User-organized pre-pooled ride-hailing: exploring a new mode
Recently published:
Hao, W., Fang, Y., and Levinson, D. (2026) User-organized pre-pooled ride-hailing: exploring a new mode. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment Volume 157, August 2026, 105422 [doi]
User-organized Pre-pooled Ride-hailing (UPR) is a user-coordinated form of shared mobility that layers social media coordination on top of commercial ride-hailing within bounded trust-based communities (e.g., campuses, workplaces, or residential compounds). We designed a comprehensive survey with 24 choice scenarios and integrated sociodemographic, revealed behavior, and attitudinal measures including environmental perceptions, then estimated mixed logit models for all respondents and for organizers versus followers. UPR is most competitive for longer, daytime trips and for first-/last-mile access to metro hubs, offering a lower per-person cost than solo ride-hailing and faster door-to-door travel than public transport. UPR choice is negatively associated with ride-hailing and platform ride-pooling use, implying substitution. Climate-mitigation beliefs increase UPR choice probabilities, while stronger trust requirements and privacy concerns constrain uptake. The findings highlight how environmental perceptions and community trust jointly shape decentralized pooling and its potential role as a low-impact complement to transit in fringe areas.
Keywords:
User-organized pre-pooled ride-hailing (UPR), Competition and cooperation, Travel behavior, Shared mobility, New mobility, Ride-hailing, Carpooling
