| 1. |
- Andersson, Hanna, 1991-
(författare)
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Tradeoffs between self and environment in environmental judgment and decision making
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- One of the greatest challenges of today is to change our behavior to act more pro-environmentally to reduce global warming. We need to make sacrifices for the environment, e.g., use a means of transportation that take a longer time but causes less CO2 emission. The present thesis aims to study different factors (intrinsic, extrinsic motivational, and extrinsic motivational-neutral information) that influence us when making tradeoffs between self and environment. Paper I examined how an anchor (a reference price) and an ecolabel influence price judgments. It was found that both a judgment of an objective fact (product price) and a subjective preference (willingness to pay for the product) were affected by an anchor. An eco-label resulted in higher judgments of objective facts. People with higher environmental concern were more affected by an anchor when stating their willingness to pay than their low concern counterparts. In Paper II and Paper III, an interaction between a high anchor and a normative message that put the emissions into context was found when making a tradeoff between CO2 emissions and travel time for a flight (Paper II) or a car journey (Paper III). People with higher concern for the environment gave a longer travel time when they received a high anchor (Paper II and Paper III) or no anchor (Paper III). Paper IV investigated how a survey measuring environmental concern can be divided to different indices and how they predict answers in a tradeoff task. The result suggests that a two-factor structure divided into ecocentric and anthropocentric concern is a possible alternative and that people scoring higher on any of the environmental concern indices were willing to travel for a longer time. Taken together, the results show that normative messages, anchors, and concern for the environment are factors that can influence and interact when people make tradeoffs between self and environment in environmental judgment and decision making.
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| 2. |
- Kabanshi, Alan
(författare)
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Experimental study of an intermittent ventilation system in high occupancy spaces
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Spaces with high occupancy density like classrooms are challenging to ventilate and use a lot of energy to maintain comfort. Usually, a compromise is made between low energy use and good Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ), of which poor IEQ has consequences for occupants’ health, productivity and comfort. Alternative strategies that incorporate elevated air speeds can reduce cooling energy demand and provide occupant’s comfort and productivity at higher operative temperatures. A ventilation strategy, Intermittent Air Jet Strategy (IAJS), which optimizes controlled intermittent airflow and creates non-uniform airflow and non-isothermal conditions, critical for sedentary operations at elevated temperatures, is proposed herein.The primary aim of the work was to investigate the potential of IAJS as a ventilation system in high occupancy spaces. Ventilation parameters such as air distribution, thermal comfort and indoor air quality are evaluated and the system is compared with a traditional system, specifically, mixing ventilation (MV). A 3-part research process was used: (1) Technical (objective) evaluation of IAJS in-comparison to MV and displacement ventilation (DV) systems. (2) An occupant response study to IAJS. (3) Estimation of the cooling effect under IAJS and its implications on energy use. All studies were conducted in controlled chambers.The results show that while MV and DV creates steady airflow conditions, IAJS has cyclic airflow profiles which results in a sinusoidal temperature profile around occupants. Air distribution capability of IAJS is similar to MV, both having a generic local air quality index in the occupied zone. On the other hand, the systems overall air change rate was higher than a MV. Thermal comfort results suggest that IAJS generates comfortable thermal climate at higher operative temperatures compared to MV. Occupant responses to IAJS show an improved thermal sensation, air quality perception and acceptability of indoor environment at higher temperatures as compared to MV. A comparative study to estimate the cooling effect of IAJS shows that upper HVAC setpoint can be increased from 2.3 – 4.5 oC for a neutral thermal sensation compared to a MV. This implies a substantial energy saving potential on the ventilation system. In general, IAJS showed a potential for use as a ventilation system in classrooms while promising energy savings.
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| 3. |
- Keus van de Poll, Marijke, 1984-
(författare)
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Disruption of writing in noisy office environments
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall aim of the four experimental studies included in this dissertation was to investigate the influence of background speech on writing performance. In Paper I, a manipulation of speech intelligibility of background speech, by using the Speech Transmission Index (STI), revealed disruptive effects at lower STI values (i.e. with relative low speech intelligibility) than expected, based on an earlier developed model. This showed that writing is more sensitive to disruption from background speech than previously thought.Experiment 1 in Paper II addressed the question whether the sound of babble, sound of water waves, or pink noise is the most effective and appreciated way of masking background speech to reduce its intelligibility and thereby its disruptiveness. Masking with babble was best. Experiment 2 in Paper II followed this finding up by showing that the disruption of writing by background speech is a function of the number of voices talking in the background—less voices, more disruption.Paper III investigated the combined impact of background speech and task interruptions on writing performance. Background speech (which was played during the whole condition) after an interruption was expected to prolong the time it took to resume the same writing speed as before the interruption. This hypothesis was not confirmed, but participants’ self-reports showed that the combination of task interruptions and background speech convey a particularly high workload.Paper IV explored what role sound source location and individual differences (inattention, noise sensitivity and working memory capacity) play in the disruption of writing by background speech. Self-reports showed that speech in front of the individual was perceived as more distracting compared to speech from behind. Other results in the same study showed that high inattentive individuals profit more from less intelligible speech located behind them than attentive individuals and high noise-sensitive individuals were more distracted by highly intelligible background speech than by less intelligible background speech.The most important and replicable finding in this dissertation is that writing fluency is very sensitive to disruption from background speech; a finding relevant for the design of open work environments. In work areas where writing is a common task, the aim should be to create quiet work areas.
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| 4. |
- Sörqvist, Patrik
(författare)
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The role of working memory capacity in auditory distraction
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The basis of individual differences in susceptibility to auditory distraction has been a research field largely ignored. The current work presents four studies demonstrating that individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) are related to the magnitude of auditory distraction. The first three reports showed that high WMC attenuates the effects of speech and aircraft noise on reading comprehension and prose memory. The fourth report showed that high WMC attenuates the power of unexpected sound stimulation to capture our attention, but not the interference from changing-state sound streams to seriation processes.Furthermore, the first and the second report showed that the capacity to exclude new, potentially relevant but ultimately irrelevant, materials from memory underlies the relationship between WMC and the effects of speech on reading comprehension/prose memory. Based on these results, a new perspective of WMC called the "sub-process view" was developed, according to which WMC is a compound of functionally distinct subprocesses: some of which are related to auditory distraction. Ten years ago it was not at all clear if cognitive-control processes play a role in auditory distraction, but the studies reported in this thesis strongly suggest that cognitive-control - as reflected in WMC -constitutes a fundamental basis of individual differences in susceptibility to auditory distraction.
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| 5. |
- Todorov, Ivo, 1976-
(författare)
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Individual Differences in Multitasking : Support for Spatiotemporal Offloading
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In both the private and work spheres, multitasking among three or more activities has become and is continuing to evolve as a pervasive element of everyday life, and recent technological advances only seem to be exacerbating the process. Despite attempts to understand the mental processes that let humans successfully multitask, little is known about the functional cognitive level at which these mental processes take place. This thesis makes a case for the involvement of spatial ability (among other cognitive abilities) in successful multitasking behavior. It focuses on the importance of the cognitive off-loading of executive control demands onto spatial ability, due to the inherent complexity of relationships between task goals and deadlines in multitasking scenarios. Importantly, it presents a working hypothesis—the spatiotemporal hypothesis of multitasking—as a tool for making specific predictions about multitasking performance, based on individual and sex differences in spatial ability.In Study 1, individual differences in spatial ability and executive functions emerged as independent predictors of multitasking performance. When spatial ability was decomposed into its subcomponents, only the coordinate (metric), but not categorical (nonmetric), processing of spatial relations was related to multitasking performance. Males outperformed females in both spatial ability and multitasking, and the effects were moderated by menstrual changes, in that sex differences in coordinate spatial processing and multitasking were observed between males and females in the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle, but not between males and females at menses. In Study II, multitasking performance reflected age- and sex-related differences in executive functioning and spatial ability, suggesting that executive functions contribute to multitasking performance across the adult life span, and that reliance on spatial skills for coordinating deadlines is reduced with advancing age. The results of Study III, in which the spatiotemporal hypothesis was directly scrutinized, suggest that the spatial disruption of multiple deadlines interferes with multitasking performance. Overall, these findings suggest that multitasking performance, under certain conditions, reflects independent contributions of spatial ability and executive functioning. Moreover, the results support the distinction between categorical and coordinate spatial processing, suggesting that these two basic relational processes are selectively affected by female sex hormones and are differentially effective, even across the age span, in transforming and handling temporal patterns as spatial relations in the context of multitasking. Finally, fluctuations of sex hormones exhibit a modulating effect on sex differences in spatial ability and multitasking performance.
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| 6. |
- Andersson, Hanna, 1991-, et al.
(författare)
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Anchoring effect in judgments of objective fact and subjective preference
- 2021
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Ingår i: Food Quality and Preference. - : Elsevier. - 0950-3293 .- 1873-6343. ; 88
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The way by which various sources of external information interact in their effects on judgment is rarely investigated. Here, we report two experiments that examine how two sources of external information—an anchor (a reference price) and an eco-label—influence judgments of an objective fact (product price) and a subjective preference (willingness-to-pay for the product). Participants’ price judgments were drawn in the direction of the anchor point, whereas the eco-label resulted in higher judgments of objective fact (Experiment 1) but did not influence subjective preference (Experiment 2). Interestingly, the eco-label seemed to strengthen the effect of the high anchor in judgments of objective fact. Further, participants with higher environmental concern answered a higher price on the subjective preference questions when they received a high anchor, as well as a lower price when they received a low anchor in comparison to the low environmental concern group. This study demonstrates that various external information sources can strengthen each other’s effects on consumer belief about products, while the effects are weaker for consumers’ preferences. The implications of the results for decision making are discussed.
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| 7. |
- Andersson, Hanna, 1991-, et al.
(författare)
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The negative footprint illusion is exacerbated by the numerosity of environment-friendly additions: unveiling the underpinning mechanisms
- 2024
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Ingår i: Journal of Cognitive Psychology. - : Taylor & Francis. - 2044-5911 .- 2044-592X. ; 36:2, s. 295-307
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The addition of environmentally friendly items to conventional items sometimes leads people to believe that the carbon footprint of the entire set decreases rather than increases. This negative footprint illusion is supposedly underpinned by an averaging bias: people base environmental impact estimates not on the total impact of items but on their average. Here, we found that the illusion's magnitude increased with the addition of a greater number of "green" items when the number of conventional items remained constant (Studies 1 and 2), supporting the averaging-bias account. We challenged this account by testing what happens when the number of items in the conventional and "green" categories vary while holding the ratio between the two categories constant (Study 3). At odds with the averaging-bias account, the magnitude of the illusion increased as the category size increased, revealing a category-size bias, and raising questions about the interplay between these biases in the illusion.
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| 8. |
- Bökman, Fredrik, et al.
(författare)
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The psychology of balancing gains and losses for self and the environment : Evidence from a carbon emission versus travel time tradeoff task
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of Environmental Psychology. - : Elsevier. - 0272-4944 .- 1522-9610. ; 74
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- If human behavior is to become more sustainable, people will have to be willing to sacrifice personal gains and benefits for the sake of sustainability. Decisions will have to involve making tradeoffs between what is good for the self and what is good for sustainability. In the present paper, we studied the psychology of such tradeoffs in the context of a carbon dioxide (CO2) emission versus travel time tradeoff task. The experiment investigated how intrinsic motivational factors (environmental concern), extrinsic motivational information (a normative message) and extrinsic motivation-neutral information (anchors) influence these tradeoffs. The results revealed that extrinsic factors interact in their effects on tradeoffs such that participants were willing to travel for a longer time for the benefit of less CO2 emissions when they were externally motivated by a normative message, but only when this motivational emphasis was combined with a high anchor. Furthermore, this interaction was particularly strong in participants with high environmental concern. We conclude that extrinsic and intrinsic motivational factors interact in their effect on making people willing to accept personal losses in exchange for sustainability gains and that these motivational factors may have to be combined with further extrinsic information to influence decisions.
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| 9. |
- Colding, Johan, 1958-, et al.
(författare)
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Applying a Systems Perspective on the Notion of the Smart City
- 2020
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Ingår i: Smart Cities. - : MDPI AG. - 2624-6511. ; 3:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper focuses on the need for a widened definition of the notion of technology within the smart city discourse, with a particular focus on the “built environment”. The first part of the paper describes how current tendencies in urban design and architecture are inclined to prioritize high tech-solutions at the expense of low-tech functionalities and omits that information and communication technology (ICT) contrasts the art of building cities as an adaptable and habitually smart technology in itself. It continues with an elaboration on the need for expanding the limits of system boundaries for a better understanding of the energy and material telecouplings that are linked to ICT solutions and account for some perils inherent in smart technologies, such as rebound effects and the difficulty of measuring the environmental impacts of ICT solutions on a city level. The second part of the paper highlights how low-tech technologies and nature-based solutions can make cities smarter, representing a new technology portfolio in national and international policies for safeguarding biodiversity and the delivery of a range of ecosystem services, promoting the necessary climate-change adaption that cities need to prioritize to confer resilience.
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| 10. |
- Colding, Johan, et al.
(författare)
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Wicked Problems of Smart Cities
- 2019
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Ingår i: Smart Cities. - : MDPI. - 2624-6511. ; 2:4, s. 512-521
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- It is often uncritically assumed that, when digital technologies are integrated into the operation of city functions, they inevitably contribute to sustainable urban development. Such a notion rests largely on the belief that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions pave the way for more democratic forms of planning, and that ‘smart’ technological devices result in a range of environmental benefits, e.g., energy efficiency and the mitigation of global warming. Drawing on the scientific literature that deals with ‘smart cities’, we here elaborate on how both propositions fail to consider drawbacks that could be characterized as ‘wicked’, i.e., problems that lack simplistic solutions and straightforward planning responses, and which often come about as ‘management surprises’, as a byproduct of achieving sustainability. We here deal with problems related to public choice constraints, ‘non-choice default technologies’ and the costs of automation for human learning and resilience. To avoid undemocratic forms of planning and too strong a dependence on non-choice default technologies, e.g., smart phones, we recommend that planners and policy makers safeguard redundancy in public-choice options by maintaining a wide range of alternative choices, including analog ones. Resilience thinking could help planners deal more effectively with the ‘wickedness’ of an increasingly hyper-connected society.
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