Portraying role models to promote stair climbing in a public setting:  The effect of matching sex and age

This study evaluated the impact of portrayed others on stair climbing in a train station. On each of five observation days, we observed stair climbing behavior during six periods: a no-intervention period and five intervention periods to promote stair climbing. During the no-intervention period, no prompts or environmental changes were introduced. During one intervention period, we showed a health message at the point-of-choice. During the other four intervention periods, we portrayed the same health message together with one of four life-sized models varying in gender and age: a young male model, a young female model, an older male model and an older female model. Fifteen hundred passersby were observed. Chi-square tests revealed that introducing a health message did not yield a significantly higher proportion of stair climbers compared with the no-intervention period, even though there was a positive trend (21.7% vs. 15.0%). However, adding a portrayed model resulted in a significantly higher proportion of stair climbers compared with the no-intervention period (25.9% vs. 15.0%). In general, the proportion of stair climbers was significantly higher among passersby who matched with the model in terms of their gender and age than among passersby who did not match with the model (37.2% vs. 21.5%). These findings demonstrate that adding a portrayed model to a health message positively affects stair climbing in a public setting. Moreover, passersby are more likely to climb the stairs when there is a gender- and age-related match with the model.status: publishe