The Psychology of Vehicle Performance: Implications for the Uptake of Electric Vehicles

Road transport accounts for around 16% of global CO2 emissions, and electric vehicles (EVs) represent a potential mitigation route. High performance might offset the disadvantages of higher cost and short range that make their uptake problematic. This research investigated how consumer drivers construe, perceive and value vehicle performance. Research with UK drivers, using the repertory grid method, found that drivers construe vehicle performance as having two independent dimensions, dynamic and cruising performance. A new inter-goal dynamics and feedback control model of driving behaviour was developed to account for differences in the opportunities afforded to perceive vehicle performance in naturalistic driving. This was embedded in a Bayesian model for perception of available vehicle performance. Driving simulation and test track experiments with UK drivers found that: driving behaviour was strongly affected by goal activation; drivers could perceive performance differences in naturalistic driving, but only if they were large; the lowest perceptual difference threshold, for mid-range available vehicle acceleration, was 7.7%; smaller differences could affect driving behaviour (overtaking) through a process of implicit learning. The symbolic value of products is conferred by their symbolic meanings. Two new methods were developed to quantify symbolic meanings, grounded in costly signalling theory, which represents them in terms of personality traits of a typical user. The symbolic meanings of car types, performance attributes and driving styles were all measured. In a randomised controlled trial, UK consumer drivers rated an EV better on dynamic and cruising performance than a conventional ICE control, but this benefit was insufficient to outweigh the disadvantages. The symbolic meaning of an EV was found to be consistent with cruising performance, but inconsistent with dynamic performance. Extended-range EVs would have the dynamic and cruising performance benefits of EVs without the range disadvantages, and may be a desirable option for many once costs reduce

Habit discontinuity and student travel mode choice

Overreliance on motorised travel modes aggravates existing problems of public obesity and global climate change. However, travel mode choices are often habitual, and habits are difficult to break, as automatic responses to stable-contexts learnt through repetition. One approach is to destabilise the stable-contexts that cue travel habits. Such an opportunity could arise when people move-house, so we predicted that the travel mode choices and habits of university students would change, without a behaviour change intervention, when they moved-house between academic terms. University students (N = 250) completed two questionnaires, around 5.5 months apart, between new academic years; 153 students moved-house (“movers”). As predicted when movers changed their travel mode choices, their new choices became more automatic and their old choices less automatic. Mover’s travel changes were planned prior to moving-house, however there was insufficient evidence that either changes in the social context or activated values were related to travel changes. We discuss these findings with respect to acquiring habits and the habit discontinuity and self-activation hypotheses (Verplanken, Walker, Davis, & Jurasek, 2008) and the advantages of student house-hunting as a 'window of opportunity' for establish new travel habits amongst university students

Philip Skippons Bericht über einen Aufenthalt in Heidelberg im Sommer 1663 in: Philip Skippon: An Account of a journey made thro' part of the Low Countries, Germany, Italy and France, in: A collection of voyages and travels: some now first printed from original manuscripts, other now first published in English in six volumes [...], printed by assignement from Mssrs. Churchill, London, 1732, Vol. VI, S. 432-441 (FONTES 56)

Im Sommer 1663 erreichte eine kleine Reisegesellschaft um den Botaniker John Ray Heidelberg. Die Engländer hielten sich nur wenige Tage in der Stadt auf. Durch Empfehlungsbriefe an Professoren der Universität und an den Kurfürsten hatten sie einen privilegierten Zugang zu vielen Informationen. Kurfürst Karl Ludwig, ein Sohn der Elisabeth Stuart, und somit Neffe des englischen Königs Karl I., hatte sich in den Jahren des Exils lange in England aufgehalten. Er sprach Englisch und empfing die Besucher auf die Schloss, wo er ihnen auch seine Sammlungen zeigte. Philip Skippon nutzte als aufmerksamer Beobachter die kurze Zeit und hinterließ eine lebendige Schilderung der Stadt, des kurfürstlichen Schlosses und der Universität

Philip Skippon's "Description of Florence" (1664) in: Philipp Skippon: "An account of a journey made thro’ part of the Low-Countries, Germany, Italy and France", in: "A collection of voyages and travels, some now printed from original manuscripts, others now first published in English (...)", second edition, volume VI (London 1746) (FONTES 51)

Ludwig Schudt hat in seinen "Italienreisen im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert" (1959) als erster den Blick der Forschung auf Philip Skippons (1641-1691) "An account of a journey made thro’ part of the Low-Countries, Germany, Italy and France" gelenkt und die Bedeutung des Textes erkannt. Zusammen mit drei weiteren Naturwissenschaftern (Botanikern und Zoologen) bereiste Skippon die Niederlande, Deutschland, Österreich, die Schweiz, Italien und Frankreich zwischen 1663 und 1666. Schudt schreibt von Skippons “offene[m] Auge für Land und Leute”. Er interessierte sich für die Urbanistik, Monumente, Inschriften, Kirchen, Paläste und Gärten, für die Architektur, Skulptur und Malerei, wie im besonderen für die Kunstsammlungen, Kuriositäten und Raritäten. Skippon war auch von Maschinen und Instrumente begeistert. Er berichtet ferner über Staatwesen und Politik, sowie über die Sitten und Gewohnheiten des Volkes. Skippons lange und informative Beschreibung der Stadt Florenz, wie die ähnlich vernachlässigte Beschreibung des Heinrich von Huyssen (FONTES 44), stellt eine wichtige Ergänzung zu der oft ziemlich leblosen Guidenliteratur der Stadt dar. In seinem Bericht erscheinen die Kunstwerke in den politischen, wirtschaftlichen, sozialen und wissenschaftlichen Zusammenhängen in denen sie entstanden, gesammelt, studiert und erklärt wurden. Die Gesamtheit von Skippons Beschreibungen der Sammlungen von Kunstwerken, Kuriositäten und Raritäten, die er zusammen mit seinen Mitreisenden eifrig besucht und inventarisiet hat, stellt eine unschätzbare Dokumentation dar, um die Kunst- und Wunderkammern des 17. Jahrhunderts präziser und differenzierter zu definieren

Commuting and wellbeing in London: The roles of commute mode and local public transport connectivity.

PublishedJournal ArticleOBJECTIVES: To explore the relationships between commute mode, neighbourhood public transport connectivity and subjective wellbeing. METHOD: The study used data on 3630 commuters in London from wave two of Understanding Society (2010/11). Multivariate linear regressions were used to investigate how commute mode and neighbourhood public transport connectivity were associated with subjective wellbeing for all London commuters and for public transport commuters only. Subjective wellbeing was operationalized in terms of both a positive expression (life satisfaction measured by a global single-item question) and a more negative expression (mental distress measured by the General Health Questionnaire). Logistic regression was also used to explore the predictors of public transport over non-public transport commutes. RESULTS: After accounting for potentially-confounding area-level and individual-level socioeconomic and commute-related variables, only walking commutes (but not other modes) were associated with significantly higher life satisfaction than car use but not with lower mental distress, compared to driving. While better public transport connectivity was associated with significantly lower mental distress in general, train users with better connectivity had higher levels of mental distress. Moreover, connectivity was unrelated to likelihood of using public transport for commuting. Instead, public transport commutes were more likely amongst younger commuters who made longer distance commutes and had comparatively fewer children and cars within the household. CONCLUSION: The findings highlight the heterogeneity of relationships between commute mode, public transport connectivity and subjective wellbeing and have implications for intervention strategies and policies designed to promote commuting behaviour change.This work was undertaken as part of the first author's PhD funded by a Shell Global Solutions (UK) award to CA and supervised by CA, MW and SS. CA is partially funded by UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care of the South West Peninsula PenCLAHRC. MW is partially funded by NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Environmental Change and Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in partnership with Public Health England (PHE), and in collaboration with the University of Exeter, University College London, and the Met Office. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Shell Global Solutions (UK), the NHS or the NIHR, the Department of Health or PHE. The authorship order reflects relative contribution

What cognitive mechanisms predict travel mode choice? A systematic review with meta-analysis

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record.Reduced private car use can limit greenhouse gas emissions and improve public health. It is unclear, however, how promotion of alternative transport choices can be optimised. A systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to identify potentially modifiable cognitive mechanisms that have been related to car use and use of alternative transport modes. A qualitative synthesis of measures of potentially modifiable mechanisms based on 43 studies yielded 26 conceptually distinct mechanism categories. Meta-analyses of associations between these mechanisms and car use/non-use generated 205 effects sizes (Pearson’s r) from 35 studies. The strongest correlates of car use were intentions, perceived behavioural control, attitudes and habit. The strongest correlates of alternative transportation choices were intentions, perceived behavioural control and attitudes. Implications for researchers and policy implementation are discussed

Load Generators for Automatic Simulation of Urban Fleets

[EN] To ensure cities sustainability, we must deal with, among other challenges, traffic congestion, and its associated carbon emissions. We can approach such a problem from two perspectives: the transition to electric vehicles, which implies the need for charging station infrastructure, and the optimization of traffic flow. However, cities are complex systems, so it is helpful to test changes on them in controlled environments like the ones provided by simulators. In our work, we use SimFleet, an agent-based fleet simulator. Nevertheless, SimFleet does not provide tools for easily setting up big experiments, neither to simulate the realistic movement of its agents inside a city. Aiming to solve that, we enhanced SimFleet introducing two fully configurable generators that automatize the creation of experiments. First, the charging stations generator, which allocates a given amount of charging stations following a certain distribution, enabling to simulate how transports would charge and compare distributions. Second, the load generator, which populates the experiment with a given number of agents of a given type, introducing them dynamically in the simulation, and assigns them a movement that can be either random or based on real city data. The generators proved to be useful for comparing different distributions of charging stations as well as different agent behaviors over the same complex setup.This work was partially supported by MINECO/FEDER RTI2018-095390-B-C31 project of the Spanish government. Pasqual Martí and Jaume Jordán are funded by UPV PAID-06-18 project. Jaume Jordán is also funded by grant APOSTD/2018/010 of Generalitat Valenciana - Fondo Social Europeo.Martí Gimeno, P.; Jordán, J.; Palanca Cámara, J.; Julian Inglada, VJ. (2020). Load Generators for Automatic Simulation of Urban Fleets. Springer. 394-405. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51999-5_33S394405Campo, C.: Directory facilitator and service discovery agent. FIPA Document Repository (2002)Dong, J., Liu, C., Lin, Z.: Charging infrastructure planning for promoting battery electric vehicles: an activity-based approach using multiday travel data. Transp. Res. Part C: Emerg. Technol. 38, 44–55 (2014)Jordán, J., Palanca, J., Del Val, E., Julian, V., Botti, V.: A multi-agent system for the dynamic emplacement of electric vehicle charging stations. Appl. Sci. 8(2), 313 (2018)Noori, H.: Realistic urban traffic simulation as vehicular Ad-hoc network (VANET) via Veins framework. In: 2012 12th Conference of Open Innovations Association (FRUCT), pp. 1–7. IEEE (2012)Palanca, J., Terrasa, A., Carrascosa, C., Julián, V.: SimFleet: a new transport fleet simulator based on MAS. In: De La Prieta, F., et al. (eds.) PAAMS 2019. CCIS, vol. 1047, pp. 257–264. Springer, Cham (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24299-2_22Skippon, S., Garwood, M.: Responses to battery electric vehicles: UK consumer attitudes and attributions of symbolic meaning following direct experience to reduce psychological distance. Transp. Res. Part D: Transp. Environ. 16(7), 525–531 (2011)del Val, E., Palanca, J., Rebollo, M.: U-tool: a urban-toolkit for enhancing city maps through citizens’ activity. In: Demazeau, Y., Ito, T., Bajo, J., Escalona, M.J. (eds.) PAAMS 2016. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 9662, pp. 243–246. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39324-7_2

Consideration of environmental factors in reflections on car purchases: Attitudinal, behavioural and sociodemographic predictors among a large UK sample

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record Encouraging the purchase of low-emission vehicles could reduce the environmental impact of growing global car ownership. To date, however, there is relatively little research into the degree to which environmental features, such as reduced CO2 emissions, are considered important when reflecting on car purchase decisions using large representative samples. This issue was explored using data from wave four (2013/14) of the UK Household Longitudinal Study, weighted to be representative of the UK population (N = 12,895). Principal components analysis identified three types of considerations during car purchase reflections: Utilitarian, Image-conscious and Environmental. Logistic and Ordinary Least Squares regressions identified attitudinal, behavioural and sociodemographic predictors of reporting environmental considerations during car purchase. Consideration of environmental factors during reflections on car purchases was more likely among those with higher climate change concerns and topic engagement, as well as self-reported pro-environmental behaviours more generally. Environmental considerations were also higher amongst women, older adults, non-white ethnic groups, urban residents and among individuals in Scotland (vs. London). Contrary to previous findings, richer and more educated respondents were less likely to consider environmental factors, with income positively related to image factors such as brand. Although our findings offer some support for the pro-environmental attitude–behaviour consistency hypothesis, they also highlight key non-attitudinal, sociodemographic factors underlying car purchase reflections that may help social-marketers and policy makers identify key audiences to more effectively promote low-emission vehicle purchases.Shell Global Solutions(NIHR) Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care of the South West Peninsula PenCLAHRCNIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Environmental Change and Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in partnership with Public Health Englan

Management of cull dairy cows—Consensus of an expert consultation in Canada

Many cull dairy cows enter the marketing system and travel to widely dispersed and specialized slaughter plants, and they may experience multiple handling events (e.g., loading, unloading, mixing), change of ownership among dealers, and feed and water deprivation during transport and at livestock markets. The objectives of this study were to describe the diverse management of cull dairy cows in Canada and establish consensus on ways to achieve improvements. A 2-day expert consultation meeting was convened, involving farmers, veterinarians, regulators, and experts in animal transport, livestock auction, and slaughter. The 15 participants, recruited from across Canada, discussed regional management practices for cull cattle, related risk factors, animal welfare problems, and recommendations. An audio recording of the meeting was used to extract descriptive data on cull cattle management and identify points of agreement. Eight consensus points were reached: (1) to assemble information on travel times and delays from farm to slaughter; (2) to increase awareness among producers and herd veterinarians of potential travel distances and delays; (3) to promote pro-active culling; (4) to improve the ability of personnel to assess animal condition before loading; (5) to identify local options for slaughter of cull dairy cows; (6) to investigate different management options such as emergency slaughter and mobile slaughter; (7) to ensure that all farms and auctions have, or can access, personnel trained and equipped for euthanasia; and (8) to promote cooperation among enforcement agencies and wider adoption of beneficial regulatory options

New technologies for the old: Potential implications of living in later life for travel demand

Assistive technologies for older people, such as personal tracking devices and community alarms, can facilitate living independently for longer. Where and how older people live will affect patterns of travel associated with their lifestyles and needs. They may remain in their own homes, those of relatives or in residential care homes. They may make minimal or extensive use of technologies. As such, assistive technologies represent an example of technological developments and their social uptake outside the field of transport. Such developments may, nevertheless, have an indirect impact on travel demand and one which may be quite substantial. This paper aims, through a series of expert interviews, to examine: (i) to what extent the mobility effects of technological developments (outside transport) are being considered within the transport sector; (ii) how important or relevant it is for such consideration to be given; and (iii) ways in which such impacts can be accounted for in travel demand analysis and policy decisions. What emerges is that such indirect impacts are considered very important but rarely are they examined. The transport experts interviewed noted various ways of increasing the integration between transport and other domains. Several saw more emphasis on these issues in the education of transport professionals as an important starting point. The paper concludes with the case for using scenario planning as a means to emphasise how the living arrangements for older people, facilitated through assistive technologies, could produce distinct and significant consequences for travel demand. © 2013 The Authors