DyMoN webinars for an interdisciplinary view on motivating sustainable urban mobility
Sustainable mobility matters and can have a big impact: 70% of the EU population live in cities today, and this is projected to reach almost 84% in 2050. 50 billion passengers were carried by buses, trams and metros in EU cities in 2018, saving 100 million car trips every day. 6 out of 10 people aged over 15 never or hardly ever are physically active (source of statistics), with implication for overall public health costs. Active modes, such as walking and cycling contribute not only to climate protection, but also to health preservation.
Image by Simon Abrams from Unsplash
Within the project “Dynamic Mobility Nudge” (DyMoN), we bring together researchers and practitioners from different disciplines to support people in making sustainable choices when it comes to urban mobility.Join us during upcoming (remote) webinars for an interdisciplinary view on motivating sustainable urban mobility. This webinar series will be accompanied by the handbook “Digital nudging for sustainable mobility” (free download upon publication in November 2023) and consists of the following webinars. The Webinars are free but registration is mandatory.
Download DyMoN Handbook “Digital nudging for sustainable mobility” at salzburgresearch.at
Webinar 1 (16/11/2023): An interdisciplinary view on sustainable urban mobility behaviour
The first Webinar takes place on 16th of November 2023 from 14.00 to 15.00 (UTC+1) via Zoom.
In this webinar, we will focus on the importance of sustainable mobility within cities: In a first step, we will briefly dive into the sustainability discourse and connect it with mobility. We will learn about the tension field between negative ecological effects, economic prosperity and societal participation. A key for a systemic understanding for sustainable mobility is the spatial reference. Mobility can be defined as the opportunity and capability to move in space. Following this definition, people’s mobility is ultimately dependent on distance, accessibility, connectivity, and the design of the streetscape. The latter is particularly due to the fact that the perception of the built and natural environment influences mobility decisions. With this in mind, we will reflect together on the following questions: What exactly is sustainable mobility? What are spatial aspects of sustainable mobility? What kind of environment do we need to provide to make sustainable modes the “natural” option? And what potentials can we unlock for a shift towards sustainable urban mobility?
Image by Enzo lo Presti from Unsplash
WEBINAR 2 (07/12/2023): Digitally-enabled behaviour change for sustainable mobility
Image by beeline navigation from Unsplash
When it comes to promoting sustainable mobility, local decision-makers (e.g. city representatives, transport planners and providers) have the choice between two options: “Hard measures”, like introducing new policies, infrastructure and bans, on their own are not always effective and cannot be implemented in every situation. Therefore, “soft measures”, behavioural interventions or “nudges” that operate without restrictions or bans, have risen to prominence as a viable complement to policy measures and to support mobility infrastructure usage. In this webinar, we are talking about soft measures in the form of digital tools that can help in changing mobility behaviour, like smartphone apps. You surely have encountered this concept before – are you wearing a smartwatch right now or do you have a smartphone app that helps you with physical activity? Then you have a first understanding of digitally enabled behaviour change! We can transfer this idea to mobility. For this, we are talking about models of behaviour change that help us in a deeper understanding of human behaviour and how behavioural interventions and nudges can be built on them. Further, we show how digital tools can help in shaping mobility behaviour and discuss best practice examples.
WEBINAR 3 (11/01/2024): Using data to support sustainable mobility behaviour
In other fields, such as health, it is quite common to not only design digital behavioural interventions and nudges (e.g. motivational strategies), but to also combine them with information about the relevant context of a person to increase effectiveness. The basic idea behind this is that a person’s decisions and behaviour are also very dependent on the current context. By considering situational variables, we get a more realistic picture of a person’s current context, and in turn, the behavioural interventions and nudges have a greater chance of being effective. Within this webinar, we show how situational aspects relevant for mobility behaviour can be digitally represented and integrated in a Geographical Information System (GIS) to be further used for “situation-aware nudges”. Moreover, we will show how the collected data can also be used to feed it into multiple products, such as a data dashboard that displays multiple indicators for sustainable mobility in a visual, focused format.
WEBINAR 4 (01/02/2024): Learnings and recommendations for sustainable mobility from the Dynamic Mobility Nudge project
Image by Ross Findon from Unsplash
In the final webinar, we take a step back and reflect on learnings and important messages from our project. These include insights into our proof of concept, which consisted of a field trial with situation-aware mobility nudges in Salzburg as well as a transnational hackathon in Uppsala, and what challenges and opportunities we faced: What does it take to engage the public, how can important stakeholders be involved and what factors are important for success within digital campaigns for sustainable mobility? We discuss the impact that our approach of digital nudging can have on behaviour. Finally, we present policy recommendations from our project for helping others with fostering sustainable urban mobility.