SUNSET

We aim for reduced congestion, reduced air pollution or improved safety by stimulating people to change their travelling behaviour.

Problem

Congestion, accidents and pollution.

Description

SUNSET develops and evaluates a set of innovative services that use Smartphone technology, social networks and incentives to encourage people to travel more sustainably in urban environments. The project’s objective is to increase personal mobility and at the same time reduce congestion, increase safety, and protect the environment.

The SUNSET approach to target system level problems caused by the increase of urban mobility is to improve the mobility behaviour of individuals. By assessing mobility behaviour on an individual level, personalized directions can be derived and used to motivate and incentivise citizens to make their contribution to improve urban mobility for all. With a fast increasing percentage of people carrying a Smartphone in their pockets, a promising way to implement this strategy is to provide a mobile App that records personal-level mobility patterns while people are on the move and gives incentives for mobility improvements.

The main technological result is the design and implementation of the tripzoom software system that provides functionality to end-users (travellers) to become aware of their mobility behaviour and get stimulated to travel more sustainable and to professionals that want to stimulate more sustainable travel (road authorities and city
governments).

 

Results

Experiments showed in general:

  • providing users with information has the potential to change
    behaviour;
  • users need time to respond to the challenge set in the
    experiments;
  • the level of the rewards does not seem to affect the users too
    much;
  • users agree challenges and rewards have the potential to change
    behaviour;

 

For behavioural change with a focus on challenges:

  • challenges to shift the departure times show that the morning peak can be reduced by challenging participants to travel either before or after the peak hour. Although car drivers don’t show a large response, the behavioural change is enough to reduce the number of departures in the peak moments by 3%;
  • shifting users to other travel modes proved successful in switching from public transport to the bike in Gothenburg. It proved to be difficult to motivate car drivers to use public transport;
  • In terms of using the social networks concepts users are most interested in information useful for themselves and less interested in providing others with their experiences and sharing info.

Lessons Learned

  • In order to capture the base case of travel behaviour, asking participants to install the Tripzoom app and use it for two weeks was not the most effective approach.
  • Only strongly tailored incentives leveraging on the personal preferences and context of the traveller can effectively influence individual and group-based travel behaviour in a sustainable way.
  • Apps/services should be more tailored towards specific stakeholders associated target groups seamlessly integrated with lifestyle-compliant look, feel and preferences.
  • Users seem to be interested in using social networks in transport mainly for receiving information concerning their personal trips rather than providing information to the community.