ADAPT fellowship: smart approaches to influencing sustainable behaviour change

This EPSRC/LWEC Challenge Fellowship addresses the question "How can our cities, their hinterlands, linking infrastructure, rural surround and the regions they are in, be transformed to be resilient, sustainable, more economically viable and generally better places to live?". By 2050 it is probable that 80% of the world's population will live in urban centres, and as transport is a very significant contributor to global carbon emissions, as well as road congestion and urban air quality problems, it is important that everyone is encouraged to rethink their personal mobility behaviour.

It is particularly important to encourage people to reduce urban car travel. However, increasingly our daily travel is also disrupted by weather as environmental changes are impacting on climatic patterns. Managing transport infrastructure affected by flooding, wind and extreme temperatures means that operators and authorities need to reduce demand on the network at such times for safety reasons. Messaging requirements are different between normal and emergency situations but the experience of disruption can also enable us to change our habitual behaviours.

I investigate how to influence people to take voluntary action for mitigating and adapting to environmental change. My research combines computing science (persuasive technologies, human computer interaction and argumentation theory) with transport studies (geography, statistics, social science) to promote voluntary travel behaviour change to support adapting to and mitigating environmental change.

I will explore and develop persuasive but ethical argumentation-based tools for supporting individual behaviour change for sustainable transport through the flow of information directed to the travelling public, in both normal and emergency situations, using available technologies such as Smartphones, web applications, customer information screens and variable message signs.

Using persuasive technologies to influence behaviour change is an emerging area for transport research, though it is well established in other fields such as healthcare. There is growing interest in applying a practical argumentation approach to behaviour change, as it is self-evident that theories of behaviour change and persuasion (which underpin many existing behaviour change interventions, in transport, environment, energy and health, both on and off line) involve making use of arguments.

As a result of this work there will be new ways to communicate persuasive arguments and solutions for making large and small changes to the way we travel. We will then be able to make decisions about our daily transport needs with confidence, knowing that we have the best information about the consequences for ourselves and for wider society.

For example, improved information and more effective arguments may help more car drivers to have the confidence to use Park & Ride and Rail Parkway Stations to access urban centres. This will be of practical value in reducing road congestion and urban air pollution.

INDUSTRY, POLICY AND PRACTICE COMMUNITIES
The research will generate novel algorithms for use in travel planning and transport behaviour ICT. Letters of Support have been supplied by ATOC, Cleanweb UK, Department for Transport, Ecolane Ltd, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, Transport Systems Catapult and TravelAi Ltd. The seven Project Partners have indicated high levels of commitment to engage with the research by offering in-kind support. This support ranges from hosting knowledge exchange activities, co-development of research, providing advice (including through the Advisory Board), access to stakeholders, access to data and user groups and potential to trial or prototype applications and best practice guidance.
As shown by the Letters of Support from DfT and SEPA, policy and practice communities will benefit from the insights into effective behaviour change interventions that will be developed. Creating practical outputs for policy and practice communities is an explicit objective of the programme. Stakeholder liaison with this community (transport and travel behaviour change in particular) is embedded in the methodology, and it is anticipated that there will be a significant advance in knowledge of how to construct effective behaviour change interventions. For example, scoping discussions with travel behaviour change professionals (the North East Scotland Transport partnership (NESTRANS) GETABOUT manager and a former First Group sustainability director) indicated that many local authority travel behaviour change teams have to generate their own web-site content or use marketing agencies, and content creation is currently more of a craft than a science, with limited understanding of which elements are genuinely effective, as most measures are delivered in packages of soft and hard policy interventions. CleanwebUK offers the opportunity to become engaged with their network of web developers through their Meet-ups and Hackdays and TSC can provide access to a large network in transport ICT. Having ATOC, Ecolane Ltd and TravelAi Ltd as Project Partners offers a more direct route to knowledge transfer.
The Institute for Transport Studies also has a West Yorkshire Transport Innovation Fund partnership with the Combined Authority where both organisations have pledged £100k over three years to develop joint research and to ensure deployment of state of art insights. My proposal will be able to take advantage of this agreement to leverage impact from my Fellowship.
GENERAL PUBLIC
The research approach embeds public engagement with the issue of transport behaviour change as well as issues relating to the acceptability of persuasive technologies in the methodological process from the outset. The research team will also facilitate two-way engagement with the general public through structured participation in public science events (large events such as the Leeds Festival of Science held as part of British Science Week and small, such as public engagement outreach events such as Pechakucha or Café Scientifique or even Code the City hackathons) reaching out to all demographics. This will contribute to raising public understanding of the science involved in transport ICT, persuasive technology and argumentation.
SUMMARY OF PATHWAYS TO IMPACT
Stakeholder liaison, knowledge exchange and public engagement activities are all described in the Case for Support. The staged nature of the research programme means there will be publicly reportable outputs from year one. Resources have been requested to support a sustainable level of participation in Knowledge Exchange and Public Engagement by the PI and RAs over the life of the project, utilising public science events, University of Leeds initiatives and through self-generated opportunities using public science and policy networks.