Research by Kent psychologists at\u00a0St Dunstan\u2019s and St Stephen\u2019s level crossings in Canterbury last summer shows motivating messages at the two sites cut emissions by the equivalent of taking 1,044 cars off the road for a year.<\/p>\n
The research, which was funded by\u00a0Canterbury City Council<\/a>\u00a0following a successful grant bid to the\u00a0Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs\u00a0<\/a>(DEFRA), assessed\u00a06,528 vehicles arriving at the level crossings where air quality values tended to exceed national and EU recommended thresholds at various times most days.<\/strong><\/p>\n They tested the effects of three different signs that amplified existing signs that requested drivers to switch off their engines, by asking them\u00a0to \u2018join other responsible drivers\u2019, \u2018to think about their actions\u2019, or to \u2018improve air quality in the area\u2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n Professor Dominic Abrams<\/a> said: \u2018This project successfully\u00a0used social psychology to persuade more drivers to turn off their engines<\/strong>,\u00a0bringing benefits for everyone in the area, including the drivers themselves.<\/p>\n The study was conducted by Professor Dominic Abrams, Director of the Centre for the Study of Group Processes; Dr Tim Hopthrow<\/a>, Faculty of Social Sciences Associate Dean of Research and Innovation; Kent Psychology research students Hirotaka Imada and Hilal \u00d6zkececi; Dr Fanny Lalot<\/a>, Kent Psychology Research Associate and Dr Anne Templeton, Lecturer at Edinburgh University.<\/p>\n Read more on the University of Kent News Centre here<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Research by Kent psychologists at\u00a0St Dunstan\u2019s and St Stephen\u2019s level crossings in Canterbury last summer shows motivating messages at the two sites cut emissions by … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55574,"featured_media":1905,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[140626,10470,3684,167560,70],"tags":[140632],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55574"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1906,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904\/revisions\/1906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}