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The promotion of cycling is of great importance for fostering sustainable and healthy modes of transport in urban areas. For this reason, many cities around the world organize biking competitions in order to motivate citizens to commute by bike. The success of such campaigns appears to demonstrate the positive effects of using playful settings for...
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Sustainable urban mobility and traffic congestion are the key challenges in a smart city. Nevertheless, a sustainable mobility approach such as real-time ridesharing as a solution is likely to fail, if not integrated with actions aimed at increasing the awareness of citizens, encouragement through incentives and influencing their behavioral change....
The planning of sustainable urban mobility has recently become a top priority on the political agenda in Brazil. In 2012, Federal Government established the National Policy on Urban Mobility, determining that municipalities must prepare Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMP). In this context, the integration of land-use and transport is expected t...
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... For example, incentive programs can be implemented to reward employees who walk or cycle to work. Inter-departmental or inter-firm competitions about the number of steps taken or distance cycled in a month with prizes involved can be set up to encourage more active commuting (e.g., Millonig et al. 2016). ...
Commuting research often assumes that commuting is a daily grind that elicits stress and strain for travelers. Some scholars have identified evidence that supports the benefits of commuting, but research into this aspect is still relatively limited and does not make a strong connection with the body of works that view commuting as a stressor. This paper offers a more nuanced understanding of commuting by integrating these seemingly separate schools of thought. Drawing from the theoretical lens provided by the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory and research on rest and recovery, we develop and present the Pre-commute/In-commute/Post-commute (PIP) model of commuting, with six propositions. This model views each commute as unique and dynamically shaped by circumstances that occur both before and during the commute. Consequently, the events and experiences that take place after the commute are affected, influencing commuters’ state before their next commute, as well as having an enduring impact on individuals’ health and work-related outcomes. The PIP model also provides a fuller consideration of how individuals can shape the commuting experience through the In-Commute Activities (ICAs) they choose to do. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
... It may also foster social norms within the workplace of active and sustainable transport modes. There is evidence to suggest that incorporating workplace travel plans as part of the on-boarding process with an employer could assist individuals with reducing their reliance on motorised, single occupancy vehicle travel (Ahmed et al., 2020;Diniz et al., 2015;Millonig et al., 2016;Petrunoff et al., 2015). This may also produce a workplace environment where it is the social norm to use active travel. ...
... Studies on environmental awareness have shown that it is necessary to conduct longitudinal and quantitative studies to bring out the effects of the long-term interaction between users and the game system considering different cultural contexts Millonig et al., 2016), benefits and risks, as well as environmental attitudes (Cellina et al 2019a). Future studies will have to investigate the link between gamification and other means of transport and the impact of these mechanics, considering the challenges regarding ethics, safety and protection of autonomous vehicles (Maltese et al. 2021;Bucchiarone et al. 2021). ...
The chapter aims to understand the role of gamification in sustainable urban transitions. In several European countries, environmental issues and the consequent adverse effects on the planet have attracted policymakers, companies, consumers and academics (McKenzie in Comput Environ Urban Syst 79, 2020). Cities must transform into increasingly sustainable and intelligent smart cities, generating synergies between different sectors and companies and providing citizens with more efficient and easily usable products/services. In this regard, transport is a crucial service industry in the transition towards urban sustainability. This chapter will focus on the role of gamification in sustainable mobility and the urban transition process. The study adopted a systematic literature review approach to summarize existing knowledge on gamification in the transport field. The review synthesized 40 studies highlighting the bibliometric characteristics, the main gamification outputs’ and research gaps detecting potential implications and relevant insights for service literature. The research has evidenced how gamification can change consumer behavior by creating and increasing loyalty and engagement, raising awareness of environmental issues or developing an eco-friendly lifestyle. The study provides a systematic literature review investigating gamification's role in sustainable urban mobility. The findings present managerial implications and some insights for companies and policymakers into implementing gamification to pursue the sustainable urban transition.KeywordsGamificationSustainable mobilityUrban transitionSmart cities
... The authors state that these aspects hold a higher potential than rational factors like health or environment. In a field experiment similar to German CITY CYCLING campaign, the bike to work campaign led to an increase of cycling frequency of 15% of the participants [20]. Following the previous examples, we have to assume that cycling campaigns affect cycling behaviour at least in terms of cycling frequency. ...
... The influence of the campaign itself on mobility behaviour during the campaign period can be assessed as low in contrast to recent studies [18], [20], [43]. However, an interesting result of the survey is that a relevant share of campaign participants intend to use the bicycle more frequently for daily trips -even after the campaign period (although the frequency of use across the entire sample can already be considered high). ...
The CITY CYCLING (STADTRADELN) campaign has been running since 2008 to motivate German citizens to use the bicycle for daily mobility routines. In the course of the MOVEBIS research project, nationwide GPS data of the CITY CYCLING participants were collected in the years 2018-2020 and were processed for planning purposes. This contribution addresses the question to which extent the participants in the CITY CYCLING campaign represent cyclists in the Federal Republic of Germany and whether the motivation during the campaign leads to a significant change in mobility behaviour. For this purpose, more than 73,000 complete questionnaires of campaign participants from a survey in the year 2020 were evaluated. The age and gender distribution of app users and non-users of the campaign are corresponding to those of cyclists from representative household surveys in Germany (MiD 2017). App users and non app users differ only insignificantly from each other and are, on average, rather older than in the cycling participants of nationwide MiD survey. The results reveal that the smartphone has no significant influence on the cycling behaviour of the users. The survey participants are regular cyclists. Around 88% of the respondents use the bicycle most frequently in everyday life, followed by the private car (national average) and public transport (in large cities). The influence of the campaign on the level of utilisation or the number of kilometres travelled by bike can be described as rather low, overall. Whereas 65% of the participants stated that they cycled to work just as often as outside the campaign period, 19% of the respondents used the bicycle less often for commuting and 16% more often. The results indicate that the CITY CYCLING campaign captures and represents the everyday transport behaviour of participants. During the COVID-19 pandemic, participants used their bicycles significantly more often (73%). The perception of safety is consistently high. The campaign was rated very positively and the majority of users (91%) would participate again or rather recommend the campaign to others (78%).
... In addition to being beneficial for the employee, workplace-based cycling interventions may provide benefits to the employer, including increased productivity (36) and reduced absenteeism (37). Whilst a number of workplace cycling initiatives have been trialed, many have focused on single components, such as cycle reward schemes (37), salarysacrifice cycle purchase schemes (38), cycle challenges (39), or one-off cycle events (40). Few workplace initiatives have adopted an integrative approach, targeting both individual and social barriers to cycling over a consolidated period of time, which is likely to be necessary to maximize effectiveness given that most people report multiple barriers acting at different levels (41). ...
... Our key innovation was to use an evidence-based approach guided by the rigorous step-by-step 6SQuID intervention development framework (42), theoretical accounts of behavior change [the Behavior Change Wheel (44) and Self-Determination Theory (45)] and evidence-based behavior change techniques (46), and move beyond single-component workplace cycling interventions (36,39,40,53) to design a multi-component individual-/social-level intervention tailored to address the specific barriers to cycling for our target population (employees of a multi-national bank). These barriers were broadly similar to those observed in previous research, and included lack of cycling skills and confidence (27,28), lack of safety (31) and social support (33), perceptions of effort (30), and cost (32). ...
The Cycle Nation Project (CNP) aimed to develop, test the feasibility of and optimize a multi-component individual-/social-level workplace-based intervention to increase cycling among office staff at a multinational bank (HSBC UK). To do this, we first explored barriers to cycling in a nationally-representative survey of UK adults, then undertook focus groups with bank employees to understand any context-specific barriers and ways in which these might be overcome. These activities led to identification of 10 individual-level, two social-level, and five organizational-level modifiable factors, which were mapped to candidate intervention components previously identified in a scoping review of cycling initiatives. Interviews with HSBC UK managers then explored the practicality of implementing the candidate intervention components in bank offices. The resultant pilot CNP intervention included 32 core components across six intervention functions (education, persuasion, incentivisation, training, environmental restructuring, enablement). Participants received a loan bike for 12-weeks (or their own bike serviced), and a 9-week cycle training course (condensed to 6 weeks for those already confident in basic cycling skills), including interactive information sharing activities, behavior change techniques (e.g., weekly goal setting), bike maintenance training, practical off-road cycling skill games and on-road group rides. Sessions were delivered by trained bank staff members who were experienced cyclists. The CNP pilot intervention was delivered across three sites with 68 participants. It was completed in two sites (the third site was stopped due to COVID-19) and was feasible and acceptable to both women and men and across different ethnicities. In addition, the CNP intervention was successful (at least in the short term) in increasing cycling by 3 rides/week on average, and improving perceptions of safety, vitality, confidence, and motivation to cycle. Following minor modifications, the long-term effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the CNP intervention should be tested in a full-scale randomized controlled trial.
... Past applications have shown that it is effective towards increasing the users' engagement with the system and improving their loyalty to it [46]. Introducing a gamified, competitive environment between users leading to social dynamics was found to promote the use of bike-sharing for specific trip purposes such as commuting [47]. ...
... Contrary to "extrinsic" behaviour change motivation as provided, for example, in gamified fitness apps or vouchers for walking, intrinsic motivation frames a target behaviour as desirable in itself, so the "new" behaviour and the desired qualities allocated with it is the actual reward and no other incentives are needed (Vallerand 2007). Extrinsic motivators can be helpful to raise the awareness of alternative behaviour patterns and invite individuals to test a different routine, but if the intrinsic value of the alternative does not gain awareness during this test, the former behaviour will return as soon as the incentives stop or the excitement of the new wears off (Millonig et al., 2016). ...
Walking is widely promoted as a healthy and sustainable way to get around. Still, although the benefits of walking are undisputed, it is equally known that most people walk much less than they could and should do. This article explores this discrepancy from the angle of human behaviour change processes and applies a theoretically grounded systematics for identifying the most important barriers against walking. This is followed by a description of behaviour types and related behaviour change motives to inspire strategies and arguments to address different types of target groups. The proposed framework can support the selection of measures and strategies to increase walking in different environments and addressing specific social groups.
... Promoting healthy behaviors is a challenging task. It is widely acknowledged among researchers that simply educating people about the importance of health and what to do is not enough [15][16][17]. Without more personalized support, people often fail to translate their health goals and intentions to actions because of temptations, self-control challenges, and bad habits [18]. ...
... Over the past decade, many (digitized and gamified) corporate health programs have been successfully employed at worksites, for example, to improve dietary intake [41,42], advertise smoking cessation [43], promote cycling [17], and promote physical activity in general [44]. Two promising persuasive strategies that these studies reported on were applying social dynamics (i.e., motivating others or being motivated by others), and personalization (i.e., tailoring of the intervention to personal preferences). ...
... Two promising persuasive strategies that these studies reported on were applying social dynamics (i.e., motivating others or being motivated by others), and personalization (i.e., tailoring of the intervention to personal preferences). Millonig et al. [17] found that social dynamics had a very strong effect on participants, suggesting that emotional aspects (e.g., team spirit, and fun) have greater potential to encourage participants to adopt healthier routines than more rational strategies (e.g., warning participants that their current behavior yields negative health outcomes). Additionally, Oenema et al. [41] argued that the positive impact of their personalized, web-based intervention on dietary intake may be partly explained by the perceived personal relevance and individualization of the information. ...
Social gamification systems have shown potential for promoting healthy lifestyles, but applying them to occupational settings faces unique design challenges. While occupational settings offer natural communities for social interaction, fairness issues due to heterogeneous personal goals and privacy concerns increase the difficulty of designing engaging games. We explored a two-level game-design, where the first level related to achieving personal goals and the second level was a privacy-protected social competition to maximize goal compliance among colleagues. The solution was strengthened by employing occupational physicians who personalized users’ goals and coached them remotely. The design was evaluated in a 5-month study with 53 employees from a Dutch university. Results suggested that the application helped half of the participants to improve their lifestyles, and most appreciated the role of the physician in goal-setting. However, long-term user engagement was undermined by the scalability-motivated design choice of one-way communication between employees and their physician. Implications for social gamification design in occupational health are discussed.
... Cities are becoming ever more interested in deploying systems that serve as a better mobility alternative than privately owned cars. Shared mobility systems like Uber, Lyft, Bird, Lime, and multiple bicycle sharing companies are attracting users at unprecedented rates [19]. These systems can sometimes complement mass transit. ...
In the past years, mobility trends in cities around the world have been pushing for safer, greener, and more efficient transportation systems. This shift in mobility trends creates an opportunity for using mobile lightweight infrastructure, such as bicycles, as a generator of knowledge that will benefit commuters alongside the environmental and societal performance of cities. We propose a system architecture design for an open source mobile sensor fusion apace a platform with a knowledge abstraction framework that enables citizens, urban planners, researchers, and city officials to better address the complex issues that are innate to cities. The system is mounted on a commercial electric assist bike and is able to combine sensor input that describes the bicycle’s electro-mechanical, geospatial, and environmental states. The system proposes sensor flexibility and modularity as key characteristics, and the abstraction framework conceptualizes the way in which these characteristics can be best exploited for city improvement. We demonstrate the functionality of the system and framework through the creation of a use case implementation for clustering bike trip patterns using unsupervised learning clustering techniques. This platform outlines a way to migrate focus from providing solutions to asking the right questions in order to satisfy citizens’ needs.
... Our selected example is an extensive bicycling study that was designed and conducted over a period of six weeks during the Fall of 2015 in the Greater Boston area, Massachusetts, USA (Millonig et al. 2016). The study aimed at investigating ways to improve wellbeing in cities through a socially influencing system (Stibe 2015) that encouraged more people commuting to work by bicycle. ...
The term wellbeing is widely used in the field of persuasive technology, especially when helping people to achieve positive changes in their attitudes and behaviors. However, wellbeing as a concept is often poorly understood, thus making it difficult to evaluate the success of such technology-supported behavioral interventions. This is especially critical as the definition of persuasive technology is grounded in the benefits that individuals and society derive from its use. In this paper, we present a literature review of the wellbeing concept in the field of persuasive technology. We propose a working definition of wellbeing and its dimensions for further refinement. We provide an example of how persuasive technology design can integrate this understanding. It helps assessing wellbeing as a measurable construct, thus provides ways for proper evaluation of persuasive technology and its effects on people at various scales.
