Digital nudging and eco-friendly Choices: A cross-national study on sustainable consumer behavior in mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) platforms

Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) platforms are rapidly transforming urban transportation by integrating multiple transport modes into seamless digital ecosystems. Yet their potential to drive sustainable consumer behavior remains underexplored. This study investigates how digital nudging techniques—subtle interface features such as eco-score displays, green defaults, and carbon impact visibility—influence eco-friendly transportation choices across culturally distinct contexts. We extend the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) by integrating constructs from choice architecture, personal value orientations (Schwartz's framework), perceived trust in digital platforms, and user experience quality. Using survey data from 1047 MaaS users in the Netherlands (n = 531) and South Korea (n = 516), we employ Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to test our integrated behavioral model and conduct multigroup analysis to examine cross-national differences. Findings reveal that perceived usefulness, ease of sustainable decision-making, social motivation, and infrastructure support significantly predict eco-friendly behavioral intentions in both countries. User experience emerges as a critical antecedent, strengthening trust and reducing effort perceptions. However, cultural value orientations moderate these relationships differently: self-transcendence amplifies social and infrastructural influences in collectivist South Korea, while openness-to-change strengthens performance-driven pathways in individualistic Netherlands. Perceived distrust negatively impacts intentions more strongly among Korean users, highlighting culturally contingent responses to platform credibility. This research makes three key theoretical contributions: (1) it advances digital service design theory by empirically demonstrating how nudging strategies influence sustainability choices in real-world MaaS contexts, (2) it provides cross-cultural insights at the intersection of behavioral economics, mobile technology adoption, and sustainable transportation, and (3) it offers a value-sensitive framework for understanding how personal values shape responses to eco-oriented digital interventions. For practitioners, our findings underscore the importance of culturally adaptive, trust-building, and experience-centered platform design to promote scalable, inclusive sustainable mobility transitions.