3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions

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    Mobility as agency: perspectives from South Africa, China, and the United States
    (2020) Bergman, Zinette
    We must develop more sustainable ways to be mobile, yet four main hurdles challenge sustainable mobility. The first is the need for individuals and groups to adopt the fundamentally different attitudes, values, and norms upon which sustainable mobility are premised. The second is the reticence to abandon infrastructures and industries that are clearly unsustainable. The third is about the limits imposed by mono-focal mobility approaches that tend to favour either socio-technical or psychosocial interventions. The fourth is the lack of integration, which prevents the creation of an interdependent mobility system that associates psychosocial, sociocultural, and technological dimensions that would give rise to more sustainable mobility practices. The purpose of this research is to explore the potential contribution psychology can make to developing sustainable mobility solutions that transcend some of these limitations. Psychology has played an important role in addressing societal challenges for many decades. The field has at its disposal extensive knowledge about individuals and their practices, and given that individual practices are the defining feature of mobility, the field is ideally positioned to contribute to sustainable mobility. Our ability to be mobile serves as one of the primary functions through which we realise our personal, professional, and social goals. Thus, our potential as agents in the world is deeply connected to our ability to be mobile. Accordingly, there exists a fundamental connection between personal agency and individual mobility practices. This research exploits this connection by using Albert Bandura’s concept of personal agency and his Model of Triadic Reciprocal Causation to develop a framework known as ‘mobility as agency’. This framework conceptualises different modes of agency (individual, proxy, and collective) as well as the potential of different types of environments (selected, imposed, or constructed) to facilitate or constrain agentive action in relation to mobility intentions and desired outcomes in order to study mobility practices as dynamic and interdependent agentive practices. Conceptualising and studying the interdependence between different psychosocial dimensions and socio-structural environments that define mobility practices in different contexts offers the opportunity to systematically examine the limitations of current sustainable mobility approaches and to explore how these limitations could be overcome. Using a comparative case study approach, mobility as agency is applied empirically in three research sites to study the mobility practices of car users in regions without developed passenger trains in the United States (US), regular train users in Beijing, China, and Metrorail commuters in the Western Cape of South Africa. A mixed methods approach known as Hermeneutic Content Analysis is used to study how agency unfolds in individual mobility practices. The analyses identify various agentive pathways, which function differentially, and which are systematically connected to different environmental dimensions, thereby illustrating how mobility as agency is inherently psychosocial and functionally dependent on technical and socio-structural environmental dimensions. The argument for a more nuanced understanding of agency as distinct and systematic patterns of reciprocal interactions is based on empirically systematising distinct patterns of reciprocal interaction between preferences and behaviours in relation to specific contextual and cultural dynamics of mobility environments. To date, most studies on personal agency focus on individual agency especially in relation to self-efficacy. By transcending conventional unidirectional concepts of agency, this research contributes a framework that expands personal agency in line with the Model of Triadic Reciprocal Causation to include the reciprocal interactions between different psychosocial dimensions and socio-structural environments. Furthermore, these findings contribute to the field of sustainable mobility an approach that addresses some of the limitations imposed by focusing on either technical and socio-structural, or psychosocial interventions. Using mobility as agency to examine the interdependencies and conditionalities of mobility practices, this research intends to contribute to advancing psychological research on the dynamic reciprocal relationship between individuals, culture, and environment. In doing so, it proposes a culture-sensitive and context-specific approach to studying sustainable mobility
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    User- producer interaction in the Rea Vaya bus rapid transit system in Johannesburg
    (2017) Sello, Khumo Idah
    This study investigates the innovation dynamics of the Rea Vaya Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system using the concept of user-producer interaction in the innovation system, with a focus on user feedback to the producer of innovation. Using a constructivist world view and a qualitative approach of inquiry the purpose of this study was to investigate the extent at which user feedback is currently being utilised as a tool to enhance public sector innovation within a metropolitan city such as the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) Metropolitan Municipality. The Rea Vaya BRT System was the focus of the case study research design methodology and was adopted with objective of seeking to understand the processes adopted by CoJ in the utilisation of user feedback in public sector innovation. The study further sought to understand how a public institution such as CoJ utilises user feedback to improve innovation. Sampling and data collection procedures occurred through a spatial scale that spans from the bus depot in Dobsonville Soweto (South) towards Johannesburg town (East) which signifies a single trip on the Rea Vaya BRT system bus (C1 route). The data Collection tools included interviews with stakeholders, observation and document analysis to unpack the drivers and barriers that impede the utilisation of user feedback for public sector innovation. The sample selection for the study informants depended on access to official and relevant participants in the CoJ’s road and transport department and the Rea Vaya BRT System Bus Operating Company (BOC). User feedback is recognized and collected by the CoJ’s road and transport department according to the participants of the study. However, it is not structured and documented because there are no formal processes put in place to collect user feedback and explain how each process work. There is no secondary data on how user feedback is implemented in the Rea Vaya system. The researcher, however, put together a user feedback loop using primary data to understand user feedback processes in the Rea Vaya BRT system. It was from the user feedback loop that the possible barriers were identified to why the user feedback is not fully implemented and does not lead to improving and enabling effective public sector innovation. The possible barriers include: A lack of a user feedback mechanism report; an absence of user feedback plan; an absence of a user feedback implementation; an absence of a user feedback monitoring and evaluation system; competing interests between the politicians and administrators; user demands that the CoJ road and transport department cannot meet; lack of innovation incentives from the municipality for users; municipal bureaucracy process; lack of relationship between users and the municipality; capacity to deliver and implement user feedback; and negative attitude of municipal officials. This research has come to the understanding that for innovation to succeed in the city there is a need to change institutional frameworks that allows for the diverse collection of user feedback, that allows for the transparent dissemination of user feedback within the various stakeholders of the CoJ and the department of roads and transport and which allows for the efficient use of state resources that will assist in further unpacking and reevaluating user feedback. To conclude this research firmly believes that there should be an adoption of monitoring and evaluation tools into the user feedback processes that the city can utilise as a key measuring outcome-based results of public sector innovation in the metropolitan landscape. Another important finding is a lack of a monitoring and evaluation report that can be used to monitor how user feedback is used and how it can contribute to effective public-sector innovation.
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    Awakening the city of seven hills: a transportation hub to enhance mobility for wellness in Kampala Uganda
    (2019) Namutebi, Sheila Sarah
    In recent years, research studies have shown an increase in stress levels especially among people living in cities. Clear links have been established correlating wellbeing with the environment. Studies show that urban environments increase tendencies of unhappiness and stress among people. This study identifies inefficiency in systems that facilitate mobility as one of the causes of stress among city users. It recognises mobility as a core component of any system that facilitates the efficient flow of things between points. Inadequacy in systems of mobility can therefore cripple a system by preventing the free movement of things from one point to another. Like so many developing cities, the urban environment of Kampala, the capital of Uganda that is undergoing rapid urbanisation and often unchecked development faces challenges regarding mobility. In Kampala, majority of the population either walk or rely on public transportation and yet the inadequate infrastructure and systems of mobility denies them the right to freely and easily access and navigate their city. This both directly and indirectly results in physical and psychological stress in city users leading to frustrations and financial losses and consequently prevents wellbeing. The study focuses on the Old Taxi Park which is the most frequently used public transportation facility for daily short trips around the city of Kampala. Recognising that the failing state of infrastructure and inadequate systems of organising the movement of vehicles and people in and around the park render it one of the black spots that contribute to and often escalate the problems regarding mobility presents the Old Taxi Park as a suitable site for a project to address the city’s navigational challenges. This is aimed at mitigating stress among the people who engage with the city. The project thus proposes a revamp of the Old Taxi Park to facilitate efficient movement of people within Kampala. In order to further enhance wellness, the project draws on the healing and restorative power of nature. Although nature has been linked to improved well being, having been found to have numerous restorative benefits especially for people who constantly interact within densely inhabited fast paced settings, the city centre of Kampala which has the highest population density and fastest pace of life in the entire city critically lacks instances where people can interact with and so benefit from the nurture of the elements of nature. Therefore this research project takes an approach of reintroducing various elements of nature to the urban fabric through the design of the transportation hub and how it integrates with Kampala’s urban fabric. The main objectives for the project are hence to promote efficiency in the systems of mobility and to reintroduce nature within the urban sphere in order to promote wellness for the people who interact with the concrete jungle that was once the City of Seven Hills
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    Assumed models of human behaviour in the promotion campaigns of public and non-motorised transport in the Gauteng city region
    (2018) Muzhizhizhi, Nyasha
    This study applied a case study approach to analyse assumed human behaviour models applied in the conceptualisation and implementation of the promotion campaigns for public and non-motorised transport in the Gauteng City Region and how this might have influenced the transition towards public transport and non-motorised transport. Besides the primary data collected through interviews with diverse participants, secondary data from reports and media articles were captured and analysed. The study found a diverse range of promotion campaigns for public and non- motorized transport such as You make Joburg great and the Ecomobility Festival. The related promotion campaign activities included educational campaigns and billboard messaging. Using behavioural insights such as prospect theory and rational choice theory, the study analysed the activities and tools of the promotion campaigns in order to understand the predominant assumed model. The study finds that the rational agent model of human behaviour was the most assumed model for the promotion campaigns. Due to the fact that the outcomes of the campaigns were not systematically evaluated, specific transition-impacts of the assumed model could not be analysed and therefore no relevant finding could be made on the related sub-question. However, secondary data sources clearly indicate that IMT use continues to grow in Gauteng City Region in spite of the ongoing campaigns. The study therefore went on to identify gaps within the delivered campaign activities and considered better ways to improve such campaigns in the context of the non-rational model. The study finds that in spite of close to over three decades of scientific questioning of the rational model, the model remains as the predominant framework in the promotion campaigns for PT and NMT. Although there might be other contributing factors, this predominance of the framework possibly undermines the anticipated impacts, and in particular, inhibits the responses to such campaigns and overall transitioning towards public and non-motorised transport. Key words: econs, framing, non-motorised transport, non-rational model, nudging, promotion campaign, public transport, rational model
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