Health Department Canton of Zug
How can we promote psychological well-being in times of a global pandemic and beyond?
Public Organisation | Public Health Campaign | Personal Wellbeing | Gamification
Context
The global Covid-19 pandemic had an immense impact on everyone. Therefore, the Office of Sport and Health Promotion in Zug (Switzerland) envisioned maintaining and fostering the psychological well-being of its citizens with a public campaign called #HeyZug.
Challenge
How can we promote psychological well-being in times of a global pandemic and beyond?
The challenge was to motivate people to carry out behaviours that contribute to greater psychological well-being fuelled by scientific insights from behavioural science.
The project’s objective was to create a behaviourally-informed public health campaign to promote selected individual or group behaviours and contribute to psychological well-being. It deliberately did not reference “psychological well-being activity” but rather focused on activities “contributing to joy in life”. The campaign was started during times of Covid19-related lockdowns and executed in partnership with the Office of Sport and Health Promotion Zug and GLA United.
Picture 1: Different defined aspects of joy in life
Approach
Firstly, the appropriate target behaviours of the campaign were defined in a series of collaborative workshops with members of the canton Zug, including the latest research findings on contributors to psychological well-being.
Secondly, Affective performed desk research on relevant behavioural insights around psychological and physical health promotion campaigns, focusing on insights from the public sector while also looking for inspiration from the private sector.
Thirdly, based on the findings, the team brainstormed and designed interventions for public challenges and calls to action to promote the identified key behaviours of the campaign.
Fourthly, the canton-wide initiative was rolled out in close collaboration with the experts from GLA United, who focused on the practical implementation of the campaign concept.
In the last step, Affective evaluated the campaign's success based on the gathered interaction data from the challenges and presented the results to relevant stakeholders of the initiative.
Concepts
Together with the scientific team of the Office of Sport and Health Promotion Zug, Affective identified several relevant behavioural science concepts and psychological factors contributing to psychological well-being in citizens. Selected concepts include:
Gamification
Goal Setting
Framing
Social Norms
Feedback
Messenger Effect
Deliverables
Each designed and implemented campaign tackled one of the three elements for more joy in life (see picture 2). All three challenges and calls to action were implemented online and were ultimately successful.
The first challenge was a step challenge, where people could “collect“ steps and add them to an online tracker. Pre-selected routes around the canton on the website supported people discovering new walking routes. The campaign was highly successful: Zug quickly reached their goal to cover enough distance as the equivalent of walking around the country of Switzerland. This goal was then updated to walk around the globe and was halfway completed throughout the campaign.
In the second campaign, Zug residents were invited to send a video, picture or voice memo of how they spend their personal 5 minutes a day. It was about showcasing their small rituals during the day or what they do to recharge their batteries. All submissions were posted on a pinboard on the website.
For the final challenge, residents were invited to submit a picture with a short text about how they tried something new, started a new hobby or presented a DIY-tip. This challenge was aiming at the Zug community to motivate each other to try something new.
Due to the success of the campaigns and calls to action, a public health campaign was launched in a follow-up collaboration in 2022 and 2023.
Picture 2: Implemented Zug campaigns for more joy in life
Reference
“Together with Affective, we've implemented several public campaigns to promote healthy behaviours, including a pilot for supporting healthy diets at the point of sale. We are thankful for the efficient, reliable, fast, differentiated and sound thinking - it's fun to work with such motivated people.”
Dr. Xenia Fischer, Research Lead, Office of Sport and Health Promotion, Canton of Zug.