Prince Steven E, Muskin Sarah E, Kramer Samantha J, Huang ShihMing, Blakey Timothy, Rappold Ana G
Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment, Office of Research and Development, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education at the Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment, Office of Research and Development, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
Humanit Soc Sci Commun. 2024 Feb 12;11:253. doi: 10.1057/s41599-024-02641-1.
Climate change factors and expanded population growth in the Wildland Urban Interface (transition zone between human structures and undeveloped wildland) contribute to a projected increase in wildfire frequency and smoke exposure. As an unregulated source of air pollution, reducing smoke exposure represents a difficult challenge for health risk communicators. The target audience is broad with unpredictable health impacts due to spatial and temporal variability in exposure. Beyond providing information, agencies face challenges reaching affected populations, motivating behavior change, and overcoming barriers between intentions and actions (recommended health protection). The Smoke Sense citizen science project developed a smartphone app to provide an engagement, learning, and information-sharing platform. Here we draw upon previous trends in behavioral patterns and propose a synergistic approach of citizen and behavioral science that can be applied to increase understanding of health risk and motivate new habits to reduce exposure among impacted individuals. Presentation of the approach proceeds as follows: (1) we identify several core factors that contribute to an intention-action gap, (2) identify applicable social and behavioral science principles that can bridge the gap, (3) propose explicit examples focused on theoretical principles, (4) describe small-scale user preliminary feedback and examples for monitoring and evaluating impact, and (5) provide a look to the future for collaborative citizen engagement. Current health risk communication strategies often lack consideration of behavioral factors that may enhance motivation and encourage behavior change. The proposed approach aims to leverage the strengths of citizen and social science and seeks to encourage a focused 'digital community' to implement new habits in the face of unpredictable and dynamic environmental threats.
气候变化因素以及城市与野地交界地带（人类建筑与未开发野地之间的过渡区域）人口增长的扩大，导致野火发生频率和烟雾暴露预计将会增加。作为一种无管制的空气污染来源，减少烟雾暴露对健康风险传播者而言是一项艰巨挑战。目标受众广泛，由于暴露的时空变异性，其健康影响难以预测。除了提供信息外，各机构在接触受影响人群、促进行为改变以及克服意图与行动（推荐的健康保护措施）之间的障碍方面面临挑战。“烟雾感知”公民科学项目开发了一款智能手机应用程序，以提供一个参与、学习和信息共享平台。在此，我们借鉴以往的行为模式趋势，提出一种公民科学与行为科学的协同方法，可用于增进对健康风险的理解，并促使受影响个体养成新习惯以减少暴露。该方法的介绍如下：（1）我们确定导致意图 - 行动差距的几个核心因素；（2）确定能够弥合这一差距的适用社会和行为科学原则；（3）提出侧重于理论原则的明确示例；（4）描述小规模用户的初步反馈以及监测和评估影响的示例；（5）展望公民合作参与的未来。当前的健康风险传播策略往往缺乏对可能增强动机并鼓励行为改变的行为因素的考虑。所提出的方法旨在利用公民科学和社会科学的优势，并寻求鼓励一个专注的“数字社区”在面对不可预测和动态的环境威胁时养成新习惯。
