Digitizing Travel Experience: Assessing, Modeling and Visualizing the Experiences of Travelers in Shared Mobility Services

Abstract

During shared travel, humans regularly have negative experiences resulting from unmet needs in terms of safety, comfort, accessibility, efficiency, reliability or information. Frequent negative travel experiences motivate travelers to use private motorized transport instead of more sustainable, shared mobility services. It is difficult for shared transport providers to react to such negative experiences, as these mostly depend on individual needs and situational factors and can therefore rarely be counteracted with static one-size-fits-all solutions. Additionally, (real-time) information about a traveler’s experience is not (digitally) available to providers and thus a situation-adapted reaction is often not possible. Therefore, methods to assess travel experience and make travel experience digitally available are highly important for enabling means to render shared transport more attractive. Here, we present initial research on digitizing travel experience exemplified by an envisioned automated shuttle line.