Relational benefits for Grab drivers' satisfaction and commitment

Abstract

Electronic-hailing or e-hailing service is an intermediary which provides electronic platform and database to match ride demand and supply of the users to the drivers. However, this type of sharing economy-services model has been struggling with conventional regulatory requirement in many countries, including Malaysia. The battle has changed the Malaysian e-hailing service industry landscape and eventually affected the driver-service provider relationship. As a result, the number of drivers dropped; fewer drivers are available to serve the demand and end-customers are experiencing increment in ride fares during the early period of regulatory enforcement. In response to the issues, the giant e-hailing service provider in Southeast Asia, Grab, has revised their driver-partner benefits program actively to fascinate drivers to stay longer with them. Consequently, this study proposed the link of relational benefits-relationship commitment that precedented in commitment-trust theory to rule the presented ontology. In addition, satisfaction is positioned as a mediator between the relational benefits and relationship commitment. This study adopted a quantitative approach, where the data collection process was employed through a survey questionnaire to test the proposed hypotheses. A total of 259 valid samples was obtained from Grab drivers all over Malaysia, and subsequently were analyzed using SPSS 25 and SmartPLS 3.0. Overall, the findings disclosed that confidence benefits, special treatment benefits and honor benefits were positively influence drivers’ satisfaction and drivers’ commitment towards their service provider, Grab. The study findings, however, demonstrated that the confidence benefit failed to influence driver commitment directly. In the meantime, driver satisfaction is found to be a successful mediator in the relationship between confidence benefit, special treatment benefit and honor benefit with driver commitment. Based on the obtained findings, this study provides some practical recommendation to preserve the e-hailing drivers’ welfare and well-being in this two-sided service industry.