This paper develops a mathematical model to characterize a generalized ride-sourcing market with a third-party integrator and multiple competitive ride-sourcing platforms. Different from earlier works which normally assume instant matching strategies, our model can characterize the integrator’s and platforms’ decisions on choosing flexible matching strategies under batch matching mechanisms and their influences on the market equilibrium. Through theoretical analytics and numerical studies, this study reveals that the introduction of a third-party platform integrator is not always beneficial but may be detrimental to the system in certain situations. For example, an inefficient matching strategy chosen by the integrator may lead to a lose-lose situation where both the customers hailing rides through the integrator or the individual platforms experience longer waiting times. In addition, we show that a ride-sourcing platform with a high market share may refuse to join the integrator since the efficiency gains brought by the integrator do not outweigh the losses caused by its losing market share. The managerial insights obtained from this work can assist both the integrator and individual ride-sourcing platforms in developing more efficient operational strategies in terms of pricing and matching strategies.

中文翻译：

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在批量匹配机制下与第三方平台集成商一起对乘车市场进行建模


本文开发了一个数学模型来描述具有第三方集成商和多个竞争性乘车平台的广义乘车市场。与通常采用即时匹配策略的早期工作不同，我们的模型可以描述集成商和平台在批量匹配机制下选择灵活匹配策略的决策及其对市场均衡的影响。通过理论分析和数值研究，本研究揭示了引入第三方平台集成商并不总是有益的，但在某些情况下可能对系统有害。例如，集成商选择的低效匹配策略可能会导致双输局面，即通过集成商叫车的客户或各个平台的等待时间更长。此外，我们还表明，具有高市场份额的网约车平台可能会拒绝加入集成商，因为集成商带来的效率提升并未超过其失去市场份额造成的损失。从这项工作中获得的管理见解可以帮助集成商和个人乘车平台在定价和匹配策略方面制定更有效的运营策略。