Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

This paper contributes to the telework literature by investigating empirically the impact of social influence on the decision to telework. An innovative web-based telework survey was developed and used to obtain data from a sample of employees of a large postsecondary institution in Ontario, Canada, between January and March 2009. A unique feature of the survey instrument is that it allowed employees to easily construct their workplace social networks. Using a univariate (binary) probit model, we identify three mutually exclusive sources of social influence on the decision to telework: friends who telework, neighbors who telework, and colleagues at the workplace. With respect to colleagues, we find that the net impact of social influence is governed by both the composition and the size of an employee's workplace social network. Composition is captured by interacting telework status with relationship strength.

Using the 1997/98 New York Metropolitan Transportation Council household survey and United States Census, we estimate an instrumental variable probit model to test the impact of contextual and endogenous social interaction effects on auto ownership and determine that the probability of car ownership is affected by both types of social interaction effects. Previous research focused only either on contextual effects, or, increasingly, on endogenous effects using contextual effects variables as instruments. Therefore we were unable to find studies looking at both social interaction effects simultaneously. Consistent with earlier results, we find that households have a higher probability of possessing a vehicle if they are surrounded by other automobile-owning households (endogenous effect). However, we find that contextual effects are correctly measured only when the endogenous effect is included. In our case, everything else being equal, households in poorer neighborhoods are more likely to own vehicles, and households in neighborhoods with higher proportions of people with graduate degrees are less likely to own vehicles. This suggests that car ownership in New York City is a status symbol for poorer households and that non-car-ownership is a status symbol for people with post baccalaureate education. The results are important in two policy contexts: as auto ownership is a precursor to trip generation and mode choice, auto ownership estimation is important to effective travel forecasting; as vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is tied to auto ownership, VMT reduction strategies, as a way to improve air quality, reduce congestion, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, may depend on strategies to reduce auto ownership. In either case, correct modeling of auto ownership will lead to more effective policy outcomes.

Although interpersonal influence is thought to play in important role in proenvironmental consumption behavior, mechanisms of influence are not well understood. Through literature review, we identify five theoretical perspectives on interpersonal influence: contagion, conformity, dissemination, translation, and reflexivity. We apply these perspectives to car buyer perceptions of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), a technology with attributes that can be perceived as functional, symbolic, private, and societal. The context is a PHEV demonstration project in which 275 interpersonal interactions were elicited from interviews with 40 individuals in 11 different social networks in northern California. Results demonstrate how perspectives shape research findings. Contagion, conformity, and dissemination provide useful concepts regarding perceptions of functional, symbolic and societal PHEV attributes, respectively. However, translation and reflexivity provide language and theoretical depth to describe observed perceptions and motives, while also addressing dynamics in these perceptions and in consumer values. Utilizing these differing perspectives facilitated observation that participants are more amenable to developing new, prosocietal interpretations of PHEVs if they: (i) easily form a basic functional understanding of PHEV technology, (ii) are in a transitional state in their lifestyle practices, and (iii) find supportive prosocietal values within their social network. Results demonstrate the importance of integrating complementary research perspectives to better understand consumer valuation of technologies with environmental benefits.

The recent interest in the role of transport in social interactions has been partly motivated by the hope of achieving a better understanding of the role that transport plays in network capital, or the resources that people can gather from their social networks. Despite the relevancy of this question for policy, little empirical work has been done to elucidate this relationship. This paper illustrates a method of data collection and analysis, using the social networks approach to assess the role of transport in social support, both emotional and material. The personal networks of two neighbourhoods in Concepción, Chile, with different income levels, are compared, focusing on the role of car ownership in network capital, and the relevance of the time and space characteristics of social contacts. The results suggest that having a car at home does not lead to homogeneous access to network capital, which depends heavily on the kind of social resource studied and the income context (neighbourhood) in which the individuals are embedded. The findings also underscore the need to treat social capital as a truly multidimensional concept and the usefulness of the personal networks approach for assessing these complex relationships.

Explanations of leisure travel must take the influence of participants' social contacts into account. To analyze this influence, transport planning uses social network analysis methods. While most past projects have focused on isolated network components, this paper presents a study collecting data on connected personal networks by taking a snowball sample. The paper explains difficulties for transport planning in approaching and explaining leisure travel and then introduces both the survey methodology and the instrument in detail. Advantages and disadvantages of snowball sampling are addressed, and the question why this strategy is important for approaching leisure travel, followed by experiences from the field about response rate, the fit between survey and target population, and sources of bias are given. Descriptive analyses highlight the potential of the data to produce new empirical insights.

Social activities are responsible for a large proportion of travel demands of individuals. Modeling of the social network of a studied population offers a basis to predict social travel in a more comprehensive way than currently is possible. In this paper we develop a method to generate a whole social network for a given population focusing on friendship relationships. The core of the method is a friendship-formation model that predicts for any two given persons from a population the probability that a friendship relationship exists between the persons. The model takes into account the degree of similarity in attributes, geographic distance between the persons as well as threshold values representing the persons' opportunities and base preferences for engagement in a friendship relationship. We show how the model can be estimated on the basis of observed personal social networks from a sample of individuals. We estimate and test the model using data collected in a recent survey in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. The results indicate that the model is able to generate networks that display the same structural properties as we find in the sample data. A synthetic network generated in this way can be used to microsimulate social interactions in a population in geographic space

This study uses data from the 2005 and 2007 Citizenship Survey to map broad differences in levels of volunteering and social capital between ninety different types of place in England, characterised by their regional location and level of deprivation. A measure of social capital in each type of place is constructed using a multivariate multilevel statistical model and the association with rates of volunteering is then examined. The results show a positive association at the area level between the level of formal volunteering and informal volunteering and the level of social capital. The rate of both formal and informal volunteering was, however, unrelated to the level of social capital after controlling for area deprivation. These results raise concerns about the ability of volunteering to change the social characteristics of deprived areas independently of their material circumstances. Communities have strengths primarily in areas concerned with maintaining social order rather than creating economic growth. Policies to tackle area deprivation need to concentrate on linking deprived areas up to economic opportunities in more affluent surrounding areas rather than on local strategies based on self-help.

Geographical variations in voluntary sector activity are important where they lead to inequity in service provision and differences in the opportunity to participate in voluntary group activities. However, despite important theoretical work, very little work has demonstrated variation empirically, particularly variation at the local (neighbourhood) level. This paper, for the first time, examines nationally representative data to illustrate the very real geographical differences across England in the prevalence of voluntary organisations working at a neighbourhood scale. Overall, less deprived local areas have a much higher prevalence than more deprived local areas. While certain kinds of organisations are more prevalent in more deprived areas, including those working in the field of economic well-being, this reflects the presence of organisations which receive public funds. These patterns are consistent with a key element of ‘voluntary sector failure’, resource insufficiency, and the important role of government in ensuring resources are available in areas of particular need.

A substantial body of recent research has uncovered the impact of constituency campaigns on British general election outcomes, using the published returns of candidates' spending as a proxy measure for their campaigns' intensity—the more spent, the greater the intensity of the local campaign, and the greater the intensity of campaigning, the better their performance in the constituency, and the poorer their opponents' performance. These data refer only to the last few weeks before the election, however, and cannot identify how spending affects behaviour. For the latter, it is argued that spending is a proxy measure for the amount of contact between candidates and voters; the greater the amount spent the greater the probability that an elector contacted will vote for the relevant party. It has been difficult to evaluate this argument until the 2010 general election, however, for which the availability of a large panel survey that includes information on those contacts allows a full assessment of the hypothesis. The results show that the more spent in a constituency the greater the volume and range of contacts there, which in turn increases the probability of individuals voting for the party concerned.

Saving for retirement is fraught with risk and uncertainty. For those not privileged by participation in a defined benefit pension plan, the issue is made complex by problematic decision rules: the options available are variable in terms of their costs and possible consequences, there is considerable uncertainty surrounding the anticipated outcomes of different options, and it is quite unclear whether conventional savings instruments are better or worse than simply relying upon housing and property. In this paper the problem of saving for the future is conceptualised and interrogated against respondents' views and opinions as reported in the Money section of The Sunday Times. Those interviewed are representative of a distinctive segment of the UK working population and face, more than most, the prospect of being largely responsible for their retirement income. Due regard is paid to the age and reported incomes of respondents in relation to their professed intentions just as consideration is given to their apparent risk predispositions. It is noted that many respondents preferred property over pensions across the four years considered—from the peak of the bubble through to the onset of the age of austerity. An interpretation of this preference is offered, emphasising the control of risk apparent in many people's perceptions of the value of property.

We use a qualitative study of recreational anglers in northern England to explore constructions of ‘the public’ in environmental management. We examine good and bad constructs of ‘the public’ and show how they emphasise knowledge over practice. We argue for a more differentiated view of the public through ‘environmental engagement’ which will appreciate more fully ways in which both ‘specialised publics’ and ‘performative publics’ are imagined and enacted. We demonstrate how these constructs play out through attending to the discursive and material ‘hands-on’ practices of anglers in environmental management and show how these link different geographies of public participation through both discursive and material spaces.

Chinese economic reforms have moved Mao's antiurban paradigm to an urban-driven paradigm. Since the late 1980s, modernist reforms have led to large scales of urbanization, particularly in the suburban rural zones. Extensive amounts of farmland in Beijing have been expropriated for conversion to urban use to bolster economic growth. Whilst market reforms have resulted in a substantial rise in land values, as the state is effectively the sole landowner, little of the ‘surplus value’ thus created has gone to the peasants who merely have user rights. In response, peasants have created an informal sales and rental housing market to make up for their loss in livelihood, and to meet the demand of Beijing residents and low-income migrant workers. Supported by site surveys, this paper examines peasants' rights to the city, other property rights, and the ways in which they exercise their ‘illegal’ rights and the mechanism by which the ‘surplus value’ is shared between the state, the developers, and, albeit limited, the peasants in the urbanization process. More intricate policy measures have since been taken by the Chinese government in pacifying the social tension arising from inequitable housing distribution.

Lambert et al state that emerging geographical studies of social and cultural worlds at sea should take into account the currents, textures, and more-than-human elements of the oceans. In spite of this call there has been little work which seriously considers the physical, more-than-human geography of the sea—its very materiality—and how it comes into play with social and cultural life. This paper draws on the watery excursions of Radio Caroline's pop-pirate broadcasting ships, examining the ways in which the materiality of the sea as a ‘hydro’ state (that is, motionful, deep, and dynamic), has agency; resulting in a variety of visceral affects for those at sea, and also for those listening to the station's transmissions back on dry land. The paper begins by examining the strategic locations of the pop-pirate vessels whilst at sea to manipulate the motionful impact of the ocean and how, in turn, the depth and dynamism of the sea were harnessed to create unique audio experiences for those listening. The paper then continues to explore the ways in which, even with such manipulations and harnessing, crew members sometimes had little control of their situation; resulting in disorientation and confusion as the power of the sea immersed them. Through these two sections it is contended that the specific quality of the sea opens up new relational understandings between the human and more-than-human worlds. Humans cannot assert influence back onto the materiality of the sea as they might the earth, and therefore must negotiate the force of the ocean through forms of strategy and management; manipulations of materiality and affect, forming new cocomposed relations. It is concluded that further studies, both in more-than-human geographies and within the discipline more widely, of the sea's inordinate agency and wider web of extraterrestrial relations are required in order to take seriously the often forgotten 70% of the Earth's surface which is ocean.

This paper explores the connections between economic development and sustainable land-use planning. It brings forward the idea that for cities to adapt their development patterns from low-density urban sprawl, they must plan and develop with efforts coordinated between economic development and land-use planning. It uses the example of the high-tech sector to determine what aspects are needed to create areas that are both attractive to high-tech firms while also matching the principles of smart growth, a popular method of sustainable urban development. It analyzes two case-study areas in Metro Vancouver: Yaletown, a dense neighbourhood in downtown Vancouver; and Crestwood Corporate Centre, a traditional office park in Richmond. Through these case studies the important factors needed to attract high-tech firms are determined, and connections with aspects of smart growth are articulated. It is argued that economic development and forms of sustainable urban development such as smart growth have positive connections and mutually beneficial results when coordinated.