Exploring Trust in Online Ride-sharing Platform in China: A Perspective of Time and Location

Abstract

Trust is a key issue to be considered deliberately in the online ride-sharing platform to reduce risk and ensure transactions. In this paper, trust-in-platform is explored from these two perspectives to fill the research gaps. A ride-sharing platform in China was investigated. Results show that trust-in-platform in economically developing districts is slightly higher than that in economically developed districts. At the same time, trust-in-platform level differs in time, trust-in-platform levels are obviously lower between 19’o clock and 23’o clock. Moreover, machine learning is employed to predict the relationships between time/location and trust-in-platform. The result is that recall is 78.3%, precision is 57.3%, and F1 is 66.2%. The result shows trust-in-platform has an obvious correlation with time and location, thus further consolidates the findings. This study contributes to the existing knowledge on trust in the ride-sharing platforms and has practical implications for platform operators.