Involving people in the building up of smart and sustainable cities: How to influence commuters’ behaviors through a mobile app game

Usually, mobility policies assessed by local institutions tend to intervene on the side of the urban transport networks, by designing new and expensive infrastructures, whereas only a few attention is paid to the possible positive effects induced by proper mobility behaviors of people. On purpose, Smartphone technologies and platforms are rapidly becoming effective tools for involving citizens in environmental conscious mobility habits. By means of an empirical application to a group of university students, that daily commute for reaching their departments, the effectiveness of a mobile app game in pursuing commuters to modify their mobility behaviors is here checked. The game rewards with tangible prizes the most environmentally sustainable mobility habits, connecting commuters with sponsors and companies operating in the urban context. The field application of the app in the city of Palermo challenges the involved commuters against two benchmarks of mobility behaviors characterized by the use of higher sweet mobility means. The first scenario (apart its applicability as alone) can be seen as a first less challenging step towards the second one. The interesting outcomes of this experimental application encourage paying further attention to such behavioral tools for achieving the smartness of cities.