Vertical Equity Analysis of Parking Reservation Based on the Auction Strategy

As an on-demand mobility service, parking reservations can greatly alleviate the issue of parking challenges. There are currently three primary strategies for parking reservation: first-come-first-served, permit reservation, and auction. In contrast to the first-come-first-served and permit-reserved strategies, the auction strategy uses dynamic pricing to allocate parking supplies efficiently based on the auction, which attracts more scholars for the research. However, parking reservations based on the auction process may have an inequity issue because drivers’ age, gender, income level, and location of residence fluctuate. This inequity may limit the growth of reserved parking by influencing parking drivers’ acceptance of reserved parking. But currently, very few scholars focus on the issue of reserved parking equity, and even fewer measure this nebulous and personal issue. In consideration of this, the Lorenz curve of parking reservation and the vertical equity index of parking reservation are proposed in this paper along with the calculation method for the index, which enables the problem of reserved parking vertical equity to be visualized and made concrete. The numerical experimental method is used to analyze the vertical equity of drivers with varying income levels, utilizing the Vickrey–Clarke–Groves (VCG) auction process as an example. According to the research, loss-averse drivers are more than gain-neutral and gain-seeking drivers when the income levels of the drivers using reserved parking are the same. With the increasing number of high-income drivers involved in the parking reservation, medium to low-income drivers would lose their chances of successful reservations because of their uncompetitive bid price which leads to inequity issues when the number is less than the number of parking spaces. In contrast, the vertical equity index changes more for gain-seeking drivers while being generally steady when loss-averse and gain-neutral drivers participate. For instance, when the profit and loss coefficient is 3 and 15% of drivers with high-income levels use the parking reservation platform, the vertical equity index rises from 0.09128 to 0.45434. The reference price has a moderating influence on the vertical equity index when the number of driver participants at high-income levels remains constant. In general, within a reasonable range, the higher the reference price, the more equitable the parking reservation procedure and the lower the vertical equity index.