Preference Construction and Decision-Making for Green Infrastructure: How Do Behavioral Interventions Influence Choice and Neurocognition?

"Nature-based solutions", such as green stormwater infrastructure, take advantage of natural systems to tackle the increasing challenges facing the built environment. Green infrastructure is effective in reducing stormwater runoff for urban stormwater management using connected green space. Green infrastructure also delivers multiple benefits to the community (e.g., increased quality of life and public health) and environment (e.g., enhanced biodiversity, less energy use, and reduced urban heat island effect), which is adaptive to the changing climate. However, the pace and the scale of green infrastructure implementation are still not on track with the much-needed change in the urban built environment. Policy barriers, resources barriers, governance barriers, and cognitive barriers are limiting the practice. Cognitive barriers are cited as the most critical barrier because most of the barriers limiting green infrastructure stem from and are intensified by human cognition during the design and decision-making process for infrastructure. Stakeholders involved in the decision-making process for green infrastructure must weigh the perceived risks and benefits that green infrastructure provides. This dissertation aims to better understand how stakeholders perceive green infrastructure, how much they weigh risks and benefits, and test interventions to aid the decision-making process to promote more green infrastructure design. Both a stated preference survey with discrete choice modeling and two sets of experiments using neuroimaging to measure the change in neurocognition were used to explore preference construction and decision-making about green infrastructure. A sample of the public (N=946) across the U.S. participated in the survey and reported their perceptions of risk and benefit about green infrastructure. The result highlights that perceived higher risk of green infrastructure reduced people's preference for green infrastructure. In contrast, perceived higher benefit, age, education, and the use of a rating system to measure sustainability outcomes firstly contribute to people's preference construction for green infrastructure. Engineering students who were trained in stormwater infrastructure design (N=60) participated in a stormwater infrastructure design scenario. Change in students' neurocognition was measured when students made judgments and decisions between a green infrastructure design option and a conventional stormwater infrastructure design option. Two interventions, (1) telling students about a municipal resolution in support of green infrastructure and (2) priming students to think about sustainable design before evaluating design options, were tested to change perceptions about risk and benefit of stormwater design options. The results found that telling decision-makers about a green infrastructure resolution changed their neurocognition when processing perceived risk and reduced the perceived risk they associated with green infrastructure. The results also found that priming decision-makers to think about sustainable design with a rating system for sustainability significantly decreased their cognitive load when evaluating the benefits of green infrastructure and increased their stated benefits associated with green infrastructure. These findings demonstrate the effects of relatively simple choice modifications to promote more green infrastructure. The results provide insights for policy-makers, engineers, and other stakeholders involved in the early-phase decisions on effective practice to modify human choice when facing challenges with sustainable and resilient design.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Civil Engineering

Department dc:contributor.department

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Hu, Mo

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Shealy, Earl Wade

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Paige, Frederick
• Smith, Alexander Charles
• Garvin, Michael J.

• Sustainability
• green infrastructure
• decision-making
• preference construction
• neurocognition
• fNIRS

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:33259

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/106791