Behavioural impacts on car ownership and use in salt lake city Kolkata India: cognition and ethnography as a mean

Abstract

Our experiences in an urban setting are driven by the choices we make and the perception we have about the urbanscapes. Although classical economics is followed by urban planners to study the transport choices made by the residents of an area, yet only very recently attention has been drawn towards the irrationality in the decisions within the transport framework of the city that has cropped up. The ‘rational character’ of users have failed to explain the complex and variable nature of the urban issues that seem to be impossible to solve. Behavioural economists have suggested that behaviours (such as notions of fairness, trust, commitment, adherence to social norms, overweighing low-probability events, etc) result in outcomes that do not always conform with traditional economics. Establishing a framework of planning within which changing human behaviour and influencing the decisions that they make habitually is a key to secure the future of the sustainable cities that we envision today. Collective cognition and reality stem from the character of group-living which is a widespread phenomenon among humans; cognitive social science is a means to revisit the behavioural triggers that cause people to make mobility choices within a city. Kolkata provides its users with a variety of choices in public transport; this often leads to cluttered thought process regarding ‘best’ mode choice leading to confusion and irrational decisions. As formerly mentioned, with the help of behavioural science, the choice of transport can be made easy to act upon using the intrinsic motivation. The aim of the study is to devise soft policies to reduce car usage and ownership in Salt Lake City, Kolkata by using cognitive aspects of travel behaviour. With the help of human-centred surveys and ethnographic techniques, behavioural insights have been collected for the various stakeholder groups which are then analysed using multiple layers of qualitative analysis. The thesis intends to present a policy-level framework for implementing behavioural nudges to reduce the level of car pride among residents, taking into consideration the factors that drive people to own cars and drive cars. This thesis is a conceptual outline for understanding how social values, past experiences and habits, cognition and mental models can be tapped into transport policy-making for inculcating sustainable travel habits among residents. The thesis proposes how transport gamification can be used in our study context for implementing human-focussed design for changing trave lbehaviour among the stakeholders. The Octalysis Framework developed by world-renowned game theorist, Yu-Kai Chou shall be formulated in the context of transportation, and policy proposals at multiple stakeholder levels are to be devised for mitigating behavioural issues at the various levels in travel behaviour. The policy proposals aim to create a framework whereby gamification elements such as analytics tab, progress bars, rewards, etc. are proposed as part of navigation tools and software used for trip planning. The underlying concept of this policy is to shift users from being dependent on “time savings” for trips to “green savings”, through nudges that keep dangling in different ways in front of the users till he at least gives in and tries it out. If the user fails to accept the nudge, he is further nudged but using any other technique. The policy, however, remains the same – present alternative that are appealing to the users based on their personal habits and experiences. The conceptual proposals coupled with contextual proposal provides a way forward for how social norms, personal experiences and behavioural insights may be used in mobility planning for ‘nudging’ citizens to choose sustainable travel habits and can be a way forward for India’s transport policy regime.