Sustainability specialist Thrust Carbon has added 'nudge' notifications to its Engage tool, which are designed to encourage more sustainable travel choices.
The new feature delivers “targeted and customisable” messaging direct to travellers through “any internal communication channel”. Nudges can be delivered at multiple stages of the travel planning and booking process, including for example: when a traveller is known to need to travel but has not yet booked; in the 24 hours after a booking has been made to encourage the rebooking of a greener option; or upon return from a trip to encourage more sustainable decisions in the future.
According to Thrust, the notifications are informed by behavioural science and use the EAST Framework, which presents new behaviours as ‘Easy, Attractive, Social, and Timely’.
The first set of nudges presents comparisons of emissions and transit times for air-to-rail modal shifts, as well as the implication of changing carriers or travel class when booking air travel, and a trip return-on-investment analysis based on billable and non-billable trips, according to Thrust.
Moving forward, the company said it also plans to integrate incentivisation into its nudges.
“Employee engagement in sustainability is evolving rapidly,” said Robbie Moore, head of engineering ay Thrust Carbon. “We’ve moved beyond simply educating travellers about emissions to actively influencing behaviours through smart, science-backed interventions,” he said in a statement.
The nudge notification suite is available to all Thrust Engage users, and the company reports that early adaptors have seen “measurable improvements” on trial routes.