Persuasive Cities: Health Behavior Change at Scale Agnis Stibe MIT Media Lab agnis@mit.edu Abstract. Can you imagine a city that feels, understands, and cares about your wellbeing? Future cities will reshape human behavior in countless ways. New strategies and models of urban spaces are required for creating future cities to properly respond to human activity, environmental conditions, and market dy- namics. Persuasive urban systems will play an important role in making cities more livable and resource-efficient by addressing current environmental prob- lems and enabling healthier routines. Drawing on socio-psychological theories and integrating them with new concepts for urban design, the persuasive cities research focuses on improving wellbeing across societies. This research pre- sents an ecosystem of future cities, describes three generic groups of people de- pending on their susceptibility to persuasive technology, explains the process of defining behavior change, and provides tools for social engineering of persua- sive cities. Further research should continue exploring how urban design in combination with socially influencing systems could encourage healthy and sustainable behaviors at scale. Keywords: persuasive cities, social engineering, socially influencing systems, behavior change, wellbeing, health, persuasive technology 1 Perspective As population in cities continue grow exponentially the architecture and design of future urban places will become more dominant in impacting human behavior. Ac- cording to social cognitive theory [1], any well-designed environment can become a strong influencer of what people think and do. There is an endlessly dynamic interac- tion between a person, a particular behavior, and an environment in which that behav- ior is performed. The persuasive cities research leverages this knowledge to engineer persuasive environments for altering human behavior on societal levels. The proposed research reflects on novel ways of how persuasive technology [2] and socially influencing systems [3-4] enable mechanisms to perpetually support motivation of individuals comparing to conventional methods, such as those that are based on carrots and sticks. Instead, persuasive urban systems harness social influence from crowd behavior to craft influential messaging aimed at shifting behavior and attitude of an individual, who naturally is an integral part of the same crowd. Such continuous interplay can ultimately result in an ongoing process that reshapes com- munities and societies without any other incentives. 2 Emergence of Persuasive Cities Ongoing research streams focus on sensible cities (researching sensing technologies to read human behavior in urban spaces) and smart cities (analyzing big data to classi- fy groups of people based on their distinct behavioral patterns), however there is a lack of knowledge about perspective ways to achieve persistent behavioral changes at scale. Therefore, the proposed research extends an ecosystem of future cities (Table 1) by introducing the notion of persuasive cities that aims to advance and refine influ- ential strategies designed for intentionally reshaping how people think and act in ur- ban environments. Table 1. Ecosystem of future cities Role Character Technology PERSUASIVE Change Care Socially Influencing Systems SMART Classify Understand Big Data Analytics SENSIBLE Read Feel Sensor Networks Each layer of future cities has its role, character, and supportive technology. Sensible cities employ sensor networks to read crowd behaviors. In other words, these cities feel human movements. These crowd behaviors further serve as an input for big data analytics that smart cities apply to classify groups of people according to similar be- havioral patterns (profiles). When that is accomplished, the groups having better rou- tines can be exemplified to other underperforming groups through intentionally de- signed socially influencing systems, which are at the core of persuasive cities. 3 Susceptibility to Persuasive Technology People generally can fall into one of the three generic categories depending on their susceptibility to persuasive technology (Fig. 1). Self-contained people (the red circle) most likely are not open for changing anything in them. They are fully satisfied with who they are and what they do on daily basis, thus many behavioral interventions might fail in attempts to influence this group of individuals. Self-driven people (the green circle) typically have comparatively high levels of motivation and can achieve everything that they have envisioned. Thus, these people most likely are not looking for additional sources of encouragement, and therefore persuasive technologies might become unnecessary for this group. However, there is another group of people that oftentimes would like to change their routines, but rarely succeed in doing so. That reminds of New Year’s resolutions that in many cases end around February. Therefore, this group is entitled as January 1st (the yellow circle) and seem to be the most welcoming towards technology sup- ported behavioral interventions designed to help achieving target behaviors. Alt- hough, Fig. 1 presents all three groups as equal circles, in reality the size of each group might significantly vary depending on the context and particular behavior. Self-Contained January 1st Self-Driven FAIL APPRECIATE UNNECESSARY Fig. 1. Susceptibility to persuasive technology 4 Defining Behavior Change To achieve an envisioned target behavior, the process and components of behavior change have to be well understood and clearly defined. In the process of defining behavior change, there are three main components, namely the target group, its pre- sent behavior, and its envisioned future behavior (Table 2). Table 2. The three main components for defining behavior change Target Group Current Behavior Future Behavior Description A group of people currently A certain behavior of the An ultimate future having an unsatisfactory target group that currently behavior of the target behavior. It is important to is not in line with an group that is envisioned narrow down the target envisioned future behavior to be more beneficial for group as precise as possible. in a given context. everyone. Example There are MIT faculty Who currently commute They could commute by members. alone in their private cars. bicycles instead whenever possible. 5 Tools for Social Engineering Earlier research on persuasive technology [2] describes several ways how social dy- namics can influence human behavior, which have been further refined and structured as a framework for Socially Influencing Systems (SIS) [3], depicted in Fig. 2. The SIS framework is a useful tool for scholars and practitioners aiming at improving future cities by introducing persuasive urban interventions targeted to support wellbeing. CT Competition ENGAGEMENT RE Recognition PARTICIPATION CR NI Normative Cooperation influence SF Social facilitation SL Social learning INVOLVEMENT SC Social comparison Fig. 2. Socially Influencing Systems (SIS) framework The framework describes seven socially influencing principles that can support per- suasive urban interventions. The principles are interlinked and have potential to exert stronger effects depending on the context of a particular behavioral challenge. Norma- tive influence and social comparison seem to be more effective to achieve involve- ment of the target group as the two principles focus on attitudinal changes. Coopera- tion and social facilitation seem to be more effective to make individuals participate and do the envisioned future behavior even without a formed attitude towards it. Competition and recognition seem to be more effective in engaging the target group to do the future behavior as the principles focus on both attitude and behavior simul- taneously. For example, the effects several socially influencing principles have al- ready been studied in the context of urban mobility, e.g. bicycling [5]. 6 References 1. Bandura, A.: Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Pren- tice Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1986) 2. Fogg, B. J.: Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann (2003) 3. Stibe, A.: Towards a Framework for Socially Influencing Systems: Meta-Analysis of Four PLS-SEM Based Studies. In: MacTavish, T., Basapur, S. (eds.) Persuasive Technology. LNCS, vol. 9072, pp. 171–182. Springer, Heidelberg (2015) 4. Stibe, A.: Advancing Typology of Computer-Supported Influence: Moderation Effects in Socially Influencing Systems. In: MacTavish, T., Basapur, S. (eds.) Persuasive Technolo- gy. LNCS, vol. 9072, pp. 251–262. Springer, Heidelberg (2015) 5. Wunsch, M., Stibe, A., Millonig, A., Seer, S., Dai, C., Schechtner, K, and Chin, R.C.C. What Makes You Bike? Exploring Persuasive Strategies to Encourage Low-Energy Mobil- ity. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 9072, Persuasive Technology, pp. 53-64. (2015)