Carrot Rewards. Step Together Challenges (STCs)
Federally-backed (Public Health Agency of Canada + provinces) loyalty-points health app that added 'Step Together Challenges'. Teams of partnered users earn shared incentives only when both partners collectively hit individual daily step goals 10 times in 7 days. 24-week matched case-control study (n=20,254 STC users vs ~13,150 controls) found STC group gained +537 mean daily steps over controls (~3,759 extra steps/week).
Users registered with postal code; province-level Step Together leaderboards visible by region. Provincial 'health move' campaigns pitched BC vs Ontario vs NL communities against each other in collective step counts. Each provincial cohort competed via aggregate stats published in-app and via media.
Pairwise team mechanic. Your reward is gated on your PARTNER's goal completion. You literally cannot win solo. This forces nudging, accountability check-ins and mutual-aid messaging inside the pair. The paper documents this 'cooperative-competition' hybrid as the key behavioral lever.
Rare published RCT-style evidence (~3,759 extra steps/week!) that pairing inter-area competition WITH forced intra-pair collaboration outperforms either alone. The 'partner-gated incentive' is a clever, copyable design pattern for BelongHub. Defunct as Carrot but the mechanic is intact in Optimity.
Others in the same family
INTVL
Self-described as a hybrid running tracker + neighborhood territory game. Smart GPS overlays let runners chase 10K PBs while 'holding down your neighborhood' against other community members.
Turf (turfgame.com)
Swedish-built MMO-style GPS game (by Andrimon) where players capture virtual zones placed on real-world maps using their phone's GPS. Played in monthly rounds with full reset; densest in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and increasingly the UK and Germany. Annual Bonanza events bring players to a single city for hours-long standalone tournaments (2026 Bonanza in Gothenburg).
Stride: Walk, Run, Capture
Players track walks/runs and capture hexagonal tiles on a real-world map; rewards 'determination over speed' so consistency wins, not speed. Joins thousands of nearby players competing for city/town control.
aruku& / ALKOO by NAVITIME (Japan municipal walking)
aruku& (ONE COMPATH) and ALKOO by NAVITIME are gamified pedometer apps that municipalities adopt to run citizen step competitions. Walkers gain points, redeem for local prizes/discounts. Miyagi prefecture's 'Health Walk' explicitly ranks municipalities (市町村) against each other.
GoodGym - Community Missions & Group Runs
Runners meet weekly at an Area base, run to a community project (sheltered housing garden, foodbank, park), do manual work for an hour, then run back. Area Activators are paid local coordinators; missions are solo runs to do a task for an older neighbour ('coach run').
CitizenLab / Go Vocal Representativeness Dashboard
Belgian civic-engagement SaaS used by cities across Europe to run consultations, ideation, participatory budgeting. The Representativeness Dashboard compares each participating cohort's demographics (age, gender, neighbourhood, education) against the underlying ward/postcode-level population so cities can see which neighbourhoods are over- or under-represented in real time, and target outreach.