Urban structure matters,even in a small town

A recent study in Frederikshavn, Denmark, shows that urban structural variables influence travel behaviour, even in a small town of around 30 000 inhabitants. As might be expected, socio-economic and attitudinal factors play a role in the respondents' travelling patterns. However, when controlling for these factors and a range of other potential explanatory variables, clear relationships are also found between urban structural characteristics and travel activity. These relationships exist across most subgroups of the population. The statistical relationships found between urban structure and travel behaviour are confirmed in qualitative interviews. The distance from the residence to the downtown area is a key factor influencing the accessibility to a number of facilities. These differences in accessibility result in corresponding differences in the actual travelling distances and modal split.     

Self-identity threat and resistance to change: Evidence from regular travel behaviour

Despite widespread acceptance of the need to change individual behaviour towards sustainability, resistance to change remains a continuing challenge. Past behaviour or habit, and psychological reactance, have been explored as components of resistance. Growing evidence for the influence of self-identity on behaviour suggests self-identity as a further factor. The current study draws on Identity Process Theory (Breakwell, 1986) to propose that threat to self-identity contributes to resistance to change, over and above the influence of past behaviour. Using travel-related vignettes to trigger threat, a study with 295 working parents in England found evidence supporting the relationship between self-identity threat and resistance to change travel behaviour, controlling for past behaviour. The findings further suggest identity threat as an alternative theoretical perspective on reactance. The results build theoretical understanding of resistance as a barrier to behaviour change. The application of an identity theory to understanding resistance is argued to add potentially new ways to encourage change towards sustainable behaviour. In addition, the findings suggest rich avenues for future research on the theoretical and empirical implications of the relationship of identities and sustainable behaviours.     

Science-Seeking Behaviour of Conservation Authorities in Ontario

The communication of science to science users is evolving to an approach that translates knowledge to targeted audiences. Under this evolution, knowledge brokers play an increasingly important role and users help ‘pull’ the required science to meet a policy or management imperative. To do this effectively, more insight is required into the knowledge seeking behaviour of science users and practitioners. The findings from a series of interviews that identify the science needs of Ontario’s Conservation Authorities (CAs) are presented. Results indicate that emerging functions, such as source water protection and integrated water resource planning, require more science input than mature functions. Senior CA officials view personal communication with their knowledgeable staff as the most used, accessible, trustworthy, relevant, shared, and preferable source of science information. While the internet and media were considered highly accessible, they were not viewed as trustworthy. We found no relationship between CA size and science use. Further research is needed to identify where junior and intermediate CA staff obtain their science knowledge from and whether this varies as a function of CA size. Our findings will be of interest to both policy/program communities and science providers.     

Environmental Attitudes and Behavior of Primary and Secondary Students in Asian Cities: An Overview Strategy for Implementing an Eco-schools Programme

Environmental education is essential to the success of Agenda 21. Yet currently it is without focus and effectively side-lined. This paper presents the results of preliminary investigations on the environmental attitudes and knowledge of Indian and Filipino primary and secondary school students, and their readiness to engage in pro-environmental behavior that could involve some change in their personal lifestyle. For the most part, environmental education efforts are embedded mainly into various science subjects. The relationship between environmental education and environmental awareness is analyzed to examine whether schools' environmental education could contribute to the shaping of environmental attitudes. A strategy and accompanying methodology for establishing environmental education is supplied.     

A comprehensive action determination model: Toward a broader understanding of ecological behaviour using the example of travel mode choice

This paper examines a first version of a Comprehensive Action Determination Model (CADM) of ecological behaviour that incorporates intentional, normative, situational, and habitual influences on environmentally friendly behaviour. The main assumptions of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), the norm-activation model (NAM), the theoretical concept of habit and the ipsative theory of behaviour were integrated into a comprehensive model. The model was tested using a structural equation modelling approach on a sample of 389 students in the domain of travel mode choice and compared to established less comprehensive models (TPB, NAM and a combination of both). The results show that all compared models had a good to excellent model fit and explained a substantial amount of variation in travel mode choice. The CADM, however, explained the greatest degree of variation as compared with the other models, at 65%. Subjective and objective situational constraints were responsible for most of the variation in travel mode choice in the CADM, but intentions and habits also had a significant impact. The influence of social and personal norms was mediated by habits and intention, while habits moderated the relationship between intention and behaviour. The importance of the CADM as a framework for other domains of ecological behaviour is also discussed.     

Engaging with the natural environment: The role of affective connection and identity

Research has shown pro-environmental behaviour to be positively associated with the strength of emotional connection towards the natural environment. The present study (N=199) investigated the predictive utility of an extended model of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) [ Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behaviour. Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179–211] for people's intentions to engage with the natural environment. It was hypothesised that both affective connection and identification with the natural environment would contribute significantly to the prediction of people's intentions. A secondary hypothesis was that participants who had grown up in rural areas would report more positive orientations towards engaging with the natural environment than would urban participants. The research found that affective connection was a significant independent predictor of intentions to engage with the natural environment. Environmental identity was only a significant predictor in the absence of affective connection in the regression model. As predicted, rural and urban participants differed significantly along the measured variables.     

“Lead has become carbon dioxide”: framing sustainable travel in an age of climate change

This paper explores the promotion of environmentally sustainable travel and the ways in which individual citizens engage with exhortations to adopt environmentally responsible travel modes. In local contexts, the arguments for promoting modal shifts have focused on issues like congestion, noise reduction and the improvement of local environmental quality. However, in recent years, concerns about global climate change have reframed the promotion of sustainable travel around carbon emissions reductions and more fundamental changes to lifestyle choices as a way of combating climate change. Within this context, this paper considers the ways in which individuals frame sustainable travel through using focus group data collected as part of a wider research project on travel behaviour in the UK. The paper will demonstrate that notions of “sustainable” travel are still largely dominated by localised environmental concerns that have resonances with the everyday experiences and practices of individuals, with many of the factors underlying established discourses of travel behaviour being focused on pragmatic issues like convenience and cost. In contrast, the issue of climate change presents a number of challenges for policy-makers seeking to change behaviour because of the contestations surrounding climate science, political leadership and the perceived role of individual consumers in tackling climate change.     

Nanoparticle aggregation: challenges to understanding transport and reactivity in the environment

Unique forms of manufactured nanomaterials, nanoparticles, and their suspensions are rapidly being created by manipulating properties such as shape, size, structure, and chemical composition and through incorporation of surface coatings. Although these properties make nanomaterial development interesting for new applications, they also challenge the ability of colloid science to understand nanoparticle aggregation in the environment and the subsequent effects on nanomaterial transport and reactivity. This review briefly covers aggregation theory focusing on Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeak (DLVO)-based models most commonly used to describe the thermodynamic interactions between two particles in a suspension. A discussion of the challenges to DLVO posed by the properties of nanomaterials follows, along with examples from the literature. Examples from the literature highlighting the importance ofaggregation effects on transport and reactivity and risk of nanoparticles in the environment are discussed.     

The effects of social desirability on self-reported environmental attitudes and ecological behaviour

There are several claims in the literature that social desirability concerns affect people’s response to self-reported measures of environmental attitudes and ecological behaviour. However, only a few empirical studies have indirectly evaluated the impact of social desirability on environmental issues measures, and those who did have found only a low impact. This article describes two studies that explicitly address whether socially desirable responding has direct and moderating effects on self-reported environmental attitudes and ecological behaviour. Results from correlational and moderated multiple regression analyses from both studies showed that social desirability had only a weak direct effect on environmental attitudes (but not ecological behaviour), and had no moderating effect on the environmental attitudes–ecological behaviour relationship. Implications of these findings for research on environmental issues are discussed.

Constructing the sustainable city: examining the role of sustainability in the ‘smart city’ discourse

The idea of the ‘smart city’ is increasingly central to debates on urban development and sustainability, and a host of cities are now pursuing ‘smartness’ as a way to improve energy efficiency, transport, and public services. However, existing research does not provide a clear picture of how this smart city agenda actually contributes to sustainability. The social science literature has been critical toward urban smartness, with most of the empirical research focusing on the politics of data-driven and entrepreneurial urbanism. This article seeks to contribute to this debate by empirically examining the role that sustainability plays in the smart city discourse. Its distinctive approach is to investigate how urban smartness and sustainability are framed by an authoritative institution (the European Union) and then to trace these framings down to a particular city (Stavanger, Norway). The data show that the smartness approach is strongly tied to innovation, technology, and economic entrepreneurialism, and sustainability does not appear to be a very important motivating driver. Nevertheless, the ‘sustainability component’ of the smart city agenda becomes clearer the closer we come to the city level.     

When context matters: a multilevel analysis of household and neighbourhood crowding on aggression and withdrawal

Studies examining the effects of density and crowding on human social behaviour have produced inconsistent results. This paper argues that among the reasons for these varied findings are: (1) the failure of researchers to examine how the level of density in the wider contextual environment influences the nature of the relationship between household density and social behaviour; (2) the tendency of past studies to overlook the negative consequences of both very low and very high levels of density; and (3) a lack of research investigating whether multiple coping strategies to high-density environments may be invoked by a single individual. Data from the Toronto Mental Health and Stress study are analysed using hierarchical nonlinear modelling to assess the interaction between household and neighbourhood density effects on aggression and withdrawal. The results support the notion that the effects of density on aggressive and withdrawn behaviour are nonlinear in nature and that the impact of household density is conditional on neighbourhood density. The implications of these findings for future research on density are discussed.     

Sense and sustainability: The case of the Slow City movement

Abstract

In this article I draw on recent anthropological literature on the senses to propose a novel approach to sustainable local development. I suggest that attention to how the senses are engaged in both discourses concerning and corporeal experiences of sustainable urban development, can produced insights into how these processes operate. In developing the discussion I draw from examples from ethnographic research in British member towns of the Cittàslow (Slow City) movement.     

Using citizen science in environmental justice: participation and decision-making in a Southern California waste facility siting conflict

Uses of science by environmental justice (EJ) activists reflect struggles to challenge professional scientific expertise, achieve fair outcomes, and effectively participate in decision-making processes. This qualitative research analyses the relationship between citizen science and EJ in a new waste facility siting conflict in urban Los Angeles, namely connections between citizen science and four dimensions of EJ: fair distribution, respect and recognition, participation in decision-making, and community capabilities. Citizen science is one tactic in EJ, yet little research investigates its role in a new facility siting conflict, particularly in relation to multi-faceted EJ goals. The research reveals opportunities for individual empowerment and community capacity building using citizen science, and a small measure of improved respect and recognition for participants who brought their own knowledge, research, and voices to the table. At the same time, the work identifies limitations on citizen science to improve local participatory procedures and decision-making, which also constricted the achievement of outcomes most desired by the EJ group: to prevent approval and construction of the new waste facility. This paper argues that uses of citizen science contributed to partial achievement of EJ goals, while hindered by governance processes that call for public participation yet shield decision-makers from substantive engagement with the volume or content of that participation.     

The Contribution of Environmental Assessment to Sustainable Development: Toward a Richer Empirical Understanding

It has long been suggested that environmental assessment has the potential to contribute to sustainable development through mechanisms above and beyond informing design and consent decisions, and while theories have been proposed to explain how this might occur, few have been subjected to rigorous empirical validation. This research advances the theoretical debate by building a rich empirical understanding of environmental assessment’s practical outcomes, from which its potential to contribute to sustainable development can be gauged. Three case study environmental assessment processes in England were investigated using a combination of data generated from content analysis, in-depth interviews, and a questionnaire survey. Four categories of outcomes are delineated based on the research data: learning outcomes; governance outcomes; attitudinal and value changes; and developmental outcomes. The data provide a robust critique of mainstream theory, with its focus on design and consent decisions. The article concludes with an examination of the consequences of the context-specific nature of environmental assessment practices in terms of developing theory and focusing future research.     

The rationales behind the unit-segment theory and its analysis methodology for modeling vehicular movement networks

The theory of space accessibility analysis, space syntax, has been considered for capturing trip-makers’ route-choice decisions with an understanding that, while selecting routes, trip-makers tend to follow forward-facing fields traditionally represented by axial lines. But the idea of treating axial lines as a set of roadway segments representing an urban texture has remained under scrutiny when distinct procedures have been tested without much success. Nor has the axial-line theory seemed to gain much popularity within the orthodox transportation planning community. Studies show that a long axial line is found gaining configurational centrality, in general, for being well connected to its incident lines. Fragmenting a long axial line results in weakening it (in centrality terms), but also in generating a locally oriented model. Recent investigations, dealing with this problem, have resulted in the emergence of the unit-segment theory, which has turned out to be more sensitive to the local structures located within a large urban texture than the axial counterpart for the purpose of modeling vehicular movement networks without using origin–destination trip-counts. Essentially, the question now is: Is the unit-segment analysis also capable of generating syntax configurations that are equally sensitive to large and complex urban textures? What should be the methodology of such an analysis? This paper throws deeper insights into these questions by producing theoretical and empirical research findings and seeks to develop a common ground for both transportation planning and space syntax communities to work together for gaining a better understanding of how urban configurations relate to urban vehicular movement networks.     

THE MYTH OF THE INDOOR CITY

Shopping malls have become major features in the urban landscape, yet have received little attention from environmental psychologists. Malls have become more than just a particular type of retail outlet, but places providing a complex array of commercial, community and leisure facilities. They have sought not only to complement urban provision, but to replace it. Malls have become the ‘indoor city'—a new type of place, generating particular repertoires of perceptions, evaluations and behaviours. This paper reviews the predominantly behaviourist approaches that have characterized the analysis of consumer spatial and shopping behaviour and suggests that a transactionalist approach might be more valuable. An empirical study, undertaken in Guildford, U.K., demonstrates that users of the mall do not principally evaluate malls in terms of their retail performance but as social places and spaces satisfying many psychological needs and preferences. They should not be regarded simply as an extension of the high street but rather as different sorts of places. The paper concludes with an extended discussion of the consequences of mall development for the city and urban life, arguing that the indoor city is a myth.     

WETLAND ECOSYSTEM STUDIES FROM A HYDROLOGIC PERSPECTIVE1

ABSTRACT: Selected studies from the literature were reviewed to determine the extent of knowledge about the relationship between hydrology and wetland ecosystem studies. Wetland studies of chemical input-output relationships have been the most dependent on hydrologic data of all wetland investigations; yet, very few of these studies have attempted to measure all components of a wetland's water balance. Usually, unmeasured components were calculated as the difference between measured inputs and outputs. Ground water frequently was overlooked. Chemical input-output investigations primarily were concerned with determining the amount of input retained in the wetlands. Few studies also included direct measurement of biogeochemical processes within wetlands of elements that were part of simultaneous input-output investigations. The importance of uncertainties in chemical budgets that are due to uncertainties in hydrologic budgets has been addressed in very few wetland investigations. Although many studies have emphasized the importance of hydrology to wetland ecosystem research, few studies have documented this, so that hydrology remains one of the least understood components of wetland ecosystems.     

Is Democracy Good for the Environment?

This paper presents empirical evidence to support the existence of a relationship between democracy and one aspect of environmental quality, urban air pollution. The relationship between environmental quality and democracy is explored empirically using a regression analysis of urban air concentrations of three pollutants, sulfur dioxide (SO₂), suspended particulate matter (SPM) and smoke, and two measures of democracy, the Freedom House Index and Polity III. The results suggest a significant and robust negative linear relationship between these pollutant concentrations and democracy level: the higher the level of democracy, the lower the ambient pollution level.     

Factors influencing the acceptability of energy policies: A test of VBN theory

This paper examines factors influencing the acceptability of energy policies aimed to reduce the emission of CO₂ by households. More specifically, it is studied to what extent the value–belief–norm theory of environmentalism (VBN theory; Stern, [(2000). Toward a coherent theory of environmentally significant behavior. Journal of Social Issues, 56(3), 407–424.]) is successful in explaining acceptability judgements. In contrast to previous studies, we test the full VBN theory. A questionnaire study was conducted among 112 Dutch respondents. Results confirmed the causal order of the variables in VBN theory, moving from relative stable general values to beliefs about human–environment relations, which in turn affect behaviour specific beliefs and norms, and acceptability judgements, respectively. As expected, all variables were significantly related to the next variable in the causal chain. Biospheric values were also significantly related to feelings of moral obligation to reduce household energy consumption when intermediate variables were controlled for. Furthermore, as hypothesized, personal norms mediated the relationship between AR and acceptability judgements, AR beliefs mediated the relationship between AC beliefs and personal norms, AC beliefs mediated the relationship between NEP and AR beliefs, and NEP mediated the relationship between values and AC beliefs.