Travel Choice
Influencing Behaviour in Nottinghamshire
In 2017, Nottinghamshire County Council (NCC) was awarded £845,000 from the Department for Transport’s (DfT’s) Access Fund to deliver the ‘Travel Choice’ behavioural change programme, to create a generational change in travel patterns, support economic growth, achieve health objectives and reduce carbon emissions.
ITP was appointed as Programme Manager, working alongside NCC and AECOM to design, deliver and evaluate the programme. Each work package was focused on a different audience:
- Providing personalised travel advice to residents.
- Supporting businesses and their employees to use sustainable transport.
- Helping jobseekers and college leavers to overcome transport barriers to employment.
- Supporting secondary school leavers with travel advice to further education or employment.
An overarching Programme Management work package linked the individual work packages together providing marketing, monitoring and evaluation support.
Research
We dedicated the first year of the programme (April 2017 - March 2018) to project set up, working in partnership with NCC, AECOM, Jobcentre Plus, jobseekers, local colleges, and secondary schools to:
- Refine the scope of each work package.
- Identify each audience’s drivers for change.
- Understand barriers towards sustainable travel use.
- Agree the most effective engagement methods.
We defined the information, incentives, and approach we felt could inspire people to get involved with the project; and the metrics for measuring success.
Design
Marketing forms the heart of every behavioural change programme. We worked with NCC and AECOM to agree the programme vision and mission, and how it would be communicated to the audiences.
We led a branding workshop to discuss the programme messaging and the visual representation of the brand, including the name, logos, straplines, and colour theme. The final brand name and logo were chosen by residents through NCC's Citizens Panel survey.
To coordinate a strategic marketing effort across all work packages, we produced a Marketing Plan setting out the channels for engagement, type of communication, frequency of posts and metrics for measuring impact.
Delivery
Our engagement approach was tailored to each audience to ensure we targeted individuals in the right setting, with the right messaging and the right incentives to encourage a change in behaviour.
AECOM's team of trained travel advisors went door-to-door in Mansfield and Newark providing advice to residents about local travel options.
We worked alongside Jobcentre work coaches to provide a pop-up travel clinics to offer personalised travel advice to jobseekers to get to interviews, training, or employment, and signposted them to further information.
At schools we led assemblies and classroom sessions to help students sustainably travel to college or further education.
Evaluation
A robust Evaluation Plan was set out at the planning stage detailing the outputs and outcomes targets and how these would be measured during the programme. This included the collection of primary travel behaviour data via ‘before’ and ‘after’ intervention surveys and was supplemented by corroborative secondary data sources.
Process and impact evaluations were carried out each year to highlight how the programme influenced local attitudes, connected jobseekers with employment opportunities, and encouraged people to travel more sustainably.
Over two years of delivery (April 2018 - March 2020), the project successfully supported jobseekers into employment, education, or training, and provided travel information and advice to residents, students, employees, and businesses.
The long-term impacts of delivery will be assessed at the end of the programme in 2021.
Read more about our influencing behaviour services or get in touch with Jim Bradley on (bradley@itpworld.net).
Photo source: AECOM and Nottinghamshire County Council.