Sharing mobility economy and social capital: BlaBlaCar creates relations just between heavy users?, Guide, Progetti e Ricerche di Comunicazione Internazionale

Scarica Sharing mobility economy and social capital: BlaBlaCar creates relations just between heavy users? e più Guide, Progetti e Ricerche in PDF di Comunicazione Internazionale solo su Docsity! Sharing mobility economy and social capital: BlaBlaCar creates relations just between heavy users? di Mariachiara Montebello e Andrea Careddu ABSTRACT Our research concerns the car pooling service BlaBlaCar and the development of social and relational capital resulting from the usage of this platform. The investigation is based particularly on the 2016 paper by Arcidiacono and Pais, which proves that most of BlaBlaCar users develop social relations with each other. Analyzing the methodology of the Arcidiacono and Pais paper we found out that they delivered the survey just to “heavy users” of BlaBlaCar (= people that used the service at least 5 times in a period of 4 months). This is the starting point of our main research question: is the social relation development following the use of BlaBlaCar ordinary? Or does it just concern the heavy users of the service? If not, is the usage of BlaBlaCar correlated with other main reasons (above all, money saving)? Despite most of the sample considers BlaBlaCar a community that helps changing our world, the main characteristic associated to the brand is still the comfort.11 11 Arcidiacono, D. - Pais, I., Reciprocità, fiducia e relazioni nei servizi di mobilità condivisa: un’analisi sul car pooling di BlaBlaCar, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, http://www.sisec.it/wp- content/uploads/2017/02/Arcidiacono-Pais-Car-pooling-bla-bla-car-full-paper-SISEC.pdf RESEARCH QUESTION AND ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES Analyzing the effects of BlaBlaCar on the social life of its users, we asked ourselves if the relevance of the social aspects of the platform was the same for heavy and less frequent users. We hypothesize that the majority of BlaBlaCar users, instead, prefer this platform because of the economic and practical advantages more than the sense of community. We choose to produce a quantitative research, delivering a survey (through Google Form) in which we used some of the questions adopted by Arcidiacono and Pais in their own project. The research dimension that we considered were: ● Gender, age, educational level, work condition, income bracket and domicile of the user; ● Travel frequency, main role (driver or passenger), aims of the journeys; ● Values associated with BlaBlaCar and reasons why they use this platform; ● Relevance of the feedback system, trust placed in BlaBlaCar and in strangers in general; ● Social relations created as a consequence of the usage of the service; ● Sharing of information, stories and emotions linked to the BlaBlaCar experience; ● Emotional involvement in the community and opinions about this firm. Using Microsoft Excel, we tried to correlate the results in order to observe if the ones obtained by Arcidiacono and Pais were similar or different when compared to ours. DATA ANALYSIS We managed to collect the answers of 429 BlaBlaCar users between 2018 May 30th and June 9th. Socio demographic profile Almost all of the users are young (90,9%), aged between 18 and 27 years (64,3%) and between 28 and 37 (26,6%). The adults (older than 38 years) are just the remaining 9,1% of the sample (4,9% between 38 and 47 years, 3,7% between 48 and 57 years, 0,5% more than 58 years). Graph no. 1 - Age of the surveyed The majority of the interviewed is highly educated. 57,4% of the statistic sample has at least one degree: 28,2% has a degree, 23,8% a master’s degree, 5,4% are (or have been) PhD students or got a university master. 41% of the surveyed attended high school, but 79% of them is attending university. Just 1,6% of the respondent only attended the secondary school. Graph no. 5 - Work condition of the sample In order to understand the main reasons why people uses BlaBlaCar, we asked the users to assign from 1 to 7 points to the main aspects underlined by Arcidiacono and Pais. Saving money is clearly the main reason people use BlaBlaCar (with 1899 total points and an average of 4,4 in a range between 1 and 7), followed by comfort, that reached 1605 points in total with an average of 3,7 points (although 29,6% of the respondents consider it worthy of 3 points). The lack of alternative means of transport is the third main reason why people use the platform, with an average of 3,2 points in a range between 1 and 7 (23,8% of the users gave 3 points to this reason) and a total score of 1411 points. Travelling with company doesn’t seem to be a significant reason to use BlaBlaCar, since it only scored 1246 points in total (averagely 2,9 out of 7), with the majority of the sample (52,9%) giving it only 1 or 2 points. The same goes for environmental reasons, that only scored 1194 point and 2,8 on average, since 54,8% of the interviewed assigned 1 or 2 points out of 7. Curiosity closes the chart, since “Discovering news ways to travel” was worthy of just 1 point for 39,4% of the users, thus reaching an average of 2,5 points and total score of 1061. Graph no. 6 - Reasons why people choose to use BlaBlaCar Comparing our results with the previous research we can say that while its characteristic of being cheap is still the main motivation to use BlaBlaCar, sociality is an aspect considered mainly by the more active users. Our research sample seems to be more influenced by practical motivations (saving money, comfort, lack of means of transport) than by the other benefits in terms of social experiences, environmental sustainability and curiosity. We thought that the importance of the economic reasons could have been related to the high number of people (35,7%) that declared a very low income (less than 5000 euros per year). Graph no. 7 - Income brackets of the respondents In fact, in our sample the bracket income seems to be related to the reasons why users choose to use BlaBlaCar and not more expensive means of transport, since the percentages of people that assigned just 1 point out of 7 to economic reasons gradually drops as the income bracket grows. These data are deeply different from the one emerged from the Arcidiacono and Pais research, since the majority of their sample (62% of the passengers and 70,3% of the drivers) resulted to be satisfied by their economic situation, which explains why the economic reasons are not considered way more than the other aspects. The results concerning the importance of the economic reasons could be also related to the gender of the respondents, since theirs were mostly men, that are generally paid more than women.12 Our sample, in fact, consist of the opposite groups: 71,6% female users and 28,4% male users. Graph no. 8 - Gender of the surveyed This hypothesis turned out to be confirmed by the percentages of women that attributed the maximum score (7) to “Saving money”, which is higher than the one of the men On the contrary, the amount of men assigning only one point out of 7 to this attribute is twice the percentage of women. Differences between male and female travelers There are also a few more differences between male and female respondents. - Despite having a low relevance in the research sample, company got the maximum score (in a scale from 1 to 7) by 4,9% of the male respondents and 1,9% of the female users. - BlaBlaCar is considered a way to travel comfortably, by women (3,9 points on average) more than by men (3,4). These data are also reflected by the percentage 12 Carlini, R. (2017) - Perché le donne continuano a guadagnare meno degli uomini, https://www.internazionale.it/opinione/roberta-carlini/2017/03/07/donne-guadagnano-meno-uomini Through a deeper analysis we actually found out that 47,87% of those 165 people assigned a high score (5-7) to “Saving money” and 93,94% of them uses BlaBlaCar more as passengers. This would explain why the whole research sample is divided in a 77,6% of respondents that uses the platform mostly as a passenger and a way smaller group of users (22,4%) that drives the car. Graph no. 11 - Main role of the surveyed (driver or passenger) Social relations In this next section, we’ll try to understand if users really develop any kind of social relation with people they met using BlaBlaCar. We started asking if they ever met their partner on platform and 98,3% of them answered “No” (although 7 of the interviewees said that they actually met their partner, current or ex, using BlaBlaCar!). 38% of our sample said that they became friends on social media platforms with people they met using the car pooling service, while 85% never build any friendship with other users and 87,1% hasn’t programmed any activities (ex.: dinners, travels) together. Out of 10 users, only 4 follow each other on social network and 1 actually builds a friendship with another user or shares other experiences outside the platform with him/her. However, we notice that the majority of our sample (59,7%) travelled again using BlaBlaCar with people met on platform. Graph no. 12 - Social contact kept by BlaBlaCar users with each other Therefore, our conclusion is that it’s really unusual to establish any kind of social relation out of the platform, since the only positive index is related to other journeys that the users shared via BlaBlaCar. These last data may seem to underline the level of trust on the platform, allowing us to point that the users refuse unfair practices, like exchanging their telephone numbers or adding each other on social media to plan future travels privately and thus save the commission fee. Users prove that they consider the service fares right, but we have to consider that part of this behavior is due to BlaBlaCar preventing a professional usage of the platform, establishing a fare limit for every km traveled. Review and rating The trust placed in the platform is confirmed by the high percentage of users (64,3%) that trust each other thanks to the possibility to read the feedbacks received on the profile, followed by another 20,5% that has faith in BlaBlaCar security systems. 10,5% of the sample trusts people that uses this kind of platforms, while only 4,7% trusts strangers in general. Graph no. 13 - Reasons why the sample travels with unknown people This partition is valid for both drivers and passengers. There’s also a small amount (around 6%) of passengers more confident in the feedback system than the drivers, which have a little more faith in strangers. We hypothesized that this result could be related to the age and the experience level of the users. - Regarding the age of the respondents, both drivers and passengers seem to rely mostly on the feedback system up to 47 years old, but then open themselves to unknown people and to the users of sharing economy platforms. - As of the experience level of the surveyed, the feedback system appears to be the first choice of more and less frequent travelers, always followed by the trust placed in BlaBlaCar’s security systems. This last element resulted to be more appreciated by the less experienced users, which may obviously be more hesitant to trust unknown people. The feedback system When asked about their behavior before a journey, most of the interviewees of all categories admit they usually examine the profiles and then choose who to travel with (66,7%). 27,7% of the surveyed takes a look at the profiles, but then travels with everyone, while only 24 people (5,6%) doesn’t even look at the accounts of the other users and accept them anyway. avoided this hypothesis (5,9%) and a higher number of interviewed that would have travelled with them anyway (21,1%). This is another situation which could be explained by the lower amount of experience of our sample, compared to the one of the previous research. We supposed that more expert users of BlaBlaCar trust the platform enough to be willing to accept more frequently to share their travels with users with no feedbacks. - We tried to verify this correlation and, although the habit of exchanging a few messages before accepting to travel together is widespread in all the ranges, obviously less frequent travelers (0-5 times a year) are less inclined to accept to travel with people without feedbacks and 30,43% of occasional users (0-2 trips a year) excludes this possibility, more than expert surveyed. - However, 20,45% of the users that in the previous question said that they trust BlaBlaCar security system, now excludes the possibility to travel with someone who doesn’t have any feedback yet. This result proves once again the insecurities people feels in trusting unknown people without a proof of their responsibility and correctness. These feelings lead people to be honest when they have the chance to express their opinion. Indeed, when asked about what they would do after an unpleasant experience, the majority of our sample (53,8%) admit they would leave a negative feedback. 39,9% of the users chose to don’t leave any feedback at all, but only 6,3% of the users would rather leave a positive feedback in order to preserve the user’s reputation. Graph no. 16 - Behaviors towards other users after an unpleasant experience Those results are quite similar to the ones obtained by Arcidiacono and Pais, but in their research the percentage of people giving a negative feedback was way higher. We assume that our users, travelling less frequently, don’t really care about the rating and reviewing system, since they don’t really see BlaBlaCar as a community, but just a simple mean of transport they can use when they need to. The BlaBlaCar network In order to understand the level of the sense of membership in the community, we asked a few more question already proposed by Arcidiacono and Pais. The first one is about the habit of sharing information, stories and emotions linked to the BlaBlaCar experiences. Our sample happened to have shared their thoughts mostly (87,9%) with their friends, more than with their parents (70,9%) and other BlaBlaCar users (69,7%). Only 1 out 5 (20,7%) of the surveyed shared their experiences on social media or messaging apps and 1 out of 10 never shared any of his emotions. Graph no. 17 - Ways people share their BlaBlaCar experiences Comparing our results with the ones obtained by Arcidiacono and Pais, we notice their higher percentage of people that shared their experiences with other BlaBlaCar users, meaning that the more experienced travelers usually talk about the service with other users, while our sample could be considered more populated by potential ambassadors of the platform, since they prefer to talk with friends (87,9%) and family (70,9%). However, our surveyed are more willing to not share any of their experiences with anybody, with twice the percentage of “no” obtained in the Arcidiacono and Pais sample. Nevertheless, while Arcidiacono and Pais presented the option “Nobody, ever”, we just wrote “With nobody”, so we can’t be sure that the users answered to this question thinking about all their experiences (of which they could have shared some o none) or if they could have answered “Yes” thinking about one or many travel they did not talk about with anyone, but at the same time answered “No” to the other options, referring to experiences they shared with someone. Since the percentage is low we assume that almost all the interviewees that answered “Yes” to the last option answered “No” at the previous ones. What is BlaBlaCar? Afterwards, we proposed an explicit question about the characteristic associated to BlaBlaCar. Despite being less frequent users of the platform, our respondents are way more involved in the philosophy and the values of the firm, since our percentage (94,41%) is twice the one reached by the Arcidiacono and Pais (44,4%). The same goes for the sense of belonging to the community, felt more by our sample (57,34%) than from their interviewed (44,3%). However, a big distance between the two results is reached also with the question about the comfort, with 98,14% of our sample and 61,5% of their one agreeing with the sentence. Nevertheless, the percentage of respondents that answered “No” to those questions grows with the involvement in the community that the sentences imply, starting from 1,86% not labeling the service as comfortable and ending up with 42,66% not feeling part of the community. Graph no. 18 - Definitions of BlaBlaCar Despite these results, our survey points out that 88,8% of the people who defined BlaBlaCar as a comfortable service also said that the platform is a company in which they trust, just like the Arcidiacono and Pais research does. Now we can see if there are any correlations between the community membership perceived by the users and the behavior of the respondents after a bad experience with BlaBlaCar. We analyzed the answers of those that considered themselves being a part of the BlaBlaCar community and we noticed that they are more inclined (56,1%) to leave a negative feedback than the group that answered “No”, although half of the latter would do the same. The percentage of surveyed that would rather not leave any feedback is indeed higher among those that don’t really feel part of the community, proving that they don’t really care about the welfare of the users and the reliability of the platform because they only use it for practical purposes.