Results from the GoEco! Study Available

The GoEco! project came to an end and the GoEco! and GoEco! Tracker apps, developed within it, are no longer available on the Android and iOS stores.

The study has shown that apps like GoEco! have the potential to help people travel more sustainably. In particular, people in the Southern part of Switzerland (Ticino), where the car is the most common mode of transport for many people, started traveling more ecologically sustainable on their systematic routes (e.g., commutes, visiting friends and/or family, shopping). In Zurich, people did not adapt their behavior, as many of them are already frequent users of public transport. Similarly, the transport modes for leisure activities did not change significantly. This is partly due to the fact that locations of leisure activities are often in remote places (or at least people do not immediately know any viable transport alternatives), that often you have to carry additional things that are required for the leisure activities, or simply due to the fact that it is more convenient to travel by car if you have a whole family to transport. You can find an extensive treatment and explanations of all results in our three final publications:

• A Large Scale, App-Based Behaviour Change Experiment Persuading Sustainable Mobility Patterns: Methods, Results and Lessons Learnt
• Beyond Limitations of Current Behaviour Change Apps for Sustainable Mobility: Insights from a User-Centered Design and Evaluation Process
• From location tracking to personalized eco-feedback: A framework for geographic information collection, processing and visualization to promote sustainable mobility behaviors

Of course, like usual, you can find more publications related to GoEco! on the research page, as well as on the GoEco! website.