Experimental Design
In late fall 2025, the UTK Office of Parking and Transportation will send emails to qualified students notifying them of a new partnership with Uber and to watch out for a link to register for the lottery to receive 10-$10 Uber vouchers. In January 2026, a second email will provide a link for students to register.
Funding permitting, we will perhaps repeat this expirement during the Fall 2026 semester. We may increase the amount or expand the pool of potential students to all UTK undergradautes but will update the pre-analysis plan before conducting this expansion.
Once a student clicks the link, it will bring them to a Qualtrics survey that first presents the consent form. If a student consents to participate in the research, the Qualtrics survey will then prompt them to complete the attached survey. Once a student completes the survey, the software will enroll them in the study. The survey should take a student around 20 minutes to complete. Since the student will be consenting to use of FERPA protected data, Qualtrics will prompt them to sign the form with the UTK NetID/password authentication. This authentication was provided to us by OIT.
Once the portal closes, we will randomize 1,000 students into receiving 10-$10 Uber vouchers (treatment group). Students who did not receive the treatment will receive 1-$10 Uber voucher as compensation for the survey (control group); up to 5,000. At the end of the semester, Uber will match names, email addresses, and cell phone numbers (needed to register for an Uber account) to their data that will include two subgroups of data. For vouchered rides, Uber will provide data on pick-up location, drop-off location, amount paid. For unvouchered rides, Uber will provide trip data that has been aggregated to the student by month level (number of rides, average price, fraction of rides that originate and end in Knox County). All other variables included in Uber’s transfer but not required for analysis will be excluded before the dataset is shared with the research team.
Before the data are merged, the research team will use receive three key variables from the survey: student Uber account email, student Uber account cell phone number, and NetID. The research team will then create an anonymous randomized subject id number. The research team will provide a key containing the Uber account email, student Uber account cell phone number, and randomized subject id number to Uber. These variables Uber will match the data with this key and then drop the Uber account email and student Uber account cell phone number.
UTK Registrar’s office will receive the data from Uber and then link student to the data set. The UTK registrar’s office will use the second half of the key created by the research team that contains the NetID and the randomized subject id number to link the Uber data to the data from the UTK administration. These variables include demographic data such as race, gender, high school GPA, ACT/SAT scores, Pell status, parking pass requests, UTK GPA, enrollment, and major. UTK administration will then de-identify the data by dropping all pii including NetID. The researchers will then obtain a data set that only has the randomized subject id number. The research team will destroy the key after providing the needed pieces to Uber and the UTK registrar. The UTK Parking and Transportation Office and the UTK Registrar are not part of the research team but are helping in obtaining and linking the data. The UTK Registrar will serve as the safe harbor for the data linkage for UTK.
The final analytical dataset will contain the randomized subject identification number, the treatment status, data on pick-up location, drop-off location, amount paid (for vouchered rides), number of rides, average price, fraction of rides that originate and end in Knox County for six months previous and every month for a year after voucher delivery (for unvouchered rides), race, gender, high school GPA, ACT/SAT scores, Pell status, parking pass requests, previous semesters UTK GPA, Spring 2026/Fall 2026, UTK GPA, Fall 2026/Spring 2027 enrollment, and major choice. All these variables will be on the student level. After the research team deletes the key, they will not have any access to the personal identifying data.