Preprint_Walk Your City_Wernbacher

In recent decades, a stagnation or even a decline in pedestrian traffic has been observed in many cities, despite the ambitious efforts of national and international action plans, strategies and initiatives. Our project "Walk Your City" addresses this problem by designing, developing and evaluating an innovative, behavioral-based pedestrian initiative with a focus on the nudging method. The applied nudging framework includes gamification as well as crowdsourcing elements and aims to decisively improve the quality of life in cities by promoting walking as an active and health-enhancing activity.The core of our approach is represented by nudges which are triggered via an app as well as offline campaigns. The story refers to a not so distant dystopian future where the pilot city Graz suffers from pollution, traffic chaos as well as climate change. Via regular walking as well as visiting places such as parks or viewpoints users of the app are rewarded with tokens. Following the idea of crowdsourcing these tokens can be invested into wishes for improvement such as parking benches or zebra crossings. Through this unique combination of technological innovations, playful approaches, behavioral concepts and creative campaigns, participants are motivated to explore and experience the city on foot. Walking should be perceived as a genuine and healthy alternative for short distances and anchored as first choice when covering small distances.The nudging-method will be iteratively optimized in terms of acceptance, functionality and usability using focus groups, internal lab tests and expert workshops. This strategy will a practice-oriented project implementation that is tailored to the needs of different target groups such as students, commuters as well as tourists. The mobility and health data obtained during the pilot test will be used to evaluate the suitability and impact of the nudging method in course of an academic paper. As the empirical data show, a behavioral change in terms of a larger share of walking in the modal split as well a positive impact on the interest and awareness regarding the effects of walking could be observed.