Crowdsourcing Urban Accessibility

This short paper presents some preliminary results (both quantitative and qualitative) gathered from field trials with three different mobile apps that allow walkers to map urban accessibility barriers/facilities, while wandering around. The three apps were designed based on different gamification mechanisms, respectively exploiting: i) intrinsic (i.e., altruistic) motivations, ii) extrinsic motivations expressed in terms of a concrete reward, and iii) extrinsic motivations expressed in terms of fun/entertainment. These preliminary results reveal that the apps designed on the basis of extrinsic motivations are able to drive users to provide a larger amount of contributions. Interesting differences between concrete rewards and fun used as effective means to motivate contributors are discussed.