Objective: Adaptive cruise control (ACC), a technology that allows for automated car following, is becoming increasingly prevalent. Previous surveys have shown that drivers generally regard ACC as pleasant but that they have to intervene when the ACC reaches its operational limits. The former research has been mostly concerned with specific car brands and does not fully reflect the diversity of ACC types in traffic today. The objective of the present research was to establish the determinants of pleasure in using ACC.
Methods: A 55-item online questionnaire was completed by Dutch users of diverse ACC systems.
Results: Respondents (N = 182) rated their ACC highly, with a mean score of 8.0 on a scale from 1 (extraordinarily negative) to 10 (extraordinarily positive) and were most pleased with ACC on high-speed roads and in low-density traffic. Moreover, the findings point to specific operational limits such as associated with cut-in situations. Pleasure was greater for the types of ACC that are able to decelerate to a full stop, according to 48% of our sample. An analysis of the free-response items indicated that respondents who were displeased with ACC mentioned its occasional clumsiness and the dangerous situations it may evoke, whereas those who were pleased with ACC valued the complementarity of human and machine and emphasized the roles of responsibility and experience in using ACC.
Conclusion: Pleasure in using ACC is a function of both technological advances and human factors. 相似文献
Climate change potentially brings continuous and unpredictable changes in weather patterns. Consequently, it calls for institutions that promote the adaptive capacity of society and allow society to modify its institutions at a rate commensurate with the rate of environmental change. Institutions, traditionally conservative and reactive, will now have to support social actors to proactively respond through planned processes and deliberate steps, but also through cherishing and encouraging spontaneous and autonomous change, as well as allowing for institutional redesign. This paper addresses the question: How can the inherent characteristics of institutions to stimulate the capacity of society to adapt to climate change from local through to national level be assessed? On the basis of a literature review and several brainstorm sessions, this paper presents six dimensions: Variety, learning capacity, room for autonomous change, leadership, availability of resources and fair governance. These dimensions and their 22 criteria form the Adaptive Capacity Wheel. This wheel can help academics and social actors to assess if institutions stimulate the adaptive capacity of society to respond to climate change; and to focus on whether and how institutions need to be redesigned. This paper also briefly demonstrates the application of this Adaptive Capacity Wheel to different institutions. 相似文献
Given the expansion of payments for water‐based ecosystem services (PWES) worldwide, two relevant issues are as follows: (1) determination of efficient allocations of payments among land managers, and (2) how this might change when paying one manager to implement a best management practice (BMP) to enhance an ecosystem service impacts the cost‐effectiveness of BMPs considered by other land managers not currently involved in PWES. Such externalities may be negative if diminishing returns dominate, or positive if mechanisms such as “social diffusion” dominate. We analyze how a planner should optimally allocate payments, depending on whether the expected externalities are negligible, negative, or positive. We employ (1) an optimal control model to gain insights on the problem’s dynamics, and (2) stochastic dynamic programming to determine optimal funding strategies using a specific application. The study contributes to the literature by identifying dynamically optimal PWES payment patterns, and illustrates how they should change when one accounts for externalities induced by the program. Because such impacts have not been addressed previously in a rigorous way, this treatment provides useful value added for PWES design and implementation. 相似文献
The climate change problem calls for a continuously responding society. This raises the question: Do our institutions allow and encourage society to continuously adapt to climate change? This paper uses the Adaptive Capacity Wheel (ACW) to assess the adaptive capacity of formal and informal institutions in four sectors in the Netherlands: spatial planning, water, agriculture and nature. Formal institutions are examined through an assessment of 11 key policy documents and informal institutions are analysed through four case studies covering each sector. Based on these ACW analyses, both sector-specific and more general strengths and weaknesses of the adaptive capacity of institutions in the Netherlands are identified. The paper concludes that the most important challenge for increasing institutional adaptive capacity lies in combining decentralized, participatory approaches with more top-down methods that generate leadership (visions, goals) standards, instruments, resources and monitoring. 相似文献
In this study, we look at the evolution of a cooperative water regime in the delta of the Rhine catchment. In a Dutch–German case study, we focus on cross-border cooperation on the local and regional scale, describing and analyzing how a remarkably resilient and robust transboundary water regime has evolved over the course of 50 years. Context-, interest- and knowledge-based explanations contribute important insights into the evolution of the Deltarhine regime, and it is shown that the legal, institutional and socio-economic context shapes and constrains regional cross-border cooperation. Surprisingly in this regard, we find that European water directives have not yet played a decisive, catalyzing role for policy harmonization across borders. Finally, we show that key individuals play a crucial role in regime formation and development. We suggest that the presence of entrepreneurs and leaders adds explanatory power to current conceptual frameworks in international river basin management, thus meriting further research. 相似文献