Research on dynamic pricing of self-driving car-hailing

Abstract In the shared travel platform market, the price uncertainty of new services and the dynamic pricing of the platform may cause passengers to wait strategically in both the trial operation stage and the formal operation stage. When there is an endogenous time preference, passengers will choose their own purchase strategy ( myopic / strategic ), but they will pay additional sunk costs ( strategic costs ) when choosing to become strategic passengers. Based on the theory of consumer utility, a two-stage dynamic game model is constructed. Considering that the platform and passengers can obtain and update the reference price from the historical price at the same time in the formal operation stage, the purchase strategy of passengers with endogenous time preference and its influence on the platform pricing strategy are studied. The results show that the reference price and strategy cost of passengers will affect their purchase strategy and lead to different dynamic pricing strategies. The increase in passenger strategy costs can increase platform profits, consumer surplus, and social welfare at the same time, and will also damage consumer surplus and social welfare while increasing platform profits. In addition, the increase in the credibility of the reference price does not always benefit the platform. When the passenger 's strategic cost and reference price are both high, a more accurate reference price will even damage the platform 's profit and consumer surplus at the same time. Compared with the case of short-sighted passengers, the passenger 's strategy waits for the line.