Taxi Regulation and Its Impact on User Experience in European Countries

Abstract

The taxi industry is one of the few industries where quantities and maximum fare prices are still strictly controlled. However, even though large-scale shifts in regulatory structures are happening across the world, the impacts of these changes are still largely unknown. The aim of this article was to get a narrow picture of the potential effects of deregulation of the taxi industry in a European context by investigating and comparing the observed effects in two European capitals. When talking about the taxi industry, we refer to the “traditional” European taxis, meaning that digital taxi services such as Uber, Bolt etc. are excluded. The article provides an overview of the background to the regulation of the taxi industry and the most common justifications of regulation. According to the findings, deregulations of the taxi markets can have varied results even in cities with very similar regulatory structures and no specific framework for effects caused by deregulation could be made. However, the contention of whether taxi regulations are beneficial mainly focuses around quantitative and economic regulations.