RECOGNITION OF SUSTAINABLE MOBILITY AS BASIS FOR THE TRANSITION INTO A DIGITIAL GAMING CONCEPT FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

Mobility behaviour is often shaped through social habituation in childhood and adolescence. Persons who are accustomed to use sustainable transport modes will stick to their manner later on in life too. Since children and young adults undergo drastic physical and mental developmental steps in a short period of time, awareness raising campaigns must exactly match with different age groups and their current mobility behavior. Against this background of behavioral development of children, the research project BewusstMobil developed a concept for a smartphone application which automatically collects individual travel behaviour patterns, quantifies current environmental-friendly and health promoting behaviour and acts as platform for a game which young people can play online. The basic idea is that children and young people aged 12 to 18 years collect points by their current mobility behavior and chosen transport mode. Depending on how they travel (bus, tram, walking, etc.) and how environmental-friendly or healthy this mode of transport is, they collect more or less points i.e. for example if a person walks or travels by train, he/she gets more points as if traveling by car. Recognition of trip data (start and end points, mileage, time used, transport mode) is activated after the start of the application in the background and as soon as the person moves. Data are assessed by using GPS positioning and movement data such as speed and acceleration. In most cases, indicators for sustainable mobility are available on a very general level and rather aimed at assessing infrastructure projects. However, in this application, individual mobility and the benefit for the young transport user has to be evaluated. Thus, indicators known from research and practice are selected and transferred to an individual level. This includes pollutants and GHG-emissions (ecological impacts), costs (economic impacts), travel time and health benefits (social aspects). Depending on the selected transport mode, quantities are calculated for each indicator. The factors included in the calculation are the trip length [km] and the trip duration [min], which are determined through GPS tracking. The normalization is done by monetization, mainly based on recommendations for a cost-benefit analysis, i.e. different dimensions [g / veh-km, min, €] are converted to costs by using market prices (or "shadow prices"). These values are weighted according to their importance in order to ensure the assessment of environmentally friendliness and health promotion of individual mobility of children and adolescents. These parameters form the basis for the games' scoring system. Points earned due to individual mobility behavior, can be traded in for proceeding on virtual routes of different modes on a map of Austria in the smartphone application, in order to reach virtual locations where the player can win goodies (promotional gifts, shopping vouchers, concert tickets, etc.). As several players try to reach these locations simultaneously, and the number of goodies at each location is limited the game creates motivation for playing and competing among participants. The application was tested in three different schools in the Province of Lower Austria covering pupils aged 13 to 18. A clear knowledge of the environmental impact of the transport system was identified prior to the test phase, but this knowledge hardly influences the choice of transport mode currently. However, a change in behavior had been reported during the gaming. Since this is not due to the transfer of (new) knowledge, it can be assumed that this shift was primarily caused by the game design and the information contained in the game mechanics that were incorporated resulting in a change of behavior. Generally, data collection as well as the overall concept and usage were clear for all users. However, younger people; age 13 years seems to lose interest faster than the other age classes. In particular, the interests concerning the competition were more relevant to higher classes, but at the same time the willingness to cheat increased. Thus, the full technical functionality was mentioned as requirement for further use of the application. Particularly, mode detection and tracking of individual trips have to ensure high accuracy and thus a fair scoring, since the desire for fair playing conditions was at the top in all age groups. From a scientific point of view, the application offers the opportunity to learn more about mobility behavior of young people and to use the digital world to raise the awareness and to influence user’s mode choice in a positive way. The presentation will give an overview of the data collection, the scoring system quantifying sustainable mobility behavior and illustrate the game concept based on the automatic recognition of individual trip data. Moreover, results of the before and after attitudinal and mobility surveys will demonstrate current mobility behavior, the perception of the application and the influence on the individual mobility behavior of young people based on current data.