Citizen-centric design in mHealth: Concept mapping for active transportation promotion

• Infrastructure emerged as the pivotal feature to promote active transportation. • Offering itinerary and actionable info provides the most effective app feature. • Encouraging contact with local government and multimodal trips are novel approaches. Active transportation (AT) offers a sustainable means of enhancing daily physical activity and mitigating transportation-related pollution. Leveraging mobile health (mhealth) technology can be a valuable tool to promote AT behavior. However, existing interventions often lack evidence-based behavior change techniques and rarely involve potential end-users in the development process. This study aims to explore the promotion of AT through mhealth interventions using a participatory approach. We conducted online concept mapping sessions with residents of the Alpes-Maritimes Department in France. Participants engaged in brainstorming, sorting, and rating of ideas related to app features designed to encourage AT. We employed multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis to visualize the participants’ collective conceptual thinking on this subject. Data was stratified by participant demographics, including age, education, and typical mode of transportation. Participants collectively generated 44 ideas perceived as useful to fostering AT behaviors. These ideas formed six main concepts, ranked by efficiency to encourage AT as follows: Infrastructure (n = 9 ideas), Itinerary (n = 9), Contact with government (n = 4); Data (n = 12); App usability (n = 6); and Legislation and code of conduct (n = 4). The study highlights the pivotal role of infrastructure in fostering AT. Travelers could also be effectively engaged through app features such as tailored information on the presence and quality of AT infrastructure, hybrid multimodal journey planning, and time and cost savings by different travel modes. Engaging with local governments via the app is identified as a novel and promising approach to AT promotion. Indications of specific tailoring opportunities for different demographic groups need to be further investigated.