Getting someone out of their car and onto an e-scooter is no easy task! Given the challenge, studies into customer motivation can provide product managers in urban mobility with useful insights. Research shows that gamification features incentivize green actions and create customer motivation. Inspired by these studies, apps like Changers are growing popular.

In this article, let’s discuss how Changers is making urban mobility greener!

• 3 trends affecting urban mobility today
• Gamification features incentivize sustainable urban mobility
• Changers: 3 examples of gamification that create customer motivation
• Recap

3 trends affecting urban mobility today

Governments are striving to hit the goals of the Paris Climate accords. The targets of the agreement require an overhaul in the way we travel. Here are today’s trends:

1. Cities want sustainable solutions. Local governments, such as in Barcelona and Paris, are creating the 15-minute city. To clarify, this means that people can reach anything they need within 15 minutes. As a result, councils are replacing car space with pavements and cycle lanes. This benefits shared mobility companies! For example, e-scooter enterprise Lime entered Paris in 2018, and in just 1 year counted 12 million journeys! In real terms, that’s over 1.2 million fewer trips by car.

2. Ride-sharing market leaders have shifted focus to user retention. Uber and Lyft have seen user growth metrics stagnate. Given this, Uber and Lyft developed reward systems to increase user retention. This reflects industry trends. In brief, the ride-sharing culture is no longer about competition, but consolidation. Namely, rather than expanding directly, mobility apps are now buying local companies instead. For instance, to enter South America, the Chinese ride-sharing app Didi bought the Brazilian enterprise 99.

3. Public and private mobility is integrating. The needs of the public and private sectors are converging. Public organizations, like those that operate the buses and trains, are working with shared mobility companies to create greener cities. Notably, in Spain, the state-run railway operator Renfe partnered with e-scooter company Circ and ridesharing app Cabify. Amazingly, the 3 companies have integrated into 1 app! Clearly, this is better than using each app individually. In that mess, your app might get lost! The integrations give users one central place for all their transport needs.

Gamification features incentivize sustainable urban mobility

Gamification is the use of game elements in non-game contexts. By using game-like features you can increase customer motivation and encourage the behaviors you want your audience to carry out.

A recent study shows that gamification helps urban mobility apps incentivize green mobility. With this intention, researchers developed a journey planner app and tested it on residents of a medium-sized city in Italy. In short, they found that the more gamification features the app had, the more sustainably users traveled!

Want to know more about the ins and outs of gamification? Read our ‘What is Gamification?’ page!

To start, the app had basic functionality. With each passing week, examples of gamification such as leaderboards, badges, and point systems were added. The results were striking! Comparing week 1 to week 5, there was a near 30% drop in car trips.

The positive results were achieved with a clever gamification strategy.

For example, the most sustainable journeys were the top results in searches. In addition, they were highlighted in green to emphasize them even more. Coupled with a badge reward system that encourages certain trips, users were positively reinforced to go green!

Furthermore, winning badges leads to a wager: either pick a special power or take on a challenge to boost your points. Wagers are not just fun, they also use the empowerment dynamic of gamification. Empowerment creates customer motivation!

Changers.com – 3 examples of gamification that create customer motivation

Putting the research paper into action, Changers is a mobile app that helps companies incentivize their employees to adopt a greener lifestyle. It is achieved, for example, by rewarding users with badges, or empowering them with points that can plant trees that offset their commute’s CO2 emissions. Thanks to Changers’ mobile app, users in the German city of Münster saved 80,000 kg of CO2 in just 3 months! This was made possible with gamification.

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Let’s uncover 3 main gamification features Changers utilizes:

1. A reward system that unlocks perks for sustainable activities. The points system incentivizes green actions like walking to work. As a result, participants can exchange their points for vouchers in staff cafeterias or for bicycle accessories.

Prizes are an excellent extrinsic motivator that provides users with goals to strive for! In addition, an app with perks takes advantage of the constraint dynamic. This means that parts of your app are locked off. Why is that so effective? Science shows the fear of missing out is as motivating as winning!

2. Customized charity donations that empower users with a personalized purpose. The points system can also buy donations for your chosen charity. This mechanic empowers users to customize their own benefits. Customization tools are shown to significantly boost mobile app engagement!

3. Competitions that are not just fun, but provide ongoing motivation. Playing with friends and colleagues provides motivation to reach the top of the leaderboard. This game mechanic appeals to the need for social status, which is a great source of intrinsic motivation! People like to be at the top. In addition, Changers has a forum that allows colleagues to discuss or brag about their achievements. Obviously, people are naturally motivated by competition, collaboration, and relationships!

Utilizing these gamification features, Changers is making a real difference. By incentivizing users to choose sustainable mobility methods like the bicycle, the app is helping people’s health and the planet. In achieving this, Changers provides an excellent example of gamification that shows how gamifying your app creates long-lasting customer motivation!

Recap

One company taking advantage of this is Changers. To put Changers in context, here are 3 trends affecting urban mobility today:

1. Cities want sustainable solutions. Since the Paris Climate agreement, local governments are making their cities greener.
2. Ride-sharing market leaders have shifted their focus to user retention. Both Lyft and Uber implemented a reward system to increase user retention.
3. The needs of public and private companies are converging. For example, the Spanish state-run railway operator Renfe partnered with e-scooter company Circ and ridesharing app Cabify. The 3 companies integrated into 1 app!

A recent study shows gamification can help sustainable urban mobility. In this study, researchers developed a journey planner app. In short, they found that the more gamification features they added, the more sustainable trips were taken!

The app began with basic functionality. With each passing week, examples of gamification were added. Comparing week 1 to week 5, there was a 28% drop in car trips!

This was achieved with a clever gamification strategy:

🌱 The most sustainable journeys were the top results in journey planner searches.

🏆 A badge reward system encouraged certain trips.

💪 Challengers and wagers empowered the user.

Learning from that study, Changers is also a model gamification example:

💰 A reward system that unlocks perks for sustainable activities such as walking to work.

💳 Customized charity donations that empower users with a personalized purpose.

👏 Competitions that are not just fun, but provide ongoing motivation.

Thanks to their mobile app, Changers can boast success: in just 3 months, users in the German city of Münster saved 80,000 kg of CO2! This was made possible with the customer motivation created by gamification.