Among many changes potentially induced by the adoption of ridehailing, one key area of interest in transportation and urban planning research is how these services affect sustainable mobility choices, such as usage of public transit, walking, and biking modes and lower ownership of household vehicles. In this study, by using subsamples of the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) 2017 data, propensity score matching technique is applied to generate matched samples of ridehailing adopters and non-adopters from ten different core-based statistical areas in the U.S. Results from multivariable count data regression models built on the matched samples indicate that, on average, the count of public transit trips is greater for adopters compared against identical non-adopters in all ten areas. Regarding average counts of walking and biking trips, adopters tend to make more trips in most of the places, although a few exceptions are also found. However, the relationship between ridehailing adoption and count of household vehicles appears to be more complicated as adopters, on average, seem to have a lower or higher number of vehicles than identical non-adopters, depending on the area. One major limitation of this study is that, in the statistical analyses, effects of attitudinal and detailed geographic variables are not directly controlled for, which complicates causal interpretations of findings.
Does Adoption of Ridehailing Result in More Frequent Sustainable Mobility Choices? An Investigation Based on the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) 2017 Data
