1,709 research outputs found
Promoting Sustainable Mobility: To What Extent Is “Health” Considered by Mobility App Studies? A Review and a Conceptual Framework
Promoting cycling and walking in cities improves individual health and wellbeing and, together with public transport, promotes societal sustainability patterns. Recently, smartphone apps informing and motivating sustainable mobility usage have increased. Current research has applied and investigated these apps; however, none have specifically considered mobility-related health components within mobility apps. The aim of this study is to examine the (potential) role of health-related information provided in mobility apps to influence mobility behavior. Following a systematic literature review of empirical studies applying mobility apps, this paper (1) investigates the studies and mobility apps regarding communicated information, strategies, and effects on mobility behavior and (2) explores how, and to what extent, health and its components are addressed. The reviewed studies focus on environmental information, especially CO2-emissions. Health is represented by physical activity or calories burned. The self-exposure to air pollution, noise, heat, traffic injuries or green spaces is rarely addressed. We propose a conceptual framework based on protection motivation theory to include health in mobility apps for sustainable mobility behavior change. Addressing people’s self-protective motivation could empower mobility app users. It might be a possible trigger for behavior change, leading towards healthy and sustainable mobility and thus, have individual and societal benefits.Peer Reviewe
Combined Digital Nudging to Leverage Public Transportation Use
The urgency of global climate change is becoming increasingly evident, but current mobility patterns in developed countries continue to cause severe environmental damage. Therefore, developed countries need to change their mobility patterns fundamentally, such as modal changes to public transportation instead of private car use. Digital nudging in IT-enabled mobility applications is a novel and promising way to influence modal changes to public transportation. In this study, we conduct an online experiment with 183 participants in which they are being nudged toward public transportation trip options. Our results show that combining two different digital nudges significantly affects the choice of public transportation options. By contrast, single nudges do not lead to significant changes in the choice of public transportation trips. With our findings, we contribute to the research stream of digital nudging and the transportation literature and provide insights for practice to address the adverse effects of current mobility patterns
An investigation of the motivators and barriers of smartphone app incentives for encouraging cycling
Effectiveness of incentives offered by mobile phone app to encourage cycling: A long‐term study
Reduction of car use is one of the most effective ways to tackle congestion-related problems. Using positive incentives to stimulate bicycle use is one possibility to reduce car use. Cycling is a sustainable transport mode that uses little space and is healthy. There is evidence that positive incentives may be more effective than punishing travellers for undesirable behaviour, and the emergence of mobile applications for delivering interventions has opened up new opportunities for influencing travellers. So far, few studies have focused on exploring the effectiveness of positive incentives on long-term behavioural change. We used the SMART app to deliver positive incentives to more than 6000 travellers in the Dutch region of Twente. The app automatically tracks users and provides incentives such as challenges with rewards, feedback, and messages. This study covers the period from March 2017 to June 2018, in which more than 1000 SMART users participated in monthly challenges. We evaluated the effects of the challenges and rewards and found that the challenges did encourage cycling and reduced car use in the short term. There is also some evidence for behavioural change over a longer time period
An End-to-End Solution for Enabling Urban Cyclability: The Bike2Work Experience
Mobility plays a fundamental role in modern cities. How citizens experience
the city, access its core services, and participate in city life, strongly
depends on its mobility organization and efficiency. The challenges that
municipalities face are very ambitious: on the one hand, administrators must
guarantee their citizens the right to mobility and to easily access local
services; on the other hand, they need to minimize the economic, social, and
environmental costs of the mobility system. Municipalities are increasingly
facing problems of traffic congestion, road safety, energy dependency and air
pollution, and therefore encouraging a shift towards sustainable mobility
habits based on active mobility is of central importance. Active modes, such as
cycling, should be particularly encouraged, especially for local recurrent
journeys (i.e., home-to-school, home-to-work). In this context, addressing and
mitigating commuter-generated traffic requires engaging public and private
stakeholders through innovative and collaborative approaches that focus not
only on supply (e.g., roads and vehicles) but also on transportation demand
management. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end solution for enabling urban
cyclability. It supports the companies' Mobility Managers (MMs) acting on the
promotion of active mobility for home-to-work commuting, helps the city
administrators to understand the needed urban planning interventions, and
motivates the citizens to sustainable mobility. To evaluate the effectiveness
of the proposed solution we developed two analyses: the first to accurately
analyze the user experience and any behaviour change related to the BIKE2WORK
initiative, and the second to demonstrate how exploiting the collected data we
can inform and possible guide the involved municipality (i.e., Ferrara, a city
in Northern Italy) in improving the urban cyclability.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figure
Open Innovation, Soft Branding and Green Influencers: Critiquing 'Fast Fashion' and 'Overtourism'
This paper explores digital reality replication for cultural consumption and green-digital open-system innovation, along with responsible, sustainable practices fashioned in a post-COVID-19 era. We address these after the dystopian effects of lockdown on global tourism and, in particular, the looming crisis of unsustainable 'overtourism'. The aim of this paper is to disclose problems and policies related to moderating consumption to more sustainable levels. The scope of the article tackles three fields: urban re-branding, fast fashion, and overtourism. Each problem area is analysed against the background of digital surveillance in the attention economy with the aid of a conceptual model. Accordingly, the principal objectives of this paper are to analyse key sustainability problem sources, evolutionary processes, and policy responses. The paper's originality and value lie in its recognition of tractable problem engagement through conceptual and practicable methods. This contribution also explores other consumption modes that tourists appreciate, namely, retail activity and its unsustainable "fast fashion" obsession. Finally, the paper analyses urban soft branding, the third tourism attractor within the niche touristic activity of the creative-cultural and gastronomic kind, which also features impulses that affect the perpetuation of unsustainable touristic practices. Thus, this contribution also assesses various studies on tourism futures that exploit digital media to assist in conserving both natural and cultural environments. Accordingly, we first narrate the soft re-branding of an "Art City" as a "Fashion City" and consider the example of green-digital innovation in the cultural milieu of Florence, Italy, in light of criticism of the unsustainability of "fast fashion". We consider which actions are envisioned or advised in the similarly "over-touristed" city of Venice. In a different vein, we consider whether the mobilisation of 'pop celebrity' performers such as audience engagers or influencers works for sustainable intervention through an assessment of the cultural interventions of Madonna in Lisbon. Finally, we anatomise "green" politics and policies for creative-cultural cities with the support of digital media to influence sustainable actions to moderate or, alternatively, revitalise polluted, congested, or otherwise over-touristed city centres. The greening of central Paris, Barcelona, Milan, and London offer a a series of examples of this type of moderation and revitalisation. Keywords: digital reproduction; open innovation; lockdown; overtourism; soft branding; influencer
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