DyMoN – Dynamic Mobility Nudge: Shaping sustainable urban mobility behaviour with real-time, user-generated and public open data

Cities face the challenge of promoting sustainable mobility in order to reduce CO2 emissions, improve air quality, reduce noise and thus make the city a more liveable place. To achieve this, cities can use bans and legislation (“hard” measures) on the one hand, and strategies to change citizens’ behaviour (“soft” measures) on the other. Since hard measures are not always effective or cannot be used in every situation, nudging is a alternative method to bring about behavioural change. Nudging refers to a method of influencing behaviour, but without the use of prohibitions, restrictions or economic incentives. Nudging draws on findings from behavioural economics and psychology and works, for example, by directing attention, changing the environment or through social influences. Nudges can also be used in the area of mobility behaviour. The DyMoN project will enrich digital nudging for more sustainable mobility behaviour with data sources. For example, the situational component is often crucial in nudging (i.e., in which context or situation a nudge reaches a person). In this context, data that should make digital nudging more effective in DyMoN includes, for example, weather data, environmental data, infrastructure data, or traffic data that converge and are processed in the DyMoN Data Hub. By taking into account the situational components within a city, effective nudges are to be designed within the DyMoN framework.

Citizens’ involvement is a key component in the project. In DyMoN, the ideas, requirements and opinions of the citizens regarding sustainable mobility are to be included from the beginning and for the development of the nudges.
For cities, DyMoN will create a manual for effective digital nudging for active mobility, as well as a data dashboard that can be used to evaluate current conditions in the city. Workshops will give cities the opportunity to learn more about effective nudging and the work in DyMoN. In addition, a DyMoN Summer School for young scientists will be held in Salzburg to enable knowledge transfer into research as well.
A proof of concept of the DyMoN framework will take place in Salzburg and Uppsala, where the effectiveness and flexibility of the framework will be tested.

Salzburg Research is responsible for the project coordination of this project, which is carried out within the framework of JPI Urban Europe (ERA-NET Co-fund Urban Accessibility and Connectivity). Furthermore, Salzburg Research is responsible for the design of the effective digital nudging methods and the collection of user needs, which are a central part of the DyMoN project.