Rider Incentive Targeting: Causal Incrementality, ROI, and Spillovers
Context: You plan a rider‑side incentive (e.g., “20% off up to $10”) targeted by a propensity model. You must estimate causal incrementality and ROI in a two‑sided marketplace with selection and spillovers.
Do the following:
1) Marketplace‑Health Metrics (with formulas)
Define and provide formulas for:
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Matching quality: pickup ETA p50, post‑dispatch cancel rate within 5 minutes, driver idle minutes/trip.
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Demand: incremental trips, GMV lift.
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Supply: acceptance rate, earnings/hour.
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Composite quality‑of‑match metric: distance‑to‑pickup p50.
2) Identification Under Three Scenarios
Propose identification strategies for:
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(A) Randomized geo holdouts.
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(B) Thresholded offer scores enabling regression discontinuity: specify bandwidth selection, continuity checks, McCrary test for manipulation, and polynomial order.
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(C) Business‑rule targeting enabling IV via an operational friction instrument: state relevance and exclusion, and list threats you will test.
3) ROI Formula and Estimation
Write the ROI formula including cannibalization, subsidy burn, surge/ETA externalities, and habit formation. Specify how to estimate LTV lift and amortize CAC. Include confidence intervals via the delta method or bootstrap.
4) Two‑Stage Randomization for Spillovers
Design a two‑stage randomization (city×week, then rider) to identify direct vs spillover effects, and define estimands for total, direct, and indirect effects.
5) Multiple Testing
Choose and justify a correction strategy (Bonferroni vs BH vs hierarchical testing) for: 1 primary, 3 key secondaries, and ~20 diagnostics.
6) Heterogeneity
Outline a pre‑registered plan to detect effect moderation by city tier and weather using causal forests or group‑wise models while controlling Type‑S/M errors.
7) Diagnostics and Decisioning
Enumerate pre‑trend checks, placebo windows, and negative‑control outcomes. Define criteria for declaring success and for rollback.