After the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, crowding has been highlighted as a risk factor for contracting acute respiratory infections (ARIs) such as COVID-19, which has affected the demand for public transport. Although several countries, including the Netherlands, have implemented differential fare systems for peak and off-peak travel to reduce crowding during the rush hours, the problem of overcrowding on trains has remained prevalent and is expected to cause more disutility than even before the pandemic. A stated choice experiment in the Netherlands is conducted to understand the extent to which people can be motivated to change their departure time to avoid crowded trains during rush hours by offering them real-time information on on-board crowding levels and a discount on the train fare.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper discusses possible long-term effects of COVID-19 on activity-travel behaviour. Making use of theories and concepts from economics, psychology, sociology, and geography, this work argues that lasting effects can be expected, and specifically that peak demand among car and public transport users may be lower than if the pandemic would never have happened. The magnitude of such effects at the aggregate level in terms of the total travel time of all inhabitants of a country or state is likely limited.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGoals and pathways to achieve sustainable urban development have multiple interlinkages with human health and wellbeing. However, these interlinkages have not been examined in depth in recent discussions on urban sustainability and global urban science. This paper fills that gap by elaborating in detail the multiple links between urban sustainability and human health and by mapping research gaps at the interface of health and urban sustainability sciences.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn addition to a code of conduct for researchers, it is desirable to implement a code of conduct for funders of research. This is because researchers often behave unethically as a result of direct and/or indirect pressure from funders. The paper provides an expansion of the first proposal for such a code of conduct and includes several elements such as "policy relevant research should not be contracted and supervised by a client with an interest in the outcomes", and "policy relevant research should always be examined by an independent institute".
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCost-benefit analyses for transportation projects usually value impacts on safety and travel time through experiments in which consumers of mobility ('drivers') choose between routes which differ in safety and travel time. This approach has been criticized for failing to consider that private choices may not fully reflect citizens' preferences over public goods and means, a concept known as the consumer-citizen duality. Recent empirical evidence has established that individuals do indeed assign comparatively more value to safety in their role as citizens than in their role as drivers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFScientific literature lacks a model which combines exposure to risk, risk, and the relationship between them. This paper presents a conceptual road safety framework comprising mutually interacting factors for exposure to risk resulting from travel behaviour (volumes, modal split, and distribution of traffic over time and space) and for risk (crash and injury risk). The framework's three determinants for travel behaviour are locations of activities; resistances (generalized transport costs); needs, opportunities, and abilities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Acoust Soc Am
January 2013
In applied research, noise annoyance is often used as indicator of subjective reaction to aircraft noise in residential areas. The present study aims to show that the meaning which respondents attach to the concept of aircraft noise annoyance is partly a function of survey context. To this purpose a survey is conducted among residents living near Schiphol Airport, the largest airport in the Netherlands.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this paper, an attempt is made to establish the direction of causality between a range of psychological factors and aircraft noise annoyance. For this purpose, a panel model was estimated within a structural equation modeling approach. Data were gathered from two surveys conducted in April 2006 and April 2008, respectively, among the same residents living within the 45 Level day-evening-night contour of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, the largest airport in the Netherlands (n=250).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrevious research has stressed the relevance of nonacoustical factors in the perception of aircraft noise. However, it is largely empirically driven and lacks a sound theoretical basis. In this paper, a theoretical model which explains noise annoyance based on the psychological stress theory is empirically tested.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPeople move to another house for different reasons. It is sometimes presumed that a process of self-selection might take place on the basis of noise sensitivity, i.e.
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