Tags:big data, fairness, machine learning and ride hailing
Abstract:
Ride hailing market is by far the fastest growing industry. However, even though there is a growing consumer demand to these services, the scarcity of publicly available data makes it difficult for marketers to understand the demographic patterns of ride hailing usage and to analyze whether their system functions fairly. In this research, we analyze the first of its kind large-scale dataset on ride hailing provided by the City of Chicago to examine fairness with respect to usage and price. As our findings suggest, low income neighborhoods pay higher prices than high income neighborhoods. Additionally, consumers from minority and low-income neighborhoods have less ride hailing usage than consumers from white dominant, high-income neighborhoods. Finally, we found that young and active consumers that use ride hailing pay higher prices in comparison to other populations of different ages. This is one of the first city level datasets on ride hailing services that is publicly available and provides insights about their practices in terms of fairness. By better understanding the factors that create unfair practices in the ride hailing market, marketers and policy makers can offer solutions or work together to set regulations aiming to prevent disparate impact in the ride hailing industry.
If I Tap It, Will They Come? an Introductory Analysis of Fairness in a Large-Scale Ride Hailing Dataset