New ways of mobility: The birth of ridesharing. A case study from Hungary

Abstract

Recent emerging globalisation and post-industrial development partly driven by IT services influence not only markets, but all other subsystems of the society, too. This revolutionary change has fundamentally transformed our mobility and movements in space. In the era of network society, the idea of shared-use mobility has brought about possibilities in transportation that resulted in the emergence of new groups, directions and destinations. By now this type of alternative transportation has spread among the most developed countries and shows a flourishing example of sharing economy, an internet-based peer-to-peer model, which does not require a top-down service provider. The main focus of the present study is a socio-geographical analysis of how this innovation has spread among Hungarian citizens. Which social groups are the most active users of ridesharing? What geographical endowments or insufficiencies result this way and what are the spatial patterns of transportation? To answer these questions we studied the biggest Hungarian ridematching system ‘Oszkár’ and its users with the help of questionnaires (N=425).