Urban areas can be considered the ground for the challenges related to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The objective of shaping cities as human settlement that will see a more inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable future is often argued in literature as an issue dependent on behavioral change of inhabitants in urban areas. In this paper, the authors question if experimental applications based on gamification can co-produce more sustainable neighborhoods through an impact evaluation method that departs from individual choices within the complex of urban mobility. This investigation is carried out within MUV (Mobility Urban Values), an EU research and innovation project, which aims to trigger more sustainable urban mobility in six pilot cities. This article describes the critical method of validation, an impact assessment of the MUV experimental gamification in the pilot cities, in order to represent a proof for future urban strategies. This methodological approach is based on an evaluation structured on indicators of both impact and process suitable for urban contexts. As based on six pilot cities, with possibilities for transferability to other contexts and scalability to other cities, the method represents a reference work for the evaluation of similar experimental applications.Systems 2019, 7, 30 2 of 28 in changing their habits. Individuals rarely recognize their power to affect and improve the liveability of the context they inhabit as their own neighborhood/city/region/planet and as their own life. It is difficult, indeed, to believe in the 'butterfly effect' (i.e., our individual routines have an impact on an entire ecosystem), so that the causal link between every little change of daily routines can have an impact on a systemic dimension of the SDG as fundamental and relevant.With the attempt to enhance this awareness, studies on behavior change highlight gamification as an effective perspective [3]. Gamification is often defined as the process of game design elements that structure playful activities [4] on non-game contexts [5]. Game design elements are generally driven by a user-perspective that leads individual human personal motivation and/or perception to provide more effective, efficient, engaging, enduring, and entertaining experiences [6,7]. Points, ranks, levels, competitions, challenges, rewards, badges, or reputations are designed to keep users, as players, in the game [8]. Gamification has been much used as a tool for user-design products or services, but also in business with the purpose to motivate individual behavior change.Since the beginning of the XX century, psychologists, anthropologists, and philosophers have studied the function of playing for human beings. Karl Groos in his "The play of man" [9], besides acknowledging that the instinct of playing has deep physiological bases, also argued that "play" has a fundamentally social function: it offers to humans (and animals) a tool to mastery those activities that bring prosperity for their species. Later in time, Ber...
European Union Member States are called upon to meet internationally proposed environmental goals. This study is based, in particular, on the recommendation of the European Union (EU), which encourages Member States to pursue effective policies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions, including through appropriate changes in the behavioral habits of citizens. In this respect, among the main sectors involved, transport and mobility should certainly be mentioned. National institutions should be adequately involved in order to achieve the objectives set; in this regard, universities must certainly be considered for their educational value. These latter, for instance, could commit to improving the environmental performance of the mobility of their commuter students (to a not insignificant extent), since commuting modes are often the cause of high CO2 emissions; indeed, they still largely involve the use of internal combustion engines based on fossil fuels. In this paper, the effectiveness of a smartphone-app-based method to encourage commuter students to adopt more sustainable transport modes is evaluated. In more detail, starting from a statistical analysis of the status quo of mobility habits of a sample of students at the University of Palermo (Italy), an improvement of current habits toward a more sustainable path is encouraged through a new application (specifically created for this purpose) installed on students’ smartphones. Then, the daily and annual distances traveled by commuters with the new mobility modes are calculated, and the resulting savings in energy and CO2 emissions are estimated. Finally, it is proposed that the reduced emissions could be converted into energy-efficiency credits that the University could use to enter the emission trading system (ETS), here contextualized within the Italian “TEE” (“Energy Efficiency Credits”) scheme, while the benefits for students participating in the program could consist of reduced fees and free access to university services. The results obtained show the feasibility of the proposal. This approach can be considered a useful model that could be adopted by any other public institutions—not only universities—to facilitate their path toward decarbonization.
Cities are currently engaged through their urban policies in pushing people towards less environmentally impacting mobility modalities: therefore, cycling and walking are strongly promoted, especially by means of new and wider limited traffic and no-cars zones. In this paper, the effectiveness of the new smartphones and appsbased technologies in modifying the mobility behaviors of citizens towards more sustainable choices has been investigated. Specifically, the potential of a smartphone app, directly involving citizens by means of a game rewarding the most sustainable trips, has been tested on a university commuters' group. These latter, starting from their current mobility situation, were challenged by an enhanced scenario characterized by more restrictive and sustainable targets. Promising results have been obtained suggesting that game-based tools could be effectively used as urban policy interventions intended to obtain a more sustainable mobility.
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