Influencing Driver’s Behavior on an Expressway with Intrinsic Motivation

Uncontrollability of automobiles is one of the factors of traffic congestion on an expressway. The incentive to intrinsic motivation is particularly effective in influencing behavior decisions with continuity and low cost. Gamification is a method of providing motivation that introduces game design elements into non-game contexts. In this study, we proposed a method for inducing a driver on an expressway to take a rest using gamification based on the intrinsic motivation. We created a smartphone application for implementing the proposed method, thereby influencing each driver’s behavior on an expressway in real-time. With our application, a driver takes a break at a rest area to complete quests provided by the application and automatically avoids a traffic congestion. The result of an experiment showed that our method induced significantly long rest compared to a conventional congestion presentation. The results of a user study on a real expressway indicated that the application achieved the rest events with 70% possibility in the best scenario.