Surge pricing is commonly used in on-demand ridesourcing platforms to dynamically balance demand and supply, although it is controversial and has long stimulated debate regarding its pros and cons. In practice, there is usually a reasonable or legitimate range of prices. However, such a constrained surge-pricing strategy may fail to balance demand and supply in certain cases—e.g., even adopting the highest allowed price cannot reduce peak-period demand to a level at which the market clears without some form of non-price rationing. To address this limitation, we propose a novel reward scheme integrated with surge pricing: Passengers pay an additional amount to a reward account on top of the regular surge price during peak hours, then use the balance in their reward account to subsidize trips during off-peak hours. We propose models to describe the number of travel requests and the number of active drivers on the platform, and characterize the market equilibrium under several assumptions. We compare scenarios with and without the reward scheme from three perspectives: passenger utility, driver income, and platform revenue and profit. We find that in some situations, all three stakeholders—i.e., passengers, drivers, and the platform—will be better off under the reward scheme integrated with surge pricing.

激增定价通常用于按需拼车平台，以动态平衡需求和供应，尽管这一直是有争议的，并且长期以来一直引起人们对其优缺点的争论。实际上，通常存在合理或合理的价格范围。但是，在某些情况下，这种受限制的激增定价策略可能无法平衡供需关系-例如，即使采用最高允许价格也无法将高峰期需求降低到市场清算的水平，而无需某种形式的非价格配给。为了解决这个限制，我们提出了一种与激增定价相结合的新颖的奖励计划：乘客在高峰时段在常规激增价格的基础上向奖励账户支付额外的金额，然后使用其奖励账户中的余额来补贴非高峰时段的旅行。高峰时段。我们提出模型来描述出行请求的数量和平台上活跃驾驶员的数量，并在几个假设下表征市场均衡。我们从三个角度比较有无奖励方案的情况：乘客效用，驾驶员收入以及平台收入和利润。我们发现，在某些情况下，在与激增定价相集成的奖励计划下，所有三个利益相关者（即乘客，驾驶员和平台）会更好。