The capital of Austria has announced the use of a “Culture Token”, which was set for initial tests at the end of February. Residents of the city can earn the tokens by acting in a climate-friendly manner.
Thus, a playful bonus system, in the form of an app, will aim to motivate citizens to reduce CO2 emissions and do something good for themselves.
In an initial test phase, the culture tokens can then be used at Vienna’s People’s Theatre, the Vienna Museum, the Art Museum and the Concert house.
A playful pilot project that rewards climate-friendly behaviour
The condition for participating in the “Culture Token” is to have registered for it in advance, (the project is initially limited to 1,000 citizens). Culture Token is a smartphone app, which works with a GPS location tracking system and records the distances covered by walking, cycling or public transport. Such actions are then rewarded with token credits. One token corresponds to about 20kg of CO2. To save this amount, a citizen would have to walk or use public transport to get to work every day for two weeks.
Collecting data for an extended “Vienna token”
On the project’s website, the City of Vienna has claimed to be creating a ”playful pilot project that rewards climate-friendly behaviour.“ After six months of scientific monitoring with a final evaluation, the project is to be looked at in more detail, and provide the data which will serve as the basis of a potential Vienna token, which could then be realised if the “Culture Token” is successfully implemented.
In 2018, the city’s data governance coordinator, Brigitte Lutz, introduced the Vienna. The city reacted quickly to this proposal, and has been working on the project since January 2019.
