Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has caused big changes to customers’ perceptions and attitudes towards ride-sharing apps. The purpose of this article is to examine the factors that influence customers’ intention to continue using ride-sharing services during the pandemic. A conceptual model was developed based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and an extensive literature review. An online survey was used to collect data from 398 users of Uber ride-sharing services in Egypt. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test and validate the proposed model. The findings showed that customers’ intention to continue using the ride-sharing apps during the pandemic is influenced by four factors which are performance expectancy, economic benefits, facilitating conditions and social influence. It indicated that customers’ effort expectancy, perceived infectability and fear of COVID-19 do not affect their intention to use these services. The article contributes by examining the UTAUT in the context of ride-sharing apps during the pandemic. It provides some guidelines for companies that provide ride-sharing services to follow to help them survive with the big challenges they have faced during the pandemic.

摘要

COVID-19 大流行的爆发使客户对拼车应用的看法和态度发生了重大变化。本文的目的是研究影响客户在大流行期间继续使用拼车服务的意愿的因素。基于技术接受和使用的统一理论 (UTAUT) 和广泛的文献综述开发了一个概念模型。一项在线调查用于收集埃及 398 名优步拼车服务用户的数据。偏最小二乘结构方程模型（PLS-SEM）用于测试和验证所提出的模型。调查结果显示，客户在大流行期间继续使用拼车应用的意愿受到四个因素的影响，即绩效预期、经济效益、便利条件和社会影响。它表明客户的努力预期、感知的可感染性和对 COVID-19 的恐惧不会影响他们使用这些服务的意图。本文通过在大流行期间在拼车应用程序的背景下检查 UTAUT 来做出贡献。它为提供拼车服务的公司提供了一些指导方针，以帮助他们在大流行期间面临的巨大挑战中生存。