The effect of ride-hailing services on public transit usage in China's small- and medium-sized cities: A synthetic control method analysis

With the recent advances in smartphones and Internet technologies, ride-hailing services (such as Uber and Didi) have emerged and changed the travel modes that residents use. An important issue within this area is how ride-hailing services influence public transit usage. The majority of the research regarding this topic has focused on situations in large cities and has not reached a unanimous consensus among scholars. In particular, the role of ride-hailing services in small- and medium-sized cities may be different from the role of these services in large cities. In this paper, we choose 22 small- and medium-sized cities in China as samples with a research time window spanning from 2011 to 2016 to examine the impact of the introduction of ride-hailing services on public transit usage. The results of the synthetic control method, as well as other robustness checks, show that (1) the introduction of ride-hailing services to China's small- and medium-sized cities significantly increases public transit usage; (2) the effect of the introduction of ride-hailing services on public transit usage in small- and medium-sized cities is “proactive” for approximately 1 year; and (3) the positive effect of ride-hailing services on public transit usage in small- and medium-sized cities weakens over time. This study enriches the literature on the impact of ride-hailing services on the urban transportation system by specifically taking small- and medium-sized cities as the research scope. The above findings are of great significance to the urban transport department's formulation of ride-hailing policies and the operation layout of public transit operators in small- and medium-sized cities.