Who can ride along? Discrimination in a German carpooling market

Although numerous studies have focused on ethnic discrimination in the labour and housing market, carpooling has barely been covered. Yet carpooling is indispensable for many minorities because they face severe economic inequalities. In order to test for ethnic discrimination in the carpooling market, we conducted a correspondence test. We sent out requests from four fictitious user profiles to drivers listed on one of Germany's carpooling websites. All users were aged mid-20s: two males and two females. One man and one woman had German names, the second set had Turkish names. In total, we collected 952 observations. Our field experiment reveals substantial discrimination by ethnicity and gender. Whereas women with German names are least likely to experience discrimination, men with Turkish names are the most likely to be discriminated against. At first sight, counterintuitively but in line with ethnic competition theory, users with Turkish names are not significantly more discriminated against by drivers on routes in East Germany where xenophobia is more prevalent compared with West Germany.