Impact of Digital Flat-rate Mobility Passes on User Exploratory Behavior: A Case Study of Strategic Multimodal Integration in Urban Residential Districts

Abstract

Urban commuters are largely governed by behavioral inertia — the tendency to adhere to routine transit paths in order to minimize cognitive load and incremental cost. This rigidity systematically bypasses the peripheral "inter-hub" districts that exist between major rail nodes, suppressing local economic activity despite their cultural and commercial potential. This study investigates how a digital flat-rate mobility pass, deployed through a strategic consortium of three competing private railway operators and multiple micro-mobility providers in a high-density Tokyo residential district, disrupts this inertia. Drawing on Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller, 1988) and choice architecture principles (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008), we analyze behavioral data from 559 pass holders over a three-week experiment. Results demonstrate that eliminating marginal per-ride costs induced a measurable shift from efficiency-driven commuting to discovery-oriented exploration: 38.4% of users utilized three or more transport modes per journey, average local spending increased by 1,757 JPY per person, and 62.5% of respondents visited commercial destinations they had never previously accessed. These findings establish multimodal digital integration as a scalable instrument for regional revitalization and human-centered Smart City governance.

Keywords: Maas, Multimodal Transportation, User Experience (UX), Behavioral Transformation, Urban Revitalization, Social Experiment

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1007876