Towards a better psychological satisfaction: developing a mixed multi-criteria evaluation system to urban 'Not in my back yard' facilities siting.

'Not in My Back Yard (NIMBY)' facilities are psychologically sensitive to urban and regional development. Multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) method has been widely used for the decision-making of optimum siting of urban NIMBY facilities which aim to improve residents' psychological satisfaction. However, the evaluation of qualitative criteria in siting analysis remains under researched, such as the insufficient focus on urban and regional spatial development, social public opinion, and psychological factors. Thus, the effective improvement of MCE method through an interdisciplinary view can optimise the decision process and advance the factor assessment system of siting, which helps to supplement qualitative criteria evaluation. The specific improvement steps are as follows. The first step is to introduce the mixed MCE method to improve the qualitative criteria evaluation method by pre-processing qualitative criteria with min-max standardisation and normalization. This process transfers all negative factors to positive ones and transforms the F function to linear functions. The second step is to optimise the existing two-phase siting decision-making including the feasibility evaluation phase and the MCE phase. The third step is to propose a modular criteria system composed of urban and regional spatial planning, social psychological factors and the corresponding improvement strategy of this system from three perspectives of composition, measure, and weight. We argue that the improved method could be broadly applied to optimum siting decision of urban NIMBY facilities and enhance the psychological satisfaction of residents.

Identifying the Predictors of Community Acceptance of Waste Incineration Plants in Urban China: A Qualitative Analysis from a Public Perspective.

Due to concerns about consequences to public health, the ecosystem, the natural landscape etc., the planning and construction of waste incineration plants always gives rise to a reaction and even protests from local communities. This study aims to investigate the determinants affecting public acceptance of waste incinerators. We contribute to the existing knowledge in the following ways: (1) this study undertook a qualitative analysis on community acceptance of nimby facilities in the context of China for the first time; (2) through qualitative interview analysis, we emphasize the impact of interactions among multiple factors regarding the acceptance of waste incinerators; (3) we finally construct a framework to systematically explain the formation mechanism of community acceptance of waste incineration plants. Employing in-depth interviews with 22 representative residents, the results indicate that from the perspective of externality, risk perception has a significant negative impact, whereas the effects of benefit perception are positive. In terms of interaction between government and citizen, both justice perception and political efficacy are positive. Social situational factors positively promote community acceptance. Lastly, the impact of individual cognition is mixed. This study has the potential to make a significant difference in better community governance and environment-friendly cities.

Exploring the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and changes in travel behaviour: A qualitative study.

During the COVID-19 crisis, a series of measures were taken to restrict travel and social activities outside the home in order to curb the pandemic and ameliorate its negative effects. These unprecedented measures have had a profound impact on the number and purposes of trips and modes of travel. In China, although the pandemic is now generally under control and transport availability has returned to nearly normal, the extent of the changes in travel behaviour wrought during and after the pandemic still remains unclear. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to investigate the differences in individual travel behaviours during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, using Huzhou as an example. Semi-structured interviews were used to examine the influence of COVID-19 on the travel behaviour and perceptions of different groups. The results indicate that, initially, travel demand was greatly reduced. Second, decreased travel reduced participation in activities, which can have adverse effects on people's health as well as their subjective well-being. Third, the degree and duration of such impacts varied from person to person. Students, lower income cohorts, groups living in small communities with insufficient green spaces, and those working in tourism, catering, informal businesses and transport-related sectors were more vulnerable than others. Policymakers, urban and transport planners should therefore pay attention to the social inequities that arise from unequal access to transport and heterogeneity between individuals. Additionally, public transport systems require further development to promote social cohesion.

The Impacts of Air Pollution on Mental Health: Evidence from the Chinese University Students.

A growing number of developing countries have experienced worsening air pollution, which has been shown to cause significant health problems. However, few studies have explored the impact of air pollution on the mental health of university students, particularly in the Chinese context. In order to address this gap, through a large-scale cross-sectional survey, this study aims to examine the effects of air pollution on final-year Chinese university undergraduates' (due to graduate in 2020) mental health by employing multivariable logistic regression. Our findings show that, first, although normal air quality is not strongly associated with lower levels of negative mental health, there is a strong link between poor air quality and higher levels of negative mental health. More specifically, life satisfaction hedonic unhappiness and depression measured by the Centre for Epidemiological Studies' Depression scale (CES-D) are statistically associated with air pollution. In addition, we also found that gender is a significant factor, as males had more than 1.6 times greater odds of increased mental health problems compared to their female counterparts. Place of birth also plays a significant role in participants' mental health. Moreover, undergraduates with urban household registration experienced significant levels of hedonic unhappiness and depression on the CES-D scale. Finally, we found that there is an association between respondents' economic situation and their mental health too. Overall, this study contributes to the research on air pollution management and mental health intervention, particularly in relation to student groups. The undergraduate curriculum should provide more guidance and suggestions on promoting mental health and establishing positive attitudes to life and academic study of the final year students, under the context of air pollution in China.

The Role of Sleep Quality in the Psychological Well-Being of Final Year UndergraduateStudents in China.

There are increasing numbers of university students in China suffering from poor sleep and psychological well-being problems. In particular, the issues are more severe among the final year undergraduate students, because they are experiencing a transitory period from university life to the workplace. However, extant research has rarely explored sleep quality and psychological well-being of final year university students. To better understand the role of sleep quality in psychological well-being, we examined the association between different sleep quality and mental health. Based on a cross-sectional survey of 2495 full-time final year university students in China, we employed multivariable logistic regression to assess association between sleep quality and psychological well-being by controlling for sociodemographic factors such as age, gender, education, marital or relationship status, household conditions, place of birth, study subjects and etc. According to the research results, we can find strong association between sleep quality and psychological well-being. Having normal sleep quality is associated with lower level of psychological well-being problems. By contrast, poor sleep quality is associated with high level of negative psychological well-being. Poor sleep quality has higher potency than normal sleep quality due to negative bias. Among covariates, age, gender and education have significant effects on psychological well-being.

An Evaluation of Environmental Governance in Urban China Based on a Hesitant Fuzzy Linguistic Analytic Network Process.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the performance of urban environmental governance by developing hesitant fuzzy linguistic analytic network process (HFL-ANP). The study bridges the gaps in current knowledge in the following ways: the study methodically develops the HFL-ANP method to evaluate and pick the optimal environmental governance strategy from alternatives; theoretically, network structure of evaluation indicators system on environmental governance is constructed, and the objective and subjective information in the evaluation process of environmental governance is combined. In detail, based on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and the pollution haven hypothesis, the paper constructs the evaluation indexes system of environmental governance and takes observation time length into consideration. Then, we choose three urban cases of environmental governance by exploring the existing literature. Furthermore, we develop the HFL-ANP method and apply it to the cases. The study calculates the initial weights of all indexes by using multiplicative consistency of the HFL preference relation, and derives the decision matrix through combining objective information with subjective information of environmental governance. Finally, we come to the following conclusions: ANP network stricture is close to real-world practical problems and provides the basis for HFL-ANP method; HFL-ANP is a very suitable method of assessing environmental governance; and based on the urban cases of environmental governance, Shanghai is the optimal alternative. In addition, this indicator system can only be applied to cities in China, and the administrative hierarchy of policies has not been considered by this method. Thus, future studies should expand this method and indicator network to contain different countries and different administrative hierarchy.