Our town and city centres are at a crossroads.
Over the past decade, our once-bustling high streets have been reshaped by significant shifts in consumer behaviour. While online shopping continues to boom, commuting patterns have evolved post-pandemic, and economic pressures have only intensified, leaving many town and city centres grappling with empty storefronts, dwindling footfall, and a fading sense of community.
Part of the reason it’s so tough for local businesses and authorities is because the challenge isn’t just about bringing people back once; it’s about giving them a reason to return again and again. And the truth is, traditional tools like discount vouchers, loyalty cards, and seasonal campaigns just don’t cut it anymore.
Increasingly, many across the private and public sectors are turning to gamification as the answer, championing new approaches that don’t just reward transactions but reshape habits through playful, purpose-driven technology.
But how beneficial can gamification really be for building habits that benefit our local communities?
Gamification: More Than Just Points and Prizes
In short, gamification is the use of game-like mechanics to influence behaviour. You’re no doubt already familiar with it in action: think topping up points on your Starbucks rewards card or claiming your free cheeseburger from McDonalds Monopoly, for example.
But gamification is about more than not just points and prizes. When built thoughtfully, it turns everyday actions into meaningful experiences, which is why more and more city councils, tourism boards, and private sector retailers are turning to gamified programmes and reward models to overcome common hurdles like visitor attraction and community engagement.
The goal is simple: make visiting physical locations fun and rewarding, thereby increasing footfall and positively shaping visitor behavior. And the good news is, it’s already proved effective.
Take Beat the Street, a game commissioned by UK councils and health bodies that transforms towns into interactive fitness trails. Participants tap RFID cards on ‘Beat Boxes’ around their neighbourhoods, earning points for every mile walked or cycled. In Derby, more than 12,000 residents collectively covered thousands of miles in the first week of the challenge alone, while players in Barnsley racked up over 140,000 miles in just six weeks. And best of all, follow-up surveys showed that many kept up their active routines even after the game ended.
Locally, another great example is in Sunderland, where the city’s Smart City programme is redefining what it means to deliver digital transformation with a human focus. According to the 2023 Lloyds Consumer Digital Index, one in three Sunderland residents were found to lack essential digital skills, underscoring the real challenges many face when it comes to accessing opportunities in an increasingly digital-first world. But through a powerful combination of next-gen infrastructure and inclusive design, the initiative is making real progress in boosting connectivity, improving digital skills, and enhancing access to services across health, education, and housing.
Central to this vision is the recently launched Sunderland App, which acts as a digital gateway for residents to navigate city services and explore local opportunities. Best of all, with further features on the horizon, the user-friendly platform provides a strong foundation for introducing gamification elements that could reward positive behaviour and encourage sustained local engagement, showing how digital innovation can be both people-first and place-led.
But it’s important to note that these programmes aren’t just giving away rewards. They’re nurturing civic pride, reinforcing shared goals, and encouraging positive behaviours — and it’s this sustained impact that demonstrates the real power of gamification.
Shaping Habits With Technology: Successful Models for Community Change
So with an ability to foster long-term positive habits, what kinds of behaviours can councils and local authorities encourage with gamification?
- Frequent city centre visits for shopping, events, and exploration
- Greener travel choices like walking, cycling, or using public transport
- Community participation, such as attending town halls or community incentives
- Environmental action, like recycling or using refill stations
- Cultural engagement, including library use or museum attendance
From better health to stronger communities, you’ll notice that these behaviours all deliver integral social value — and it’s technology’s role to make these actions more visible, more rewarding, and, as a result, more habitual.
Think of it this way: traditional loyalty schemes usually offer financial incentives, like a free coffee after ten stamps or 10% off your next visit. But in this instance, the real value lies in how you engage, not what you buy.
That’s the logic behind events like Hinckley BID’s digital treasure hunt, which used Halloween-themed QR code trails to encourage families into the town centre. Children scanned clues scattered across high street windows, while parents discovered shops they hadn’t noticed before. And this didn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. Prizes were modest, spanning things like goody bags and draw entries, but the reward was the experience itself — a mantra we’ve seen other towns adopt through incentives like AR-powered ‘safari hunts’ which transform shopping areas into virtual adventure zones.
Meanwhile, In Nottinghamshire, councils collaborated on a bus incentive programme through the Notts Green Rewards app. Riders could win prizes like free monthly bus passes simply by choosing public transport over private cars, gamifying greener travel habits by rewarding not consumption, but conscious choice. And in doing so, it made commuting a form of positive participation.
From Halloween QR hunts in Hinckley to sustainable transport incentives in Nottinghamshire, the most successful schemes share a few common traits:
- They reward participation, not just purchases: Notts Green Rewards offered bus users a shot at free travel passes; not discounts for spending, but rewards for greener choices.
- They encourage repeat engagement: Seasonal trails like AR scavenger hunts bring people back throughout the year.
- They trigger competition and pride: Leaderboards, team goals, and points collecting create emotional investment far beyond the cash value.
These examples illustrate a key insight: behaviour change doesn’t always require high-cost incentives. Sometimes, the chance to play, contribute, or be recognised is reward enough, and perhaps most importantly, it’s the experience itself that’s valuable — and that’s what sustains behaviour beyond the reward.
Local authorities don’t have to rely on retail coupons to drive participation, and that’s no doubt great news in the face of significant budget restraints. Here’s how they can incentivise valuable behaviour more sustainably, while building ownership, trust, and identity to drive longer term regeneration:
Recognition and Status
- Leaderboards for steps walked, events attended, or bins recycled
- Digital badges or public shout-outs for consistent engagement
- ‘Local hero’ titles for top contributors
Experience-Based Rewards
- Exclusive access to council-run events, facilities, or sneak previews
- Invitations to civic receptions or awards ceremonies
- Participation in shaping future projects via community panels
Community Impact Rewards
- Let points earned by individuals unlock real improvements like new benches or public art
- Allow communities to ‘vote with their steps’ by allocating funding based on local engagement
How Technology Turns Actions Into Habits
The true power of gamified programmes lies in the technology behind them: tools that make participation seamless, engagement satisfying, and impact visible.
To effectively build local habits, technology must deliver on four key principles, and when these elements are designed with care, they turn one-off behaviours into lasting patterns.
1. Seamless user experience
Simplicity is essential.
Successful platforms use intuitive interactions like QR codes, GPS check-ins, or NFC tags that feel as effortless as tapping your phone. This ease removes friction from the process, inviting a broader and more inclusive user base to participate without needing extensive onboarding.
2. Instant feedback and gratification
Behaviour change relies on the immediacy of reward.
When users see their points increase instantly, unlock a badge, or climb a leaderboard in real time, it activates the brain’s reward system and reinforces the action. In apps like Beat the Street, players get instant confirmation and score updates, building excitement and encouraging repeat participation.
3. Personalised and adaptive design
The most effective digital platforms adapt to each user’s journey.
Rather than offering one-size-fits-all challenges, they deliver tailored goals based on prior engagement, location, or community priorities. This keeps users motivated by ensuring the challenge remains achievable but engaging. Think of it as a digital coach that adjusts as you improve.
4. Community transparency and visible impact
People want to know their efforts matter.
Platforms that show how individual actions contribute to wider community benefits, like unlocking funding for a new park bench or improving air quality, foster a deeper connection. And it’s this visibility that turns users into stakeholders, not just participants.
Take the Shopkick app in the US, for example, which rewards users just for walking into stores or scanning certain products. The combination of low-effort interaction and instant feedback, backed by real-world rewards like gift cards, drove noticeable increases in dwell time and footfall for big-name retailers like Maceys and Target. This model offers a blueprint for councils: when you make behaviour effortless and rewarding, people repeat it.
From a local authority perspective, the added value is in the data. Built-in analytics provide real-time insight into engagement trends, peak usage times, and community response. This means programmes can be continuously refined for better results, creating a feedback loop not only for users, but for programme operators too.
Long-Term Gamification: Designing for Trust, Impact and Longevity
Any gamification programme must be built on a foundation of trust. For gamified systems to deliver long-term value, they should be designed with user confidence, ethical principles, and community wellbeing in mind.
This starts with privacy by design. Clear data policies, limited tracking, and opt-in transparency reassure users that their information won’t be misused, while platforms must also prioritise accessibility to ensure that participation is intuitive and inclusive — remember your community spans everyone from tech-savvy teens to OAPs.
Beyond the interface, trust is built through clarity of purpose. Users should always understand why their actions are being tracked, how their data is used, and what collective good their participation supports. The most successful programmes maintain this transparency through user dashboards, visible community goals, and reward structures that feel fair and meaningful.
Sustained impact also depends on smart measurement. Councils and programme operators should go beyond vanity metrics and track what truly matters. That includes:
- Footfall data: Analysed by time of day and location to show shifts in high street engagement.
- Mode shift indicators: Such as reduced car usage or increased cycling and public transport uptake.
- Behavioural persistence: Measuring how long users stay engaged and whether positive habits continue post-campaign.
- Qualitative feedback: Gathered through in-app surveys, interviews, and community focus groups to capture public perception and community cohesion, measuring how people feel, not just what they do.
Vitally, data must not only be collected but acted upon. This makes iteration a non-negotiable. Programmes should evolve based on feedback, seasonal trends, and user behaviour, whether that’s refreshing rewards, redesigning challenges, or partnering with new local businesses.
Finally, longevity hinges on shared value. When users see that their actions lead to tangible local improvements, like cleaner parks, better bus services, or new public attractions, they’re more likely to stay engaged. And it’s this reciprocal model of reinvestment that transforms temporary footfall into long-term community loyalty, turning gamification into a sustainable tool for empowering positive, repeatable behaviour.
Building Better Habits and Stronger Communities Through Gamification
Gamification offers far more than a one-off gimmick: it provides a scalable framework for reshaping how people live, move and connect with the places they call home. By embedding playful, purpose-driven mechanics into everyday routines, councils and businesses can turn simple actions like walking into a shop, cycling to work, or attending a market into rewarding experiences that ripple out into broader community benefits. And in an era of tight budgets and ever-shifting consumer patterns, this has arguably never been more important.
The evidence is clear: when game mechanics are carefully aligned with meaningful incentives, gamification drives real behaviour change. The most successful initiatives blend extrinsic rewards like discounts, points or small prizes, with intrinsic motivators such as community pride, friendly competition or the satisfaction of completing a challenge. Users arrive for the tangible perks but stick around for the community pride, the status of topping a leaderboard, or the simple joy of completing a challenge.
Equally vital is the partnership between public and private sectors. When local authorities, BIDs and retailers collaborate, everyone wins. Shops and venues experience higher footfall and increased spend; councils acquire powerful, real-time insight into community engagement; and residents enjoy enriching experiences that foster social connection and local pride — all without the red tape of traditional grants or infrastructure projects.
Of course, not every programme hits the mark first time. Some apps falter due to clunky design, uninspiring rewards, or lack of follow-through, so always focus on fun first. Make the experience enjoyable and participatory — something people want to talk about and share.
For local leaders, the call to action is clear. Now is the time to be bold, reimagining community engagement as a game worth playing. Picture a future where stepping into a museum, joining a litter-pick or hopping on a bus automatically earns you points, status or even influence over future community projects. That’s not just innovation; it’s infrastructure for long-lasting behavioural change and a new kind of community loyalty and engagement.
So, by investing in thoughtfully designed gamification platforms, towns and cities across the country can cultivate healthier, more vibrant communities — transforming high streets and town squares into dynamic hubs where people don’t merely pass through, but actively participate. For any local authorities looking to build stronger, more engaged communities, that’s the kind of technology worth investing in.