What Makes You Bike? Exploring Persuasive Strategies to Encourage Low-Energy Mobility

• Published in: Persuasive Technology pp. 53 - 64
• Main Authors: Wunsch, Matthias, Stibe, Agnis, Millonig, Alexandra, Seer, Stefan, Dai, Chengzhen, Schechtner, Katja, Chin, Ryan C. C.
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Behavior change; Biking; Cycling; Low-energy mobility; Persuasion; Socially influencing systems; Sustainability; Transportation
• ISBN: 9783319203058; 3319203053
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-20306-5_5

This paper explores three persuasive strategies and their capacity to encourage biking as a low-energy mode of transportation. The strategies were designed based on: (I) triggering messages that harness social influence to facilitate more frequent biking, (II) a virtual bike tutorial to increase biker’s self-efficacy for urban biking, and (III) an arranged bike ride to help less experienced bikers overcome initial barriers towards biking. The potential of these strategies was examined based on self-reported trip data from 44 participants over a period of four weeks, questionnaires, and qualitative interviews. Strategy I showed a significant increase of 13.5 percentage points in share of biking during the intervention, strategy II indicated an increase of perceived self-efficacy for non-routine bikers, and strategy III provided participants with a positive experience of urban biking. The explored strategies contribute to further research on the design and implementation of persuasive technologies in the field of mobility.