Do We Choose What We Desire? – Persuading Citizens to Make Consistent and Sustainable Mobility Decisions

A dilemma in urban mobility with tremendous effects on citizens’ wellbeing is the unconscious antipode between their short- and long-term goals. People do not anticipate all consequences of their modal choices and thus make decisions that might be incoherent with their desires, e.g. taking their own car due to convenience but causing a congested city. Omnipresent Information Systems on smartphones provide the necessary information and coordination capabilities to support people for sustainable and individually coherent mobility decisions on a mass scale. Building upon extant work in travel behavior and social psychology, a framework is proposed to coordinate research efforts in the development of persuading measures for sustainable mobility decisions. This framework accounts for user heterogeneity, motivation and wellbeing as influential dimensions in the mobility decision process. Tied to social influence the derived measures contribute to a behavioral change in people’s mobility behavior leading to a higher wellbeing level in urban areas

The role of coordination costs in mode choice decisions: A case study of German cities

In times of accelerating urbanization and environmental pollution, mode choice decisions (MCD) are a critical parameter in a city’s appearance and its environmental impacts. Simultaneously, the emerging smartphone multimodal traveller information systems (SMTIS) simplifies the usage of multimodal trips and, therefore, enhance the options in MCD. Current MCD models, in addition to considering classic parameters like travel time and cost, also consider socioeconomic variables and latent variables, such as modal preferences or mode-specific characteristics. However, from the users’ perspective, one main influence is currently still not sufficiently considered in these models: Coordination costs for planning the trip, such as looking-up time tables for public transport. Consequently, we introduced this variable in a multinomial logit model and made a representative survey in Germany for measuring the coordination effort and evaluating our model. Our results support our hypothesis that coordination costs have a significant impact on MCD. We therefore conclude that further developments in information systems together with supporting policies may influence the MCD and, hence, lead to more sustainable cities in the future

Do We Choose What We Desire? -Persuading Citizens to Make Consistent and Sustainable Mobility Decisions

Abstract. A dilemma in urban mobility with tremendous effects on citizens' wellbeing is the unconscious antipode between their short-and long-term goals. People do not anticipate all consequences of their modal choices and thus make decisions that might be incoherent with their desires, e.g. taking their own car due to convenience but causing a congested city. Omnipresent Information Systems on smartphones provide the necessary information and coordination capabilities to support people for sustainable and individually coherent mobility decisions on a mass scale. Building upon extant work in travel behavior and social psychology, a framework is proposed to coordinate research efforts in the development of persuading measures for sustainable mobility decisions. This framework accounts for user heterogeneity, motivation and wellbeing as influential dimensions in the mobility decision process. Tied to social influence the derived measures contribute to a behavioral change in people's mobility behavior leading to a higher wellbeing level in urban areas