Unlocking the Potential of Digital, Situation-Aware Nudging for Promoting Sustainable Mobility

The DyMoN consortium have published an article describing a framework for triggering situation-aware nudges that can motivate people to use sustainable modes of transport, which is facilitated by geographic information systems (GIS). The context ultimately decides on mobility options and thus shapes mobility behaviour.

Nudges are an increasingly used strategy for promoting sustainable modes of everyday mobility. However, in most cases, the design of nudges and the triggers for issuing these interventions neglect the user’s specific context and are thus less relevant to the recipient. Digital nudges communicated through mobile devices offer situation awareness, which is facilitated by GIS. Using the geographic reference as the “primary key” allows for connecting the current location information of recipients with static and real-time environmental data that define the contextual situation.

The Dynamic Mobility Nudge project (DyMoN) describes a framework for triggering situation-aware nudges and provides a functional proof-of-concept. Through linking concepts from behavioural economics and psychology with methods from GIS science and Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI), new opportunities for promoting sustainable mobility are illuminated.

Promoting sustainable mobility is imperative in tackling the negative effects of motorised individual transport. However, in doing so, concerted efforts at the systemic level need to be implemented. Gössling clusters the broad range of interventions for car reduction into three classes, namely:

1. The provision of good alternatives
2. Comprehensive investments into adequate infrastructure
3. Communication strategies that frame reduced car use positively.

Whereas the former two classes are widely anticipated in policies, the latter remains often neglected. Although mounting evidence disproves the applicability of economic arguments (rational choices based on complete knowledge) in explaining and adapting mobility behaviour, research on how sustainable mobility can be popularised through behavioural interventions remains comparably scarce. Likewise, the number of implemented policies and successful campaigns is limited—although there is strong interest from urban sustainability strategists and mobility planners.

In this paper, they focus on nudging, which is an increasingly relevant option for inducing mobility behaviour change. They are keen to understand how digital nudges can be implemented smartly to promote sustainable mobility practices so that the immediate context (the situation) of the recipient of a digital nudge is considered. They link domains engaged in mobility behaviour change and provide a comprehensive framework that facilitates a data-driven, GIS-based approach for delivering situation-aware nudges to clients.

The presented approach is adaptable and transferable and can thus be implemented and employed for any behaviour-oriented sustainable mobility promotion.

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