Impacts of framing air pollution outcomes on transport behavior change: A case study of Tehran, Iran

Recent years, air pollution phenomenon has become one of the most crucialproblems of metropolises like Tehran. Urban transportation of this highlypopulated city is the main reason for its air pollution problem. Despite alltransport infrastructure developments, new policies and stringent regulations, theair pollution problem has still remained crucial. In effect, in order to reduce airpollution of Tehran, factors like public participation must be inquired more indepth. This research considers the effects of air pollution outcome framing oncitizen’s environmental behavior change. Results of this study show that airpollution framing can change people’s perception about air pollution and theirurban transportation behavior. Moreover, framing can improve people’sparticipation and encourage them to use less polluter vehicles. Four kinds offraming which were used in this research namely gain-local, gain-distant, losslocaland loss-distant, had significant impacts on participants. The study resultedin great increases in bicycle usage and increases in the use of public transportvehicles. Furthermore, results of the study provided evidences that encouragingand rewarding framings have superior impacts on individuals rather than punitiveregulations. Encouraging framings had no favorable impacts on Personal Carusage, nevertheless encourage individuals to use Public Transportation further.

Keywords:

Air pollution control , Outcome framing , Behavior change , Urban transport vehicles