2025 Volume 11 Issue 2 Pages A_63-A_70
The World Health Organization constitution states that health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Therefore, in Japan, many studies have been made on the connection between public transport usage and mental or social health. However, few studies identify the factors influencing the impact of using public transport on health. In addition, although shared-ride taxi has been becoming highly important to meet the low demand mainly in rural areas of Japan, there have been few studies focused on the impact of shared-ride taxi on health. Consequently, it might be difficult for local authorities to consider where to introduce shared-ride taxi services and how to improve existing shared-ride taxi services, from the perspective of health improvement. This study mainly aims to identify the factors that influence the impact of shared-ride taxi on mental or social health. The results of our study clearly show the following: (1) the impact of shared-ride taxi on mental and social health is not uniform but depends on individual attributes of shared-ride taxi users, and (2) the impact of shared-ride taxi on mental health is small.
