Before revision: Understanding collective human behavior and dynamics at urban-scale has drawn broad interest in physics, engineering, and social sciences. Social physics often adopts a statistical perspective and treats individuals as interactive elementary units, while the economics perspective sees individuals as strategic decision makers . Here we provide a microscopic mechanism of city-scale dynamics, interpret the collective outcome in a thermodynamic framework, and verify its various implications empirically.
After revision: Understanding driver behavior in on-demand mobility services is crucial for designing efficient and sustainable transport models. Drivers' delivery strategy is well understood, but their search strategy and learning process still lack an empirically validated model . Here we provide a microscopic mechanism of city-scale dynamics, interpret the collective outcome in a thermodynamic framework, and verify its various implications empirically.