What Affects User Experience of Shared Mobility Services? Insights from Integrating Signaling Theory and Value Framework

Abstract

Shared services using digital platforms have increasingly gained prominence in recent times. Existing studies have studied several facets of ride-sharing services, but mobile app technology’s impact on user’s experience has not been explored meticulously. We attempt to study the technological artifacts which can signal about the capability of the service and thereby, reducing the informational asymmetry, stemming from lack of information and in-person communication. To address that, we adopt the Signaling Theory and Value Framework to understand the apps’ features, reflecting the shared mobility service quality to the users. We mine 212,000 and 150,000 user reviews on India’s two most extensively used shared mobility services- OLA and UBER, respectively and identify the factors affecting user experiences. We provide a novel framework by mapping these factors to theoretical lexicons. Multiple regression models show that time resources, monetary resources, perceived information protection, app usage controllability, perceived safety in e-payment mechanism, informational trust-related advantage, and participation in decision making influence the user experience of both the services significantly.