Fürstenfeldbruck, a Samba pilot

Information and rewarding initative can be an important tool when convincing users to abandon their cars and choose more sustainable mobility behaviour.

Problem

The share of private cars in Fürstenfeldbruck is high when compared to the average of the MVV Region, which is around 58%. The total percentage of trips being made with sustainable modes of transport such as public transport (11%), biking (16%), and walking (20%) lies at around 47% in this county. The remaining 53% of the trips are made with private cars, either as drivers (41%) or as passengers (12%).

Description

First, a preliminary analyses was conducted to understand to what policy users would respond better, and what would work more effectively in future mobility behaviour change measures. Mainly two initiatives contribute to the achievements of the objectives:

• creation and diffusion of mobility information packets;
• rewarding of people for their sustainable mobility behaviour tracked through the MUV app.

Stakeholders have been engaged in discussions regarding the topic of behaviour change through several workshops and meetings. The main focus of the policies is not on classic financial rewards but rather on providing information as an incentive and having financial incentives and rewards as a supplementing motivation. The financial rewards used have to be financed either by the public administration or stem from cooperation with local businesses. For the co-creation of rewarding schemes, the opportunity of the workshop was used.

The rewarding policies that will be used for the mobility package and the mobility App will be different. For the mobility App, both digital and financial rewards were used as mentioned in the results section of the report. On the other hand, the financial rewards that will be a part of the Mobility package will be free trial tickets or subscriptions, which will be sponsored by either MVV or the counties. The effectiveness of these different rewards will be monitored and analysed in this project with the help of surveys and data analysis from the App.

Lessons Learned

One of the most important lessons learnt from this project activity is that, contrary to the popular belief that one needs financial incentives to bring about a behaviour change, information can prove to be quite an effective tool for behaviour change when provided at the right time, in the right form and to the right people.

However, this does not mean that large-scale change can be brought about without any financial incentives. As mentioned in the results section, financial incentives should be paired with complementary incentives such as digital rewards and ‘praise’ for helping the environment to bring about the best results.