Cryptocurrency-based fare-reward scheme has been emerging from on-demand ride-sourcing platforms. The reward scheme provides each passenger with some units of cryptocurrency as rewards for use of ride service. The passengers can redeem the rewards for various redemption options. The redemption options offer the passengers economic benefits to offset a portion of costs of using ride services. In this way, the economic benefits serve as incentives for the passengers to repeatedly use ride services, which leads to increase in passenger demand for the platforms. From a passenger perspective, the reward scheme has a distinctive feature in that economic benefits can fluctuate according to changes in price of cryptocurrency in the future. Therefore, the passengers perceive the benefits differently based on their own risk preference and expectation of future price changes. It creates a challenge for the platforms because the optimal decisions for ride services vary by the value that the passengers place for their cryptocurrency rewards. To tackle this challenge, this paper analyzes the impacts of the reward scheme on on-demand ride-sourcing markets. The analysis is done with a mathematical model where a ride-sourcing platform makes decisions for trip fare, vehicle fleet size and cryptocurrency reward size. The reward decision is available under the assumption that the platform secures as many units of cryptocurrency as it rewards to passengers at their equilibrium price level. The model defines passengers’ perceived value of cryptocurrency rewards in terms of risk aversion level and expectation of future price growth of cryptocurrency. Afterwards, we investigate equilibrium and optimal properties of monopoly, social-optimum and second-best optimum ride-sourcing markets. Our analysis gives several key insights on the markets. First, the markets always locate at normal regime where interactions between passenger demand and vehicle supply for ride services converges to a stable equilibrium state. Second, this study shows that a ride-sourcing platform would make a decision to reward if passengers expect larger economic benefits from future redemption of cryptocurrency rewards than their current value. Third, it is shown that the quality of ride services would get worse because average pick-up time for passengers and drivers gets longer with more passenger retention. Fourth, this paper finds that the markets have more room to improve profit or social welfare as passengers expect larger speculative gains from reward redemption.

基于加密货币的票价奖励计划已经从按需乘车采购平台中出现。奖励计划为每位乘客提供一些单位的加密货币作为使用乘车服务的奖励。乘客可以兑换各种兑换选项的奖励。兑换选项为乘客提供经济利益，以抵消部分使用乘车服务的成本。这样一来，经济效益就成为了乘客重复使用乘车服务的诱因，从而导致乘客对平台的需求增加。从乘客的角度来看，奖励计划的一个显着特点是经济利益可以根据未来加密货币价格的变化而波动。所以，乘客根据自己的风险偏好和对未来价格变化的预期，对收益有不同的看法。这给平台带来了挑战，因为乘车服务的最佳决策因乘客对其加密货币奖励的价值而异。为了应对这一挑战，本文分析了奖励计划对按需叫车市场的影响。该分析是通过一个数学模型完成的，在该模型中，拼车平台会根据行程票价、车队规模和加密货币奖励规模做出决策。奖励决定是在假设平台获得与以均衡价格水平奖励给乘客一样多的加密货币单位的情况下可用的。该模型根据风险规避水平和对加密货币未来价格增长的预期来定义乘客对加密货币奖励的感知价值。之后，我们研究了垄断、社会最优和次优最优拼车市场的均衡和最优属性。我们的分析给出了几个关于市场的关键见解。首先，市场始终处于正常状态，乘客需求与车辆供应之间的相互作用收敛于稳定的均衡状态。其次，这项研究表明，如果乘客期望未来赎回加密货币奖励的经济利益高于其当前价值，则乘车平台会做出奖励决定。第三，结果表明，乘车服务的质量会变差，因为乘客和司机的平均接载时间会随着乘客保留率的增加而变长。第四，本文发现市场有更大的空间来提高利润或社会福利，因为乘客期望从奖励兑换中获得更大的投机收益。