Enhancing sustainable mobility through a multimodal platform: would travellers pay for it?

Summary Building a multimodal information platform constitutes a disruptive innovation, which can enhance the use of sustainable travel modes and reduce the negative externalities of car use. This eco-innovation will change the structures of the market and induce changes in behaviour. From a web-based survey conducted in the Plateau de Saclay - an area located 20 km south of Paris, very affected by congestion - travellers' willingness to pay (WTP) for such a platform was investigated. In particular, a multinomial logit with unobserved heterogeneity in general WTP was estimated to determine marginal WTP for the potential services that could be provided by the platform. The results show that the price of access to the information platform and its various services is an important variable but cannot be considered the only determinant of the intention to use it. We present a new research model of user acceptance of an eco-innovation. Based on a use behaviour analysis, we highlight several aspects to consider such as the facilitating conditions and moderator variables, the performance expectancy of the platform measured in spheres of activity and travel time, effort expectancy and social influence.