How can incentives promote sustainable mobility? What incentives are available and how do they work? Over the past three years, ConPolicy has been working with the German Institute for Urban Affairs (Difu) to investigate these and other questions as part of a research project commissioned by the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA).
There is a wide range of incentives for sustainable mobility: a financial bonus for giving up your own car, advice on switching to eco-friendly transport, or the annual mileage collection during City Cycling Week – incentives can motivate people to try out sustainable mobility in many different ways. However, not every incentive has the same effect on the same target group. Rather, the effect depends on many local conditions. What does an incentive that motivates people to use eco-friendly modes of transport need to look like? How can an incentive be best tailored to the prevailing conditions and the target group? The results of the project provide answers to these questions and show why the right incentive can be surprisingly simple.
On October 17, 2025, the project's closing event took place in the form of an interactive online conference. Over 500 participants from academia, local authorities, and consulting firms took part to learn about the project's results and share their own experiences. The aim was to encourage as many participants as possible to make greater use of incentives in mobility planning in the future.
The results of the project have been published in various publications:
- The brochure summarises the key findings of the project. In addition to the effectiveness of incentives, it highlights good practices and success factors for designing effective incentives that promote sustainable mobility.
- With step-by-step instructions and reflective questions, the navigation guide helps you to tailor your incentive to your specific local circumstances.
- Good (international) exampls of incentives can be found in our factsheet and in the scrollytelling.
- We have summarised the state of research on the effectiveness and possible applications of material, immaterial and gamified incentives in this publication.