Ph.D. Thesis Defense Announcement

BEHAVIORAL INTERVENTIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORTATION

By VISWA SRI RUPA ANNE

Advisor:

Dr. Srinivas Peeta

Committee Members: Dr. Omar I. Asensio (Public Policy), Dr. Patricia L. Mokhtarian (CEE), Dr. Sofía Pérez-Guzmán (CEE), Dr. Yu Wang (May Mobility)

Date and Time: November 18, 2026. 8:30 AM EST

Location: SEB 122

ABSTRACT
If healthier and more environmentally sustainable ways to travel are available, why do private vehicles continue to dominate everyday travel in the United States? The challenge is not simply a lack of awareness. People may recognize the benefits of walking, biking, or taking public transit yet find it difficult to change their daily routines. This is because habits, motivations, personal circumstances, and the practical constraints of different transportation systems all influence how we travel. Addressing this challenge requires understanding not only what motivates travelers to consider sustainable travel alternatives, but also how behavioral interventions can be strategically designed, deployed, and evaluated in the real-world to shape travel choices.
This dissertation investigates this persistent challenge through four interconnected studies combining randomized survey experiments, transportation network optimization, and a smartphone-based field experiment. It examines how behavioral interventions can encourage travelers to reconsider habitual travel choices by communicating the health and environmental benefits of sustainable transportation through salient, trip-specific informational messages delivered at the point of travel decision-making. First, it examines how health and environmental messages influence travelers’ willingness to adopt sustainable transportation, considering message framing and individual characteristics. Second, it investigates how gamification strategies, including badges and leaderboards, can motivate sustainable travel choices through goal-setting and social comparison. Third, it develops a transportation network optimization framework that accounts for heterogenous traveler responses to identify effective monetary and non-monetary interventions for improving transportation efficiency, environmental outcomes, and public health. Finally, moving beyond hypothetical travel scenarios to real-world implementation, the dissertation presents the development of the GT TranSACT prototype smartphone application as well as the deployment in a longitudinal randomized field experiment in metro Atlanta. This study examines participant engagement, sustained participation in behavioral studies, and the practical and behavioral barriers to implementing and evaluating interventions in everyday travel settings.
Together, these studies bridge the gap between understanding individual travel decisions, strategically designing interventions at the network level, and implementing them in practice. By integrating behavioral evidence, network optimization, and real-world experimentation, this dissertation advances our understanding of how sustainable travel choices can be fostered through behavioral interventions, how monetary and non-monetary interventions can be allocated across a transportation network, and how participant engagement and the availability of feasible travel alternatives affect intervention delivery and effectiveness in real-world settings.