TY - JOUR
T1 - Designing mobile application messages to impact route choice
T2 - A survey and simulation study
AU - Mayr, Christina Maria
AU - Templeton, Anne
AU - Köster, Gerta
N1 - Funding: C. M. and G. K. are supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research through the project roVer (grant no.13FH669IX6). This work is financially supported through the Open Access Publication fund of the Hochschule München University of Applied Sciences. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
PY - 2023/4/20
Y1 - 2023/4/20
N2 - Crowd congestion is a common issue at train stations around major sports events, and puts passengers at risk and lowers service quality. Guiding arriving fans along less traveled routes may alleviate congestion. Smartphone apps provide a medium to deliver route suggestions but the messages they provide are pivotal to adherence. We explore how message design affects pedestrians' willingness to follow route instructions. We present an online survey conducted with two groups: football fans, and students and faculty associates. We vary the presence of top down views of the route choices at train station Münchner Freiheit in Munich, real-time information on congestion, and appeals to team spirit. We compute a distribution of route choices that suggests that congestion may be reduced with the right combination of message components for each target group. We then use a computer simulation to investigate the congestion situation. Our results suggest that lowest congestion is achieved when people base their decisions on real-time information. The social identity approach is highlighted in our study as having a possible influence on message design. Moreover, it indicates that the implementation of such apps in real-life applications can improve safety. Our methodology can be applied to other scenarios to test the suitability of apps and message designs.
AB - Crowd congestion is a common issue at train stations around major sports events, and puts passengers at risk and lowers service quality. Guiding arriving fans along less traveled routes may alleviate congestion. Smartphone apps provide a medium to deliver route suggestions but the messages they provide are pivotal to adherence. We explore how message design affects pedestrians' willingness to follow route instructions. We present an online survey conducted with two groups: football fans, and students and faculty associates. We vary the presence of top down views of the route choices at train station Münchner Freiheit in Munich, real-time information on congestion, and appeals to team spirit. We compute a distribution of route choices that suggests that congestion may be reduced with the right combination of message components for each target group. We then use a computer simulation to investigate the congestion situation. Our results suggest that lowest congestion is achieved when people base their decisions on real-time information. The social identity approach is highlighted in our study as having a possible influence on message design. Moreover, it indicates that the implementation of such apps in real-life applications can improve safety. Our methodology can be applied to other scenarios to test the suitability of apps and message designs.
UR - https://github.com/pedestrian-dynamics-HM/message-design-and-route-choice
UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284540.s001
UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284540.s002
UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284540.s003
UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284540.s004
UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284540.s005
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0284540
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0284540
M3 - Article
C2 - 37079544
AN - SCOPUS:85153409758
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 18
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 4
M1 - e0284540
ER -