DriveStats: a Mobile Platform to Frame Effective Sustainable Driving Displays

TL;DR

DriveStats introduces a reusable mobile research platform to study how drivers perceive and act on monetary and carbon information about eco-driving. Through a 10-day diary study with 27 participants, the authors show that goal-directed framing can enhance cognitive utility for CO2 savings, while monetary cost information remains the primary driver of engagement; privacy-preserving, client-side data collection underpins the platform. Key contributions include a mobile app architecture with trip detection, CO2 and cost calculations, and an open-source framework for rapid mobility research beyond cars. The results illuminate how different information utilities—Instrumental, Hedonic, and Cognitive—interact with goal framing to influence sustainable driving behaviors, offering practical guidance for designing in-car displays and research probes. Overall, DriveStats provides a scalable toolset for testing information displays in daily driving and other mobility contexts, with implications for improving the effectiveness of sustainability interventions on real-world behavior.

Abstract

Phone applications to track vehicle information have become more common place, providing insights into fuel consumption, vehicle status, and sustainable driving behaviorsHowever, to test what resonates with drivers without deep vehicle integration requires a proper research instrument. We built DriveStats: a reusable library (and encompassing an mobile app) to monitor driving trips and display related information. By providing estimated cost/emission reductions in a goal directed framework, we demonstrate how information utility can increase over the course of a 10 day diary study with a group of North American participants. Participants were initially interested in monetary savings reported increased utility for emissions-related information with increased app usage and resulted in self-reported sustainable behavior change. The DriveStats package can be used as a research probe for a plurality of mobility studies (driving, cycling, walking, etc.) for supporting mobile transportation research.

Figures (2)

• Figure 1: The main tabs of the DriveStats app for the diary study. (\ref{['fig:trips']}) Trips tab shows to and from points with times and estimated distances. (\ref{['fig:tabc']}) Carbon tab displays a spent "goal" with totals. (\ref{['fig:tabd']}) Costs tab displays a spent "goal" with totals.
• Figure 2: Box plots of the dwell times across all the tabs. Participants spent significantly more time on the money tab over the carbon tab ($p=0.0117$). Tabs Carbon and Money were randomized across the population to mitigate order bias.