Improving Sustainable Mobility through Modal Rewarding: The GOOD_GO Smart Platform

Private car mobility registers today a h igh accident rate and around 70% of the overall CO2 emissions from transport were generated by road mode split (European Commission, 2016). Moreover, in urban areas they occur 38% of the overall fatalities from road transport, and 23% of the overall CO2 emissions (European Commission, 2013). As a result, a modal shift of at least a part of passenger transport in urban areas, from private car to sustainable transport systems is desirable. This research aims to promote sustainable mobility through two mutually reinforcing "main actions": firstly, there is a r ewarding Open-Source platform, named as GOOD_GO; secondly, there is the SW/HW system connecting to the wide world of private and/or shared bicycles. Through the GOOD_GO platform Web portal and App, a user enters a so called 'social rewarding game' thought to incentive sustainable mobility habits, and gets access to the second item consisting of a system to disincentive bike-theft and based on the passive RFID technology. The low-cost deterrent bike-theft and bike monitoring/tracking system is functional to bring a big number of citizens inside the rewarding game. In 2018, a pilot test has implemented in the city of Livorno (Tuscany, It), and it involved around 1,000 citizens. Results were quite encouraging and today, the cities of Livorno, Pisa and Bolzano will enlarge the incentive system both to home-to-school and home-to-work mobility. The Good_Go platform is an actual M-a-a-S (Mobility-as-a-Service) application, and it becoming a Mobility Management decision system support, jointly with the opportunity of organizing more incentive tenders and rewarding systems types

Sharing Economy – a Modern Phenomenon: The Emergence of Electric Scooters

Sharing economy has rapidly come into today’s society. Although the concept of sharing is not new per se, the modern form of the sharing economy has only recently emerged. The main idea in the sharing economy is buying an access to use resources instead of owning them—it enables a more efficient use of the existing resources. Sharing economy has two primary business models: peer-to-peer and business-to-peer. As known services, such as Airbnb, are based on the former, the latter includes the popular shared mobility service, electric scooters. This form of mobility has been integrated in the landscape of major cities in Finland, initially in the capital Helsinki. Given that the electric scooters have been present in news outlets due to the injuries related to their use, and also the variety of public opinions for and against, it is a relevant topic to conduct research on. The main purpose of the research is both to explore the earlier literature and create an appropriate framework to reflect the empirical research upon but also to investigate who participates in the sharing economy by using the electric scooters and why. The methodological choice for the empirical research was to perform a qualitative study by interviewing eight people living in Helsinki to gain insight on their general perceptions of the sharing economy, and also to clarify what are the most common motives and deterrents for the use the of electric scooters. On a general level, the most relevant categories were given for both motives (economic, social, convenience, environmental) and deterrents (trust, efficacy, social, sustainability) in the general context of sharing economy. Consequently, the results of the interviews were mirrored to those categories. The empirical results indicate that the interviewees perceive the concept of the sharing economy similarly—the fundamental purpose is positive, and the goal to use resources more effectively is welcomed. More specifically, users of the electric scooters mostly value the following attributes: they are a good alternative to public transportation, they save time, they are convenient, and they are widely available. In addition, the most common motives and deterrents are aligned with the main categories as for the sharing economy in general. Subsequently, the most frequently mentioned categories for the motives were convenience and environmental, whereas the most frequently mentioned categories for deterrents were trust and sustainability

Achieving Digital Wellbeing Through Digital Self-Control Tools: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Public media and researchers in different areas have recently focused on perhaps unexpected problems that derive from an excessive and frequent use of technology, giving rise to a new kind of psychological "digital" wellbeing. Such a novel and pressing topic has fostered, both in the academia and in the industry, the emergence of a variety of digital self-control tools allowing users to self-regulate their technology use through interventions like timers and lock-out mechanisms. While these emerging technologies for behavior change hold great promise to support people's digital wellbeing, we still have a limited understanding of their real effectiveness, as well as of how to best design and evaluate them. Aiming to guide future research in this important domain, this article presents a systematic review and a meta-analysis of current work on tools for digital self-control. We surface motivations, strategies, design choices, and challenges that characterize the design, development, and evaluation of digital self-control tools. Furthermore, we estimate their overall effect size on reducing (unwanted) technology use through a meta-analysis. By discussing our findings, we provide insights on how to (i) overcome a limited perspective that exclusively focuses on technology overuse and self-monitoring tools, (ii) evaluate digital self-control tools through long-term studies and standardized measures, and (iii) bring ethics in the digital wellbeing discourse and deal with the business model of contemporary tech companies

Social Media And “Flash-Infringement”: Live Music Culture And Dying IP Protection

This article interrogates issues of music intellectual property rights infringement at live performances. I am especially interested in music infringement at live concerts and DJ-driven mash-up parties, and the use of technologies to transfer protected content by smartphone — or remote storage device — at or near the performance site. The covalent forces of social media, including the use of smartphone apps such as Meerkat and Periscope, and flash mob culture have created a perhaps unstoppable threat to copyright and other intellectual property rights — a phenomenon that I define in this article as “flash infringement.” In a flash infringement setting, it may be impossible to stop the infringement among thousands of partygoers or fans and their online followers

Outdoor Education and Mobile Learning: an Autobiographical Narrative Using Application-Based Information and Resources

Although mobile learning using smartphones and applications or apps have the potential to inform and educate individuals in an outdoor environment, users may find that connectivity issues and basic knowledge of outdoor environments, including both physical and emotional, could be limited by what this technology provided. This study provided my perspective as both participant and researcher on a journey over 150 miles on the Colorado Trail, using my iPhone as my primary tool for navigation and information for learning how to survive in an outdoor environment. From the beginning, the physical effects were difficult to overcome, but it was the psychological toll that became my greatest obstacle and the one element where mobile learning in the outdoor environment proved to have the greatest value. While this was one perspective, in a single study, by one participant, in which mobile learning in an outdoor environment took place, there were several themes that developed in regards to data connection, the use of fluid apps, the usefulness of static apps, and the restrictions of power in rural mountainous environments. These themes were emphasized to help future researchers further develop this information to help in the continued development of outdoor education using mobile learning

In the Living Room: Second Screens and TV Audiences

© The Author(s) 2015. This article is based on a small pilot project exploring the role, function, and meanings of second screens and companion apps for TV audiences that is contextualized by existing academic audience research. This is mapped alongside industry research and academic debate about second screens. The results illustrate some disjunction between industry expectations of usage and viewers' everyday experiences. I argue that industries' tendency to conflate "viewer" with "fan" indicates a less than nuanced understanding of the television/companion app audience. Further, the lean forward/lean back binary applied to digital media users and television audiences respectively points to a problematic not addressed in much industry literature, while the respondents for this research indicate a complex interplay between the pleasures of viewing that incorporates the social and the personal with the second screen and the TV text