Key Findings: Challenges Are the Heart of the System & Notifications Matter a Lot

The AI-CENTIVE project investigates how digital incentives can support sustainable mobility behavior using the ummadum app. A comprehensive analysis by BOKU University studied over 1,200 users over a 15-month period, revealing compelling insights into behavioral responses.

Monthly challenges stand at the center of the entire incentive system. Users strategically focus on challenges with the highest expected rewards, closely tracking their chances of winning. Many smaller prizes prove more effective than few large ones, which means that users don’t count on main prizes but rather want to win “something”.

Both encouragements and recommendations showed remarkably strong impacts on user behavior, if they specifically reflect on users’ preferences. Since users typically record activities in short, intense periods lasting 2-5 days, well-timed notifications can effectively trigger these high-activity phases, enhancing the effect of larger financial incentives.

Individual Trip Rewards Matter Less than Expected

Points for single trips had a significant but smaller effect than anticipated. Unlike challenges, they have no gamification component and he purely economic incentive is presumably limited due to the relatively small amounts.

Sustainability Impact Assessment

The project develops a framework for evaluating sustainability impacts, creating a pathway from individual behavioral changes to broader environmental benefits:

  • Input Level: Investments in app development and financial rewards
  • Output Level: Number of app users
  • Outcome Level: Behavioral changes and modal shift
  • Impact Level: CO₂ emission reductionand and increase of physical activity

The research analyzed 2.64 million experimental units across five transport modes (walking, cycling, public transport, car driver offering ridesharing, car passenger), providing evidence that AI-based incentive systems can substantially support the effectiveness of nudging apps.

Next Steps

Integration of user characteristics from surveys and simulation of scaled rollout scenarios across Austria to estimate larger-scale sustainability impacts and develop system-wide mobility behavior change strategies.