Microtransit Use in Rural Communities: Exploring Persuasive Messaging to Promote Prosocial Behavior

Abstract

Microtransit is a rapidly growing transportation option being used by rural communities that lack traditional shared public transportation (e.g., buses, etc.). It offers a shared, technology-enabled solution with flexible, on-demand access to transit booked through a smartphone application at a low cost. In 2020, the City of Wilson, North Carolina implemented the RIDE microtransit system. As popularity and service demands grew higher, unserved trip requests increased. Treating the RIDE system as a computational sociotechnical system, this work seeks to leverage user-technology interaction to facilitate adaptive resource allocation thereby promoting system efficiency. Ten focus groups were conducted with 74 community-dwelling RIDE users to assess RIDE usage and user preferences. To explore how messaging might influence the likelihood of prosocial behavior, participants were exposed to persuasive messaging designed to request voluntary changes to their travel plans (i.e., shifting pickup time or walking further to the pickup point) to assist other, more vulnerable users including elderly and disabled individuals. Over two iterations, focus group participants evaluated 32 persuasive message prototypes designed with combinations of persuasive principles popularized by Cialdini (2007) such as social proof, liking/similarity, commitment/consistency, and reciprocity. Results indicated that messages using the principle or reciprocity consistently resulted in a higher self-reported likelihood of altering travel plans. Likewise, messages that benefited vulnerable users consistently resulted in higher likelihood of altering travel plans. Discussion focuses on next steps in the research process and elaborates on how such human factors-related information will be useful during system algorithm development.

Keywords: Transportation, Messaging. Persuasion, Prosocial Behavior

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1007633