75 research outputs found

    Attitudes and Trust in Leveraging Integrated Sociotechnical Systems for Enhancing Community Adaptive Capacity: Phase I

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    69A3551747116The overarching goal of the project is to understand and model ways in which we can leverage unique \u2013 and interconnected \u2013 physical and social characteristics of place to enhance community adaptive capacity in response to disruptions. This first phase (one-year) sets the stage for that line of inquiry by exploring and assessing the state of the field and best practices regarding attitudinal surveys in the areas of both resilience and transportation planning. The review explores the role of networked sociotechnical systems as they contribute to adaptive capacity, a concept rooted in social-ecological resilience theory, at the community level. Relevant applications of social network analytical methods are explored as a means of guiding methodological development for the next project phase

    Lead-user needs and trends within sustainable transport

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    Initiation of the lead user method depends upon successful collection of lead user needs and trends. These pieces of information are determined from secondary sources, and interviews with market and technology experts. Specifically, the trends provide an overview of prevailing issues in the area, and their associative user needs can be useful for understanding the elements which must constitute future products, processes and services. Both of these types of information are essential for identification and recruitment of ‘lead users’, an innovative type of user. This study documents the process of collecting this information within the sustainable transport domain, and subsequently presents the collected future needs and underlying behavioural trends. Finally, it suggests a high-level replication procedure for conducting similar processes within alternative domains

    To Share or Not to Share: Investigating the Social Aspects of Dynamic Ridesharing

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    Transportation network companies (TNCs) have introduced shared-ride versions of their ordinary services, such as UberPool or Lyft Line. The concept is simple: passengers pay less in fares for an incremental increase in time spent picking up and dropping off other riders. This paper focuses on the social and behavioral considerations of shared rides, which have not been explored as thoroughly as time and cost trade-offs in transportation. A survey of TNC users conducted through Mechanical Turk in June and July of 2016, which had 997 respondents across the United States, found that (a) users of dynamic ridesharing services reported that social interactions were relevant to mode choice, although not as much as traditional factors such as time and cost; (b) overall, the possibility of having a negative social interaction was more of a deterrent to use of dynamic ridesharing than the potential of having a positive social interaction was an incentive; (c) there was evidence that a substantial number of riders harbored feelings of prejudice toward passengers of different social class and race, and these passengers were much more likely to prefer having more information about potential future passengers; (d) most dynamic ridesharing users were motivated by ease and speed, compared with walking and public transportation; and (e) safety in dynamic ridesharing was an important issue, especially for women, many of whom reported feeling unsafe and preferred to be matched with passengers of the same sex

    Co-operatives, Work, and the Digital Economy: A Knowledge Synthesis Report

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    This report surveys recent literature on co-operative approaches to improving work and livelihoods in the digital economy, specifically in the gig economy, the tech sector, and digital creative industries. It introduces concepts that update co-operative theory and practice for the digital age, including platform cooperativism, open cooperativism, distributed co-operative organizations, and Exit to Community. It outlines how the co-operative model has been adopted by and for self-employed workers, platform workers, technologists and communication professionals, and data subjects. While the report presents evidence of co-ops’ potential to improve working conditions and mitigate power asymmetries in the digital economy, it also addresses challenges co-ops face. It explores perspectives on the infrastructure necessary to overcome these challenges and expand worker co-ops’ presence in the digital economy, including the formation of co-operative federations for sharing technology across co-ops. Despite the promise of co-ops in the digital economy, the literature cautions against viewing them as a panacea. Stressing that individual co-ops are not, on their own, a sufficient response to problems of work and inequality, several authors position co-ops as one among a diversity of worker-centered organizations and strategies necessary to improve work and livelihoods in the digital economy. The report concludes with suggestions for future research and policy recommendations

    The Corporate Purpose of Social License

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    This Article deploys the sociological theory of social license, or the acceptance of a business or organization by the relevant communities and stakeholders, in the context of the board of directors and corporate governance. Corporations are generally treated as “private” actors and thus are regulated by “private” corporate law. This construct allows for considerable latitude. Corporate actors are not, however, solely “private.” They are the beneficiaries of economic and political power, and the decisions they make have impacts that extend well beyond the boundaries of the entities they represent. Using Wells Fargo and Uber as case studies, this Article explores how the failure to account for the public nature of corporate actions, regardless of whether a “legal” license exists, can result in the loss of “social” license. This loss occurs through publicness, which is the interplay between inside corporate governance players and outside actors who report on, recapitulate, reframe and, in some cases, control the company’s information and public perception. The theory of social license is that businesses and other entities exist with permission from the communities in which they are located, as well as permission from the greater community and outside stakeholders. In this sense, businesses are social, not just economic, institutions and, thus, they are subject to public accountability and, at times, public control. Social license derives not from legally granted permission, but instead from the development of legitimacy, credibility, and trust within the relevant communities and stakeholders. It can prevent demonstrations, boycotts, shutdowns, negative publicity, and the increases in regulation that are a hallmark of publicness — but social license must be earned with consistent trustworthy behavior. Thus, social license is bilateral, not unilateral, and should be part of corporate strategy and a tool for risk management and managing publicness more generally. By focusing on and deploying social license and publicness in the context of board decision-making, this Article adds to the discussions in the literature from other disciplines, such as the economic theory on reputational capital, and provides boards with a set of standards with which to engage and address the publicness of the companies they represent. Discussing, weighing, and developing social license is not just in the zone of what boards can do, but is something they should do, making it a part of strategic, proactive cost-benefit decision-making. Indeed, the failure to do so can have dramatic business consequences

    Not Just Along for the Ride: Work, Justice, and Municipal Regulation of Ridehailing Platforms

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    Digital platforms are a package of information and communications technologies that bring together buyers and sellers onto proprietary markets. These platforms have come to dominate services like for-hire vehicles that are some of the most emblematic of city life. However, the rise of ridehailing platform like Uber has been accompanied with a loss of power for workers who make a living providing these services. This is a concern for cities, which have traditionally regulated this service to maintain trust between drivers, passengers, and market facilitators. Where conditions for workers decline and trust is damaged, it could lead to a decline in the service altogether. This study asks what role municipalities can play to improve conditions for workers. A growing literature documents the regulation of ridehailing platforms in global cities particularly as they grapple with regulatory change. Yet, few studies have captured the diverse range of municipalities that regulate the service or examined these regulatory systems once in place. To help fill this gap, this study surveys a diverse range of cities and towns that regulate ridehailing in a nested qualitative case study within the Greater Golden Horseshoe of Ontario, Canada. The study documents the conditions faced by drivers and measures those conditions against a standard of justice based upon Fainstein’s Just City theory. In Fainstein’s work, justice is a movement over time towards greater democracy, diversity and equity expressed in the capabilities of the most marginalized groups. In this study, an assessment of justice in ridehailing platforms is conducted through the analysis of semi-structured interviews with drivers in the GGH region. Interviews are transcribed and subjected to thematic analysis to identify important themes and concepts facing the drivers. The thesis next examines the current municipal regulatory system applied to ridehailing platforms and the perspective of municipal representatives within the GGH region who fashioned that system. Content analyses of local GGH region media reports, and municipal documents describe relevant events and regulatory strategies across the GGH region. Semi-structured interviews are then conducted with staff and councillors from municipalities with regulations for ridehailing platforms. Together these methods are analyzed to describe the rationale for regulation in the context of challenges facing the ridehailing system. The study continues with an examination of the current strategies employed by drivers to improve their own conditions to determine if there is a role for municipalities to support drivers. The study examines the potential of workforce development programs and their applicability to platform drivers. Interview analyses of drivers within the GGH region are compared against accounts described in videos produced by platform drivers across English North America and posted online in video diaries (vlogs). These two groups of data are then compared to understand how drivers are currently empowered and the barriers they face when trying to improve their own circumstances. The thesis contributes to the conceptual understanding of vehicle-for-hire services, the role of cities in that service and the nature of justice for platform drivers. The study finds that the erosion of municipal regulations over for-hire vehicles in the region is largely due to a choice by municipalities not to extend regulations over ridehailing platforms. This choice is attributed to an understanding of the industry as a private market where regulation should be minimized. For policy makers seeking to extend justice to platform drivers, the thesis calls for municipalities to expand the tools of oversight and create mechanisms for workers to direct changes to the structure of vehicle-for-hire services

    A passenger-to-driver matching model for commuter carpooling: Case study and sensitivity analysis

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    For the transport sector, promoting carpooling to private car users could be an effective strategy over reducing vehicle kilometers traveled. Theoretical studies have verified that carpooling is not only beneficial to drivers and passengers but also to the environment. Nevertheless, despite carpooling having a huge potential market in car commuters, it is not widely used in practice worldwide. In this paper, we develop a passenger-to-driver matching model based on the characteristics of a private-car based carpooling service, and propose an estimation method for time-based costs as well as the psychological costs of carpooling trips, taking into account the potential motivations and preferences of potential carpoolers. We test the model using commuting data for the Greater London from the UK Census 2011 and travel-time data from Uber. We investigate the service sensitivity to varying carpooling participant rates and fee-sharing ratios with the aim of improving matching performance at least cost. Finally, to illustrate how our matching model might be used, we test some practical carpooling promotion instruments. We found that higher participant role flexibility in the system can improve matching performance significantly. Encouraging commuters to walk helps form more carpooling trips and further reduces carbon emissions. Different fee-sharing ratios can influence matching performance, hence determination of optimal pricing should be based on the specific matching model and its cost parameters. Disincentives like parking charges and congestion charges seem to have a greater effect on carpooling choice than incentives like preferential parking and subsidies. The proposed model and associated findings provide valuable insights for designing an effective matching system and incentive scheme for carpooling services in practice

    Nomadic Sharing: Information Infrastructures in the Sharing Economy

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    This research examined the role of information infrastructures in decentralized contexts of the sharing economy. The community studied was a group of nomadic workers known as digital nomads. An investigation of three online forums was conducted and elements of emergence and generativity were identified in the community’s patterns of sharing and access across information infrastructure.Master of Science in Information Scienc

    Contrived Surplus and Negative Externalities in the Sharing Economy

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    The modern-day sharing economy delivers a multitude of benefits to users and providers worldwide. While there is much discussion about its benefits (e.g., convenience, access, and income), due to its largely unregulated/ under-regulated status, the increasing commercialization of the sharing economy spawns negative effects which must be mitigated to foster long-term sustainability. Based on externalities and concerned markets, this conceptual paper examines the implications of contrived surplus for stakeholders in ridesharing, home sharing, and bike sharing and presents managerial implications for developing these sectors in a reasonable and sustainable manner
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