The Hitchhiker’s guide to the pick-up locations

Background: Hitchhiking is a well-known form of transportation, which has been extensively studied from a sociological perspective. While this tourism approach has been popular in some countries for decades, the question of making hitchhiking fast has never been studied from a comprehensive point of view. In this research, we aim to find the best locations for hitchhiking, which may be used in travel recommender systems. Methods: For this purpose, we study the relationships between certain spatial properties and waiting time at pick-up locations, estimate statistical significance of several factors according to various countries. Results: We extracted features for the data from hitchhiking logs, analyzed their importance and built corresponding classification and regression models for estimating hitchhiking experience with a sufficient accuracy. Conclusions: This paper is the first to analyze important spatial factors for a successful hitchhiking trip and construct models to predict the quality and waiting time at hitchhiking locations.