USmile Urban Smart Measures and Incentives for quality of Life Enhancement 3.

Accessibility and sustainability are important conditions for vital and resilient cities, but are under pressure especially in urban areas. This project aims to develop, test and evaluate “smart” measures to affect behaviour. The measures are smart in the first place because they offer an innovative mix of negative and positive financial incentives, thus bypassing some of the main disadvantages of pricing and of rewarding. The measures are also smart because they have a highly innovative technological character, not only from the conceptual viewpoint (e.g. tradable driving permits) but also from the technological perspective (e.g. linking real time automated vehicle identification to virtual market environments). These smart measures will be studied from a multidisciplinary perspective, where forces are joined among economists, psychologists, traffic engineers and policy analysts, and will be evaluated from the perspectives of effectiveness, acceptability, and efficiency - paying attention to key urban challenges such as accessibility and environmental quality.

Main project

This project is part of project "Effects and acceptability of pricing policies".

Researchers and partners

Behavioural and Social Sciences, Psychology

• Nadja Zeiske, Social Psychology
• Linda Steg, Social Psychology

Partners outside of the University of Groningen

• Erik Verhoef - VU Amsterdam
• J.W.C. van Lint - TU Delft
• E.J.E. Molin - TU Delft
• Robert van den Hoed - Hogeschool van Amsterdam

Results

Successful grant proposals and other achievements

• NWO SURF call, proposal 'USmile'

University's focus areas

• Sustainable Society