Sustainable Mobility in Smart Cities: The Key Role of Gamified Motivational Systems for Citizens’ Engagement and Behavior Change

MaaS, with its user-centric vision aiming at more flexible, personalized, and on-demand mobility services, has a perspective to address the key sustainability challenges of the mobility of the future: transport solutions that are integrated, inclusive, and time-efficient, while containing the economic, social, and environmental costs. Civic engagement is a key success factor towards this objective: to fully embrace MaaS transformation, citizens need to feel part of the process. Gamification proved to be effective to raise citizens' awareness, encourage their participation, and promote a gradual but profound behavior change. These characteristics can be exploited by MaaS solutions to attract users and encourage the acceptance of tailored mobility plans. The chapter presents two successful cases of gamified systems aiming at promoting a more sustainable mobility, Play&Go and Kids Go Green; investigates the potential of gamified systems, in combination with MaaS solutions, in terms of citizens' engagement and behavior change; and discusses current limitations and future challenges.