Is Augmented Reality Leading to More Risky Behaviors? An Experiment with Pokémon Go Romain Pourchon ( ✉ ) , Pierre-Majorique Léger ( ✉ ) , Élise Labonté-LeMoyne ( ✉ ) , Sylvain Sénécal ( ✉ ) , François Bellavance ( ✉ ) , Marc Fredette ( ✉ ) , and François Courtemanche ( ✉ ) HEC Montréal Tech3lab, Montréal, Canada {romain.pourchon,pml, elise.labonte-lemoyne,ss,francois.bellavance,marc.fredette, francois.courtemanche}@hec.ca Abstract. Released in the summer of 2016, Pokémon Go is one of the world’s most downloaded applications. Using augmented reality technology, this game has become the latest craze among young people and adults. However, it has also caused several accidents because of players getting distracted while walking. Following the research that has been conducted on texting while walking, it would be interesting to compare the risks arising from gaming while walking. This research therefore compares dangerous behaviors exhibited in three conditions using a smartphone while walking, Pokémon Go with augmented reality, Pokémon Go without, and texting while walking. We can conclude that playing Pokémon Go, with and without augmented reality, leads to more dangerous behaviors overall than texting. We also observe the appearance of a new risky behavior when playing Pokémon Go that is unseen in texting while walking, abrupt stops. Keywords: Mobile multitasking · Augmented Reality · Attention · Real context study 1 Introduction In this paper, we investigate the effect of Augmented Reality (AR) on the behavioral risk associated with playing on a smartphone while walking. Previous studies have demonstrated that multitasking on a smartphone while walking is a risky behavior. An observation study found that more than 7% of pedestrians engage in mobile multitasking [1], which we define here as the behavior of individuals who change their attention quickly between different activities on a technology while walking. Some studies report that mobile multitaskers took longer to cross the street and to initiate crossing when they saw an available safe gap, looked left and right less often, and were more likely to be hit or almost hit by an oncoming vehicle [2, 3]. Researchers found that texting causes more cognitive distractions and decision-making mistakes compared to talking on a cell phone because attention is divided between more than one stimulus and this negatively impacts the performance of these tasks. When subjects change from task A to task B, © Springer International Publishing AG 2017 F.F.-H. Nah and C.-H. Tan (Eds.): HCIBGO 2017, Part I, LNCS 10293, pp. 354–361, 2017. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-58481-2_27