Leading the Horse to Water? Investigating the Impact of Ride-Hailing Services on Hate Crimes

Lin Qiu1; Dandan Qiao2; Bernard C Y Tan2; Andrew B Whinston3

2024

10.1177/105914782312249

Production and Operations Management   影响因子和分区

1059-1478

1937-5956

Hate crimes, which stem from prejudiced attitudes, have a distributionally detrimental impact on societal stability. Although inter-group contacts are potentially an effective means for reducing prejudice and subsequently decreasing the number of hate crimes, scholars have recently recognized the possibility of negative contacts that might actually amplify prejudice. As a result, the question of whether intergroup contacts truly possess the ability to effectively decrease hate crime numbers remains inconclusive. In addition, prior contact research primarily relies on laboratory experiments because the establishment of intergroup contacts in a field setting is challenging. Examination of the effectiveness of intergroup contacts hence merits further investigation in a real-world setting. In this article, we propose that ride-hailing services, which naturally connect individuals from different backgrounds, offer an avenue to facilitate intergroup contacts in practice, which could potentially reduce prejudice and the volume of hate crimes. Leveraging the staggered introduction of this technology into counties in the United States, we conducted a series of analyses to empirically evaluate the contact effects in the open field. Our analysis reveals a notable decrease in the number of hate crimes (particularly a 5.75% reduction in racial hate crimes) after the introduction of ride-hailing services. These findings remained consistent across various robustness tests. Additional moderation analysis suggests that the increased interaction between different groups, facilitated by ride-hailing services, is the most likely explanation for the observed decrease in hate crimes. We further conducted an extensive survey involving real ride-hailing drivers and passengers. The results from our survey provide direct evidence that ride-hailing services create natural and constructive environments where positive interactions and mutual understanding can develop among diverse groups of people. This, in turn, helps mitigate prejudice and hate crimes within society, as observed in our analysis. This study not only extends the existing body of literature on contact theory but also sheds light on how modern technologies can play a pivotal role in curtailing hate crime, yielding both theoretical and practical implications.

Hate crime ride-hailing service contact theory prejudice

SSCI ; SCI

英语

第一

Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund[R-253-000-171-114] ; Southern University of Science and Technology Startup Program[Y01976208]

Engineering ; Operations Research & Management Science

Engineering, Manufacturing ; Operations Research & Management Science

WOS:001224931100001

SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC

ENGINEERING

人工提交

1.Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China
2.Information Systems and Analytics, National University of Singapore, Singapore
3.IROM, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

Lin Qiu,Dandan Qiao,Bernard C Y Tan,et al. Leading the Horse to Water? Investigating the Impact of Ride-Hailing Services on Hate Crimes[J]. Production and Operations Management,2024,33(1).

Lin Qiu,Dandan Qiao,Bernard C Y Tan,&Andrew B Whinston.(2024).Leading the Horse to Water? Investigating the Impact of Ride-Hailing Services on Hate Crimes.Production and Operations Management,33(1).

Lin Qiu,et al."Leading the Horse to Water? Investigating the Impact of Ride-Hailing Services on Hate Crimes".Production and Operations Management 33.1(2024).