学术视界｜MS: 数字平台能降低道德风险吗? 关于优步和出租车的案例

Meng Liu

Washington University

Erik Brynjolfsson

Stanford University

Jason Dowlatabadi

Uber Technologies

Digital platforms provide a variety of technology-enabled tools thatenhance market transparency, such as real-time monitoring, ratings of buyersand sellers, and low-cost complaint channels. How do these innovations affectmoral hazard and service quality? We investigate this problem by comparingdriver routing choices and efficiency on a large digital platform, Uber, withtraditional taxis. The identification is enabled by matching taxi and Ubertrips at the origin-destination-time level so they are subject to the sameunderlying optimal route, by exploiting characteristics of the pricing schemesthat differentially affect the incentives of taxi and Uber drivers in variouscircumstances, and by examining changes in behavior when drivers switch fromtaxis to Uber. We find that (1) taxi drivers route longer in distance thanmatched Uber drivers on metered airport routes by an average of 8%, withnonlocal passengers on airport routes experiencing even longer routing; (2) nosuch long routing is found for short trips in dense markets (e.g.,within-Manhattan trips) or airport trips with a flat fare; and (3) long routingin general leads to longer travel time, instead of saving passengers time.These findings are consistent with digital platform designs reducing driver moralhazard, but not with competing explanations such as driver selection ordifferences in driver navigation technologies. We also find evidence of Uberdrivers’ long routing on airport trips in times of surge pricing, suggestingthat the tech-enabled market designs may not be binding in our setting.

道德风险、信息不对称、优步、数字平台、市场设计

Keywords: moral hazard • information asymmetry • Uber • digital platforms • market design

本文研究了与传统业务相比，数字平台是否会影响道德风险和服务质量。我们从出租车和优步的对比研究中寻找证据。通过匹配优步和出租车司机的行驶路线，并分析纽约市的出行数据，我们发现出租车司机相对于优步司机更倾向于在机场路线上绕行，尤其是当乘客来自外地时。同时，这种差异在短途的曼哈顿区内旅行和票价固定的机场旅行中没有出现。这些发现与减少驾驶员道德风险的数字平台设计初衷一致，即在出租车道德风险回报高的情况下，优步技术平台和定价方案减少了司机的道德风险行为。

数字平台可以通过减少信息不对称来显著提高市场效率，因为信息不对称长期以来一直是提升市场效率的关键障碍。就优步而言，这是通过几种方式实现的，包括评级系统、便捷的投诉渠道和出众的GPS，使得司机和乘客都能看到同一条路线。一般来说，一旦智能手机基础设施到位，这些功能可以以非常低的边际成本推出。

但优步司机可能不如出租车司机那样有动力使用他们自身的判断力，因为脱离GPS的路线可能会给乘客带来可疑的行为，从而导致糟糕的评级和投诉。因此，全球定位系统的使用，加上监测和评级系统，可以限制对人类进行知识积累的动机，以及人的主动性和判断力。关于数字颠覆的研究越来越多，尤其是数字平台减轻道德风险的潜力。优步的崛起是数字平台力量的一个案例，表明这种技术进步可以显著降低信息不对称。