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Emotional state after the trip to school and associations with children’s attitude towards sustainable mobility patterns

Johansson, Maria LU orcid ; Raustorp, A ; Boldeman, C ; Kylin, M ; Sternudd, Catharina LU and Mårtensson, Frerika (2010) IAPS 21 Conference
Abstract
A sustainable development of the built environment asks for changes in urban residents’ mobility patterns. The extensive use of the car contributes to sedentary lifestyle and negative environmental impact in many respects. Children living in urban areas are faced with limits of their independent use of the environment both in terms of travel and outdoor play. Many parents hold favourable attitudes towards sustainable ways of mobility for their children, at least as long as the children are accompanied by an adult. In reality however many of the children’s daily trips are carried out by car. Parents’ are thereby also risking that their own present unsustainable daily mobility patterns are transferred to the next generation. Our modal choice... (More)
A sustainable development of the built environment asks for changes in urban residents’ mobility patterns. The extensive use of the car contributes to sedentary lifestyle and negative environmental impact in many respects. Children living in urban areas are faced with limits of their independent use of the environment both in terms of travel and outdoor play. Many parents hold favourable attitudes towards sustainable ways of mobility for their children, at least as long as the children are accompanied by an adult. In reality however many of the children’s daily trips are carried out by car. Parents’ are thereby also risking that their own present unsustainable daily mobility patterns are transferred to the next generation. Our modal choice is partly a result of affective factors. Nilsson and Küller (2000) showed that urban residents who expressed affection for their car also travelled more by car. Gatersleben and Uzzell (2007) showed that commuting by cycle to work was beneficent for the commuter’s affective state. Children seem to like to walk and cycle, to move around by kick bikes and skateboard. How does physical active travel influence their emotional state? Is the children’s emotional response towards their way of travel also associated with their attitude towards different mobility patterns in travel and play? These are some of the research questions that are to be analysed within the interdisciplinary research programme “Children on foot”. The research is carried out in cooperation between The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Lund University, Karolinska Institute and The Linneaus University. Theoretically the study departs from Küller’s (1991) model of Human-Environment-Interaction stating that a person’s successful interaction with the environment can be seen as a result of a basic emotional process that takes into consideration the activity to be carried out by a person, characteristics of the physical and social environment with consideration for individual factors. In the basic emotional process, the core affects of arousal and pleasure are two crucial components. These core affects have been shown to be the basic units of emotions and are linked to distinct patters of brain activity. During one week in September 2009 over 200 10-year old Swedish children reported how they travelled to school and assessed their emotional state by a paper and pencil test as soon as they arrived at school. At one point during the week the children rated their preference of various travel modes and leisure activities in a separate questionnaire. The travel modes and activities had previously been assessed by experts to give rise to different levels of energy expenditure. Moreover data was collected for the children’s daily physical activity by pedometer. The paper will within the symposium “Sustainable everyday mobility patterns in urban childhoods” present the results of correlational analyses of these data and discuss the implications of possibilities to travel to school for development of sustainable mobility patterns among children in urban areas (Less)
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type
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
publication status
published
subject
host publication
IAPS 21 Conference, Abstracts of Presentations
conference name
IAPS 21 Conference
conference dates
2010-06-27 - 2010-07-02
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
a27685ac-85cd-44d1-afc9-dea765024c46 (old id 3469669)
alternative location
http://iaps.scix.net/cgi-bin/works/Show?_id=iaps_21_2010_69&sort=DEFAULT&search=johansson&hits=23
date added to LUP
2016-04-04 13:01:45
date last changed
2018-11-21 21:11:51
@inproceedings{a27685ac-85cd-44d1-afc9-dea765024c46,
  abstract     = {{A sustainable development of the built environment asks for changes in urban residents’ mobility patterns. The extensive use of the car contributes to sedentary lifestyle and negative environmental impact in many respects. Children living in urban areas are faced with limits of their independent use of the environment both in terms of travel and outdoor play. Many parents hold favourable attitudes towards sustainable ways of mobility for their children, at least as long as the children are accompanied by an adult. In reality however many of the children’s daily trips are carried out by car. Parents’ are thereby also risking that their own present unsustainable daily mobility patterns are transferred to the next generation. Our modal choice is partly a result of affective factors. Nilsson and Küller (2000) showed that urban residents who expressed affection for their car also travelled more by car. Gatersleben and Uzzell (2007) showed that commuting by cycle to work was beneficent for the commuter’s affective state. Children seem to like to walk and cycle, to move around by kick bikes and skateboard. How does physical active travel influence their emotional state? Is the children’s emotional response towards their way of travel also associated with their attitude towards different mobility patterns in travel and play? These are some of the research questions that are to be analysed within the interdisciplinary research programme “Children on foot”. The research is carried out in cooperation between The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Lund University, Karolinska Institute and The Linneaus University. Theoretically the study departs from Küller’s (1991) model of Human-Environment-Interaction stating that a person’s successful interaction with the environment can be seen as a result of a basic emotional process that takes into consideration the activity to be carried out by a person, characteristics of the physical and social environment with consideration for individual factors. In the basic emotional process, the core affects of arousal and pleasure are two crucial components. These core affects have been shown to be the basic units of emotions and are linked to distinct patters of brain activity. During one week in September 2009 over 200 10-year old Swedish children reported how they travelled to school and assessed their emotional state by a paper and pencil test as soon as they arrived at school. At one point during the week the children rated their preference of various travel modes and leisure activities in a separate questionnaire. The travel modes and activities had previously been assessed by experts to give rise to different levels of energy expenditure. Moreover data was collected for the children’s daily physical activity by pedometer. The paper will within the symposium “Sustainable everyday mobility patterns in urban childhoods” present the results of correlational analyses of these data and discuss the implications of possibilities to travel to school for development of sustainable mobility patterns among children in urban areas}},
  author       = {{Johansson, Maria and Raustorp, A and Boldeman, C and Kylin, M and Sternudd, Catharina and Mårtensson, Frerika}},
  booktitle    = {{IAPS 21 Conference, Abstracts of Presentations}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  title        = {{Emotional state after the trip to school and associations with children’s attitude towards sustainable mobility patterns}},
  url          = {{http://iaps.scix.net/cgi-bin/works/Show?_id=iaps_21_2010_69&sort=DEFAULT&search=johansson&hits=23}},
  year         = {{2010}},
}