Racial discrimination in transportation network companies
Name
TNC_Main_temp_19_12_19.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
2.71 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
4183caa50dadd6b9dfef560371e3fecd
Author(s)
Ge, Yanbo
Knittel, Christopher Roland
MacKenzie, Don
Zoepf, Stephen
Date Issued
October 2020
Journal
Journal of Public Economics
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Citation
Ge, Yanbo et al. "Racial discrimination in transportation network companies." Journal of Public Economics 170 (October 2020): 104205 © 2020 Elsevier B.V.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
In a randomized audit study, we sent passengers in Boston, MA on nearly 1000 rides on controlled routes using the Uber and Lyft smartphone apps, recording key performance metrics. Passengers randomly selected between accounts that used African American-sounding and white-sounding names. We find that the probability an Uber driver accepts a ride, sees the name, and then cancels doubles when passengers used the account attached to the African American-sounding name. In contrast, Lyft drivers observe the name before accepting a ride and, as expected, we find no effect of name on cancellations. We do not, however, find that the increase in cancellations leads to measurably longer wait times for Uber.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104205
