Looking for Research into Merchandise to Change Travel Behaviour

Hi Karin

As a cycling evangelist, here's what I would say: More free and easily accessible public bicycles on the streets (also creates lots of jobs for bike mechanics). Discount rainwear for cycling on soggy days. Bike lanes and priority rights in traffic. Prizes for miles of cycle commuting (can be paid for by lowered healthcare costs). Lots of advertising to promote benefits of cycling - personal, environmental, economic. The most expensive bike costs less than the cheapest car, a fraction to maintain, and gets 1,000 miles/gallon (or whatever that is in metric-speak) of non-polluting sustainable fuel in kilocalorie equivalents of gasoline/petrol. Not to mention the natural (and still legal) high from exercise-induced hormones (I call them cyclorphins).

Power to the Pedals!
Adam in potholey-but-still-bikable Boston, arguably famous for the meanest drivers in the U.S.A., 99.9% of whom are really nice to cyclists

The first idea that popped into my head might be to conduct an interactive campaign of sorts that utilizes those transport methods to further the personal involvement of the user. Forgive the vagueness; its tough to explain what I mean without an example. This article

I'm just wondering why you have decided that "merchandise" is the best way to achieve your campaign goal to "motivate, inspire and encourage the long term use of sustainable forms of transport." Perhaps this is just one part of a larger campaign you are planning, but if you haven't done so already, I would encourage you to go back to the CBSM process Doug outlines in Fostering Sustainable Behavior, and start by identifying the barriers to the specific behaviors you want to promote. Otherwise, how can you know what the most effective interventions are (or what "merchandise" to include)? For example, if you found out that lack of information about the best and safest bike routes is a barrier, then providing a bicycling map might make sense. As an example of travel-mode shift campaigns, you might want to take a look at the various TravelSmart programs that have been implemented in the UK, Australia and the U.S. (Portland, OR)--I've pasted the executive summary from the Gloucester Travel Smart pilot project below. I also recommend the research of Sebastian Bamberg (e.g., Bamberg, S., Ajzen, I., & Schmidt, P. (2003). Choice of travel mode in the theory of planned behavior: The roles of past behavior, habit, and reasoned action. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 25, 175-188. This paper is available through Icek Aizen's webpage: http://people.umass.edu/aizen/publications.html)

Also, the Safe Routes to School Program: www.saferoutestoschools.org. You might want to do a search of the National Transportation Library, which includes studies from all over the world: http://ntl.bts.gov/. This is just a sample of resources--there's a lot out there! (If you contact me directly, I can email you pdfs of these and other resources.) Executive Summary: The Gloucester TravelSmartpilot project ran from April 2001 to March 2002 in Quedgeley. The project was managed by Sustrans in partnership with Socialdata, with 30,000 funding from Gloucestershire County Council and in-kind support from Gloucester City Council. Other key project partners were Stagecoach, Swanbrook Transport, Quedgeley Parish Council and Vision 21. Sustrans, the sustainable transport charity, is developing a major new TravelSmart programme to change the way we travel. The work focuses on Individualised Marketing, an innovative technique pioneered by Socialdata for promoting use of public transport, cycling and walking as alternatives to car travel. It uses personal contact with households to identify those willing and able to reduce their car use before providing them with personalised information on alternative modes and incentives to try them out. Socialdata, which has its head office in Germany has used Individualised Marketing (IndiMark) to promote public transport in projects covering around 1.3 million people across Europe and in Australia. The approach was extended to include walking and cycling as part of the highly successful behaviour change programme in Western Australia, also called TravelSmart. A recent project covering 35,000 people in Perth achieved a 14% reduction in car trips and increases in walking of 35%, cycling (61%) and public transport use (17%). The Quedgeley pilot project was one of the first two UK trials of TravelSmart, the other taking place in Frome, Somerset. The aim was to test Individualised Marketing on a random sample of 500 people living in Quedgeley, using household travel surveys (before and after) to measure effect of the marketing activities on personal travel behaviour. The use of control groups during the travel survey process enabled the analysis to identify changes in the modal choice of the participants that were due to the marketing activities alone. Initial telephone interviews were conducted with the target households to identify those who were interested in making greater use of public transport, walking and cycling: Interested households were offered a range of travel information and incentives including timetables for their local bus stop, personal travel plans, a city-wide cycle map, test tickets for local bus services and a cycle shop discount card. Those who were already regular users of environmentally friendly travel modes were offered further information and a choice of small TravelSmart gifts as a thank you from the project team. No further contact was made with people who were not interested in changing the way they travelled. The table below shows the effect of Individualised Marketing on the percentage share of each main travel mode (by number of trips) in the Gloucester TravelSmartpilot project.The results are derived from analysis of the travel surveys and relate to the behaviour change of all households contacted during the marketing campaign. For comparison, the table also shows the results of the Frome TravelSmart pilot project. The net effect of Individualised Marketing in the Gloucester pilot project was a 9% reduction in car trips. Around half of these car trips were substituted by walking, a quarter by cycling and the remaining quarter by public transport. The Frome pilot project resulted in a 6% reduction in car trips. These results indicate that TravelSmart Individualised Marketing could make a significant contribution to local and national policy objectives on transport, the environment and health. Further work is being planned to confirm the behaviour changes are sustained over time (as they have been in previous projects) and to extend TravelSmart to a wider population in Gloucester and other areas.

Umbrellas? We did work place travel plans in one of our offices, and in a follow up survey around 10% of the staff had used the umbrellas provided. The idea was that weather shouldn't be a barrier to people walking, or walking to public transport.

Regards

Lisa Bridson
Environmental Specialist
Housing New Zealand Corporation
Ph (04) 439 3478

I like Doug McKenzie-Mohr's idea of a keychain that says "do you really need to take this trip?" It could have a bike or bus charm on it.

Gwen

Gwen Farnsworth
Manager, Research
E Source
303-345-9111

Hi all,

Having coordinated a number of travel behaviour change programs, particularly in school communities, I have found that these factors are most likely to lead to sustained behaviour change. Infrastructure and end of trip facilities that encourage walking and cycling. I have always been amazed at the number of kids who start cycling to school when you build a secure bike cage. Similarly decent shower and change facilities will persuade many people to start cycling to work. Integration of travel behaviour change programs into the organisation's core business. Schools that successfully integrate travel behaviour change programs into their teaching curriculum maintain effective travel behaviour change programs long after government backing is gone. Most schools have leadership programs and are usually looking for constructive activities to engage students. These students usually end up running interclass competitions where students compete to win a monthly trophy for most kids walking, cycling, carpooling or using PT to school. This combined with simple printed certificates for special effort have proved extremely effective in reducing car use. I have personally seen schools evolve this activity to a point where well over 60% of the school uses 'active transport' modes every day. Similarly in workplaces it is important to take travel programs out of their box and integrate them into the organisation's vision. It is important to remember that communities will end up running these programs completely independently of any government funding. The more money it costs to maintain a travel behaviour change program the less likely it will endure. Another note here is that organisations must allocate some staff resource to maintaining their travel behaviour program. In schools this must be a teacher resource to ensure the educational links are maintained (usually the PE teacher). Once a program has got off the ground it doesn't take much to keep them ticking over so this job is not too demanding. Public recognition of effort. I am always amazed at what people will do to get a pat on the shoulder by the boss. For workplace programs give awards or write feature articles about individual staff members in internal publications. For school based programs, issue certificates and trophies. Make it easy for people to start. Show people how easy it is to include a bit of exercise into a busy routine by walking to a bus stop that's a bit further away or parking 500m away from their kid's school and walking the last little bit. Often these suggestions end up saving people time because of the fuss associated with trying to find a close park! As part of one workplace program we made free PT tickets available from the same desk where people picked up a company car for workplace trips. This combined with some basic timetable information led to a big reduction in people driving to regional offices close to PT. Lead from the top The CEO, manager or school principal can't expect anyone to do something they're not willing to give a go themselves. I worked with one school where the principal met kids and parents at a local park and walked to school with them every Thursday. Within three weeks this group had grown to over 80 kids + their mums and dads. Information It is important to give well packaged information that gives people practical advice on how to use sustainable transport modes. A local access guide showing PT routes, bike paths and walking tracks is a good start. other good products include stop specific timetables, and short articles on how to include walking/ cycling in a busy routine in the school /company newsletter. Incentives Incentives can be effective but you need to be careful here. Just giving incentives because someone has reached a particular milestone can be very counter productive. Just consider, many schools have populations of over 800 children. It is possible that all of these kids could reach a predefined milestone at the same time! This is potentially the same for large employers. The outcome is that these programs just cannot sustain themselves financially. Also milestone based incentives tends to create an expectation that the next reward will be better than the last. eg you walk 10 times you get a water bottle, you walk 20 times you get a pedometer, walk 30 times a movie ticket - what are you going to give next? People will stop when the goodies run out. My experience has taught me that incentives are best given for extra-special effort or randomly. eg the kid who walks to school regularly carrying their double bass deserves a reward. Kids/ employee who regularly walk/ ride to school/ work could qualify to enter a draw for a really special prize. Prize should directly encourage the behaviour you want to increase. so specially branded water bottles, t-shirts, bike jerseys, bike repair kits, bike lights & flashers badges are great. Kids also love fluorescent wrist slaps and stickers. Special note here about stickers - primarily school kids will value a good sticker just as much if not more that an expensive incentive item. The final note I will add here about travel behaviour change programs is that they need to belong to the community in which they are being delivered. Effective/sustainable programs grow from strong consultative process rather that any packaged products or activities delivered by the coordinating agency. The most effective programs involve, engage and inspire their communities. I have had many comments from school principals about the changes they have witnessed in their school following a successful travel behaviour change program. Not only are there a lot more families walking to school but also mums and (even) dads have become involved in wide range of other school activities. I hope this is useful

Bernard Houston
Community Engagement Adviser
Redland Shire Council

We use a variety of prompts as reminders to carpool. Most are given away during promotions (Rideshare Week, Go Green for St. Patricks, Earth Day, Commuter Challenge) as prizes for an interactive game we developed - Who Wants to Clean a Million Air. Its a multiple choice game with questions all related to transportation and the environment. The prizes/prompts are awarded for correct answers and include mini key chain lights, air fresheners, driving mugs, note pads for car visors, and other car items that serve to remind commuters that carpooling is a option. All prompts have our logo.

Anne Marie

Anne Marie Thornton
Trans Canada
Carpool.ca
Web: www.carpool.ca
Tel: 250.743.8035
Fax: 250.743.8000
Email: [email protected]