Moving Around a City - Rationality of Travel Mode Choice

Cílem práce je zodpovědět na otázky ohledně volby dopravního prostředku pro běžné dojíždění, jakou roli v rozhodování hraje lokace bydliště a jak se liší volba v případě tradičních obyvatel města a těch, co žijí mimo město. Omezila jsem svůj záběr čistě na způsoby dopravy dospělých v České republice.RESUME Moving Around a City - Rationality of Travel Mode Choice The aim of my study is to answer questions related to explanation of the travel mode choice used by people for regular commuting and what role in their decision making can be attributed to location of their residence, i.e. how the travel mode choice differs in case of traditional urban residents and suburban residents. I have limited my focus only to the travel modes used by adult residents of the Czech Republic. The reason why to study everyday commuting is the fact that people currently living in western cities spend a lot of time and money commuting and that the aggregate of everyday individual mobility generates an important environmental impact. Thus, this work represents a contribution to dynamically developing areas of sociology of travel and mobility as well as a general contribution to sociology of action. The choice of methodology in this study is based on the presumption that despite the fact that the travel mode choice represents a routine (social) behaviour, to a certain extent it can be seen as rational. Thus, I try to explain individual mobility by incorporating it into patterns of human motivation, means and goals, i.e. into categories of human action, in a context of specific conditions and situational constraints. The random...Katedra sociologieDepartment of SociologyFaculty of Social SciencesFakulta sociálních vě

Increasing the Influence of CO 2 Emissions Information on Car Purchase

In response to concerns related to climate change, and an attempt to encourage more sustainable behavior, individuals are often provided with information on greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) of consumer items, such as personal vehicles. Currently in the US, information on vehicle efficiency is provided as grams of carbon dioxide (CO2) per mile. Previous research presenting CO2 as a mass and testing willingness-to-pay through Discrete Choice Experiment has found that such information can influence vehicle choice. However, other research has questioned whether how this information is presented might affect choice. That research argues that CO2 emission information generally lacks contextualization that allows for interpretation. As well, it argues that the type of contextualization may affect choices. That research though did not test willingness-to-pay and the strength of its influence is not clear. In addition, research exists that argues that using pro-social, as opposed to financial, contextualization might be more influential on people’s choices. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to build on these previous findings on how CO2 emissions are presented to determine whether changing how that information impacts vehicle choice with a Discrete Choice Experiment of vehicle choice analyzed using latent class modeling. No previous study has so robustly studied the influence that different framings might have on vehicle purchase. Five different methods of presenting CO2 information are tested in this experiment: CO2 emissions as grams per mile (current method), CO2 emissions as pounds per year (consistent imperial units), CO2 emissions as tons per year (yearly contextualization), an annual tax on CO2 (yearly financial contextualization), and CO2 as a percentage of the 2025 US EPA reduction target of 26% from 2005 levels (social goal contextualization). Results demonstrate that the current method results in lowest willingness to pay for CO2 emission reductions, while the social goal contextualization results in the highest

The climate change stage of change measure: vehicle choice experiment

ABSTRACT: Various measures have been proposed and validated to assess environmental motivation and explain peoples’ consumer behavior. However, most of the measures are rather complex, sometimes comprising dozens of items. In order to overcome the associated response burden, the goal of our research is to validate a much simpler measure of environmental motivation, namely the measure of Climate Change-Stage of Change. To do so we analyze data from a discrete choice experiment in which drivers decide to purchase a car with different levels of CO2 emissions and we also measure their environmental motivation with three alternative measures. The results show that environmental motivation assessed with Climate Change-Stage of Change explains the choices in the experiment as well as with more complex measures. Our findings have substantial implications for researchers as they may be able to assess climate-relevant motivation – a significant factor for many consumer choices – with a single question

A global experiment on motivating social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic

Finding communication strategies that effectively motivate social distancing continues to be a global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-country, preregistered experiment (n = 25,718 from 89 countries) tested hypotheses concerning generalizable positive and negative outcomes of social distancing messages that promoted personal agency and reflective choices (i.e., an autonomy-supportive message) or were restrictive and shaming (i.e., a controlling message) compared with no message at all. Results partially supported experimental hypotheses in that the controlling message increased controlled motivation (a poorly internalized form of motivation relying on shame, guilt, and fear of social consequences) relative to no message. On the other hand, the autonomy-supportive message lowered feelings of defiance compared with the controlling message, but the controlling message did not differ from receiving no message at all. Unexpectedly, messages did not influence autonomous motivation (a highly internalized form of motivation relying on one’s core values) or behavioral intentions. Results supported hypothesized associations between people’s existing autonomous and controlled motivations and self-reported behavioral intentions to engage in social distancing. Controlled motivation was associated with more defiance and less long-term behavioral intention to engage in social distancing, whereas autonomous motivation was associated with less defiance and more short- and long-term intentions to social distance. Overall, this work highlights the potential harm of using shaming and pressuring language in public health communication, with implications for the current and future global health challenges

A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world

Moving Around a City - Rationality of Travel Mode Choice

RESUME Moving Around a City - Rationality of Travel Mode Choice The aim of my study is to answer questions related to explanation of the travel mode choice used by people for regular commuting and what role in their decision making can be attributed to location of their residence, i.e. how the travel mode choice differs in case of traditional urban residents and suburban residents. I have limited my focus only to the travel modes used by adult residents of the Czech Republic. The reason why to study everyday commuting is the fact that people currently living in western cities spend a lot of time and money commuting and that the aggregate of everyday individual mobility generates an important environmental impact. Thus, this work represents a contribution to dynamically developing areas of sociology of travel and mobility as well as a general contribution to sociology of action. The choice of methodology in this study is based on the presumption that despite the fact that the travel mode choice represents a routine (social) behaviour, to a certain extent it can be seen as rational. Thus, I try to explain individual mobility by incorporating it into patterns of human motivation, means and goals, i.e. into categories of human action, in a context of specific conditions and situational constraints. The random..

Review: "Research on alienation of humans from nature" H. Vostradovská, J. Krajhanzl, E. Strejčková.

Recenze projektu Výzkum odcizování člověka přírodě. In: Kolektiv autorů (2005). Děti, aby byly a žily. Praha: Ministerstvo životního prostředí. ISBN 80-7212-382-3

How High Is the Recreation Value of Successional Forests Growing Spontaneously on Coal Mine Spoil Heaps?

Research highlights: Recreation value increases with the age of replanted as well as successional forests. Successional forests are not systematically less valuable for recreation than replanted forests. Succession may be used as a viable and low-cost reclamation practice of spoil heaps. Background and objectives: Afforestation has been a popular practice in post-mining land reclamation in the Czech Republic. To expand the current evidence on the recreation values of reclaimed forests, we conducted a valuation study for most typical reclaimed forests, as well as for successional forests spontaneously growing on surface coal mine deposit heaps. Using two distinct measurement methods, we also explore whether the estimated recreation value of forests is robust. Materials and Methods: An online survey was conducted in 2016 on a sample of residents living in the vicinity of coal mine deposit heaps, residents of the adjacent region of Karlovy Vary, and a control population from the central Bohemian region. Participants evaluated visual representations of forest stands typical for reclamation and succession, along with commercial spruce forest as a reference type. In the direct measurement, we measured the attractiveness of a respective forest for a walk using a 5-point scale. In the indirect measurement, a hypothetical choice between two forests for a walk was elicited in a discrete choice experiment. Results: Both direct and indirect measurements provide similar results. All reclaimed forests have a lower recreation value than the reference spruce forest. Successional forests are not systematically less valuable for recreation than replanted forests and the recreation value of both types increases with their age. The age, gender, and education of the participants did not affect the recreation value of a forest. Conclusions: We demonstrate that succession may be used as a viable and low-cost reclamation practice of spoil heaps emerging as a by-product of open-cast coal mining. With recreation as only one of many forest uses, our findings need to be interpreted vis-à-vis the objectives and expected results for individual sites and their habitat conditions