Abstract:
Facing the parking conflict between the demands and supplies in the shared parking market, this paper characterizes the risk of distance deviation suffered by parking users due to slot reassignment and proposes a pricing model for the shared parking platform under different risk preferences, which identifies the optimal pricing strategy for the platform to cope with the risks. Based on the platform operation logic and parking market characteristics, this paper classifies the risk preferences into risk-neutral and risk-averse types and classifies the market into low deviation and high deviation scenarios. Adopting the mean-variance approach, this paper proposes a pricing model for the shared parking platform and derives the equilibrium results in terms of the parking price, the platform’s profit, consumer surplus, and social welfare under different risk preferences. Take the Guangzhou case as an example to verify the findings, results show that the pricing strategy under the risk aversion scenario is the same as that under the risk-neutral scenario when the risk aversion coefficient or deviation rate error is zero. The risk-neutral platform is found to have a high parking price and a large platform’s profit compared with the risk-averse platform when the risk aversion coefficient and deviation rate error are larger than zero under both low and high deviation scenarios. The risk-neutral platform is further found to sacrifice some profits to avoid the risk to keep a high consumer surplus and large social welfare. Relevant conclusions provide support for the shared parking platform to cope with the parking conflict risk and promote the sustainable development of the platform at the operational level.