Fun + Urgency = Impact: The Hidden Incentivization When Air Quality, Employer Engagement & Gamification Unite

Ryan Evans is the vice president of business and community relations at Salt Lake Chamber, the state of Utah’s chamber of commerce. He manages the chamber’s relationships with other chambers as well as business associations.

Utah experiences poor air quality for about 5% of the year annually. This is one of the state’s biggest concerns; but with the help of the RideAmigos platform, Utah has taken the first steps towards solving this problem. Together, they created the Clear the Air Challenge, managed by Salt Lake City. When the state’s capital lost funding for the program, it was taken over by Salt Lake Chamber.

Clear the Air Challenge

This event is a statewide month-long challenge that happens every July. It encourages citizens to drive smarter, drive less, and reduce congestion. A statistic finds that mobile sources cause 50% of the pollution in Utah. The challenge has proven popular and successful with almost 7,000 participants in 2014. 143,000 trips were eliminated, over 2.2 million miles were saved, but most importantly, 668 emission tons were saved.

How to get people to participate:

The Clear the Air Challenge uses TDM gamification tactics and the tools offered by RideAmigos’ platform to incentivize participation. 88-90% of participants sign up as members of a team, usually dividing themselves up by their employers. The competition platform is built around this, offering 10-15 prizes a week to keep participants engaged and competitive. There are 3 criterias for winners: individuals, teams, and large v.s. small employers. This incentivizes every kind of competitor to participate. The competition ends with a large awards ceremony, attracting hundreds of supporters and lots of press coverage to the event.

This is “a fun way of engaging our community in something that really matters and at the same time we’re promoting better transportation behavior… we’re encouraging them to continue this behavior throughout the year” says Ryan. The goal is to get people involved in a focused effort and to “emphasize in a short time the individual impact that anyone can have on air quality.”

Our vision at RideAmigos is to reduce traffic congestion, promote cleaner air, and allow for a happier commute. Through our multi-modal platform we offer transportation alternatives, which include ridesharing and other transportation modes that ultimately reduce pollution and save the commuter time and money. Using features such as our gamification and incentives tools, many administrators have been able to successfully reduce their carbon footprints.