GoEco! in Zurich
GoEco! seeks to overcome traditional awareness-raising approaches and, by taking advantage of the wide acceptance of smartphones and tablets, proposes an innovative, community-based approach, directly addressing citizens and their everyday mobility choices.
Problem
High usage of private transport modes over sustainable ones, such as bicycles, walking or public transport.
Description
The project, through the use of the app and the concept of gamification, stimulates the user to assume a sustainable mobility behaviour. The app allows to track the movements and calculate the kilometres travelled and the CO2 saved by walking, by bike or using public transport rewarding virtually the users.
GoEco! seeks to overcome traditional awareness-raising approaches and, by taking advantage of the wide acceptance of smartphones and tablets, proposes an innovative, community-based approach, directly addressing citizens and their everyday mobility choices.
The main objective of GoEco! is to investigate if and how information feedback and social interactions (social comparison and peer pressure) can be effective in fostering changes in personal mobility behavior.
Results
Comparing the data collected between the first and the last monitoring period, GoEco! was able to produce change in individual mobility patterns, reducing both the average energy consumption and the average CO2 emissions per kilometre. However, such a change is only recorded for the following set of travels:
- for “systematic” routes, namely those regularly and frequently carried out;
- and in Ticino: in Zurich we observe a certain increase in walking and use of the bicycle, but statistical analyses show that this could depend on the particular sample of GoEco! active participants, therefore we cannot generalize.
The explanation for these results seems quite straightforward. In Zürich use of public transportation is already very common: cars are only used when no other options are really available, and this is why bringing about a change is more difficult. Furthermore, in general it is easier to change habits on paths that we frequently travel, on whom we know we can produce a benefit that is repeated over time.
Lessons Learned
Eco-feedback information and social interaction (social comparison and peer pressure) can be effective triggers to foster changes in personal mobility behaviour, to facilitate the long-term challenge to reduce private motorized transport and to promote a transition to more energy efficient mobility options, such as vehicle-sharing, intermodal use of means of transport, public transportation and slow mobility.
