More than good intentions: the role of conditions in personal transportation behaviour

Engaging individuals in pro-environmental behaviours is critical to addressing today’s environmental challenges. This study examines how conditions – or an individual’s context – influence action. Through semi-structured narrative interviews and document analysis, we examined the influence of conditions in five individual cases involving attempted change in personal transportation behaviour. The cases, studied over the course of one year, are derived from participants in a sustainability institute, representing a range of attempted behaviours, and highlight numerous potential barriers to desired pro-environmental behaviours. We found that the degree of engagement with sustainable transportation primarily was influenced by the amount and intensity of supportive conditions relative to barriers. Participants who successfully engaged in their desired transportation-related pro-environmental behaviours experienced physical, social, and learning conditions that promoted competence and satisfaction. We discuss the implications for designing interventions that encourage pro-environmental behaviours.     

Place satisfaction and perceived recovery after Hurricane Sandy on Staten Island’s East Shore

Individuals’ relationships to place play an important role in their interactions with their residential environments. Prior research has suggested that neighbourhood satisfaction is closely related to neighbourhood attachment, and that attachment is linked to disaster recovery. This study uses data from a survey of residents of the East Shore neighbourhoods of Staten Island, New York, an area that experienced severe storm surge flooding during Hurricane Sandy, to test the association between neighbourhood satisfaction and self-reported recovery from the storm. Perceived recovery from Sandy is treated as the dependent variable in several ordinal logistic regression models. The key independent variable measure tested is neighbourhood satisfaction rating. A statistically significant direct positive relationship is found between neighbourhood satisfaction and perceived recovery from Sandy. This finding is robust across multiple models with various controls and other covariates. These results suggest that place satisfaction may contribute to disaster recovery.     

公众认知、感知价值与灾害气象服务满意度的关系研究——以深圳市3029份《公众气象安全认知度调查问卷》数据为例

目前从公众认知水平的角度出发,评价灾害气象服务满意度的文献较少。该文创新性地提出了公众气象认知这一概念,以深圳市3 029份公众气象安全认知度调查数据为例,采用结构方程模型,评估了公众认知、感知价值与灾害气象服务满意度之间的关系。研究发现,公众认知水平对灾害气象服务满意度的评价具有重要的影响。另外还发现:1深圳市公众对于气象服务总体评价良好,对台风期间的气象服务的满意度最高,而对气象预警信息获得的便捷性的满意度最低;2公众气象认知与灾害气象服务感知价值均显著影响公众对于灾害气象服务的满意度;3提高公众气象认知,可通过促进对气象服务价值的感知,进而提高公众的满意度。针对以上结论,给出了相应的政策建议。     

Does the presence of wind turbines have negative externalities for people in their surroundings? Evidence from well-being data

Throughout the world, governments foster the deployment of wind power to mitigate negative externalities of conventional electricity generation, notably CO₂ emissions. Wind turbines, however, are not free of externalities themselves, particularly interference with landscape aesthetics. We quantify these negative externalities using the life satisfaction approach. To this end, we combine household data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) with a novel panel dataset on over 20,000 installations. Based on geographical coordinates and construction dates, we establish causality in a difference-in-differences design. Matching techniques drawing on exogenous weather data and geographical locations of residence ensure common trend behaviour. We show that the construction of wind turbines close to households exerts significant negative external effects on residential well-being, although they seem both spatially and temporally limited, being restricted to about 4000 m around households and decaying after five years at the latest. Robustness checks, including view shed analyses based on digital terrain models and placebo regressions, confirm our results.     

Evaluation of the Environmentalist Dimension of Ecotourism at the Dadia Forest Reserve (Greece)

Environmental education and financial support of nature conservation are considered among the primary components of the environmentalist dimension of ecotourism. The potential of environmental education calls for enhancing visitor environmental knowledge and prompting change of visitor behavior. The present study addressed the evaluation of the environmentalist dimension of ecotourism in the Dadia Forest Reserve. The first objective of the research was to study the influence of variables determined prior to the visit, namely, visitor and visit characteristics, visitor environmental information sources, visitor pro-environmental behavior, and visitation goals, on variables determined during the visit, that is, visitor participation in and satisfaction from ecotourism activities. The second objective was to study the effect of selected variables on visitor knowledge and behavior intentions. Visitor participation in and satisfaction from ecotourism activities were primarily controlled by visit characteristics. Levels of visitor knowledge were quite satisfactory; however, coherence among knowledge items was rather loose. On the other hand, behavior intention items revealed the highest possible degree of coherence, which should be attributed to the pervasive influence of visitor satisfaction from watching birds at the Bird Observatory within the Dadia Forest Reserve. Ecotourism activities, during which the main part of environmental knowledge was offered, exerted no effect on visitor knowledge; all the same, they significantly influenced visitor behavior intentions. Overall, visitor behavior intentions revealed a considerable potential of financing environmental protection and providing voluntary work in the frame of the environmental management of the Dadia Forest Reserve.     

城市道路养护作业对驾驶员安全驾驶的影响

从市政养护的满意度、驾驶员行为调查以及城市交通标志识别等方面展开调查,发现私家车、公交车和出租车对道路养护作业的满意度存在显著差异,3类车型的驾驶员在安全驾驶行为上也存在明显差异。私家车驾驶员的驾驶失误行为明显高于出租车和公交车驾驶员。违规越多的驾驶员,其驾驶攻击性行为越强。同时道路养护中的常见标志对不同类型的驾驶员产生不同的信息量。私家车驾驶员对于交通标志的理解程度明显高于出租车和公交车驾驶员。     

The Effect of Job and Environmental Factors on Job Satisfaction in Automotive Industries

A methodology was developed for diagnosing industrial work, which includes questionnaire, observation, measurements, data collection and statistical analysis. A survey was conducted to investigate the relationship between job satisfaction and factors that affect work design in 2 automotives manufacturing companies in Malaysia. A basic work design model was proposed. The aim of this model was to determine the factors that influence employees’ perception towards their work. A set of multiple-choice questionnaires was developed and data was collected by interviewing employees at a production plant. The survey focused on job and environmental factors. The results supported the proposed model and showed that job and environmental factors were significantly related to job satisfaction. They highlighted the significant influence of age, work experience and marital status on job satisfaction. Further, environmental factors, especially the surroundings, context dependence and the building’s function, also had a significant impact on job satisfaction.     

Office Ergonomics: Deficiencies in Computer Workstation Design

The objective of this research was to study and identify ergonomic deficiencies in computer workstation design in typical offices. Physical measurements and a questionnaire were used to study 40 workstations. Major ergonomic deficiencies were found in physical design and layout of the workstations, employee postures, work practices, and training. The consequences in terms of user health and other problems were significant. Forty-five percent of the employees used nonadjustable chairs, 48% of computers faced windows, 90% of the employees used computers more than 4 hrs/day, 45% of the employees adopted bent and unsupported back postures, and 20% used office tables for computers. Major problems reported were eyestrain (58%), shoulder pain (45%), back pain (43%), arm pain (35%), wrist pain (30%), and neck pain (30%). These results indicated serious ergonomic deficiencies in office computer workstation design, layout, and usage. Strategies to reduce or eliminate ergonomic deficiencies in computer workstation design were suggested.     

Ensuring the service quality at a university construction technology laboratory in Brazil

Service quality in a construction technology laboratory can result in an improvement in construction companies’ competitiveness. This research aims to evaluate the service quality provided by a construction technology laboratory, specifically in the segment of performing testing through the rupturing of concrete samples. For this research, a survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire that was created based on a literature review regarding the surveying of laboratory customers at a university in the south of Brazil. Our research was both exploratory and quantitative, and the data were analyzed by applying multivariate data analysis. The conclusions of this study show that the dimensions of quality services are: communication, reliability, responsiveness, credibility, and tangibility. These five dimensions together provide a high explained variance standard of 79.75%. Having a suitable number of attendants available to serve customers and presenting agility in the construction laboratory is one of the managerial research contributions. Moreover, through information availability, this research generates greater traceability that can be used both by customers and by institutional management. Constantly and thoroughly monitoring the customer service cycle is another relevant factor that can improve the quality of the services provided.     

面向救灾物资需求特征的自然灾害应急响应

对救灾物资需求的数量、时间、地域、结构和运输特征进行分析,得到自然灾害应急响应下的救灾物资配送方案。通过选择合适的属性指标表达灾区及物资的差异性,并使用多目标规划的方法构建了物资配送模型,实现救灾物资在灾区的合理、公平分配。以玉树地震关键救援期下的救灾物资配送为例检验物资配送模型,结果在灾区紧急指数较高的地区反映了灾区救灾物资的差异性,而在灾区紧急指数较低且相差不大的地区体现了物资配送的公平性。与传统商业物流配送模型的优化结果比较,验证了救灾物资配送模型的有效性与合理性。