A data-driven quantitative assessment model for taxi industry: the scope of business ecosystem’s health

European Transport Research Review, Apr 2017

Introduction The taxi industry has boomed over the years, both in street-hail and dispatch market. However, few studies focus on comprehensive perspectives, which make decisions such as implementing regulative or incentive policies difficult. As an economic community working in the value-oriented process, the taxi industry requires a holistic performance evaluation to determine how to adapt strategies to survive and grow. Methods This paper proposed the concept “Taxi Industry Health degree” based on the theory of Business Ecosystem and the evaluation of its health. A four-layer criteria set is developed from aspects of robustness, productivity and sustainability, and weights are determined through Analytic Hierarchy Process. Results A synthetic evaluating model combining Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation and Artificial Neural Network is used to maintain the goal of multi-criteria decision-making. With the GPS and Taximeter dataset of taxicabs in the whole taxi industry in Wuxi, the model is applied to empirical studies. Conclusions This paper provides sensibility analysis on not only the company’s order volatility, revenue growth and utilization of resources, but also influence on citizen’s welfare, energy consumption and environmental pollution, which enables practical regulations and policies within taxi industry.

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A data-driven quantitative assessment model for taxi industry: the scope of business ecosystem’s health

Eur. Transp. Res. Rev. A data-driven quantitative assessment model for taxi industry: the scope of business ecosystem's health Yong Zhang 0 Miner Zhong 0 Yunjian Jiang 0 0 School of Transportation, Southeast University , Nanjing, Jiangsu 210096 , China Introduction The taxi industry has boomed over the years, both in street-hail and dispatch market. However, few studies focus on comprehensive perspectives, which make decisions such as implementing regulative or incentive policies difficult. As an economic community working in the value-oriented process, the taxi industry requires a holistic performance evaluation to determine how to adapt strategies to survive and grow. Methods This paper proposed the concept BTaxi Industry Health degree^ based on the theory of Business Ecosystem and the evaluation of its health. A four-layer criteria set is developed from aspects of robustness, productivity and sustainability, and weights are determined through Analytic Hierarchy Process. Results A synthetic evaluating model combining Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation and Artificial Neural Network is used to maintain the goal of multi-criteria decision-making. With the GPS and Taximeter dataset of taxicabs in the whole taxi industry in Wuxi, the model is applied to empirical studies. Conclusions This paper provides sensibility analysis on not only the company's order volatility, revenue growth and utilization of resources, but also influence on citizen's welfare, energy consumption and environmental pollution, which enables practical regulations and policies within taxi industry. Taxi industry; Quantitative analysis; Business ecosystem; Health degree; Combine evaluation 1 Introduction Taxi industry thrived in China after the reform in 1978, and it has developed for nearly 40 years. As shown in Fig. 1, the number of taxis in China has reached about one million for the last ten years, and statistics in Jiangsu province play an important role (China Statistical yearbook 2005–2015). Although the service quality was improved and most of the travel demand was met, there appear negative anticompetitive practices, which would consequently impede the development. Some taxi companies levy very high operation fees to obtain profit, which results in poor service and driver’s pressure [1]. In recent years, some local governments has prohibited for-profit ridesharing from making profits, which provides similar service with traditional taxi [2]. Thus, performance evaluation is needed to demonstrate the existing demand trends, operation peak, stakeholders concerns, and potential needs [3]. Researchers identified four different segments: hailing, taxi rank, and pre-book segment [4]. Some adds the contract segment [5]. In most countries, taxi services are provided by companies and individual operators. Other stakeholders within the industry include taxi associations and regulatory authorities. Taxi fare are regulated in most European countries, and entry regulation were established in some countries such as Belgium, Italy, France, etc. [6]. In some other countries, deregulation policy showed great impact on taxi industry. The Netherlands saw sharp increase in taxi number too, but the service quality has declined [7]. In South Africa, the minibus taxi industry accounts for 67.9% of the public transport market. Although metered taxis exist, they do not provide a big share [8]. Therefore, it is of great significance to have an efficient and comprehensive evaluation tool to gauge the impact of new policies. For both well-established companies and new ventures in taxi industry, success requires strategic thinking to make use of resources and capabilities [9]. The term BBusiness Ecosystem^ means a network of actors interact with each other with an essential technology for survival and success [10], the health of which are shown in its longevity and growing propensity [11]. The performance indicator of business ecosystems proposed by previous researchers are robustness, productivity and niche creation [12]. Understanding the existing taxi industry performance helps to create sound models and policies for improving the quality of overall business ecosystem. In this paper, a multi-dimensional evaluation framework is introduced based on theories of business ecosystem, sustainable development and industrial security. Due to the disunity between subjective opinions and the objective criteria, assessment of the overall performance usually composes of four steps: proposing the criteria framework, Fig. 2 Structure of the proposed taxi industry evaluation model determining the weights, analyzing the data and finally provide suggestions [13]. GPS equipped in taxi can collect and transmit the position and time related data to control centers in taxi companies, which helps record trajectories, occupancy and fares [14]. Therefore, the evaluation tool can obtain detailed and real-time information from the GPS dataset. The proposed evaluation tool is used w (...truncated)


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Yong Zhang, Miner Zhong, Yunjian Jiang. A data-driven quantitative assessment model for taxi industry: the scope of business ecosystem’s health, European Transport Research Review, 2017, pp. 23, Volume 9, Issue 2, DOI: 10.1007/s12544-017-0241-0