  By utilising vehicle capacity more efficiently, ride-pooling platforms can
potentially lead to reduced congestion levels without adversely prolonging
travel times. While previous studies concluded that shared rides can offer
substantial benefits, initial evidence suggests low adoption levels. We
postulate that previous studies that investigated the potential of ride-pooling
failed to account for the trade-off that users are likely to make when
considering a shared ride. We address this shortcoming by formulating user net
benefit stemming from sharing as a compensatory function where the additional
travel time and on-board discomfort need to be compensated by the price
discount for a traveller to choose a shared ride over a private ride. The
proposed formulation is embedded in a method for matching travel requests and
vehicles. We conduct a series of experiments investigating how the potential of
ride-pooling services depends on travel demand characteristics, user
preferences and the pricing policy adopted by the service provider. In
particular, the impact of various behavioural settings in terms of users'
willingness to share their ride and delay aversion on service adoption and its
operational efficiency is assessed. Our results suggest that the total vehicle
mileage savings found by previous studies is only attainable when users are
very willing to share their ride (i.e. attach low premium to private rides) and
are offered a 50% discount for doing so. We find ride-pooling transportation
distance savings as low as 15% in less favourable behavioural scenarios.
