Humans turn to other humans for decision making. They don’t know how the algorithm operates but they understand how a human mind operates. Ergo, they would be more likely to follow a human’s recommendation.

Due to the explosive growth of peer-to-peer transportation sharing services offered by micro-entrepreneurial travelers, investigating how their quality cues affect demand is of paramount importance. The goal of this study was to identify what types of intrinsic and extrinsic quality cues affect the demand of peer-to-peer transportation sharing services. Based on the rich data set of 414,292 transactions from a leading peer-to-peer ridesharing platform, it was identified that intrinsic quality cues – car status and driver status – and extrinsic quality cues – price and offering duration – significantly affect the peer-to-peer transportation demand independently and interactively. Although the lower price and longer offering duration of a transportation sharing service positively affect its demand, the higher price or shorter offering duration can increase its sales when combined with better intrinsic cues. Implications for vulnerable segments such as female and minority drivers are provided