Point-of-decision prompts for increasing park-based physical activity: a crowdsource analysis

To examine the potential efficacy of using point-of-decision prompts to influence intentions to be active in a park setting.

In June 2013, participants from across the U.S. (n=250) completed an online experiment using Amazon's Mechanical Turk and Survey Monkey. Participants were randomly exposed to a park photo containing a persuasive, theoretically based message in the form of a sign (treatment) or an identical photo with no sign (control). Differences in intentions to engage in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity within the park were examined between the two conditions for multiple gender, age, and race groups.

Participants who were exposed to the park photo with the sign reported significantly greater intentions to be active than those who viewed the photo without a sign. This effect was stronger for women and largely null for men, but no differences were observed across age or race groups.

Point-of-decision prompts are a relatively inexpensive, simple, sustainable, and scalable strategy for evoking behavior change in parks and further testing of diverse messages in actual park settings is warranted.