  Ride-sourcing drivers as individual service suppliers can freely adopt their
own relocation strategies including waiting, cruising freely, or following the
platform recommendations. These decisions substantially impact the balance
between supply and demand, and consequently affect system performance. We
conducted a stated choice experiment to study the searching behaviour of
ride-sourcing drivers and examine novel policies. A unique dataset of 576
ride-sourcing drivers working in the US was collected and a choice modelling
approach was used to estimate the effects of multiple existing and hypothetical
attributes. The results suggest that relocation strategies of ride-sourcing
drivers considerably vary between different groups of drivers. Surge pricing
significantly stimulates drivers to head towards the designated areas. However,
the distance between the location of drivers and surge or high-demand areas
demotivates them to follow the platform repositioning recommendations. We
discuss the implications of our findings for various platform policies on
real-time information sharing and platform repositioning guidance.
