Evaluating Global Integrated Transportation Application for Mega Event: Role of Trust and Exchanging Personal Information in Mobility as a Service (MaaS)

By evaluating user experience (UX) with an integrated transportation mobile application, called GoPyeongChang, which was developed for 2018 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in South Korea (see Fig. 1), this study aims to provide insights into how the advanced networked technology could be utilized for future, global, mega events. The GoPyeongChang mobile application was primarily designed to help users from different nationalities navigate through the public transportation services they could opt for while attending the mega sports event. This mobile application integrated transportation information to provide international users the ability to navigate Korea using any combination of available transportation systems information (e.g., a shared car system, public transportations information) in four languages (i.e., Korean, English, Chinese, and Japanese). The application allowing users to purchase tickets using the in-app payment system. However, challenges integrating with local based mobile application services, (e.g., phone number-based identification system) was inevitable, and foreign visitors had to suffer from difficulties in using the application due to unfamiliarity with local services and the applications UI hierarchy. Despite these difficulties, this case study surprisingly found that the GoPyeoungChang has contributed to forging global users’ positive attitude toward the site and the mega sports event through the mediating role of trust. This effect extended to the positive evaluation of the image of host country. Based on the findings, we attempted to provide an explanation for the experiential process through which the integrated transportation application was successfully adopted by non-local users who attended the mega sport event.