Equilibrium and sensitivity analysis of dynamic ridesharing

Sharing travels is an effective way to increase car occupancy rates and to reduce the number of cars for the same distances traveled. This is a problem involving operations research (how to best match travels in time and space, what level of similarity for the routes, ...) and behavior challenges (on which conditions users choose to share travels, which type of users is willing to share the travel, what is the accepted detour and rescheduling, ...). This research aims at filling the gap in the latter aspect by proposing an equilibrium modeling approach for (dynamic) ridesharing. By using a Nested logit model, greater insight into the impact of different policies, behavioral factors and matching criteria can be presented. We deal with a theoretically interesting basic model structure of a single-link case, in which we study the complex interaction of multiple factors, and the joint sensitivity to the most relevant parameters. This allows us to derive some basic recommendations from the equilibrium states reached.