Evaluating a Travel App's Influence on College Student Commuting to Campus (CTRAVELAPP)

Florida Atlantic University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Health Behavior

Treatments: Other: MaaS app; Other: No app

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04720300

G-1905-283549

1588924-3 (Other Identifier)

Details and patient eligibility

About

The Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial (cRCT) portion of the study will focus on evaluating the use of information, marketing, and incentives to shape student travel behavior to campus through the three channels identified in Ajzen's (1991) framework.

Full description

The investigators will evaluate whether a package of information, marketing, and incentives shifts student travel behavior to campus over one year, and in turn if these shifts in travel behavior result in improved academic performance.

Specific objectives of the cRCT include evaluating whether the intervention results in relatively:

1. Greater utilization of travel modes alternative to single-occupant vehicle travel (transit, biking, walking, bike-sharing, electric scooters, and carpooling)
2. Lower rates of car ownership
3. Superior college performance--higher grade point averages (GPAs)
4. More credit hours completed
5. Higher retention rates

Enrollment: 450 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Students who live off-campus and attend any of the following three colleges or universities: Florida Atlantic University (FAU), Broward College (BC), or Palm Beach State College (PBSC).
• Students must plan to be at the same institution for the next academic year.

Exclusion criteria

• Students live on campus
• Students will leave their current institution within the next academic year

Trial design

Primary purpose: Basic Science

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

---

450 participants in 2 patient groups, including a placebo group

MaaS app

Active Comparator group

Description:

The Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) App will be provided to students in the Intervention Group and is intended to facilitate their use of alternative transportation modes such as public transit, ride-hailing, walking, biking, bike share, and e-scooter share to get to campus. The MaaS App will be downloaded to students' smartphones and will provide real-time, multimodal trip planning to students on demand when they open the app. This means, for instance, that a student can plan a trip that includes driving to a train station, taking the train, and then walking from the alighting train station to their final destination. The app will be white label, i.e. it will have a customized look and feel specific to the participating south Florida colleges, and it will have personalization features so that students can tailor the app to their travel patterns. Students in a cluster assigned to the MaaS group will also receive information concerning housing options. Students complete surveys

Treatment:

Other: MaaS app

No app

Placebo Comparator group

Description:

Students receive no app, no housing information, students complete surveys.

Treatment:

Other: No app