미추홀외국어고등학교 Debate and Current Affairs Ⅱ

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Extra Reading1> Nudging for Sustainable Mobility

1. Introduction
The transportation sector is the largest producer of greenhouse gasses in the United States, according to the
Environmental Protection Agency. Over half of those emissions come from light-duty vehicles, like passenger
cars and four-wheel trucks. In order to combat the dangerous effects of vehicle emissions, cities are
introducing more sustainable transit options, like electric buses and cable cars. Yet these new, green modes
of transportation won’t help the environment if potential users don’t utilize them.
To encourage residents to adopt greener transit, some cities are applying theories of behavioral economics.
Nudges are non-intrusive interventions that guide people toward a desirable action; in their 2008 book Nudge,
Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein explain that a nudge “is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters
people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic
incentives.” Choice architecture is another way of saying the context in which choices are presented. Thaler
and Sunstein are careful to point out that “nudges aren’t mandates.” Encouraging one option over another is
acceptable, but banning one option isn’t. So when there are multiple transit options, individuals have a choice
of how to get from Point A to Point B. But how do they decide which one to take? Research into travel
behavior reveals how much psychological and social factors influence transit choices; attitudes about public
transit, established travel habits, and loss aversion can all lead individuals to exhibit non-rational behavior
when planning their transportation. The new research shows that there is an opportunity for cities to step into
the choice architecture and nudge people toward greener modes of transit. Below are three examples of how
cities have combined behavioral insights with new technology and data to increase green transit usage and
decrease greenhouse gas emissions.

2. Driving Less in Durham

In Durham, North Carolina, city officials wanted to nudge commuters out of their single-occupancy cars and
toward more sustainable options. So for six months in 2018, Durham used two different behavioral economic
strategies to encourage 1,500 downtown workers to leave their cars at home. For the first strategy,
participants provided their home and work addresses, and opted into receiving personalized maps with bike,
bus, and walking routes. The emailed maps compared the trip times and reminded workers that they could
save gas money and increase their physical activity if they didn’t drive. The maps also included some social
norms influencing, by declaring that driving downtown was “so 2017.” This nudging worked better than the city
initially expected, as employees who took part in the pilot were 12 percent more likely to use alternative
methods of transit than the employees who didn’t have the nudge.
The second intervention was for city employees, and not only nudged them toward more sustainable transit
options but also rewarded them for choosing the bus over driving alone. The GoDurham bus lottery meant that
bus riders were able to enter a weekly lottery with a cash prize. Commuters that participated in the weekly bus
lottery “reported commuting by [car] alternatives 19 percent more, and reported a higher level of happiness
and lower levels of stress during the pilot.” Based on the success of these two pilots, the City of Durham was
awarded $1 million in the Bloomberg Philanthropies U.S. Mayors Challenge competition; they will spend the
next few years continuing to nudge residents toward healthier, greener transit.

3. Transit Interventions in Vancouver

 In Canada, four out of five commuters use private cars to get to work, and less than a quarter of residents in
Toronto and Vancouver take public transit to work, despite having access. Translink, the Metro Vancouver
transportation network, wanted to apply behavioral insights to increase the demand for alternative and
sustainable modes of transit. Translink partnered with Alta Planning and Design and the Behavioral Insights
Team (BIT) to design and report on a program that would increase public transit use. The team’s approach
had three stages. First, mapping out the behavioral touch points where transit choices could be influenced.
Second, designing an “easy, attractive, social, and timely” intervention. And third, testing to see whether the
intervention worked. The interventions, or nudges, would be different for different groups of people. Low-
frequency users would be encouraged to “Try it Again” while mid-frequency users were asked to “Make it a
Habit.” High-frequency users were told to “Use it Well.”
For the “Try it Again” group, the researchers identified various psychological barriers “preventing infrequent
or inexperienced users from giving public transportation a try.” These included status ambiguity aversion, and
the perception of cars as status symbols. In order to address the various blocks and biases, the researchers
created multiple interventions. Researchers knew that individuals are likely to change one habit if they are
going through a transition period. Trip uncertainty is reduced and people are less frustrated and anxious about
their commute when scheduled train times are shared by text or real time locations are shared in an app.
Additionally, combating negative stereotypes can make public transit a more viable option for the low
frequency riders.
The “Make it a Habit” group is familiar and comfortable with public transit, but doesn’t ride with high
frequency. In Metro Vancouver, 11 percent of the population falls into this mid-frequency group; their
frequency of public transit ridership varied widely, but the most anyone rides is just two to three days per
month. This could be attributed to sunk cost fallacy for car owners or unexamined habits. For interventions,
the researchers suggested leveraging defaults and sunken costs with pre-loaded transit cards, gamifying rides
with a lottery similar to the one in Durham N.C., and connecting with riders through personalized social-norms
text messaging.
And the high frequency “Use it Well” riders take transit four to five days a week and are interested in using it
more. The nudges for this group are small, since they already have positive associations with public transit.
High frequency users cited “convenience, affordability, not worrying about parking and driving, and the
environmentally friendly nature of this mode of transport” as their motivators for taking public transportation.
Examples of behavioral interventions include making the ride more social through programs that encourage
interaction, or gamifying incentives to utilize the trains at off-peak times.

4. Commuter Discounts in Hong Kong

Reducing crowding by nudging users to ride during off-peak hours was the focus of a research paper from
the Urban Mobility Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Hong Kong is one of the densest
places in the world, with one of the most popular public transit systems on earth; 12 million passenger trips
are made on public transport every day. The Mass Transit Railway (MTR) is the main public transit network,
but the popularity of MTR has led to traincar overcrowding and station congestion. In addition to railway
expansions, the Hong Kong government and transit agency wanted to test behavioral nudges to decrease
train usage during peak hours. The researchers from MIT worked with MTR to introduce a morning, pre-peak
hour commuting discount fare. Riders had a 25 percent discount if they rode to one of the 29 heavy-use
stations before 7:15am. The experiment ran for nine months, and achieved the internal goal of reducing
morning peak-hour ridership by 3 percent. There was also a notable reduction in crowding on the morning
trains. MTR has adopted the strategy for another year, having found the 3 percent reduction sufficient enough
to continue with the discount.
5. Conclusion
Reducing vehicle transit and encouraging sustainable travel are crucial for cities that want to address
everything from public health to pollution to traffic congestion. Knowing that behavioral and social factors
influence transit choices, cities have an opportunity to nudge residents toward greener modes of travel. And
as the above cases show, simple nudges can result in significant impacts. So perhaps this is a nudge to cities,
to encourage them to incorporate behavioral economics into their transit plans.