Assessment of Driver's Attitude and Behavior of Ride-sharing services from passenger's Perspective in Dhaka City

Abstract

The advent of ride-sharing firms, which began in 2009 in San Francisco, California, USA, has significantly impacted the transportation field during the last decade. A system where drivers are those who have privately owned vehicles and passengers can avail the rides using an app or website and pay for their trips is called "ride-sharing." Ride-sharing services are growing in popularity in developing countries to meet urban travel demand in the absence of adequate public transportation. Though these ride-sharing services provide numerous benefits to commuters in Dhaka City, their drivers' attitudes and behaviors are not thoroughly analyzed and ignored, despite being directly tied to passenger safety. Numerous incidences of various sorts of harassment and violence against passengers in ride-sharing services have been recorded in recent times. Unfortunately, no noteworthy study has been found that assesses drivers' attitudes and behaviors from the perspective of passengers in Dhaka city, the capital of Bangladesh. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study is to analyze drivers' attitude, behavior, and actions of ride-sharing services from the perspective of users in Dhaka. Moreover, this study aims to determine the user's degree of satisfaction by measuring the driver's attitude and behavior of ride-sharing services. For this purpose, the study will ascertain customer satisfaction by evaluating the driver's attitude and behavior of ride-sharing companies, where drivers' attitude and behavior is determined by their appearance, way of communication, honesty, empathy, habit, punctuality, additional charge demand, and knowledge of the fundamentals of app use. A questionnaire survey of 153 passengers will be used in this study to assess the driver's attitude and behavior. Through this questionnaire survey, information will be collected on respondents' socioeconomic status, demographic features, trip characteristics, and their degree of satisfaction with the drivers' attitude and behavior of the ride-sharing services. A count data model will be applied to determine the association between respondent attributes and their level of satisfaction with drivers' attitudes and behaviors. The findings of this study will show that commuters' satisfaction with drivers' attitudes and behaviors varies significantly according to their socioeconomic, demographic, and travel factors. The actual scenario of drivers' attitude and behavior towards the passengers of various ride-sharing companies will be revealed through this study. The study would also inform the authority that the variation of driver's attitude and behavior depends on multiple parameters such as education, gender, occupation, trip number, area, etc. of the ride sharing users. Thus, the results of this study will be helpful to policymakers as well as the ride-sharing service providers in taking necessary steps to improve driver's behavior towards passengers and eventually improve the current service quality and security given to commuters.