Distrust as a Hazard for Future Sustainable Mobility Planning. Rethinking Employees’ Vulnerability When Introducing New Information and Communication Technologies in Local Authorities

Nienaber, Ann-Marie; Spundflasch, Sebastian; Soares, Andre; Woodcock, Andree

Abstract

The implementation of innovative technologies to support the planning and implementation of new
transport schemes in cities requires staff to not only gain appropriate technical capabilities but also to
have the willingness to adopt innovative technologies. Taking a sociotechnical approach, focussing on
the Technology-Acceptance Model (TAM), we highlight employees’ distrust and unwillingness to
become vulnerable as an additional challenge for Local Authorities (LAs) to cope with the introduction
of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) for mobility solutions in their transport
departments. Using data from semi-structured interviews and workshops held across Europe (conducted
as part of H2020 CIVITAS SUITS), two key indicators have been identified relating to the unwillingness of
potential users to adopt new technologies for mobility solutions, i.e., incongruence of values and
attribution of negative motives. Furthermore, we show behavioral intentions’ that indicate that users’
are not willing to become vulnerable and thus, provide evidence of signs that an organization can look
for that may show that the likelihood of their technological implementation failing is relatively high. The
practical guidelines provided at the end of the paper have been derived from our experiences of
introducing new technologies for mobility solutions in partner cities of the SUITS project and highlight
how users’ can be persuaded to ‘become vulnerable’ and actual using new technologies for future
mobility solutions.

Keywords
Information & Communication Technologies; Trust; Local Mass Media; SEMI-structured interviews; Hzards; Europe