Nudging travellers towards greener modes of transport

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Abstract

The increasing contribution of transportation to global carbon emissions requires thinking beyond the traditional travel demand management measures to ensure transport sustainability. The effectiveness of “soft” psychological interventions, commonly known as NUDGE mechanisms, in different fields make them a potentially effective measure. However, implementing and testing NUDGE mechanisms in the real-world transport landscape is difficult and expensive. To address these issues, this study uses virtual reality (VR) experiments to test the effectiveness of complex NUDGE interventions in realistic travel scenarios within controlled environments. The NUDGE strategies include providing explicit information of the carbon impact of using a taxi in three ways: pre-travel (as carbon tax), enroute (by means of information-board and dynamic carbon meter) and post-trip (receipts with relevant information). Advanced discrete choice models accounting for learning effects were used to analyse the data. Results show that NUDGE can effectively encourage participants to shift from using taxis to buses, with a potentially lasting effect.

The Speaker

Yu Wang is a Research Assistant at the Institute for Transport Studies, in the University of Leeds. His research focuses on sustainable urban transportation and transportation decarbonization, using experimental economics. His work investigates travellers’ behavioural mechanisms in responding to transport policies using data-driven methods, while contributing to innovative policy design. He is now working on leveraging emerging data sources for travel behaviour modelling and innovative carbon reduction approaches.