Understanding the potential policy transfer of gamification schemes for behaviour change in public transport and road safety

Abstract

There is a long history in transport of implementing travel demand management (TDM) to manage users' behaviour. Recently, gamified interventions have been proposed as a better way to incentivise users to participate in TDM interventions. The concept of gamified design uses game design elements in non-game contexts. However, transport is complex and diverse and it is not clear whether gamified design is transferable between different transport applications such as increasing public transport use and improving road safety. The research question of this study is to investigate policy transfer effects of different gamified design applications. In order to explore this research question, this study designed two stated preference surveys with the same gamified design concepts but applied in two fields, including public transport with the aim to relieve congestion and for young drivers with the aim to improve road safety. Both surveys are held in Queensland, Australia. A multinomial logit modelling approach was used for both case studies. The marginal effect results were cross compared to draw out policy implications and potential policy transfer effects. The paper concludes that some users' attitudes and perceptions are transferrable, and gamified schemes are not particularly favoured. In particular, it is clear that irrespective of transport field, the design of a scheme for vehicle users must understand participants’ intentions and that this is more important than capturing their beliefs.