Salient Attributes of Mobility Apps: What Does Really Matter for the Citizen?

As cities keep growing, urban mobility is one of the most significant challenges cities have to face nowadays. As one measure of smart city initiatives, mobility apps aim to support the use of public transport and reduce the number of private cars. This paper applies the theoretical framework of Service-Dominant logic to analyze and compare sets of functionalities of mobility service platforms for public transportation. We examined service apps offered by associated public transportation companies using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to identify salient attributes of mobility apps from the users\u27 perspective. Our empirical results show that apps with high user ratings are characterized by integrated infrastructure resources, providing a monitoring function and trouble reports, filtering modules, and functionalities for saving favorite connections and purchasing tickets. Our study provides novel insights into the field of mobility service apps and indicates practical guidelines for policymakers of transport and tariff associations