‘Nudging’ travel behaviour change through the design of information systems…
- Erel Avineri, University of the West of England
Today’s travellers have a wealth of information at their disposal to help plan and execute their journeys. The availability of travel information to the public has
changed dramatically in recent years with the increasing use of the internet and mobile communications. Millions of portable satellite navigation systems are sold every year in the UK and Europe. The number of people using web-based journey planners to inform their journeys is increasing. The rapid technological developments in the field of Advanced Traveller Information Services (ATIS) demand a greater understanding of what part this technology is now playing in relation to travel behaviour, and how such systems can be designed to benefit both individuals and transport systems as a whole.It has been generally argued that when making choices between alternative transport options, travellers behave in a reasonably rational way, and can be approximated to act according to their interests, as long as they are provided with complete and accurate information on each of the alternatives – they try to minimise money and other costs, and maximise their utilities from the journeys they are making. Due to the size and complexity of the transport system, choosing between alternative routes, alternative modes of transport (car, bus, train, cycling, etc.) or the timing of their journeys is not always an easy task for travellers.
Providing travellers with reliable and updated information on travel options is therefore acknowledged as having the potential to improve travellers’ choices in ways that are beneficial for individuals and society. Stemming from its 1998 Transport White Paper, the Department for Transport has given, and continues to give, notable attention to traveller information systems as part of its approach to transport policy.
Individual travellers are commonly seen as rational human beings who, through choice making, maximise their utilities. However, insights and (theoretical) understandings from psychology and behavioural economics are now emerging through the literature to paint a more complex picture of decision-making processes. Empirical studies provide much evidence that in real life, the behaviour of travellers is typified by bounded rationality. Travellers’ limited cognitive resources have a strong effect on their use of information. Recent evidence showed that even when provided with explicit information on their travel choices, travellers turn out to interpret and value this information in a way that systematically violates the assumptions of rational behaviour. But it is not just the content of information that influences our choices. Inspired by the work of cognitive psychologists, researchers at UWE Bristol found that travellers are heavily influenced by context, ie. the manner in which travel information is being presented.
Thaler and Sunstein ( from the University of Chicago) argue in favour of the so-called Libertarian Paternalism approach, as a way to help people make the ‘right’ choices without restricting their freedom of choice. In their recent book (‘Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness’), they suggest the incorporation of small features in the environment to attract people’s attention and highlight the ‘right’ choices for them and alter their behaviour. The art and science of ‘nudges’ could inspire the further design of ATIS, to help travellers make better choices. The following are a few (out of many) examples that illustrate such nudges.
Defaults: a default is the option that individuals receive if they do not explicitly request something different. Defaults have strong influence on behaviour – and they tend to become a habit. Some journey planners provide travel information on more than one mode of transport. In the design of a journey planner, travellers could be provided by default with information about car transport, even if they are planning to use public transport – this default might increase the attractiveness of car transport.
On the other hand, setting public transport as the default mode could nudge people to consider this as the first option. No matter how defaults are set, it is important not to restrict the choices available for the traveller – making information on all alternatives available.
Framing and ‘loss aversion’: People tend to feel and behave differently when information about their choices is presented (or ‘framed’) as gains or losses. The following illustrates three possible ways of presenting the same information on two commuting choices.
Under the rational choice model, the format of the information should not matter. However, since people are more sensitive to losses, they might find the cycling option specifically attractive in the third alternative. This is a rather simple example of how the designers of travel information systems can help people to make more sustainable travel choices simply by choosing a specific format to present information about time (and other attributes) of the alternative choices.
Salience: A specific challenge ATIS designers are faced with is how to provide travellers with information on the environmental costs of their journeys. A growing number of travellers are already aware of, and have concerns about, the greenhouse emissions they generate. When informed about environmental impacts, they might make sustainable choices. However, many of the negative impacts of our travel choices are not salient. For example, it is difficult to the driver to easily imagine the air pollution and climate change caused by carbon emissions.
Carbon emissions are invisible to travellers; it is therefore difficult for them to associate their travel behaviour with environmental costs. Without feedback, a behavioural change is less likely. Providing drivers with daily information on their carbon emissions might make them ‘visible’, and could make it easier for them to do the right thing. Recent research reports on the effect of in-vehicle data recorders on drivers’ behaviour; this on-board technology collects and records information on the movement, control and performance of the vehicle. It was found that drivers, through the provision of daily feedback on their performance, tend to improve their safety behaviour. Using the same technology to provide drivers with environmental costs, against some targets or against previous performance, could provide them with a psychological incentive to change their behaviour.
The effectiveness of travel information systems may be enhanced if more consideration and emphasis is given to the design of the information context.
The libertarian paternalism approach is not offered as an alternative to other measures to influence travel choices. In some cases, synergy between the pricing and the soft intervention by nudges could be an effective policy. ‘Getting the prices right’ by taxes and subsidies could be the first step of a transport policy; however, the effect of pricing policies on behavioural change is limited – partly because of individuals’ bounded rationality. Travellers do not always associate their behaviour with the relevant costs and this slows down the process of behavioural change. Nudges can help individuals to overcome cognitive biases, highlight the better choices, and increase the size and the speed of behavioural change – without restricting choices or limiting travellers’ freedom of choice.
In liberal democratic regimes, where the public and political acceptability of regulation and enforcement are low, the libertarian paternalism approach, through the nudging of travellers, could be one of the most promising approaches to deal with the need for a radical and urgent behavioural change. The last 10 years have seen a rapid evolution of the field of travel information provision. The technological level of today’s systems, the widespread availability of travel information services, together with the insights from behavioural sciences, makes the incorporation of nudges into travel information systems more easy and cost-effective than ever. This could be the trigger to achieve the behavioural change we urgently need.
Dr Erel Avineri, Erel.Avineri@uwe.ac.uk
Reader in Travel Behaviour, Centre for Transport Society,
University of the West of England, Bristol
This article appears in the current edition of The Science & Technology Review, issue 2, pp. 133-134. Published by PSCA International. www.publicservice.co.uk. World Streets thanks them for permission to reproduce the full text of the article here.
* Listen to the author on "Nudging" in the following podcast presentation - http://www.tsu.ox.ac.uk/news/podcasts/eavineri081215.mp3
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as long as the fundamental externalities are not addressed, in the case of mobility behavior, the cost of gasoline, and the addition of appropriate taxes to cover all of the costs not covered strictly by the materials cost, and possibly and likely free parking, every program to promote optimal mobility is never going to achieve optimal results.
ReplyDeleteIf gasoline in the U.S. was priced comparable to that in Europe and if parking cost money, everywhere, rather than mostly just in cities, and couldn't be subsidized except in ways where it wasn't favored the way it is now, E.g., in U.S. law employers can provide $20/mo. to bicyclists and something over $200/mo. to drivers, it would force land use and transportation planning and policy to be far more congruent than it is today.
As long as we talk about adding choice etc., we won't get anywhere substantive.
Where transit works better without appropriate costing of gasoline is where there is a robust transit system/network, proximity of jobs and housing, density, and probably higher cost housing and higher cost accommodations for cars, all combining to make transit both an economically and time efficient choice.
DC avers that transportation costs for non auto owners is $9500 and for auto owners is double that. I don't think that's correct, as my household (2 adults) easily spends less than 1/2 that not taking into account my gf's transit subsidy from work (max. value = $1440/year). But the Planning director's point is that every $10,000 you don't spend on transportation supports $100,000 in mortgage. So sure, we pay more in housing, but for non car owning DC residents our combined housing + transportation cost is still less than the 50% of HH income that is typical in the U.S.
I think having gasoline cost more than $6/gallon in the U.S. because of the addition of excise taxes would be far more than a nudge...
A nudge is cash for clunkers, which shows how far we are from understanding the interconnected issues of our economy and policies.
Richard Layman
Washington, DC
In the middle of Dr Avineri's article was a statement that there was a synergy
ReplyDeletebetween nudges and financial incentives. I think that this needs greater
emphasis. Relying entirely on nudges is a strategy which I call "it pays to
pollute", in antithesis to a policy based on financial incentives which I call
"polluter pays".
The "it pays to pollute" strategy is supposed to work by incentivising the
producers of energy efficient services (such as transport) by enabling them to
collect more from consumers. I believe that it is palpably not working.
In newspapers we constantly see letters with themes like "we are supposed to be
being encouraged out of our cars, but..." which show that people are often very
good at seeing through such strategies.
On another point, the article mentions the name of Sunstein. This is, I assume,
the author of "Worst Case Scenarios", reviewed in the London Review of Books 10
Apr 2008. The reviewer, Jeremy Waldron, expresses his disappointment with the
book. His main points are that the book ignores distributional problems, even
though the author has elsewhere shown his awareness of this issue; and in
condemning the Precautionary Principle, by which one avoids new and uncertain
risks until one can be sure that the relevant threats are low, it generalises
from the Iraq war to climate change, though I'd say (and would have said some
years ago) that both the gravity and the likelihood of the threat from the
latter were greater by several orders of magnitude.
Simon Norton
Cambridge England
In response to the excellent comments made by Richard Layman and Simon Norton:
ReplyDeleteGovernment interventions to correct market failures and “get the prices right” (such as road-user charging) are advocated by many economists and policy makers, and are largely favoured for their economic rational and sound behavioural assumptions. However: (1) the assumption that individuals will always respond in a complete ‘rational way’ to new prices is naïve; (2) even if the market converges, as argued in classical economic theory, to an optimal allocation of resources, this process might take long time; and (3) economic interventions are largely seen by the public as a restriction of their freedom of choice and therefore and attract resistance and low public and political acceptability. Choice architecture and the use of ‘nudges’ to influence choices should be seen not as an alternative to ‘traditional’ economic measures but as a complementary measure, that might help to increase the effectiveness and acceptability of a measure. ‘Nudges’ might help to correct biases and mistakes, highlight the ‘right’ choices and make individuals’ learning process faster.
Distributional effects are important – and the debate on how to address them is with us since the early days of economics. There is accumulating evidence from behavioural sciences that (at least in some contexts) people behave and chose what is positively valued for the society, and that they are not completely selfish as commonly assumed. This could help in the design of behavioural change interventions that address social and environmental equity.
Relatively far too much carrot (for cars mainly but also trucks) ...?
ReplyDelete... relatively too little carrot (for walking, cycling and public transport and combinations thereof) ...?
... but almost none of the necessary stick ...?
One implementation problem/dilemma with the "carrot and stick" concept is that it seems to imply a reference to negativity (rather than to positive consequences) and to stubborn donkeys (us perhaps?) ...!
At one level, it seems the problem is in essence one more example of subsidising if not idolising excessive consumption based on too much wealth in the hands of relatively far too few ... such that "willingness to pay" and other loaded economic research "tools" are biased in favour of discrimination favouring those who can afford to pay but taking little notice of the exclusionary ie discriminatory effects of those who can't afford to pay or who choose not to (eg those who choose public transport, walking, cycling, etc).
That is a whole political problem of rapidly disappearing principles of "democracy" and/or equity ... but of relevance in any global comparisons or discussions.
But perhaps this can be illustrated by asking why not put up the cost of fuel and of parking when needed, these being two easily identifiable elements that are directly related to (excessive) car/truck use ... but relatively "never" increase the cost of public transport?
Michael Yeates
Brisbane Australia