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Cycling is an essential transport mode in a well-balanced urban transportation system. While most approaches for achieving an increase from today’s usually low levels of biking are focusing mainly on infrastructure measures and policies, this study presents the effects of the Biking Tourney, a bike commuting challenge between 14 companies aiming at...
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... hypothesis is that a competition among organizations would provoke cooperation among employees in each organiza- tion. Furthermore, the use of publicly displayed rankings in common areas of the companies -as shown in Figure 2 -should raise awareness of the tourney and facili- tate [10] commuting by bike. ...
Citations
... In 2015 and 2016, the topics of gamification to reduce inequalities, e.g. in assessing the abilities of impaired job applicants (Korn et al., 2016), and to support workplace well-being (Jent and Janneck, 2016), gained traction, but it was not until 2017 that research publications on gamification as a tool to promote environmental sustainability in organizations, e.g. to promote energy conservation among employees, increased. Furthermore, individual studies have explored how gamification (Wunsch et al., 2016) and emergency management (Heldal, 2016). In the same vein, research studies on gamification to promote physical activity and, thus, employee physical health also emerged. ...
... In cases where sensors were not present, employees were asked to manually track their activities as input to the gamified application. For example, some studies used manual input for recording physical activities (Mamede et al., 2021;Nuijten et al., 2022), cycling routes (Wunsch et al., 2016), or pro-environmental actions at work (Kirchner- Krath et al., 2024b;Krath et al., 2023a). ...
... Among the collaboration-oriented elements, teams of employees were often used as a cooperative form of play to achieve common goals in a cooperative-competitive manner. For example, teams competed against each other to overcome physical challenges (Mamede et al., 2021), or different companies formed teams to compete in a ranking in terms of cycling kilometers driven (Wunsch et al., 2016). On the other hand, teams were also used in gamified workshops (Patricio et al., 2022;Putz and Treiblmaier, 2018) to promote collaborative work on ideas. ...
Purpose: Given the urgency of corporate engagement in sustainable development, companies seek ways to involve their employees in sustainability efforts. In this regard, gamified systems have gained attention as a novel tool to promote sustainable employee behavior. However, as the research field matures, researchers and practitioners are confronted with a scattered academic landscape that makes it difficult to grasp how gamification can be designed to engage employees in sustainable behavior and to understand how gamification effects unfold at psychological, behavioral and corporate levels of sustainability. Design/methodology/approach: This paper uses a systematic literature review to consolidate the existing knowledge on gamification designs and their effects on sustainable employee behavior.
Findings: Studies have explored a variety of utilitarian and achievement-, immersion-and social-related gameful affordances to promote positive behavior-and system-related psychological effects as a basis for employee engagement in sustainable behavior. However, the evidence regarding their impact on rational decision-making processes and overcoming the intention-action gap inherent in sustainability is still limited. Nevertheless, several studies in focused areas indicate the potential to elicit behavioral changes that drive sustainability outcomes at the corporate level as well. Originality/value: Our study provides three main contributions. First, we develop a conceptual framework that illustrates how gamification can drive sustainable behavior in the workplace. Second, we derive seven agenda points to guide future research on gamification for corporate sustainability. Third, we deduce three practical approaches to use gamification as a strategic intervention to promote sustainable behavior in organizations.
... It involved 239 employees from 14 companies in the Boston area, including Google, iRobot, Volpe, and others, who collectively rode approximately 30,000 miles over six weeks. The study used hyper-performance methodology and gamification [33] to help employees rethink their mobility choices for their daily commutes. As a result, the application increased bike commuting commitment by 26% among participating employees. ...
... , frequency (average of daily frequency), overall slope, and period-separated slopes with daily frequency of EMA responses (the bar colored in black). For period-separated slopes, three periods are given: week #1-#6 (day 0-41), week #6-#8 (day [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55], and week #8-#10 (day 56-67). Note that overall slope is introduced from daily frequency, and that period-separated slopes are calculated from daily frequency per week. ...
... Technological advancements with vibration motors renders vibrotactile feedback as one of the most utilised modes to convey affect-related information [57,58,71]. However, non-vibrating interfaces, such as Shape-Memory Alloy (SMA) based wearable interfaces [28,31,42,51,52,54,67] are becoming a popular alternative for vibrotactile interfaces as they are more natural and expressive [31]. Moreover, SMA demonstrates multiple advantages, such as efficiency in large-amplitude actuation [35], competitive Power-to-Weight ratio [41], and a smaller form factor. ...
... Game-like designs are used in "sustainability challenges", as well as rewards, that usually are virtual points [6,14,51,55]. Social influence and social comparison are used and instantiated e.g. with leader boards [13,21,25,51,54]. Another approach is self-monitoring, often enabled through graphical, statistical representations of reported or logged mobility behaviour [6,14,40,51,55]. ...
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders diagnosed in children, for which Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) represents the main standard treatment used worldwide, despite its pedantic approach negatively affects both patients’ engagement and improvement. In this work we aim to renovate ADHD treatment with a new approach for cognitive, behavioral, and emotional patient rehabilitation. Iamhero is a first prototype of hi-tech multisensorial therapeutic environment, that bases its strength on patients physical and emotional engagement, leading therefore to cognitive and behavioral skills improvement. The first results show encouraging improvement in learning skills in patients that have steadily used the system for six months. In this paper we explain Iamhero main features, and the first experimental results obtained.
... , frequency (average of daily frequency), overall slope, and period-separated slopes with daily frequency of EMA responses (the bar colored in black). For period-separated slopes, three periods are given: week #1-#6 (day 0-41), week #6-#8 (day [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55], and week #8-#10 (day 56-67). Note that overall slope is introduced from daily frequency, and that period-separated slopes are calculated from daily frequency per week. ...
... Technological advancements with vibration motors renders vibrotactile feedback as one of the most utilised modes to convey affect-related information [57,58,71]. However, non-vibrating interfaces, such as Shape-Memory Alloy (SMA) based wearable interfaces [28,31,42,51,52,54,67] are becoming a popular alternative for vibrotactile interfaces as they are more natural and expressive [31]. Moreover, SMA demonstrates multiple advantages, such as efficiency in large-amplitude actuation [35], competitive Power-to-Weight ratio [41], and a smaller form factor. ...
... Game-like designs are used in "sustainability challenges", as well as rewards, that usually are virtual points [6,14,51,55]. Social influence and social comparison are used and instantiated e.g. with leader boards [13,21,25,51,54]. Another approach is self-monitoring, often enabled through graphical, statistical representations of reported or logged mobility behaviour [6,14,40,51,55]. ...
Healthy Ageing represents one of the most crucial topics that our society will face in the next decades, due to the progressive demographic ageing of the population, (e.g., in Italy old-age dependency ratio is estimated to reach 59,7% by 2065). These statistics highlights the need of a new paradigm for active and healthy ageing, as well as a healthcare system able to support elderly population in age-related diseases management. In this work we present Let’s dance, an innovative exergame that aims to provide a new way to deliver physiotherapy for mild or moderate Parkinson’s disease patients. Within the game, the patients are asked to reproduce the choreography proposed, whose dance moves are aimed toward the achievement of specific therapeutic goals (e.g., optimize motor coordination, physical endurance, etc.). The game is part of a broader integrated platform that through sensors and actuators located on a robot device in the clinical environment and on patients themselves, can track in real-time both the game performance and the clinical KPIs and determine the assessment of patient’s therapeutic progress. In this paper we present the first prototype of Let’s dance and a use-case scenario.
... Policymakers and spatial planners like road planners should provide better infrastructure and provide a user-friendly environment to encourage people to walk and bike for their non-work travel needs (Ramezani et al 2018, Carroll et al 2019, Useche et al 2019. While actors like companies (corporate offices) can motivate their employees to use active travel like in Boston, USA, 14 companies are motivating employees to commute to work using bikes (Wunsch et al 2016). There are several case-studies (Aittasalo et al 2017, Fenton 2017 on promoting active modes available for developed countries. ...
Background: To strengthen current discourse on acceleration and scale up of the emissions mitigation actions by sector specific demand side interventions, information on intersection of three dimensions becomes useful. First, what kind of actions help in avoiding, shifting and improving (ASI) demand for activities/services and resultant emissions so as to help in deciding choices for actions. Second, how these three categories of interventions are linked to wider impact on human wellbeing represented by the sustainable development goals (SDGs) framework and third, who are the social actors associated with these interventions. These three steps become important in targeted scaling up of actions through policy interventions.
Method: This study undertakes review of literature between 2015 and 2020 with systematic evidence search and screening. The literature search has been conducted in Scopus Database. From over 6887 studies in the initial search, 294 studies were finally reviewed. This study links demand side interventions of avoid-shift-improve (ASI) categories to SDGs. Also maps these actions to actors who can lead the changes.
Result: A wide range of improve options are already helping in incremental steps to reduce demand and emissions in various services like mobility, shelter and industrial products. However, ASI categories provide more distinct intervention options. All interventions contribute to innovation, infrastructure development and industrialisation. Interventions that interact with several of SDGs include active mode of transport, passive building design, cleaner cooking, circular economy. In mobility services policy makers supported by spatial planners and service delivery providers are the major actors. In industry policy makers get followed by spatial planners and innovators. For buildings, key actors included spatial planners followed by policy makers Discussion: Positive links of demand side interventions to multiple SDGs are over all very strong however, few trade-offs were observed. These mostly related to distributional impact across social groups which highlight the need for policy attention and hard infrastructure design changes. Mitigation and wider benefit outcomes cannot be achieved by individual or household level actions alone. They require involvement of multiple actors, interconnected actions in sequence as well as in parallel and support of hard infrastructure. Strategic information sharing to enhance user awareness and education play an important role in shaping behaviour. Digitalization, information and communication and interactive technologies will play a significant role in understanding and modifying people's choices; however, these would also require regulatory attention.
... Interventions using biking apps are also scarce. Wunsch et al. [6] explored three persuasive strategies (a frequent biking challenge, a virtual bike tutorial, and a bike buddy program), Wunsch et al. [7] tested gamification incorporated in a biking campaign, and Bopp et al. [8] tested a multistrategy intervention using an app alongside a social marketing component and social media campaign. It is worth mentioning that the merits of multi-component interventions are also not entirely warranted. ...
Current mobility patterns over-rely on transport modes that do not benefit sustainable and healthy lifestyles. To explore the potential for active mobility, we conducted a randomized experiment aimed at increasing regular commuter cycling in cities. In designing the experiment, we teamed up with developers of the “Cyclers” smartphone app to improve the effectiveness of the app by evaluating financial and non-financial motivational features. Participants in the experiment were recruited among new users of the app, and were randomly assigned to one of four different motivational treatments (smart gamification, two variants of a financial reward, and a combination of smart gamification and a financial reward) or a control group (no specific motivation). Our analysis suggests that people can be effectively motivated to engage in more frequent commuter cycling with incentives via a smartphone app. Offering small financial rewards seems to be more effective than smart gamification. A combination of both motivational treatments—smart gamification and financial rewards—may work the same or slightly better than financial rewards alone. We demonstrate that small financial rewards embedded in smartphone apps such as “Cyclers” can be effective in nudging people to commute by bike more often.
... These authors support the importance of a shared experience, which allows to go beyond the shortterm effects. In fact, according to Wunsch M., Stibe A., Millonig A., Seer S., Chin R. C., Schechtner K. [36], the collaboration and the common experience of travelers represents not only an important element in achieving a change in daily behavior, but also a mechanism for mutual encouragement in performing the travel-related activities. ...
Digital technologies integrated in the physical spaces enable new practices that open new possible interactions between people and the urban public spaces. These emerging hybrid spaces might have a crucial role in the processes aiming at having a more satisfying urban life. Mobility is a field strongly impacted by hybrid urban spaces and this should be considered in order to improve the quality of life in cities. In this paper the authors, starting from the concept of Mobility as a Service (MaaS), show as game elements applied in different moments of the travel experience and disseminated in different parts of these hybrid spaces can enhance the interaction between people and mobility services. Finally the outcome of a co-design session about a game solution aiming at improving the people experience with the mobility services is presented as an example of this assumption.
... television, radio, etc.) are examples of mass media through which behavior models can transmit new ways of thinking and behaving to a critical mass of people in the society at large with the aim of changing attitudes and behaviors. 22 In more recent times, social media and gamified PTs have become popular media, also known as socially influencing systems, 25 aimed at motivating behavior change, including engagement in targeted behaviors such as cycling, 26 healthy eating, 27,28 physical activity, 20 etc. In the context of our study, our simulated behavior models (in a prototyped fitness application), shown in Figure 1, represent virtual social agents of change, 29 with the observers of the modeled exercise behavior being the targeted audience. ...
Research has shown that persuasive technologies aimed at behavior change will be more effective if behavioral determinants are targeted. However, research on the determinants of bodyweight exercise performance in the context of behavior modeling in fitness apps is scarce. To bridge this gap, we conducted an empirical study among 659 participants resident in North America using social cognitive theory as a framework to uncover the determinants of the performance of bodyweight exercise behavior. To contextualize our study, we modeled, in a hypothetical context, two popular bodyweight exercise behaviors – push ups and squats – featured in most fitness apps on the market using a virtual coach (aka behavior model). Our social cognitive model shows that users’ perceived self-efficacy (βT = 0.23, p < 0.001) and perceived social support (βT = 0.23, p < 0.001) are the strongest determinants of bodyweight exercise behavior, followed by outcome expectation (βT = 0.11, p < 0.05). However, users’ perceived self-regulation (βT = –0.07, p = n.s.) turns out to be a non-determinant of bodyweight exercise behavior. Comparatively, our model shows that perceived self-efficacy has a stronger direct effect on exercise behavior for men (β = 0.31, p < 0.001) than for women (β = 0.10, p = n.s.). In contrast, perceived social support has a stronger direct effect on exercise behavior for women (β = 0.15, p < 0.05) than for men (β = −0.01, p = n.s.). Based on these findings and qualitative analysis of participants’ comments, we provide a set of guidelines for the design of persuasive technologies for promoting regular exercise behavior.
... In a recent Biking Tourney study [23], a socially influencing system [21] was engineered and implemented to provoke competition between and cooperation [7] within organizations. In that study, the participating organizations were ranked under four different categories related to their performance related to bicycling. ...
Can you imagine a city that feels, understands, and cares about your wellbeing? Future cities will reshape human behavior in countless ways. New strategies and models are required for future urban spaces to properly respond to human activity, environmental conditions, and market dynamics. Persuasive urban systems will play an important role in making cities more livable and resource-efficient by addressing current environmental challenges and enabling healthier routines. Persuasive cities research aims at improving wellbeing across societies through applications of socio-psychological theories and their integration with conceptually new urban designs. This research presents an ecosystem of future cities, describes three generic groups of people depending on their susceptibility to persuasive technology, explains the process of defining behavior change, and provides tools for social engineering of persuasive cities. Advancing this research is important as it scaffolds scientific knowledge on how to design persuasive cities and refines guidelines for practical applications in achieving their emergence.
Information and communication technologies (ICT) are becoming ever more pervasive in our everyday lives. Mobility, including all modes of transport, is one area where this trend is present. However, there is no comprehensive understanding of technology’s role in supporting utilitarian cycling in realistic everyday settings. In this thesis, I aim to address this gap by exploring the interplay of technology and the adoption of utilitarian cycling. Across seven case studies, I describe motivations, choices and experiences involved in utilitarian cycling and the role of technology therein. I furthermore lay out how the environment, the available cycling infrastructure, the complex interactions with other road users, and the competencies of individuals shape experiences during cycling and using ICT in that realm. Using technology probes incorporating game-like elements, I show how such systems can help their users to stay motivated and use the bicycle more often. I also investigated how professional cycling instructors help novice cyclists to inform the design of a technology probe that facilitates competence development to support cyclists in complex real-world contexts. Its evaluation shows the potential and limits of such a supportive technology. By connecting the findings across the case studies back to the literature, I then present a framework for HCI in utilitarian cycling. Therein I show that utilitarian cycling can be understood as a practice that is itself a composition of smaller sub-practices, each of which consists of a dynamic interplay between material things, competences, and meanings. These practices can then be distinguished into those that happen on-the-bicycle and those o�ff-the-bicycle. Furthermore, those practices di�ffer in their complexity. I identify four fields of practices – planning practices, choosing utilitarian cycling, manoeuvring practices, and handling practices – and show how my case studies and related work in HCI research contribute to understanding the role of digital technology within those practices.
This thesis contributes to HCI research by presenting a condensed conceptual perspective for HCI interventions and utilitarian cycling. It ranges from an abstract and decontextualised to a specific and contextualised view on cycling. It provides a detailed description of cyclists’ experiences within complex real-world contexts, highlights the importance of both choices and social practices, and provides an understanding and examples for designing and embedding ICT as meaningful support in this realm. The insights presented here can thus inform future research and design on interactive technology for cycling.
