The Deterrent Effect of Ride-Sharing on Sexual Assault and Investigation of Situational Contingencies

Research Spotlight This paper investigates the relationship between ride-sharing and sexual assault, which has been a controversial but unanswered topic in public debates on the sharing economy and ride-sharing. In particular, this research focuses on the potential of ride-sharing platforms to provide a suitable target of sexual assault with a more reliable and timely transportation option for traveling to a safer place, which is a largely neglected aspect in research and practice. By exploiting the nationwide quasi-experimental setting of Uber’s city-by-city rollouts in the United States during 2005–2017, we demonstrate that Uber’s entry into a city is negatively associated with the number of rape incidents. Furthermore, using precinct-hour–level data on Uber pickups and rape occurrences in New York City in 2015, we find that ride-sharing contributes to a more significant reduction in the likelihood of rape occurrences in neighborhoods with limited transportation accessibility, and ride-sharing is more effective in deterring sexual crime in riskier circumstances, such as around alcohol-serving places on weekend nights or when the probability of crime occurrences increases. This study sheds new light on the potential of IT-enabled platforms to improve social well-being beyond their economic contributions. Sexual assault is one of the most repellant and costly crimes, which inflicts irrecoverable harms on victims and society. This study examines the effect of information technology (IT)-enabled ride-sharing platforms on sexual assaults. Drawing upon routine activity theory from the criminology literature, we posit that ride-sharing can reduce a passenger’s risk of being a suitable target of sexual assault by providing a more reliable and timely transportation option for traveling to a safer place. By exploiting the nationwide quasi-experimental setting of Uber’s city-by-city rollouts in the United States during 2005–2017, we demonstrate that Uber’s entry into a city is negatively associated with the number of rape incidents. To zoom into the effects of ride-sharing at a more granular level, we employ precinct-hour–level data on Uber pickups and rape occurrences in New York City in 2015 and conduct spatiotemporal analyses. Our results from the spatiotemporal analyses corroborate those of the quasi-experiment and further reveal situational contingencies in the deterrent effect of ride-sharing. Specifically, ride-sharing contributes to a more significant reduc