Smartphone-based Travel Surveys: A Review

Abstract

Interest continues to grow in the use of smartphones for travel survey purposes. Their locational and interactive potential combined with their ubiquity and pragmatism as something people are likely to keep with them and charged, makes them particularly appealing. However, several challenges remain, particularly around battery life, user acceptance as an instrument for tracking mobility and a fundamental lack of concordance on how travel survey apps should be designed. The current paper provides a review of smartphone-based travel survey apps focusing on issues around functionality, participant burden, processing requirements, data quality and costs. We identify a typology of smartphone apps, that all passively collect route information but vary in the level of automation and user interaction required. All of the apps reviewed report reasonable levels of participant satisfaction irrespective of the levels of automation and user-app interaction required. However, the accuracy with which information is accurately inferred appears to vary markedly, largely a function of the quality of data collected, which in turn is heavily influenced by the make/model of phone, and the processing algorithms employed. One common issue is battery drain, which continues to be an issue for both highly automated apps and those requiring significant user interaction. Looking forward, while the intuitive appeal of smartphones will continue to grow, we argue that developments have been constrained by attempts to integrate existing survey approaches within a smartphone environment. More attention needs to be given to the design of apps that engage users to start and finish the survey, focusing on ‘smart’ use of the sensors and processing routines to minimise battery consumption and on providing additional benefits for users.