Towards Improving Public Outdoor Sports Facilities by Gamification for Well-being

In Finland, and in many other countries, there is a worrying trend that people do not exercise as much as before. The motivation for outdoor activities is on the decline, especially amongst children. This trend can affect the well-being of individuals and cause expenses for the society in lower productivity as well as increases social welfare expenses. In commercial services, gamification has been used to motivate people to exercise, but there is room for improvement on the public sector especially since cities, municipalities and governments often pay the construction and maintenance cost of public sport and hobby venues. Thus, an increase in usage would mean more worth to taxpayers’ money. In this paper, we show how basic technological solutions can be utilized to motivate people to exercise by the means of gamification and common goals for participants. We are especially interested in motivating people to take part in sports that are more rarely participated in - in this case cross-country skiing. The details of the system implemented (people counters and a web service), the gamification goals, and the results of a real-life case study in the public skiing track in the City of Pori, Finland, are presented.