An impact assessment of a travel behavior change program: A case study of a light rail service in Cagliari, Italy

The influence of positive interventions on cycling

“…However, so far only (Usui, Miwa, Yamamoto, & Morikawa, 2008) used smartphone apps to study the effects of positive incentives on cycling in a field study. Similar studies that did not focus on cycling have proven that interventions through mobile technologies can successfully stimulate sustainable travel behaviour (e.g., (Ben-Elia & Ettema, 2011a), (Hu et al, 2015), (Sanjust et al, 2014), (Zhu et al, 2015)). ).…”

“…(e.g. Brög et al 2009;Sanjust et al 2014, Lachapelle, 2013. These positive incentive projects show the potential to nudge behaviour change.…”

“…For example, recent travel apps suggests monetary and in-kind rewards are both effective on peak hour avoidance, but some VBTC projects (e.g. Brög et al 2009;Sanjust et al 2014, Lachapelle, 2013, Ampt, 2004 suggest in-kind reward or praise are more effective. Moreover, gamification of task performance with leaderboards shows a promising avenue to increase employee task performance, for example, competition tasks or cooperation tasks (Landers, Bauer, & Callan, 2015).…”

“…Moreover, most VTBC studies did not involve new ICT technology, and only a few studies with ICT service-based interventions (e.g. Bie et al, 2012;Sanjust, Meloni, & Spissu, 2014;Gabrielli et al, 2014), generally faced the issues with the low recruitment and short running issues, due to the credibility of the app or marketing strategies. This thesis had the opportunity to cooperate with multiple stakeholders using a smartphone application with broad recruitment in the long run.…”

“…Control groups can be used to determine the external effects. In this type of experiment, the use of control groups is however quite hard (only one study has 23 participants in a control group (Sanjust et al, 2014),), because there is little incentive for people to participate; i.e., there is a burden of using the app, but no benefits in the form of positive incentives such as rewards.…”