September 4, 2007

Take the stairs message in Malls

Shoppers can be encouraged to use the stairs instead of the escalators researchers from Kingston University and The University of Birmingham found in a recent study.

They used a mall to carry out their tests, which included brightly painted walls, lighting, plants and music; these have little of no effect. But when messages such as “Take the stairs” or “Seven minutes of daily stair climbing, protects your heart” are placed on the stair boards, the amount of people using the stairs increased by 190% and even the staircase without the messages showed an increase of 52%.

The study was carried out over a six week period and around 82,000 people who visited the shopping mall in England.

There is no long-term statistics to see if the trend of using the stairs would continue, however using the stairs in a mall can be dangerous too, you have people going up and down, carrying bags and children etc, which could be a recipe for disaster.

Source [News Medical]

Filed Under Shops and Malls