Can Smartphone App Trainings Help Reduce Exposure to Air Pollution?

Abstract

We conduct a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of training university students in Bogotá to use a smartphone app that displays real-time location-specific air quality data. The training increased participants’ acquisition of information about air quality, their knowledge about avoidance behavior, and most important, their reported avoidance behavior. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that if scaled to the entire city of Bogotá, the training could reduce premature cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory deaths among the additional 3–8 percent of the city’s population incentivized to undertake avoidance behavior by 51–61 percent per year, a benefit valued at US$11–13 million.