Driving less for better air: Impacts of a public information campaign

In the wake of the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, localities across the United States initiated public information campaigns both to raise awareness of threats to air quality and to change behavior related to air pollution by recommending specific behavioral changes in the campaign messages. These campaigns are designed to reduce the health hazards associated with poor air quality and to avoid federal sanctions resulting from the failure to meet air quality standards. As in many other communities across the country, a coalition of government agencies and businesses initiated a public information campaign in the Atlanta metropolitan region to reduce certain targeted behaviors, mainly driving. A two‐stage model used to analyze data from a rolling sample survey shows that the centerpiece of the information campaign—air quality alerts—was effective in raising awareness and reducing driving in a segment of the population. When the overall information campaign was moderated by employers' participation in programs to improve air quality, drivers significantly reduced the number of miles they drove and the number of trips they took by car on days when air quality alerts were sounded. Public information campaigns can be successful in increasing awareness, but changing well‐established behaviors, such as driving, is likely to require institutional mediation to provide social contexts that support the behavioral change, as well. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Managing the Environment: Rhetoric, Policy and Reality

This article argues that, despite environmental issues climbing higher on the political agenda and considerable recent policy activity, rhetoric is not matched by reality in our efforts to manage the Australian environment. We integrate the imperatives emerging from the policy and sustainability literatures and from actual policy, with detailed work on wildlife conservation in Victoria's Central Highlands. Our analysis demonstrates that, rather than undertaking the more intensive policy and 'adaptive management' that is needed, governments are often doing less and may actually be 'taking their hands of their wheel'. Some public policy and administration implications of the emerging policy field of sustainability are illustrated.     

Asian literature as a tool for cultural identity creation in Europe. Goethe’s Hafiz

By the eighteenth century the colonial powers in Europe already had well-defined images and self-images, crystalised from their native cultures, their significance within Europe, and their mercantile and political relations with other continents. Yet Germany, which would have no prospect of a unified polity till late in the following century, remained severely challenged in all these respects. From the mid eighteenth century, however, Germany’s greatest minds sought to mould for it a cultural identity, and as a vital step in this, the poet, statesman and scientist Goethe, a man indebted to a form of patronage which peculiarly qualified him to undertake such experiments, conducted a series of literary encounters with the great traditions of Asia. Their purpose was to situate Germany within the wider world culture, for one can only be a cultural force within a world to which one has some cultural relation. Goethe’s forays into the worlds of Persian, Indian and Chinese literature were attempts at creative imitation, cultural absorption and public confrontation, but their culture-building and appropriative character was also a form of vicarious imperialism, a new-world enterprise conducted by means of old-world patronage. Goethe’s carefully nuanced representations in the West-Eastern Divan indicate the advocacy of a secular cosmopolitanism, the popular impact of which has been hitherto underestimated.     

WORKING TOGETHER

Family Court of Australia has employed four Aboriginal Family Consultants within the Family Court Mediation Service in Darwin and Alice Springs. The consultants were selected from local indigenous people and assist indigenous families who are often in heated dispute over children following family breakdown and separation. The program ultimately seeks to promote access to justice for Aboriginal and Torres Stvait Islander people in the jurisdiction of family law. The program seeks to achieve this by assisting indigenous people to access and utilize the dispute resolution services provided by the Family Court. Family consultants work closely with court mediators in responding to the needs and issues of indigenous families in dispute. The article describes the model of intervention adopted and highlights the benefits of the program with reference to case studies.