Listening to Children: Enhancing Sustainable School Mobility Through Parent–Child Dialogue

SNPC (Siamo Nati Per Camminare, translated as “We Were Born to Walk”) is a long-running school-based initiative promoting sustainable mobility among primary school children in Milan. During a two-week period in the school year, participating classes record on a board the mode of transport used by students to travel to school each day (e.g. walking, bicycle, public transport, car). This is called the ‘mobility challenge’. The initiative also includes a creative component: in the 2025-26 edition, each class is invited to submit a poster representing the children’s emotions concerning the space outside the school. This is called the ‘creative challenge’. Both the mobility and creative challenges involve competitions with other classes within and across participating schools. For the mobility challenge, classes are rewarded for the share of sustainable trips (i.e., trips not by car, scooter or motorcycle) over the two weeks of the initiative. The top three classes in each school are honored at a school-organized ceremony, while the best class among participating schools is awarded a prize at a public ceremony at the end of the initiative. In the same ceremony, a prize is awarded to the classes, one for each grade, that submitted the best poster. Prizes typically consist of materials for the class or of vouchers for class activities.
Families are minimally involved and are informed about the initiative through materials sent home with the children. This is consistent with the initiative’s philosophy, which is to empower children as agents of change within their families.
The present research project evaluates the impact of greater involvement of parents on the effectiveness of SNPC, using the data from the mobility challenge as the main outcome variable.

2026-02-27

2026-03-13

Share of sustainable trips per class per day.

Share of trips by foot, bycicle, skates or public transport per day per class.

Shares of trips by specific transport modes per class per day.

The 2025-26 edition of SNPC will take place between March 2 and 13, and will involve 52 public primary schools in Milan, comprising 735 classes and approximately 15,000 students. Participation and recruitment are managed entirely by the SNPC organizers.
The 2025-26 edition of SNPC differs from previous ones in that all parents of children in participating classes are invited to fill out a short survey on their home-to-school mobility choices. Specifically, parents are asked about the school and class attended by their child, how far they live from the school, and what means of transport they typically take their child to school. If the answer to this last question is car or scooter/motorcycle, a follow-up question asks whether it would be feasible to use another means of transport, and, if no, why.
The experimental treatment is embedded within this survey. Following a class-level randomization, parents of children in treated classes are asked to involve their child in answering a few additional survey questions. The goal of these questions is to stimulate a discussion about mobility choices between parents and children, and specifically to encourage parents to listen to their children’s preferences. Specifically, the additional questions ask children what means of transport they would like to use to go to school, why, and whether their parents know about their preferences.
Surveys are distributed through QR codes included in the information material on the SNPC initiative, brought home by children at the start of the two weeks, and through Whatsapp messages distributed to parents by class representatives. Participation is voluntary and conditional on informed consent.
The analysis is conducted at the class level, since this is the level at which the SNPC class mobility data is collected. Parents’ survey responses are also aggregated at the class level. Randomization is at the class level, stratified at the school and grade level. If a parent has multiple children assigned to different treatments, the parent is assigned to the control condition to prevent spillovers.

Not available

Randomization done in office by a computer

Class

No

52 public primary schools in Milan, comprising 733 classes and approximately 15,000 students.

In the adminsitrative data: 733 classes observed over 10 days, for a total of 7330 observations.

367 classes in the treatment group, the remaining in the control group.

Power calculations with an alpha of 0.05 and a beta of 0.8 indicate that, by randomizing the sample of 733 classes at the class level into a treatment group and a control group, the study will identify treatment effects equal to 8% of the mean of the dependent variable (the percentage of sustainable journeys out of the total number of journeys made by the class over the two weeks) or 20% of its standard deviation.