Benefit Cost Analysis for ActiveSmart Geraldton

The Department of Sport and Recreation (DSR) has delivered the ActiveSmart project, in the City of Greater Geraldton (ActiveSmart Geraldton), and is currently in the monitoring and evaluation phase. ActiveSmart Geraldton builds upon an earlier ActiveSmart pilot project (ActiveSmart Rockingham), which was delivered in the City of Rockingham. A preliminary Benefit Cost Analysis of ActiveSmart Rockingham was conducted in late 2010.

The Government of Western Australia has developed a number of Behavioural Demand Management (BDM) programs that are based upon Community Based Social Marketing (CBSM) techniques. The formative BDM program was the TravelSmart Household program, which was established in the mid 1990s to address the unsustainable level of car use. The Travel Smart program has been subject to extensive monitoring and evaluation, including an assessment of the physical activity outcomes that it achieves:
• www.transport.wa.gov.au/mediaFiles/AT_TS_P_couchpotato.pdf
• www.transport.wa.gov.au/mediaFiles/AT_TS_P_victoria_household.pdf
• www.transport.wa.gov.au/mediaFiles/AT_TS_P_financereport.pdf- a socio- economic evaluation of its cost and benefit streams.
DSR commissioned a Preliminary Benefit Cost Analysis of the ActiveSmart Rockingham Program (Attachment 1). The Department is now seeking to engage a Respondent to expand upon this evaluation to take into account:
• A wider set of program benefits;
• New information on the outcomes (monitoring) of the large-scale project; and
• Modelling of the potential benefits of ActiveSmart program roll out options.