What psychological and socio-demographic factors can influence people’s intention to use ridesharing during the war? A case study in Ukraine

Public transport services can be disrupted by natural or human-made crises, such as the recent war in Ukraine. Ridesharing has the potential to be used as an alternative to public transport during such crises. However, peoples’ attitudes and intentions towards ridesharing during war has not been studied. This study aims to address this critical gap by collecting and analysing travel behaviour data in two Ukrainian cities: Kyiv and Odessa. Exploratory factor analysis identified ten factors influencing ridesharing, namely: attitudes, perceived behavioural control, subjective norm, ease of use, usefulness, moral norms, trust, perceived safety, emotions, and discrimination. Then, a combined conceptual model based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour, and the Technology Acceptance Model was proposed, to incorporate potential psychological and socio-demographic in the context of a war situation. Structural equation modelling was used to explore the causal relationships between these factors and ridesharing. In the context of war, perceived ‘usefulness’ affected attitudes, while perceived ‘ease of use’ influenced perceived behavioural control. Moral norms strongly impacted the ridesharing intention; trust influenced attitudes; and gender played a major role by indirectly affecting ridesharing intention. This can provide transport planners and policy-makers with insights as to how ridesharing can be more attractive and become a genuine tool for enhancing human mobility resilience.