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

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

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 2026, vol. 203, issue C

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.

Keywords: Sustainable travel choice; Nudge; Virtual reality experiment; Learning process (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856425003878
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:transa:v:203:y:2026:i:c:s0965856425003878

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2025.104754

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice is currently edited by John (J.M.) Rose

More articles in Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().