How do soft factors influence take-up of gamified travel demand management schemes in public transport: An investigation in Gold Coast, Australia

There are various factors that have impact on the effects of the Travel Demand Management (TDM) schemes. This paper investigates the role of soft factors (e.g., participants' perceptions and attitudes) in travellers' intentions to participate in a public transport orientated TDM scheme. A multinominal logit model is analysed giving a key result suggesting that successful implementation of gamified and incentive based TDM schemes must pay attention to satisfy a traveller's perceptions of enjoyment and usefulness. While the findings reinforce the role of ‘practical’ decision making (i.e., ease-of-use and usefulness) for the traveller in participating in a gamified TDM scheme, they also reveal that ‘fun’ or ‘exciting’ (i.e., enjoyment) also play an important role to make the scheme more attractive, particularly for public transport users. Model results also reveal that how easy the game is remains critical to the participant's intention to join and play. In particular, an easy game increases the intention to join for educational users. In concluding, the results show that participants' perceptions and attitudes are critical not only in the design of an effective gamified scheme but also in identifying the target groups (e.g., students or commuters) for the proposed schemes.