Establishment of Community Managed Fisheries’ Closures in Kenya: Early Evolution of the Tengefu Movement

Community-based management (CBM) could be an essential tool to prevent the depletion of marine resources in the Western Indian Ocean region. In Kenya, political pressure to strengthen local governance, has led to adoption of CBM as a way of reducing over-exploitation and managing the competing uses and impacts on the marine environment. Several communities in Kenya have embraced CBM and have set aside or closed previously fished areas to enhance recovery of fisheries and biodiversity. These community fisheries closures (locally called tengefu), despite being degraded, may recover to finfish abundances and biodiversity levels similar to established MPAs or above thresholds for maintaining some ecological services. Communities see their direct involvement and control of these tengefu as more likely to result in benefits flowing directly to them. Community closures are also important for articulating and resolving community values and strengthening their management capacity. Here, we describe the evolution of the tengefu movement in Kenya and combine information from focus group discussions, interviews, underwater surveys and boundary marking to evaluate the current status, opportunities and challenges facing these tengefu. We show that in some cases community closures suffer from slow and incomplete national and local legislative processes, challenges to compliance, and weak management.     

Mobile ICTs and physical mobility: Review and research agenda

The question of the relationship between the spread of communication tools and the physical mobility of individuals is not new and arose with the arrival of the fixed telephone and, more recently, the development of the Internet and especially e-commerce. The extraordinary spread of individual, especially portable, communication tools like the mobile phone, has recently generated new interest in this topic in the fields of transportation economics, geography and sociology. This article discusses the main topics that have been explored, from the debate between complementarity and substitution to analyses in terms of interactions with the spatiotemporal organization of daily activities, the size and maintenance of social networks, and, finally, perception of travel and spaces. We then identify several issues that we think merit further exploration.     

Governance Responses to Rapid Growth in Environmentally Sensitive Areas of Coastal Australia

The twin forces of rising affluence and population are altering coastal communities around the world. High amenity, environmentally sensitive areas—particularly attractive, non-metropolitan coastal environments—are witnessing a tidal wave of in migration from former urbanites. As a result, these communities are struggling to accommodate growing numbers of people with urban tastes and rural dreams in areas with governance structures and physical infrastructure designed for occasional tourists. This article looks at how governance frameworks in coastal Australia respond to the profound environmental, social, and cultural implications of this process. We offer a typology of non-metropolitan coastal growth settings—from exurban contexts to isolated coastal hamlets—and identify the main environmental, social, economic, and governance issues they face. We then outline the policy and legislative framework governing coastal areas in Australia and show how this framework is interpreted at the local level through an analysis of five local plans covering different coastal settings.     

Combining web and face-to-face in travel surveys: comparability challenges?

Response rates for household travel surveys are tending to fall, and it seems unlikely that this trend will be reversed in the future. In recent years, travel data collection methods have evolved in order to obtain reliable data that are sufficiently detailed to feed increasingly complex models, and in order to integrate new technologies into survey protocols (Internet, GPS??). Combining different media is an obvious low-cost way of improving data quality as it increases the overall response rate. But the question of the comparability of data over time and between different survey modes remains unresolved. This paper makes a comparative analysis between the travel behaviours of web-based survey respondents and respondents to a face-to-face interview. The data were obtained from the 2006 Lyon conurbation household travel survey. Our analysis shows that the Internet respondents reported fewer trips per day than the face-to-face respondents (3.00 vs. 4.04 daily trips), and that the differences between the two groups varied according to the travel mode and trip purpose. While part of this difference can be explained by socioeconomic disparities (the Internet respondents had a specific profile) we cannot exclude the possibility of under-reporting due to the web medium.     

Using measured instead of perceived noise in hedonic models

This paper compares the use of perceived and measured noise in a hedonic housing model. Although in theory the use of subjective variables is recommended, most empirical applications use measured noise variables. Merging different databases, we obtain a sample of about 2800 apartments located in Geneva, Switzerland, containing both measured and perceived noise data. We make the measured and perceived noise data comparable and analyse their performance by fitting alternatively three hedonic models. We find that for moderate to high noise levels the measured noise safely approximates its perception.     

Effective environmental marketing of green cars: A nested-logit approach

Using market data, we assess the effectiveness of an eco-marketing campaign on purchases of ‘green’ vehicles. The eco-marketing was designed as a quasi-experiment, having one region exposed to the marketing while the other region was the control. A two-level nested-logit model consistent with utility maximization reveals the campaign had short-term positive effects on green-car sales. Results also indicate green-car buyers come from highly educated communities. Age has a positive but non-linear effect on green car sales.     

Factors affecting consumer assessment of eco-labeled vehicles

A statewide sample of Maine registered vehicle owners is used to examine factors that affect their assessments of eco-labeled conventionally fueled passenger vehicles. The study focuses on developing an empirical and theoretical framework with which to model vehicle choice decisions under eco-labeled conditions. Particular attention is paid to how eco-information may affect the two-stage vehicle purchase process. The study builds upon environmental economic and psychology literature in examining the role of personal characteristics such as perceived effectiveness of consumer purchase decisions and perceptions of the eco-labeled products as factors in the vehicle purchase decision. It was found that environmental attributes of an eco-labeled passenger vehicle are significant in the purchase decision. The eco-information is considered in the vehicle purchase decision, but is generally not considered at the class-level decision.     

Some developments in equilibrium traffic assignment

A network optimization problem is formulated which yields a probabilistic equilibrated traffic assignment incorporating congestion effects and which as a special case, reduces to a user optimized equilibrium solution. In the resulting model, path choice is determined by a logit formula in which path costs are functions of the assigned flows. The article also demonstrates the similarity between some fixed demand incremental methods of traffic assignment and the minimization problem associated with computing the user equilibrium assignment.     

Group-based geographic information systems for transportation improvement site selection

Transportation improvement site selection exemplifies transportation decision making that is collaborative in nature and geographically based. Such decision-making is part of a broad societal trend toward shared and participatory discussions about public investment. Perspectives from three different transportation decision contexts in the Puget Sound Region of Washington State, a regional council, a county government and a public–private Coalition group, are combined with a literature review to develop a decision task model that summarizes the need for information technology support during transportation improvement site selection. The task model guides the development of a decision support system requirement specification that outlines integrated information capabilities provided by geographic information system (GIS) and group support system (GSS) technologies. Together, GIS and GSS capabilities contribute to evolving group-based GIS. The kinds of capabilities a group-based GIS could offer in addressing the needs are identified. A report on the use of a prototype, group-based GIS called Spatial Group Choice highlights the possibilities in an inter-organizational coalition decision context. The conclusions discuss needs for future technology developments and social–behavioral science studies on these developments.     

Nudging people towards more sustainable residential choice decisions: an intervention based on focalism and visualization

Transportation - There have been numerous behavior change studies focused on sustainable travel mode choices. In this study we focused on the residential choices that in turn influence travel...