Objective: To examine the potential efficacy of using point-of-decision prompts to influence intentions to be active in a park setting.
Methods: 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.
Results: 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.
Conclusion: 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.
Keywords: Built environment; Crowdsourcing; Parks; Physical activity.
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