Incentivizing Commuter Cycling by Financial and Non-Financial Rewards

Abstract

Current mobility patterns over-rely on transport modes that do not benefit sustainable and healthy lifestyles. To explore the potential for active mobility, we conducted a randomized experiment aimed at increasing regular commuter cycling in cities. In designing the experiment, we teamed up with developers of the “Cyclers” smartphone app to improve the effectiveness of the app by evaluating financial and non-financial motivational features. Participants in the experiment were recruited among new users of the app, and were randomly assigned to one of four different motivational treatments (smart gamification, two variants of a financial reward, and a combination of smart gamification and a financial reward) or a control group (no specific motivation). Our analysis suggests that people can be effectively motivated to engage in more frequent commuter cycling with incentives via a smartphone app. Offering small financial rewards seems to be more effective than smart gamification. A combination of both motivational treatments—smart gamification and financial rewards—may work the same or slightly better than financial rewards alone. We demonstrate that small financial rewards embedded in smartphone apps such as “Cyclers” can be effective in nudging people to commute by bike more often.

Comparing the Relative Importance of Predictors of Intention to Use Bicycles

“…The use of incentives to promote healthy behavior is not a novelty (see for a review, Mantzari et al, 2015 ). In the context of sustainable mobility, there is a broad literature on the use of incentives; indeed, various studies have explored their use in changing commute mode ( Barf et al, 1982 ; Bamberg, 2006 ; Thøgersen, 2009 ; Martin et al, 2012 ; Winters et al, 2017 ; de Krujif et al, 2018 ; Máca et al, 2020 ; Ciccone et al, 2021 ). The kind of incentives explored in the studies is various, such as monetary incentives to buy a bicycle, free use of e-bikes, vouchers, different forms of gifts, and monetary rewards through smartphone apps (see for a review, Mantzari et al, 2015 ).…”

“…Even if there are many studies on the topic, results about the effects of incentives in changing commute mode are not clear, as well as the relationship between incentives and other variables. For example, incentives seem to have an impact on the decision to travel by bike or other sustainable modes of travel ( de Krujif et al, 2018 ; Moser et al, 2018 ; Máca et al, 2020 ; Ciccone et al, 2021 ); however, it is not clear enough if the effect is long-lasting. Furthermore, is not clear the relationship between financial incentives and psychological factors.…”

Perspectives on adapting a mobile application for pain self-management in neurofibromatosis type 1: results of online focus group discussions with individuals living with neurofibromatosis type 1 and pain management experts

“…Consistent with the notion of contingency management,38 39 participants identified strategies involving points, levels, prizes or well-established reinforcement schedules to incentivise continued use. These findings suggest the importance of considering contingency management when developing an app to promote health behaviours 40 41…”

The effects of gift vouchers and environmental certificates on the demand for a collective DRT system

“…Although, the net effect of the project seems to be positive, it is unclear to what extent the increase in sustainable behavior can be attributed to the gifts or to the pure motivational effects. Further evidence shows that offering incentives via an app may increase the use of bicycle (de Kruijf et al 2018;Huang et al 2021;Máca et al 2020), public transport and walking (Tsirimpa et al 2019). We refer the reader to Hulkkonen et al (2020) for an overview on initiatives potentially influencing individual travel behavior.…”

“…In contrast to Bowden and Hellen (2019), we have two clear-cut treatments which differ in the incentives (vouchers vs. environmental certificates without equivalent) and reward customers if they achieve the same performance in each testing condition. We apply a quasi-experimental evaluation in comparison to self-disclosures (e.g., Bowden and Hellen 2019;de Kruijf et al 2018) or experimental evaluations without pre-treatment data (e.g., Máca et al 2020;Huang et al 2021). The framework for testing the effectiveness of gifts is particularly suitable here, as our experiment is conducted in the pilot phase of the bus, where customers could not form good or bad long-term experiences with the service.…”