The University of Newcastle

Overview

• University size: 37,677
• Campuses: 3
• Guaranteed parking spaces: 50

University of Newcastle (UoN) located in NSW, Australia started as Liftango’s beta client, and now has paved the way to success with university carpooling. Newcastle University had been operating for 4 years successfully. And tailored their rewards more to their students - and had an incredible user uptake.

The Problem

Although UoN was performing as one of Liftango’s top carpooling clients, their growth had been steady. Following the success of Monash University and their free parking initiative, UoN wanted to improve and tailor their rewards to something that would appeal more to students.

Why rewards users?

Carpooling is not a new idea, however, “what’s in it for me” is the attitude for some people, the environmental benefits aren’t enough to motivate picking up another person. Here Liftango learned and developed our program to take away barriers that stop people wanting to carpool by providing a “carrot at the end of a stick”. Creating a behavioural change isn’t as simple as riding in with someone once, it is about positively reinforcing the user’s action to encourage continuous change, which is what we see with UoN’s growth.

The University of Newcastle was suffering from overcrowding and minimal carparks available, causing students to be disgruntled, late or just not showing up for classes because of parking—offering guaranteed car spaces was an obvious choice. Adding a second layer of motivation, the top students of each quarter were sent fuel vouchers to help compensate taking another student to class.

The Solution

We had to analyse the potential user landscape, students, and deduce what rewards students would value most. Offering free parking to students would save them an annual $1150 if they carpooled every day.

Liftango works simultaneously with the University of Newcastle to implement the change to free parking. This work was divided into three parts:

• Marketing to prospective users and current users the change
• Integrating and creating a seamless process for UoN parking systems and parking officers
• Testing and measuring the results

The Results

The University of Newcastle had an incredible increase of 38% usage per month after free parking went live. Customising the rewards for the climate of potential carpooler has significant influence with the uptake of a carpooling program.