Do we need different levels of badges for users with different participation levels? A field experiment from a bicycle commuting program

Using a novel IT infrastructure which measures bicycle ridership within a University, we manipulate the goal condition for the awarding of badges, with "participation" badges for one ride per week, to "challenge" badges for three rides per week. Each condition is targeted at an archetype of rider: those who ride only rarely for the participation badge and thus can benefit from a goal intended to break decision inertia, and those who ride occasionally for the challenge badge who would be challenged by the challenge goal. We find marginal effects of the participation goal among rare riders, with true non-riders being especially difficult to break the state of decision inertia. With infrequent riders, we do not find significant results for the challenge goal but do find a significant increase among infrequent riders presented with the participation goal.