App Nudge Reminders Escalate Rider Numbers

Tallinn, Estonia

App ‘nudges’ reminding people about e-scooters as a transport option can significantly increase their use, according to a recent study by share service provider Bolt.

Trials incorporating e-scooters as an option in ride-share apps found the nudges could bring a 40-200% increase in e-scooter rentals, compared to control groups who did not see the reminders.

Bolt, which offers both ride hailing and scooter share services, experimented with in-app information in several European cities to steer users from ride hailing to e-scooters.

If a set of criteria were met by the potential user, e-scooter rental would appear as the second alternative in the ride hailing part of the app.

Those criteria included the availability of an e-scooter within 300m and a total journey distance that did not exceed 3km.

“In Oslo, where results are strongest, at least 55% of the e-scooter trips caused by the nudge replaced ride hail trips,” according to the study’s report, which concludes that changing information provided for multimodal journeys can be an effective way of switching users away from cars.

During the European summer of 2021, Bolt conducted several similar experiments in Krakow in Poland, Brno and Ostrava in the Czech Republic, Lisbon in Portugal, Madrid in Spain, Bordeaux in France, Gothenburg and Stockholm in Sweden, Oslo in Norway and Valletta in Malta.