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Incentivizing Commuter Cycling by Financial and Non-Financial Rewards

Current mobility patterns over-rely on transport modes that do not benefit sustainable and healthy lifestyles. To explore the potential for active mobility, we conducted a randomized experiment aimed at increasing regular commuter cycling in cities. In designing the experiment, we teamed up with dev...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Máca, Vojtěch, Ščasný, Milan, Zvěřinová, Iva, Jakob, Michal, Hrnčíř, Jan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7503873/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32825070
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17176033
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author Máca, Vojtěch
Ščasný, Milan
Zvěřinová, Iva
Jakob, Michal
Hrnčíř, Jan
author_facet Máca, Vojtěch
Ščasný, Milan
Zvěřinová, Iva
Jakob, Michal
Hrnčíř, Jan
author_sort Máca, Vojtěch
collection PubMed
description Current mobility patterns over-rely on transport modes that do not benefit sustainable and healthy lifestyles. To explore the potential for active mobility, we conducted a randomized experiment aimed at increasing regular commuter cycling in cities. In designing the experiment, we teamed up with developers of the “Cyclers” smartphone app to improve the effectiveness of the app by evaluating financial and non-financial motivational features. Participants in the experiment were recruited among new users of the app, and were randomly assigned to one of four different motivational treatments (smart gamification, two variants of a financial reward, and a combination of smart gamification and a financial reward) or a control group (no specific motivation). Our analysis suggests that people can be effectively motivated to engage in more frequent commuter cycling with incentives via a smartphone app. Offering small financial rewards seems to be more effective than smart gamification. A combination of both motivational treatments—smart gamification and financial rewards—may work the same or slightly better than financial rewards alone. We demonstrate that small financial rewards embedded in smartphone apps such as “Cyclers” can be effective in nudging people to commute by bike more often.
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spelling pubmed-75038732020-09-27 Incentivizing Commuter Cycling by Financial and Non-Financial Rewards Máca, Vojtěch Ščasný, Milan Zvěřinová, Iva Jakob, Michal Hrnčíř, Jan Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Current mobility patterns over-rely on transport modes that do not benefit sustainable and healthy lifestyles. To explore the potential for active mobility, we conducted a randomized experiment aimed at increasing regular commuter cycling in cities. In designing the experiment, we teamed up with developers of the “Cyclers” smartphone app to improve the effectiveness of the app by evaluating financial and non-financial motivational features. Participants in the experiment were recruited among new users of the app, and were randomly assigned to one of four different motivational treatments (smart gamification, two variants of a financial reward, and a combination of smart gamification and a financial reward) or a control group (no specific motivation). Our analysis suggests that people can be effectively motivated to engage in more frequent commuter cycling with incentives via a smartphone app. Offering small financial rewards seems to be more effective than smart gamification. A combination of both motivational treatments—smart gamification and financial rewards—may work the same or slightly better than financial rewards alone. We demonstrate that small financial rewards embedded in smartphone apps such as “Cyclers” can be effective in nudging people to commute by bike more often. MDPI 2020-08-19 2020-09 /pmc/articles/PMC7503873/ /pubmed/32825070 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17176033 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Máca, Vojtěch
Ščasný, Milan
Zvěřinová, Iva
Jakob, Michal
Hrnčíř, Jan
Incentivizing Commuter Cycling by Financial and Non-Financial Rewards
title Incentivizing Commuter Cycling by Financial and Non-Financial Rewards
title_full Incentivizing Commuter Cycling by Financial and Non-Financial Rewards
title_fullStr Incentivizing Commuter Cycling by Financial and Non-Financial Rewards
title_full_unstemmed Incentivizing Commuter Cycling by Financial and Non-Financial Rewards
title_short Incentivizing Commuter Cycling by Financial and Non-Financial Rewards
title_sort incentivizing commuter cycling by financial and non-financial rewards
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7503873/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32825070
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17176033
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