The personal assessments of the current and expected future state of the environment by 3232 community respondents in 18 nations were investigated at the local, national, and global spatial levels. These assessments were compared to a ranking of each country’s environmental quality by an expert panel. Temporal pessimism (“things will get worse”) was found in the assessments at all three spatial levels. Spatial optimism bias (“things are better here than there”) was found in the assessments of current environmental conditions in 15 of 18 countries, but not in the assessments of the future. All countries except one exhibited temporal pessimism, but significant differences between them were common. Evaluations of current environmental conditions also differed by country. Citizens’ assessments of current conditions, and the degree of comparative optimism, were strongly correlated with the expert panel’s assessments of national environmental quality. Aside from the value of understanding global trends in environmental assessments, the results have important implications for environmental policy and risk management strategies
Urgent and radical transition to lower-carbon forms of society is imperative to limit current and future climate change impacts. Behavioral spillover theory offers a way to catalyze broad lifestyle change from one behavior to another in ways that generate greater impacts than piecemeal interventions. Despite growing policy and research attention, the evidence for behavioral spillover and the processes driving the phenomenon are unclear. The literature is split between studies that provide evidence for positive spillover effects (where an intervention targeting an environmentally conscious behavior leads to an increase in another functionally related behavior) and negative spillover effects (where an intervention targeting an environmentally conscious behavior leads to a decrease in another functionally related behavior). In summarizing findings, particular attention is given to the implications for climate-relevant behaviors. While few examples of climate-relevant behavioral spillover exist, studies do report positive and negative spillovers to other actions, as well as spillovers from behavior to support for climate change policy. There is also some evidence that easier behaviors can lead to more committed actions. The potential contribution of social practice theory to understanding spillover is discussed, identifying three novel pathways to behavioral spillover: via carriers of practices, materiality, and through relationships between practices within wider systems of practice. In considering future research directions, the relatively neglected role of social norms is discussed as a means to generate the momentum required for substantial lifestyle change and as a way of circumventing obstructive and intransigent climate change beliefs
BackgroundThere is little robust evidence to test the policy assumption that housing-led area regeneration strategies will contribute to health improvement and reduce social inequalities in health. The GoWell Programme has been designed to measure effects on health and wellbeing of multi-faceted regeneration interventions on residents of disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the city of Glasgow, Scotland.Methods/DesignThis mixed methods study focused (initially) on 14 disadvantaged neighbourhoods experiencing regeneration. These were grouped by intervention into 5 categories for comparison. GoWell includes a pre-intervention householder survey (n = 6008) and three follow-up repeat-cross sectional surveys held at two or three year intervals (the main focus of this protocol) conducted alongside a nested longitudinal study of residents from 6 of those areas. Self-reported responses from face-to-face questionnaires are analysed along with various routinely produced ecological data and documentary sources to build a picture of the changes taking place, their cost and impacts on residents and communities. Qualitative methods include interviews and focus groups of residents, housing managers and other stakeholders exploring issues such as the neighbourhood context, potential pathways from regeneration to health, community engagement and empowerment.DiscussionUrban regeneration programmes are 'natural experiments.' They are complex interventions that may impact upon social determinants of population health and wellbeing. Measuring the effects of such interventions is notoriously challenging. GoWell compares the health and wellbeing effects of different approaches to regeneration, generates theory on pathways from regeneration to health and explores the attitudes and responses of residents and other stakeholders to neighbourhood change.
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