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Parking choice involves an individual selecting a parking place based upon various inter-related factors. This chapter examines the factors that influence parking choice decisions.

A review of the literature on parking choice has been undertaken. The influence of various factors on parking choice and recommendations for future parking policy will be outlined.

Most often it is a combination of several factors which influence individuals’ choice of parking place.

Increased knowledge of the factors which influence parking-search behaviour will inform urban parking policy applications with associated environmental and economic benefits.

Purpose – This chapter draws on examples from the United Kingdom where changes in transport policy direction have occurred and considers how lessons that emerge might be applied in China.

Methodology – It is difficult to change the direction of transport policy decisions once embarked upon. The reason for this relates to the high cost and long-term nature of many transport interventions and the complex nature of transport problems which require the introduction of packages of measures rather than individual projects. This complexity that frequently sees changing circumstances can however lead to the adoption of a new policy direction. The issue is how such changes in policy direction can be achieved given the constraints identified. To this end, this chapter presents a series of notable examples of policy change from the transport sector in the United Kingdom to draw lessons from both the development of over-arching transport policies and the implementation of specific transport planning measures as instruments of policy across a geographical range of transport sectors. Specifically it draws on a literature review and presents a series of vignettes to outline the motivations and factors which can be seen to bring about transport policy change in the surface (land) transport sector.

Findings – Specifically the chapter finds that so-called ‘agents of change’ can be categorised as follows:

1.Public and political identification of a problem;2.The emergence of suitable policy ideas or solutions; and3.The occurrence of some kind of event in the policy arena.

Research limitations/implications – From these three categories, lessons are drawn from which policy makers and policy shapers in locations other than the United Kingdom (particularly China) can benefit.

Practical and social implications – The chapter aims to influence the broader debate in terms of delivering transport policy change – with the emergence of agents, most notably the growth of the environmental movement and its influence on policy, a comprehensive research base for policy making and political events at the UK and international level.

Originality – The chapter is based on a number of vignettes that seek to identify the factors that are influential in supporting policy change on a national, area-wide or site-specific basis in the United Kingdom.

This study aims to identify the most relevant causal factors and the feedback loops of the dynamics between Tuta absoluta incidence in tomato crops and farmers' reactions to the problem. The authors seek to develop a conceptual model based on farmers' know-how to address crop damage by T. absoluta at a local and regional levels in order to determine how to confront this problem in the tomato-growing region of Sáchica, Colombia.

Community-Based System Dynamics (CBSD) is a participatory research methodology in which a group of stakeholders identifies relevant variables and the cause-effect relations among them which are then arranged into a causal loop diagram. The authors implemented this methodology in a workshop, focused on the farmers' insights related to the pest situation at the local and regional level, to achieve a causal loop diagram that explained pest dynamics and their potential management.

The relevant factors for the presence of T. absoluta, seen in the causal loop diagram, vary regionally and locally. At the local level, the pest impacts tomato production, farmers' well-being and their cash flow, while at the regional level, it affects market dynamics and environment and promotes regional coordination among farmers. Farmers propose product innocuity as a key regional objective. They also proposed establishing a planting calendar and census of greenhouses to control the pest throughout the region and the tomato supply.

First, the synthesized model could not be validated with the farmers due to the COVID 19 epidemic. However, the authors held sessions with experts to analyze each result. Second, decision-makers from the local government did not participate in the workshop. Nevertheless, the approach of the workshop was aimed at understanding the mental models of the farmers since they are the ones who decide how pests are managed. Finally, even though farmers showed interest in projects aimed at proposing area-wide, long-term and wide pest control strategies, there is a risk that they will not adopt the proposed changes, due to risk aversion.

CBSD has not been applied to agricultural systems to analyze impacts from pests at the local and regional levels. The results of this study contribute to designing future interventions for pest control in the region, along with the factors which may turn out to be “side effects” or unwanted results. To design pest control interventions at a regional level, a sound understanding of the variables or factors that control the system dynamics at various levels is required. This study represents the first step towards that end.

This chapter argues that monetary integration must precede, rather than follow, monetary unification, in order to avoid the occurrence of structural and systemic crises. It briefly overviews the relevant literature on european monetary union (EMU) with regard to the criteria to set up an optimum currency area (OCA) according to the mainstream view. It then points out that adopting the euro as single currency for a number of heterogeneous countries led inevitably to a number of major negative effects, so much so because of the counterproductive financial constraints induced by the Euro-area fiscal and monetary policies framework. Particularly, the lack of fiscal transfers between these countries and the dogmatic attitude of the European Central Bank (ECB) as regards its policy strategy and goal increase, rather than reducing, the unemployment rate, and the degree of financial instability across the euro area. In fact, a way out of the euro area exists without renouncing to the (long-run) benefits of monetary integration. It implies that countries whose population suffers most of “fiscal consolidation” introduce their national currencies again, limiting the use of the euro to their central banks only, in order for them to settle all international trade and financial-market transactions carried out by residents in these countries. This monetary–structural reform will be instrumental in increasing financial stability and employment levels across Europe, thereby inducing positive effects also for trade and public finance.

Purpose – The chapter reviews the relationship between cities, urban form and cycling and identifies generally accepted understandings, issues about which more remains to be known and some prescriptions for future action.

Approach – The discussion is based on evidence drawn from the cycling literature and from primary data collected by the authors.

Findings – Land use patterns and densities have an impact on the level of cycling and, despite some remaining methodological difficulties, it appears that cities which invest in infrastructure for cycling display greater levels of cycle use. Issues which remain in contention and require further analysis include the balance between provision for cycle traffic which is separated from motor traffic and the nature of that provision, the extent to which cycle traffic may directly substitute for trips by motor vehicle and the complexity of estimating the benefits of cycling.

Implications – Planning for cycle traffic needs to be undertaken on an area wide basis and synergistically with traffic management for motor traffic, and such planning should have due regard to the distances for which cycling is most competitive. There remains untapped potential for chaining cycle trips with public transport trips.

The authors aim to provide here an opinion on the state‐of‐the‐art of integrated ecological‐economic assessments of bioenergy under climate change, as well as the challenges along with their implications faced in planning adaptation at local scale.

Investments to reduce emissions must be made in the coming decades to avoid the risks posed by climate change. If these investments are made wisely, then costs will be manageable, stability in markets as well as energy security will be achieved, and even rural development and economic growth may be stimulated. The authors call attention to the need for modeling of climate change impacts by combining the outputs from appropriately designed crop simulation models with economic analyses. Combining natural science and economics in a compatible fashion at local scale will play an essential role in advancing communication and information exchange.

There are key differences in drivers or determinants of mitigation and adaptation potential and decisions at different scales, which means that different actors, different timescales and different spatial scales of decision making must be specifically considered. Understanding of the potential impacts of climate change requires disaggregation of the agricultural sector with appropriate detail. A critical trade‐off exists between area‐wide spatial coverage and an explicit consideration of local peculiarities.

The authors suggest that a much stronger effort must be made to meld natural science crop modeling approaches with economic analyses, to include spatially explicit consideration of conventional crop production along with 1st and 2nd generation bioenergy crops, and the evaluation not only of “best guess” scenarios of change, but also potential system impacts of extreme scenarios.

The Factor-augmented Error-Correction Model (FECM) generalizes the factor-augmented VAR (FAVAR) and the Error-Correction Model (ECM), combining error-correction, cointegration and dynamic factor models. It uses a larger set of variables compared to the ECM and incorporates the long-run information lacking from the FAVAR because of the latter’s specification in differences. In this paper, we review the specification and estimation of the FECM, and illustrate its use for forecasting and structural analysis by means of empirical applications based on Euro Area and US data.