An overview of the impacts of ridesourcing in developing countries: Main topics and questions for future research

Abstract

Despite the popularity of ridesourcing service usage across the world, there are some research gaps, especially regarding emerging economies countries. Thus, the literature on ridesourcing in developing countries is still scarce and many issues are still unknown. In this paper, a literature review is conducted on the impacts of ridesourcing in developing countries, summarizing the main topics of discussion, and proposing research questions for future studies. The main impacts discussed are related to: (1) travel behavior, (2) other travel modes, (3) traffic externalities, (4) ridesplitting, (5) labor relations, and (6) COVID-19 implications. The main findings are that ridesourcing has significant impacts on urban traffic, the environment, and social welfare. However, these findings are from few countries, which leaves a huge number of developing countries out of the analysis. It would be helpful for future studies to reflect on how similar (or different) other countries are from those included in this study. Furthermore, there are few studies that include both developed and developing countries in the same analysis and questions such as (or whether) a developing country can extrapolate ridesourcing use, patterns, or expectations based on findings from a developed country are still unknown.