The Effect of Quality Cues on Travelers’ Demand for Peer-to-Peer Ridesharing: A Neglected Area of the Sharing Economy

Abstract

The emergence of the sharing economy has had a tremendous impact on the tourism industry; however, few quality management mechanisms exist for shared tourism services. Based on unique data of 52,248 transactions collected from BlaBlaCar, the world’s leading ridesharing platform, this study examines the independent and combined effects of quality cues on travelers’ demand for peer-to-peer ridesharing services. The findings suggest that intrinsic cues (product reputation and seller reputation) and extrinsic cues (relative price and offer duration) are decisive in increasing demand, and their combined effects can be positive or negative. In addition, analyses of the heterogeneous effects of intrinsic and extrinsic cues across seller segments clarify how consumers evaluate product quality using information from multiple cues. These findings contribute to the literature on tourism and marketing by providing new insights into the design of competitive product offers in the sharing economy.