Wearable fitness trackers and smartphone pedometer apps: Their effect on transport mode choice in a transit-oriented city

Abstract

Shifting travel demand from motorized to non-motorized modes has been considered as an effective approach to addressing numerous urban transportation problems, including traffic congestion, road accidents, and noise and air pollution. Walking has been commonly promoted by governments and non-governmental organizations all over the world, predominately due to a wide array of its health, environmental, economic, and social benefits to individuals and society. With the rapid developments of wearable fitness trackers and smartphone pedometer apps in recent years, people have paid more attention to their physical health by heart rate, fitness, and sleep tracking. Recent studies have confirmed their contribution to promoting walking, but there has been a lack of research examining their influence on people’s transport mode choice. In this study, we randomly interviewed 505 people in Hong Kong, an example of a transit-oriented city, in an interviewer-administered face-to-face interview survey. A series of binary logit models are calibrated to determine factors that significantly affect people’s selection of walking and traveling by public transport. The results show that the users of wearable fitness trackers and smartphone pedometer apps generally preferred a transport mode with more walking steps than the non-users. People preferred traveling by public transport and getting off at a station earlier followed by walking, in which the marginal effects of every additional 100 steps are 6.31% and 1.78% on the selection probabilities for the users and non-users, respectively. Some transport policy measures are suggested and discussed accordingly to promote walking.