Work

Nudging urban travellers towards greener travel modes: A virtual reality experiment

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Cities worldwide face increasing pressure to reduce carbon emissions from transportation systems, yet implementing new transport policies often involves high costs and uncertainties. This study introduces an immersive virtual reality (VR) tool as a flexible, low-cost approach for evaluating travel demand management (TDM) strategies before real-world deployment. In a repeated discrete choice experiment (1,260 observations), participants chose between a taxi (high carbon) and a bus (low carbon) across multiple scenarios, each featuring variations in cost, travel time, and carbon attribute levels. Three nudge interventions were designed to highlight environmental impacts at three different decision points. The findings demonstrate that strategically timed nudges offer policymakers a scalable tool to promote sustainable urban mobility by integrating salient environmental feedback into decision-making contexts. These results underscore VR’s potential to simulate realistic policy interventions and generate inputs to quantify the impact of different types of interventions alongside travel attributes.

Source: Transportation Research Part A Policy and Practice

DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2025.104754

Authors: Yu Wang, Thomas O. Hancock, Albert Solernou, Jorge Garcia de Pedro, Yacan Wang, Charisma F. Choudhury

Institutions: University of Leeds, Beijing Jiaotong University

Language: English

Topic: Transportation Planning and Optimization

Subfield: Transportation

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Sustainable cities and communities, Climate action, Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,270