The Quantified Traveler: Using Personal Travel Data to Promote Sustainable Transport Behavior

With the advent of ubiquitous mobile sensing and self-tracking groups, travel demand researchers have a unique opportunity to combine these two developments to improve the state of the art of travel diary collection. While the use of mobile phones and the inference of travel diaries from global positioning system (GPS) and sensor data allows for lower-cost, longer surveys, the authors show how the self-tracking movement can be leveraged to interest people in participating over a longer period of time. By compiling personalized feedback and statistics on participants’ travel habits during the survey, the authors can provide the participants with direct value in exchange for their data collection effort. Moreover, the feedback can be used to provide statistics that influence people’s awareness of the footprint of their transportation choices and their attitudes, with the goal of moving them toward more sustainable transportation behavior. The authors describe an experiment that we conducted with a small sample in which this approach was implemented. The participants allowed the authors to track their travel behavior over the course of two weeks, and they were given access to a website they were presented with their trip history, statistics and peer comparisons. By means of an attitudinal survey that participants were asked to fill out before and after the tracking period, the authors determined that this led to a measurable change in people’s awareness of their transportation footprint and to a positive shift in their attitudes toward sustainable transportation.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABJ40 Travel Survey Methods
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Jariyasunant, Jerald
  • Carrel, André
  • Ekambaram, Venkatesan
  • Gaker, D J
  • Kote, Thejovardhana
  • Sengupta, Raja
  • Walker, Joan L
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 91st Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2012-1-22 to 2012-1-26
• Date: 2012

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 15p
• Monograph Title: TRB 91st Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers DVD

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Attitudes; Global Positioning System; Mobile telephones; Sustainable transportation; Travel behavior; Travel demand; Travel surveys
• Uncontrolled Terms: Personal information; Personalized traveler information; Travel data
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Environment; Planning and Forecasting; Transportation (General); I15: Environment; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01373846
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 12-4573
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: Jun 26 2012 9:19AM