaS, innovative mobility.
Car-sharing publications, which refer to short-term auto use [3], were excluded from
this research to focus exclusively on on-demand transport for passengers.
The terms “Ride-hailing” and “on-demand ride” were also excluded, as these two
terms returned publications relevant to ride-sharing services that aim to financial gain
(e.g., Uber, Lyft, etc.).
In literature, carpooling is a synonym for ride-sharing for non-profit reasons. The
keywords ride-sharing and carpooling were constructed into search strings by using
other keywords relative to the objectives, such as factors, users, passengers, barriers,
constraints, legal-framework, drivers; resulting to strings: ride-sharing factors, ride-
sharing users, etc. These search strings were used to conduct searches for all
geographical areas. Factors that decrease the likelihood to ride-share and thus prevent
ride-sharing implementation may be considered as barriers or constraints. Thus,
authors included both terms as separate search terms for performing a complete
review and synthesizing results. It should be noted that keywords ride-sharing and
carpooling were typed in all possible formats, as these were found in literature: with a
dash (–), with a space and as single words. We limited our research to articles
published in English language within the last 30 years, from 1990 to 2020.
Concurrently, authors and year of publication were also identified to perform a second
search based on their names.
The data sources that were used to collect the necessary information and data include
published journal and conference papers (Science Direct, Web of Science, Google
Scholar, Wiley Online Library and Springer). Online platforms that were identified in
these data sources, were further explored. The status and attributes of identified ride-
sharing online platforms were not disclosed in the scientific manuscripts; therefore, a
follow-up desk review conducted by focusing on online official websites and social-
media of each provider.
Selection of publications
The first task was to merge publications and exclude potential duplicates, thesis or
dissertations, and publications that were not related to ride-sharing, such as
publications focusing on taxi ride-sharing services. All duplicate publications were
deleted; the remaining ones were exported to an excel file for screening. Definitions
for different and partially overlapping concepts have emerged in publications’ titles,
including ride-hailing (commercial, organized by companies), ride-sourcing and ride-
pooling (commercial, organized by public institutions) [2, 10]. Publications not
referring to ride-sharing or carpooling were eliminated by title screening. The second
task was to identify if these publications refer to ride-sharing, carpooling or ride-
hailing. This was achieved by reviewing each publication’s abstract. Abstract
reviewing was performed by authors who are transportation experts. In some cases,
the ride-sharing definition that was used in the study was not clear and authors had to
review the introduction or/and the methodology of each publication (i.e., text review).
Each publication was recorded according to title, authors, year of publication and
location of the study, and then it was reviewed to record specific features (when
available) and build the database. These features refered to: (a) Ride-sharing
definition, (b) Ride-sharing platforms (i.e., specific ride-sharing online platforms by
name), (c) User factors—referring to factors affecting users (i.e., passengers and
drivers) to use ride-sharing services, and (d) Barriers—referring to potential barriers
and constraints that are faced in the implementation of ride-sharing services.
Development of tools for data collection
For facilitating the data collection process, a template was developed. The developed
template aimed to collect and organize information relative to ride-sharing online
platforms, which is provided on the websites and social media of ride-sharing
companies or related services, according to the following characteristics:
Name of company/ride-sharing platform
Potential barriers and provided incentives
Country of operation
Company/provider website
Current status of ride-sharing platform (in/not in operation)
Period of operation of the ride-sharing platform
Provision of urban/interurban transport services (i.e., urban trips here are considered
within the same city; interurban include all other trip types).
Analysis
Collected information is analyzed and used as input to support each of the four
objectives. Data are tabulated when possible, to support the objectives and are
presented in the following sections.
Figure 2 provides the flow diagram of publications included in the review [7]. The
initial combined total number of publications was 363 articles. Following the first
screening, 113 publications remained. The second screening identified if these
publications refer to ride-sharing, carpooling or ride-hailing by reviewing their
abstracts. Three articles that fulfilled the criteria, were not available in a database and
thus were eliminated. Following the second screening, 84 publications remained.
Following the text review, twenty-eight publications were found to use the term ride-
sharing while referring to for-profit ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft (i.e.,
ride-hailing). Finally, 15 articles met the inclusion criteria for our review.

The majority of them use the term ride-sharing (n = 32) and carpooling (n = 23). It
should be noted that one publication uses both the term ride-sharing and ride-hailing.
Almost half of the studies were conducted in the US (n = 25) and one-quarter in EU
and the UK (n = 19), with the rest being global (n = 2), in China (n = 4), in Canada (n 
= 3), in Australia, in New Zealand and in Asia (all n = 1). The majority of the studies
focus on user factors (n = 32), while 15 of them discuss barriers related to planning
and implementation of ride-sharing, and 18 mention at least one ride-sharing online
platform.
Exploration and synthesis
For each of the four objectives a discussion and synthesis of information is provided
in respective sections, as outlined in the introduction.
Literature Year Location Platforms User factors Barriers
Abrahamse and Keall 2021 N. Zealand ● ●
Agatz et al. 2020 US ●
Amey et al. 2021 US ● ●
Bicocchi and Mamei 2019 Italy ●
Brownstone and Golob 2019 US ●
Buliung et al. 2019 Canada ●
Buliung et al. 2020 US ● ●
Bulteau et al. 2019 France ●
Chan and Shaheen 2020 US
Chaube et al. 2020 US ●
Ciari 2022 Switzerland ●
Ciari and Axhausen 2020 Switzerland ●
Correia and Viegas 2019 Lisbon ● ●
Deakin et al. 2019 US ●
Delhomme and Gheorghiu 2019 France ●
Dorner and Berger 2020 Germany ●
Ferguson 2022 US ● ●
Furuhata et al. 2021 US ● ●
Gargiulo et al. 2021 Italy ● ●
Gheorghiu and Delhomme 2021 France ● ●
Guidotti et al. 2021 Italy ●
Gurumurthy and
2020 US ●
Kockelman
Hartwig et al. 2020 US ●
Heinrichs et al. 2019 Germany ●
Hwang and Giuliano 2019 US ●
Javid et al. 2019 Pakistan ●
Jiang et al. 2020 China ●
Literature Year Location Platforms User factors Barriers
Kelly 2020 US ●
Kladeftiras and Antoniou 2021 Greece ●
Lee and Savelsbergh 2021 US
Lee et al. 2022 US ●
Li et al. 2020 US ● ●
Monchambert 2019 France ● ●
Morency 2021 US ●
Mote and Whitestone 2020 US ●
Neoh et al. 2019 UK ● ●
Nikitas et al. 2019 UK ●
Nourinejad and Roorda 2019 Canada
Olsson et al. 2019 Global ● ●
Payyanadan and Lee 2020 US ●
Shaheen and Cohen 2019 US ●
Shaheen et al. 2021 US ●
Shaheen et al. 2021 France ● ●
Stiglic et al. 2019 US ●
Tahmasseby et al. 2019 Canada ●
Tavory et al. 2019 Global ●
Vanoutrive et al. 2021 Belgium ●
Wang 2022 China ●
Wang et al. 2019 Australia ●
Wang and Chen 2019 US ●
Wang et al. 2021 US ●
Wang et al. 2019a China ●
Wang et al. 2019b China ●
Wilkowska et al. 2021 Germany ●
Xu et al. 2020 US ●
Yin et al. 2019 France ●

Table 1 Summary of ride-sharing publications

RQ1 Ride-sharing definition

Table Table2 presents a sample of recent publications and ride-sharing definitions. A

universally accepted definition for “ride-sharing” does not exist and the term “ride-
sharing” is defined based on the context of each study.
 Yea
Literature Location Definition
r
Carpooling is defined as the shared use of a private vehicle by the driver and one
Abrahamse N.
2021 or more passengers (replacing the use of one or more other vehicles), generally
and Keall Zealand
for the purpose of commuting to and from work
Ride-sharing refers to a system where an automated process employed by a ride-
Agatz et al. 2020 US share provider matches up drivers and riders on very short notice, which can
range from a few minutes to a few hours before departure time
Brownstone Carpooling (hereafter called ride-sharing) is defined in the Southern California
2019 US
and Golob sense as two or more occupants per vehicle
Ride-sharing is the grouping of travellers into common trips by car or van. When
Chan and a ride-sharing payment is collected, it partially covers the driver’s cost. It is not
2020 US
Shaheen intended to result in a financial gain. Moreover, the driver has a common origin
and/or destination with the passengers
Ride-sharing refers to a mode of transportation in which individual travellers
share a vehicle for a trip and split travel costs such as gas, toll, and parking fees
Furuhata et al.
2021 US with others that have similar itineraries and time schedules. Ride-sharing is a
[38]
system that can combine the flexibility and speed of private cars with the
reduced cost of fixed-line systems, at the expense of convenience
Ride-sharing is the transportation of persons in a motor vehicle when such
Gargiulo et al.
2021 EU transportation is incidental to the principal purpose of the driver, which is to
[39]
reach a destination and not to transport persons for profit
Guidotti et al. Carpooling is the act where two or more travellers share the same car for a
2021 EU
[45] common trip
Dynamic ride-sharing and traditional carpooling both involve pre-arrangements,
Kladeftiras and EU
2021 but dynamic ride-sharing differs in the fact that the scheduling of the trip occurs
Antoniou [55] (Greece)
in a case-by-case basis
Lee and Dynamic ride-sharing is a recent alternative in which people with similar travel
Savelsbergh 2021 US plans are matched and travel together. Ride-sharing systems, where participants
[57] with similar travel itineraries are paired together
Dynamic ride-sharing involves a service provider that matches potential drivers
and passengers with similar itineraries allowing them to travel together and
Nourinejad and
2019 Canada share the costs. These services are dynamic in nature since users announce their
Roorda [71]
participation at any time by either requesting a ride as a passenger or offering a
ride as a driver
Shared ride services allow riders to share a ride to a common destination. They
Shaheen and include ride-sharing (carpooling and vanpooling); ride-splitting (a pooled
2019 US
Cohen [82] version of ride-sourcing/transportation network companies); taxi sharing; and
micro transit
Wang, Winter
Ride-sharing is a mode of transportation where a driver takes passengers on a
and Ronald 2019 Australia
non-commercial, e.g., shared cost basis, for accompanied costs such as petrol
[102]

Table 2 Ride-sharing definitions within literature

Ride-sharing typically includes carpooling and vanpooling [5], while the term does
not necessarily refer to consistent participation in the same ride-share service every
day [5] neither to daily use of the service. Ride-sharing may be used by its passengers
as a mode to complete their whole trip (i.e., origin to destination) or to complement
public transport, with the focus of further incorporating public transport in the
multimodal transport chain. In the latter context, ride-sharing aims to facilitate access
for the first/last mile to public transport services, to optimize multimodality and on-
demand mobility, thus reducing single-occupant trips, and finally to develop smart
urban/rural transport areas. A ride-sharing definition that may be used for non-profit
ride-sharing services is proposed according to Code of Virginia US [12] that defines
“Ride-sharing” as the transport of persons in a motor vehicle when such transportation
is incidental to the principal purpose of the driver, which is to reach a destination and
not to transport persons for profit.

RQ2 Ride-sharing platforms

In total 29 ride-sharing online platforms have been identified in the reviewed

literature. The platform recommends a ride fee and passengers decide to accept it or
not; from the total fee the provider retain a fixed amount to cover the transaction cost.
Although this is the most common practice, in very few occasions (only 2% of the
cases), drivers may decide what to charge passengers after reviewing the platform’s
recommendation and this occurs for interurban ride-sharing services.

In terms of geographical coverage, ride-sharing platforms operate in US, EU, Asia,

and Latin America. Ride-sharing platforms that provide services to more than one of
these geographic areas are classified as global. The majority of the ride-sharing
platforms were found to operate in EU (48%) with 27% of them being in Italy; a high
share compared to the rest of the EU countries, showing the attempts to promote ride-
sharing in Italy. US- and Asia-based platforms accounted for 20% and 10% of all
platforms, respectively, while 20% operate globally. Although, this geographic
classification refers to countries or continents, rarely one service covers the totality of
a country as in most cases, services operate in a specific city or several close-by cities.

Urban and interurban platforms cover roughly 42% and 20% of all platforms,
respectively, while ride-sharing platforms that cover both urban and interurban trips
account for 38% of all. Urban trips here are considered within the same city;
interurban include all other trip types. Often, ride-sharing platforms that provide only
interurban services provide booking access through a website platform, whereas
access through a mobile application is not available. To our understanding this occurs
because interurban ride-sharing platforms require low maintenance in terms of
administration and matching algorithms. In these cases, drivers publish their trip in
advance and passengers review trip details (i.e., trip cost, destination, time of
departure, driver profile) and decide to join or not. Therefore, to avoid extra
maintenance costs for the service, a mobile application is not available. Several ride-
sharing platforms have ceased operations due to low demand; some of them have re-
started operation under a different name or/and follow a different business model.
Approximately, 62% of the surveyed ride-sharing platforms are currently in operation,
whereas 38% have ceased their operation. The vast majority of ride-sharing platforms
(93%) have started their operation in 2005 or after, while 62% were found to start
operations in or after 2010, which might be explained by the rapid development of
mobile applications and spread of smartphones. Smartphone annual sales doubled
between 2007 and 2010 (i.e., 122.32 vs. 296.65 million units), and increased by a
factor of 4.2 between 2010 and 2014 (i.e., 296.65 vs. 969.72 million units), to reach
1540.66 million sold units in 2019 [11].

An important aspect, to address safety and security concerns and improve the overall
level of services, is users’ feedback, as all of the ride-sharing platforms allow users to
provide “feedback” either through the provided platform, through the application, or
both. The feedback platform allows users to comment and evaluate the seriousness
and reliability of drivers and vice versa. To further increased sense of safety, some
platforms provide the option to women to travel only with other women as co-
passengers or even drivers (i.e., Avacar).

The procedure to access ride-sharing is the same in all cases: users enter the platform,
register and then search for offered trips. Trips can be organized last-minute, however,
some platforms (18%) offer the opportunity to pre-plan trips one to two days in
advance (e.g., for interurban trips).

The matching mechanisms for 90% of the platforms are destination-based. Drivers,
who offer a ride, insert the departure and arrival locations and wait for those looking
for the ride to that destination or a location along the way. The passenger consults a
list of available to find the one that best meets their needs (i.e., departure, arrival,
time, crew members, etc.). Once the passenger selects the path of their interest, they
may undertake the necessary agreements (e.g., meeting point, how to recognize
themself, etc.). Ride-sharing platforms do not use a sophisticated algorithm with
multiple criteria to find the perfect ride-match, opposed to ride-hailing platforms that
incorporate more travel and user criteria [64]. Only one platform (i.e., TwoGo) was
found to use an intelligent technology to analyze rides from all users to find the best
fit for each user, and factor in real-time traffic data to calculate precise routes and
arrival times.
Several incentives are used to promote ride-sharing, such as toll cost reduction [6],
High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes in US [3, 14], free or discounted parking
access in public or private areas [51, 88], public transport ticket discounts and
collection of points that may be redeemed in companies that collaborate with ride-
sharing services [8, 15]. For example, Autostrade [6] carpooling with at least 4
passengers pays 0.50 euros toll, instead of 1.70 euros, from Monday to Friday; or
GoCarma [4] that uses Bluetooth to automatically detect if there are at least 2 people
in the car so as to qualify for an HOV toll discount.

RQ 3 User factors

Several studies in the literature focused on the exploration of users’ factors when
using ride-sharing services (Table 1). User factors may be associated in a positive or
negative way with ride-sharing. In the latter case they may also be considered as
barriers to ride-sharing implementation. The literature shows that the strongest
identified barriers for ride-sharing users are mainly psychological [16,] with the most
common ones being personal security, comfort and privacy [16,]. This section
summarizes these findings and identifies the factors that are associated with the
likelihood of ride-sharing for passengers and drivers. The following subsections
summarize factors and results for ride-sharing passengers and drivers, and Table 4
summarizes the studies and factors that are associated with the likelihood of ride-
sharing.

Conclusion

The systematic literature review of ride-sharing studies allowed us to have a

comprehensive overview of academic publications dealing with ride-sharing
platforms, user factors and barriers. These publications were selected using keywords
that refer to ride-sharing, carpooling, barriers and factors. The systematic and
comprehensive approach in this review adds strength to the research of economic,
technological, business, behavioral and regulatory barriers on ride-sharing operation
and success. Improving ride-sharing online platforms and applications and providing
more features to users to customize their ride will likely generate positive impacts for
ride-sharing.

Findings from this study provide insights and aspire to provide a comprehensive
understanding of barriers and factors in decision-making process about ride-sharing.
These findings could have important implications for urban and transport planners and
policy makers to implement tailored solutions to users’ needs and socio-demographic
characteristics. The results can be used as input to transport planning, policy-making
and ride-sharing providers: revealing the potential barriers, enabling user-centered
design environment, and providing recommendations for a successful ride-sharing
service.
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