A Large Scale, App-Based Behaviour Change Experiment Persuading Sustainable Mobility Patterns: Methods, Results and Lessons Learnt

Abstract

The present urban transportation system, mostly tailored for cars, has long shown its limitations. In many urban areas, public transportation and soft mobility would be able to effectively satisfy many travel needs. However, they tend to be neglected, due to a deep-rooted car dependency. How can we encourage people to make sustainable mobility choices, reducing car use and the related CO 2 emissions and energy consumption? Taking advantage of the wide availability of smartphone devices, we designed GoEco!, a smartphone application exploiting automatic mobility tracking, eco-feedback, social comparison and gamification elements to persuade individual modal change. We tested the effectiveness of GoEco! in two regions of Switzerland (Cantons Ticino and Zurich), in a large-scale, one year long randomized controlled trial. Notwithstanding a large drop-out rate experienced throughout the experiment, GoEco! was observed to produce a statistically significant impact (a decrease in CO 2 emissions and energy consumption per kilometer) for systematic routes in highly car-dependent urban areas, such as the Canton Ticino. In Zurich, instead, where high quality public transport is already available, no statistically significant effects were found. In this paper we present the GoEco! experiment and discuss its results and the lessons learnt, highlighting practical difficulties in performing randomized controlled trials in the field of mobility and providing recommendations for future research.

Evaluating a Mobility Service Application for Business Travel: Lessons Learnt from a Demonstration Project

“…The share of MSA users (18% of the respondents making business trips) is in line with the theory of diffusion of innovation estimating the segments of innovators and early adopters to 20% [59], indicating a bias in the analysed sample towards these groups. The problems with attrition and self-selection bias in app-based intervention research have been raised in another paper of this issue [60]. As put forward by these authors, it is challenging to retain participant's interest over time, especially for app-based interventions that suffer from higher dropout rates than other interventions due to a gradual loss of interest in new applications.…”

“…. " [60]. The participants in this study were recruited from organisations, which is usually an advantage considering that management can encourage participation and thus increase both the number of participants and the heterogeneity of these.…”

Trains in the Land of the Car: A Case Study of Mobility as Agency in the United States

“…To achieve sustainable travel, research and policies tend to focus on hard and soft approaches. Hard approaches emphasize structural and regulatory interventions, such as developing or improving public transport, creating bicycle infrastructure, introducing road-pricing initiatives, or providing monetary incentives (see for example [6][7][8][9]). These strategies aim to nudge people toward more sustainable mobility practices, which in turn are aimed at reducing car use [10].…”

“…These strategies aim to nudge people toward more sustainable mobility practices, which in turn are aimed at reducing car use [10]. Soft approaches consist of cognitive-motivational interventions that target affect, beliefs, and attitudes to encourage adoption of sustainable behaviors [9,[11][12][13]. Self-efficacy-the belief that individuals are able to execute behaviors that lead to desired outcomes-is a significant predictor of behavioral change [10].…”

“…In line with the soft approach, interventions often focus on reinforcing beliefs aligned with sustainable travel via group discussions, role-play, and information campaigns [14][15][16]. In recent years, many innovative projects have capitalized on evolving sustainability values, national or local policy frameworks that prioritize environmental concerns, or high-density cities with established or expanding public transport infrastructure to implement more sustainable travel (see for example [9,10,14,17]). However, what happens in contexts where the relevant values, policies, or infrastructure associated with sustainable travel are absent or have been superseded?…”