Alerts work! Air quality warnings and cycling

Abstract

Alert programs are central to strategies to reduce pollution exposure and manage its impact. To be effective alerts have to change behavior, but evidence that they do that is sparse. Indeed the majority of published studies fail to find a significant impact of alerts on the outcome behavior that they study. Alerts particularly seek to influence energetic cardio-vascular outdoor pursuits. This study is the first to use administrative data to show that they are effective in reducing participation in such a pursuit (namely cycle use in Sydney, Australia), and to our knowledge the first to show that they are effective in changing any behavior in a non-US setting. We are careful to disentangle possible reactions to realised air quality from the 'pure', causal effect of the issuance of an alert. Our results suggest that when an air quality alert is issued, the amount of cycling is reduced by 14 to 35%, which is a substantial behavioral response. The results are robust to the inclusion of a battery of controls in various combinations, alternative estimation methods and non-linear specifications. We develop various sub-sample results, and also find evidence of alert fatigue.

Can Apps Make Air Pollution Visible? Learning About Health Impacts Through Engagement with Air Quality Information

“…Neidell (2004; found that people protect their health against next-day smog alerts published in the newspaper by reducing outdoor recreational activities, but this effect wanes for alerts issued on consecutive days (Zivin and Neidell 2009). Air quality alerts have also been shown to reduce cycling behavior in Australia (Saberian, Heyes, & Rivers, 2017), and in China, elevated air pollution levels are positively associated with higher online searches for anti-PM2.5 masks and air filters (Liu, He, & Lau, 2018). Beyond that, there is little published on how people engage with real-time air quality information, what they learn from this information and the steps they take to protect their health in response to this information.…”

Examining Patterns of Air Quality Perception: A Cluster Analysis for Southern Chilean Cities

“…Demographic, cultural, and certain contextual characteristics are crucial in understanding the variations in perception. Over the last decades, studies performed in different countries have shown that air quality perceptions can be associated with factors such as satisfaction and attachment with one's neighborhood (Bickerstaff & Walker, 2001;Brody, Peck, & Highfield, 2004;De Groot, 1967;Francis, 1983;Rankin, 1969), age (Brody et al, 2004;Howel, Moffatt, Prince, Bush, & Dunn, 2002), socioeconomic status, educational level (Bickerstaff & Walker, 2001;Deguen, Padilla, Padilla, & Kihal-Talantikite, 2017;Dworkin & Pijawka, 1982;Tiefenbacher & Hagelman, 1999), gender or feelings of belonging to a minority group (Catalán et al, 2009;Johnson, 2002), information and exposure to different types of risks and air quality (Chen et al, 2018;Elliott, Cole, Krueger, Voorberg, & Wakefield, 1999;Kasperson et al, 1988;Mirabelli et al, 2018;Oltra, Sala, Boso, & Asensio, 2017;Saberian, Heyes, & Rivers, 2017), or political identification (Brody et al, 2004).…”

Impact of ambient air pollution on physical activity and sedentary behavior in China: A systematic review

“…Second, smog appearance may discourage people from engaging in outdoor activities (Roberts et al 2014). Finally, media alerts and warnings of poor air quality may alter people's decision on spending time outdoors and engaging in physical activity (Saberian et al 2017;Wen et al 2009a). For example, the Canadian government developed a risk communication tool, the Air Quality Health Index (AQHI), which uses a 10-point scale from low to high risk to deliver information regarding the health implications of air pollution to the general public (Government of Canada 2015).…”