Simulating the impact of cognitive biases on the mobility transition
This work addresses the challenge of promoting sustainable mobility transitions for the general public, but it is incremental as it builds on existing knowledge of cognitive biases without introducing new methods.
The paper tackles the problem of insufficient adaptation in daily mobility by exploring cognitive biases that explain resistance to change, and it develops interactive simulators to raise awareness and demonstrate these biases through various scenarios.
Climate change is becoming more visible, and human adaptation is required urgently to prevent greater damage. One particular domain of adaptation concerns daily mobility (work commute), with a significant portion of these trips being done in individual cars. Yet, their impact on pollution, noise, or accidents is well-known. This paper explores various cognitive biases that can explain such lack of adaptation. Our approach is to design simple interactive simulators that users can play with in order to understand biases. The idea is that awareness of such cognitive biases is often a first step towards more rational decision making, even though things are not that simple. This paper reports on three simulators, each focused on a particular factor of resistance. Various scenarios are simulated to demonstrate their explanatory power. These simulators are already available to play online, with the goal to provide users with food for thought about how mobility could evolve in the future. Work is still ongoing to design a user survey to evaluate their impact.