Decentralized Ride-Sharing and Vehicle-Pooling Based on Fair Cost-Sharing Mechanisms

Ride-sharing or vehicle-pooling allows commuters to team up spontaneously for transportation cost sharing. This has become a popular trend in the emerging paradigm of sharing economy. One crucial component support effective ride-sharing is matching mechanism that pairs suitable commuters. Traditionally, been performed centralized manner, whereby an operator arranges according global objective (e.g., total all commuters). However, decentralized decision-making paradigm, where are self-interested and only motivated based on individual payments. Particularly, it not clear how should be shared fairly between commuters, what ramifications cost-sharing ride-sharing. paper sheds light principles mechanisms stable matching, such no one would better off deviate from outcome. We study various fair induced outcomes. compare outcomes with social optimal outcome (that minimizes cost) by theoretical bounds optimality ratios, show several can achieve high optimality. also corroborate our results empirical taxi under data analysis New York City trip dataset, provide useful insights practical vehicle-pooling.