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

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.