Journal articles on the topic 'VEHICLE BUYING PROCESS'

Abstract The purchase of an electric vehicle has become a widely debated topic by the economic community in recent years. However, few personal automobile users, who purchased new cars, have chosen a fully electric vehicle. The novelty of this research came from the assumption that there is a lack of knowledge in this field and fuelled by contradicting information. Potential electric vehicle buyers have developed a real psychosis on the subject, the most consistent motives being among others the charge anxiety. Many researchers consider that the worries of the vehicle users are exaggerated and are not based on reality. Better documentation of the subject would reduce these fears and would increase the process of electrical vehicles absorption. The main objective of this article is to analyse the main anxiety factors by buying an electric vehicle and to reduce the related anxiety. For this purpose, the authors have performed an econometric analysis based on a questionnaire distributed online and face to face in Romania.

As a breakthrough in solving high carbon emissions from traditional fuel vehicles, new energy vehicles (NEV) showed great potential in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving air pollution. They could also be an important opportunity for China’s automobile industry to transform its development direction. This study analyzed the Sichuan Government’s policy on sales of new energy vehicles. It explored consumer perceived value and perceived risk factors related to new energy vehicle purchase intention. The results showed the government policy, all perceived values, and most perceived risks having significant impacts on buying intention on new energy vehicle, except time risk due to the expectation of development process of new energy vehicle for taking more extended time in the automobile industry.

China?s current vehicle emissions caused by air pollution problems have become increasingly prominent. How to improve new energy vehicle market share, and effectively guide the consumer buying behavior become a problem, which the government and social have to be solved. In this paper, according to establish the stochastic evolutionary game model between the government and consumers in the car market, introducing of random factors analysis on the impact of evolutionary stability ,will obtain the stable strategy of government and automotive consumers. And on the basis of it, we study the government support, cost of vehicles, the use of cost, the utility of automobile use for the ways of evolutionary stability, with case further illustrates the external disturbance factors on consumer purchase of new energy vehicles in evolutionary game process stability. Studies show that: the increasing government subsidy policy, the reducing life cycle costs of new energy vehicles and the improving effectiveness of new energy vehicles will lead the model?s evolution to the orientation of consumer purchasing new energy vehicles.

Ministry of Industry, in collaboration with PT Velasto Indonesia, has produced village vehicle prototype to support village mass transportation program. But, factors affecting potential village vehicle buyers’ decision in buying the product has not been studied.To solve the problem, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to determine rankings of importance of factors affecting village vehicle purchasing decision. Based on AHP analysis, it is concluded that price, flexibility and performance are three most important factors in village vehicle purchasing decision. As for village vehicle producer, AHP result is helpful to test the prototype’s compatibility with its future user.

The automotive shop is a business engaged in the automotive sector that serves vehicle repairs and sales of various kinds of vehicle spare parts. A marketplace is a place for buying and selling or a market that uses internet media. The current marketplace is still very common, making it difficult to find a marketplace that focuses on the automotive sector and difficult to find information about available automotive shops around. The automotive shop marketplace system can help to carry out the process of buying and selling vehicle spare parts and assist in finding various spare parts and information about available automotive shops based on the user's location. This system was developed on a web-based basis using the PHP programming language with the Laravel framework and integrated with the Leaflet API, RajaOngkir API, and Midtrans Payment Gateway as additional features in creating a marketplace. The leaflet API displays a map containing the location of the automotive shop listed on the marketplace. RajaOngkir API provides information about shipping costs to the buyer's place from the seller's place. Midtrans Payment Gateway bridges the payment process carried out by both parties so that it can take place properly. The method used in this research is to use the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) waterfall method. The results of the research conducted were tested using the black-box method.

The aim of the article is to show how important factor is the functionality of the interior of the car. The right choice of car and the selection of matching equipment for a person with motor constraints is a very important process. Buying one vehicle for drivers who have different needs and driving abilities is a difficult challenge. A well-made decision can significantly improve the safety conditions while driving. The content provides an overview of the problems related to making such a decision and discusses preliminary guidelines regarding the selection of adaptive devices for the type of vehicle body.

A methodology that can support the decision process for selecting an Electric Vehicle (EV) is crucial. Considering the quantity, diversity, and complexity of existing EV models, their advantages and disadvantages, and people's increasing concern for sustainability, selecting and buying a personal EV appropriate to one's needs and requirements is not a simple task. Currently, criteria such as price, consumption per 100 km, range, comfort, brand, safety, and technology can be used to analyse available EV models. In this context, the decision-making process can be supported by the Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), “a method that clearly structures and evaluates complex problems with several alternatives, conflicting criteria, and complex scenarios. The novelty of this paper is to present a hybrid MCDA approach, combining two powerful methods (AHP and PROMETHEE) into a single framework to assist EV selection by any given person who has no multicriteria knowledge. A survey was conducted to define relevant criteria for a private person selecting an EV. The approach was validated for EV selection, considering the available offer within a target value, based solely on available public data, and excluding qualitative criteria. The paper discusses a case study whereby the proposed approach, using both quantitative and qualitative criteria, assists a decision-maker in selecting an EV from a set of alternatives, validated by the decision-maker, proving the importance and relevance of supporting the decision-making process.

This study aims to investigate the process of buyers’ subsequent attitudes and subsequent actions and their relationships depended on the bargaining outcomes. Depth interviews were employed in order to explore the success, the failure, and the consequent actions in dyadic bargaining under the condition of one buyer and one seller. Ten international respondents were invited to be interviewed. Approximately one hour of each interview is taken, while English is the medium of the interviews. After the interviews, respondents were given five USD as an incentive. The results show that successful bargainers tended to be younger people and easterner, compared to unsuccessful bargainers who tended to be older people and westerner. When buying product in computer and vehicle category, it might provide higher chance in getting the discount, while buying product in garment category gave the partial tendency to win the bargain. Since garment seems to have fewer profit margins when compared to the other category like computer or vehicle, it thus is obligatory for the seller to avoid discounting this kind of product. During the interviews, author found that confident interviewees shared their successful bargaining experiences; whereas, interviewees with very calm and quiet attitude seemed to express about their unsuccessful bargaining stories. This research also provides insights of buyer as bargainer profoundly. It therefore helps the seller, especially in computer, garment, and vehicle industry, knows how to balance mutual-interest and maintain the strong relationship with customer.

The internet development access is really very fast and change all aspects for life activities include buying and selling transactions of goods or services that can arrange online or also called e-commerce which courier service influence. The courier basic operational is logistics of a supply chain. Transportation is a vital component in logistics management because it becomes the largest cost component in its activities that is about 50-60% of the total logistics costs. The purpose of this study is to find out what kind of vehicle routing problem (VRP) is used for courier service so can be used as reference for further research. Collect and selection process found 40 science journals for analyse. There has been a lot of research about the shortest route problem for courier service or can also called city logistics with VRP which the optimum solution obtained with heuristic and metaheuristic algorithm. Result found VRP type often used for courier service are dynamic VRP (DVRP) and VRP with time window (VRPTW) or can merging both dynamic VRP with time window (DVRPTW).

This article was written during the covid pandemic, during a pandemic like this one's mobility is being limited. So that it has a big impact on activities that are usually carried out, including the case in the field of transportation. In this case, people tend to reduce being outside their homes and also avoid crowds to minimize exposure to the Covid-19 virus. This also affects the sale of vehicle tickets from various aspects ranging from air, land and sea. To overcome this problem, a bus ticket booking website was created. With this bus ticket booking website, tickets can be purchased without having to come directly to the ticket sales outlet. Buyers can buy tickets via smartphones or laptops by accessing this bus ticket booking website. Not only simplifying the ticket buying process, it can also help reduce the crowds that could be generated in the process of buying and selling tickets. So that the existence of a bus ticket booking website is expected to help reduce the number of people exposed to the corona virus as well as simplify and shorten transactions made by buyers.

The business of buying and selling used cars is increasingly substantial in Indonesia, in the era of globalization progressively developing depends on demands a process that must be fast, precise, and economical. Repair to body, chassis, and engine are competency expertise in the field of Automotive Engineering that emphasizes automotive repair service skills. at now selling price of used cars, it is necessary to do repairs, the process of repairing used cars or better known as refurbishment work pre-owned cars is mostly done by small-scale used car buying and selling businesses. In order for used cars to return to their like-new condition, generally small-scale used car sellers carry out the process of repairing the vehicle themselves, especially repairs to the vehicle's body paint. This study aims to process of painting a Toyota Avanza car bodypaint against the thickness of the paint using a spray booth tool by using the model of central composite design (CCD). The effect of spray-on booth temperature, interstice size of the spray gun, and time according to the thickness of the paint will be analyzed using the CCD method. This spray booth painting technology is expected to help reduce bodypaint lead time. The results of the ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) regression analysis, the temperature of the spray booth, interstice size of the spray gun, and time are the factors that most significantly affect the thickness of the paint. The operating conditions to produce optimal paint thickness are temperature 55oC, interstice size of spray gun of 1.7 mm and time of painting and drying of 30 minutes, the resulted of a thickness of the paint for used and new cars are 130.2 μm and 81.84 μm., with a coefficient of determination for used and new cars of 90.78% and 96.19%.

Fuel is one of the needs that is used by the community as a material to be used on motorcycles or cars. Fuel has become an important need for society, because when there is no fuel, a motorbike or car that is owned by someone cannot be used. Each vehicle has its own fuel, for motorbikes the fuel is pertalite, Pertamax, Pertamax Turbo and for cars the fuel is diesel and dexlite. For the fuel used in motorbikes, there are some people who are interested in Pertalite fuel and there are not many people who are interested in Pertamax fuel. So researchers will make a study of public interest in Pertamax fuel. This research will be made using the neural network method by classifying community data in data mining. This study aims to see the public's interest in purchasing Pertamax fuel. The research process was carried out with the initial stages of collecting and selecting data to be used, then preprocessing, then designing the neural network method and finally the testing process to obtain classification results using the neural network method. The results obtained from data classification using the neural network method state that there are 23 people who are interested in Pertamax fuel and 18 people who are not interested in Pertamax fuel. It turns out that many people are interested in Pertamax fuel.

In this study, the fear created by the Covid-19 global epidemic on consumers (general fear of viruses and fear of activity), spending (cleaning products, preventive health products, fresh and organic food and vitamin/mineral support, clothing, education, home purchasing, vehicle, loan. The relationship between buying, rental, fashion, vacation, travel, entertainment, electronics, home decor/furniture, mobile phone, activity and general) and savings have been tested. For this purpose, in order to test the relationship between fear, saving, and spending during the Covid-19 pandemic process, a Likert-scale online survey link was shared on social networks (Twitter, LinkedIn). The total of 385 surveys was analyzed using Google Form and SPSS program (Anova, Regression). As a result of the analysis, fear (general fear and fear of activity), spending (education, vehicles/cars, monopoly products, and tobacco products, games of chance, home buying and renting, loans, luxury/fashion, games, and toys, vitamins, minerals, and food support, public services, home, and furniture décor, electronic products (including mobile phones) expenditures remained the same, protective healthcare products, cleaning products, fresh and organic food expenditures increased, travel, public transportation expenditures decreased, holiday and entertainment expenditures decreased significantly). In the research, it was determined that 42% of the participants increased their savings by 30.5% slightly, and the amount of savings did not change at all for 27% of the participants. According to the results, as consumers' fear of Covid-19 increases, some spending categories (health products, cleaning products, fresh and organic food spending) and savings rate increase. In addition, it was observed that 90% of the participants canceled their expenses due to Covid-19. As a result of the research, significant relationships were found between the variables of fear, saving, and spending during the Covid-19 pandemic process.

Regardless of the changes in the economy of the country in recent years caused by the global financial crisis, Brazil has managed to stand positively, despite the many variations in the national and international economic scenario. In the rise of the economy, the automobile sector was a prominent contributor, making it more advantageous for a consumer to purchase a new vehicle. This article aims to study the factors in the city of Cacoal that influenced a consumer’s decision to buy a new car. The methodology was descriptive research, using the deductive method, a qualitative and quantitative approach, and bibliographic research. To collect our data, we used a questionnaire containing 14 questions, some semi-open and some multiple-choice closed, sent in a link via email and Whatsapp, with the help of the Google Forms tool. In our results, it was observed that a consumer’s buying behaviour receives influences from both the external environment and the social group, both of which have a direct impact on the process of deciding to buy a new vehicle. The digital media, in the form of specialized electronic magazine websites, have become popular for consumers to consult. It was found that consumers researching in order to make a purchase decision consider the following decision factors first: quality, trust in technical assistance, confidence in the brand, safety and finally price. To a consumer looking for a new car these items are found to be the most important. The present study aims to set the parameters for future studies and to justify an interest in research.

Abstract The opinion of the operators of the working machines in today’s world is much more valued than in the past. Their comfort, safety and satisfaction during the working hours can be crucial in the decision making process of buying new working machine. Therefore, in this research paper the vertical dynamics and ride comfort of an electric street sweeper would be analysed by using a multibody dynamic model. The model is created using MSC. ADAMS, based on a real electric street sweeper. In order to test the ride comfort of the existing model, a road profile is modelled, according to the standard ISO 8608. The virtual tests are conducted while the vehicle is traveling with maximum velocity of 40 km/h, achieved during transit and lower velocities which are achieved during the operating hours of the machine. An optimization of the suspension system of the real electric sweeper is made, by targeting its components location and positioning, stiffness and damping characteristics. This results in improved ride comfort and smaller root mean square (RMS) values of vertical acceleration of the driver seat. These improvements would influence on operator’s better comfort and health. Results are presented using comparative diagrams of the original and optimised model.

This article focuses on a novel mechanism for market segmentation and price discrimination based on consumers' use of online infomediaries. Using the automotive retailing context as the setting for the study, the authors address the following question: Can online infomediaries serve as a viable mechanism for market segmentation and price discrimination? They draw on a unique and extensive data set of consumers who report on the information they found when using online buying services (OBS) as part of their new vehicle purchase process. The analysis of the data set shows that consumers who obtain price information pay lower prices (for the same product), whereas consumers who obtain product information pay higher prices. Although this points to the existence of distinct consumer segments, this knowledge is of limited value without a viable mechanism that enables firms to identify and target these customer segments specifically. On the basis of consumer usage patterns of OBS, the authors uncover distinct OBS clusters and empirically demonstrate that the use of these different clusters is associated with predicted differences in consumer outcomes. They also show that the differential use of OBS clusters is systematically related to underlying consumer characteristics. They discuss the relevance of the findings for automobile dealers and manufacturers and for other industries in which online infomediaries have established a significant presence.

The scientific research is carried out on the issue of determining current global trends in approaches to the organization of passenger transportation in the operation of various types of transport. The latest publications reflecting the study of the process of passenger transportation by routes of various types of communication were taken into account. It is established that scientists identify many tasks and problems in the organization of passenger transportation. These tasks include determining vehicle schedules, protecting passengers 'health while driving, ensuring certain conditions for passengers' comfort before flights start, and many others. Problematic issues include, among other things, the following: driving time, the quality and impact of Station service, the organization of interaction between Station service vehicles, the safety component of the transportation process, determining the impact of service comfort when determining the method of transportation, and others. From the analysis, it is determined that the issue of passenger organization is relevant and is being studied for the processes of passenger transportation from urban to intercontinental routes, and such issues are relevant for all types of transport. It can be noted that the issues of Ecology and passenger Health Protection have recently gained popularity and are considered by scientists when studying the conditions of passengers ' stay in the cabin when receiving transportation services. To a large extent, recently the attention of scientists has been drawn to the issue of establishing the comfort of passenger service before traveling at the stages of booking/buying tickets, waiting for a flight on the territories of airports or railway stations. An opinion is expressed about the influence of such comfort on the subconscious decision-making of passengers in determining the method of Transportation. It is noted that the level of Organization of passenger service is a significant factor in planning the station load. Based on the results of the literature analysis, the following conclusions were obtained: the issues of organizing passenger transportation are relevant, the study of the integrated functioning of the passenger transportation system is relevant and implemented by modeling such processes, mathematical, computer and other simulation models are used in such simulations. When conducting computer simulations, among other things, resistance factors determine the time and comfort of riding.

Abstract — Transportation activities are currently growing rapidly, both private transportation, mass transportation and distribution operations, all of which cannot be separated from the use of fuel oil (BBM) which is used as the main fuel component in driving in Indonesia. This affects the increase in sales of BBM (fuel oil) which has become a primary need in supporting the activities carried out. So in this study the aim is to determine the factors of consumer satisfaction in choosing fuel oil (BBM) in their vehicle at the Lanji Kendal gas station. At the stage of taking a sample, this research was carried out by direct observation or observation and filling out data/questionnaires for Lanji Kendal gas station customers. So that in the process of filling in the data/questionnaire it can show a result of a facility, service, economic factor and others so that it can determine consumer satisfaction in choosing fuel oil (BBM) at the Lanji Kendal gas station so that in this research what is done is a satisfaction factor analysis consumers buy Pertamax and Pertalite fuel at the Lanji Kendal gas station. Alpha value> 15 so that all items are reliable and all tests consistently have strong reliability. Keywords: Consumer Satisfaction System Buying BBM Intisari — kegiatan transportasi saat ini sudah berkembang pesat, baik transportasi pribadi, angkutan masal maupun operasional distribusi, semua tidak lepas dari penggunaan bahan bakar minyak (BBM) yang digunakan sebagai komponen bahan bakar utama dalam berkendara di Indonesia. Hal ini mempengaruhi meningkatnya terhadap penjualan BBM (bahan bakar minyak) yang sudah menjadi kebutuhan primer dalam menunjang aktifitas kegiatan yang dilakukan. Sehingga dalam penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui faktor kepuasan konsumen dalam memilih bahan bakar minyak (BBM) pada suatu kendaraan mereka di SPBU Lanji Kendal. Pada tahap pengambilan suatu semple penelitian ini melakukan dengan cara melihat secara langsung atau observasi dan mengadakan pengisian data/kuesioner terhadap pelanggan SPBU lanji Kendal. Sehingga dalam proses pengisian data/kuesioner dapat menunjukan suatu hasil dari suatu fasilitas, pelayanan, faktor ekonomi dan lain-lainnya sehingga dapat menentukan kepuasan konsumen dalam memilih bahan bakar minyak (BBM) pada SPBU Lanji Kendal sehingga dalam penelitian ini yang dilakukan adalah analisis faktor kepuasan konsumen membeli BBM Pertamax dan Pertalite pada SPBU Lanji Kendal. Nilai alpha>15 sehingga seluruh item reliabel dan seluruh tes secara konsisten memiliki reliabilitas yang kuat. Kata Kunci: Sistem Kepuasan Konsumen Membeli BBM

This thesis aims to determine the allocation of the use of female labor remittance toward the level of community welfare, and find out which types of allocation which have an impact on people's welfare. This study uses two analytical methods, namely qualitative analysis with descriptive approach and the process of hierarchy analysis by collecting data through interview. The research objects are 50 people who are former migrant workers or migrant workers' families selected by Convenience sampling method. The second object is 15 experts, namely academics who understand the concept of welfare, and are determined by purposive sampling. The research location is in Jorok Village, Utan District, Sumbawa Regency. Based on the analysis of data, the results of this research show that there are two types of remittance usage, namely consumptive and productive. For the productive use, female migrant workers allocate remittance funds for education, buying land, livestock and business. Meanwhile, the examples of consumptive use are fulfillment of daily necessities, vehicles, paying debts and renovating house. When comparing each criterion of productive use, buying land has the biggest influence on migrant workers in spending their remittance and it is long-term. For consumptive use, daily necessities have the biggest impact on the welfare of migrant workers in the short-term.

Abstrak Kebutuhan masyarakat akan kendaraan roda empat untuk memenuhi kebutuhan kerja, kulia maupun kegiatan lain terus meningkat. Masing-masing individu memiliki kebutuhan yang berbeda akan jenis mobil yang dimiliki. Sebuah mobil dengan jenis berbeda memiliki fungsi yang berbeda pula. Ketika ingin memiliki mobil, ada banyak faktor yang harus dipertimbangkan sebelum membeli yang seringkali membuat seseorang bingung akan berbagai macam pilihan yang ada. Hal ini lah yang melatarbelakangi pembuatan sistem pendukung keputusan dibidang otomotif yaitu sistem pendukung keputusan dalam penentuan pembelian mobil suzuki menggunakan metode analitycal hierarcy process (ahp) pada pt.pusaka motor utama bekasi. Sistem ini mengimplementasikan metode AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) dengan penilaian kriteria-kriteria yang ada pada monil. AHP memberikan suatu skala pengukuran dan memberikan metode untuk menetapkan prioritas. AHP menuntun ke suatu pandangan menyeluruh terhadap alternati-alternatif yang muncul untuk persoalan yang dihadapi. Kata Kunci: Sistem Pendukung Keputusan, Mobil, AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process). Abstract Community needs for four-wheeled vehicles to meet the needs of work, college and other activities continue to increase. Each individual has different needs for the type of car they have. A car with different types has a different function. When it comes to owning a car, there are many factors that must be considered before buying which often makes a person confused about the various options available. This is the background for making a decision support system in the automotive sector, namely a decision support system in determining the purchase of a Suzuki car using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method at PT. Pusaka Motor Utama Bekasi. This system implements the AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) method by assessing the existing criteria on the monil. AHP provides a scale of measurement and provides a method for setting priorities. AHP leads to a holistic view of the emerging alternatives to the problem at hand. Keywords: Decision Support System, Car, AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process).

Advertising and other promotional efforts form crucial part of rural marketing communication,that to with increasing rural prosperity, marketers are keen to inform villagers about the benefits of buying and consuming their products and services. The promotion aspects always create a challenge in rural marketsbecause of the fact that villages have thin population density and are widely spread over large remote areas.Some of the rural markets are also inaccessible to television signals and are often designated as ―media dark‖.Interpersonal communication accounts for over 80% of the rural communication process. ‗Word of Mouth‘ form of communication plays a vital role in rural consumer purchase decisions. The study was conducted among rural areas of Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu, to identify rural consumer‘s exposure to different media vehicles and to understand the importance of ‗Word of Mouth‘ in influencing rural consumer‘s purchase decision with regard to personal care products. The study throws insight into the need for positive word of mouth generation, thorough right media mix decisions targeting rural consumers. ‗Word of Mouth‘ communication rules brand building in Hinterland and the marketers foraying into it must focus on a long term effect and decide on innovative and feasible media options to capture the mind space of rural consumers.

This thesis aims to determine the allocation of use of women remittance labor to the level of community welfare and from the allocation type of allocation which has an impact on the welfare of society. This research uses two methods of analysis i.e. qualitative analysis with a deskriftive approach and analysis of process hierarchy with data collection by way of interviews. The research object amounted to 50 people from the former TKW or TKW family determined by Convenience sampling. The second object amounted to 15 experts, namely academics who understand about welfare and determined by purposive sampling. The research location is located in Jorok Village, Utan Sumbawa District. Based on the analysis of the data that has been carried out the research results that there are two types of remittance categories that are consumptive and productive, from the productive use of TKW allocating remittance funds to education, buy land, animals Livestock and enterprises. As for consumptive use, namely fulfillment of daily necessities, vehicles, pay debts and home renovation. When compared to any criteria of productive use, buying land is the use that most affects the TKW in the use of remittance funds and is long term. For consumptive use, daily necessities are the most impactful uses for short-term TKW welfare.

RESUMOO Irã como país em desenvolvimento está enfrentando uma quantidade excessiva de poluição do ar em suas grandes cidades. Parece que usar veículos elétricos / híbridos é uma solução apropriada, mas qual carro será mais compatível com a sociedade, o ambiente e as pessoas do Irã ainda é vago? Para responder a essa pergunta, projetamos nosso modelo no qual os quatro híbridos mais populares mundialmente / A eletricidade foi analisada com base nas idéias de especialistas. Em geral, é utilizado o método analítico-descritivo, a comunidade da pesquisa inclui todos os especialistas no campo da gestão ambiental e o tamanho da amostra é obtido usando o método objetivo não aleatório (10 especialistas foram questionados) para priorizar entre carros diferentes com base em um método processo analítico de hierarquia. Os resultados mostraram que, com base na perspectiva dos especialistas, veículos totalmente elétricos são preferencialmente mais compatíveis com a situação do Irã do que veículos híbridos. A característica mais significativa que é contribuída para os veículos elétricos é o alto nível de eficiência de combustível e a menor quantidade de poluição atribuída ao seu motor elétrico, o que significa que eles não liberarão nenhuma poluição no ar. Finalmente, com base nos resultados, sugerimos algumas estratégias, entre as quais a substituição de veículos a combustível antigos e de baixa eficiência, aplicando impostos excessivos regularmente.Palavras-chave: Veículos Elétricos / Híbridos, Poluição do Ar, Transporte Urbano.USING GREEN VEHICLES AS AN APPROACH TO IMPROVE AIR QUALITY IN IRANIAN METROPOLISESNowadays due to the overwhelming levels of pollution, especially in large cities, going green, which means products have higher levels of energy consumption efficiency, is one of the crucial features of any product. In fact being green for vehicles which are responsible for majority of air pollution is significant, therefore companies are trying to product more environment-friendly cars and governments are more intended to place more environmental standards on this industry. Iran as a developing country is facing excessive amount of air pollution in its big cities and it is necessary for this country to invest on more environmental products, especially in transportation system which release a numerous level of air and noise pollution into the environment. It seems, it will be an appropriate approach for this country to produce or import Electric/Hybrid vehicles, but which car will be more compatible with Iran’s society, environment and people situation is still vague, in order of answering this question we designed our model in which 4 most globally popular Hybrid/Electric has been analyzed based on experts’ ideas. In general, descriptive-analytic method is used, the survey community is included all experts in the field of environmental management and sample size is obtained using non-random objective method (10 experts have been questioned) for prioritizing between different cars based on an analytic hierarchy process. The results showed that based on the experts’ perspective, fully electric vehicles are would rather be more compatible with Iran’s situation than Hybrid ones. The most significant feature that is contributed to Electric vehicles is about their high level of fuel efficiency and the least amount of pollution attributed to their Electric engine, which means they will release no pollution into the air. We finally based on the results, suggested some strategies, among which replacing old and low efficient fuel vehicles, placing excessive tax on regular cars and Tax exemption(for driving, importing and manufacturing electric cars) are the practical approaches for government in order to engage people buying-using more efficient cars. Keywords: Electric / Hybrid Vehicles, Air Pollution, Urban Transportation

Abstract: Starting from a lot of news about modified trucks for transporting diesel fuel on the Demak pantura route. So an Socialization Activity was held for the Distribution of Subsidized Diesel Fuel to Cangkring Gas Station Officers in Demak Regency. This PKM socialization must be intensified to gas station officers so that they provide information about which vehicles are entitled to consume diesel fuel, do not commit unlawful violations such as the incident from the gas station described above and know a lot about the criminal provisions of Chapter XI article 53 which reads that everyone who processes, transport and storage. With various stages of implementation such as observation accompanied by interviews, making preparations, the implementation process is in the form of briefings and providing a statement of commitment not to distribute Solar BBM to those who are not entitled. This activity yielded 100% useful knowledge to gas station operators regarding the distribution of subsidized diesel fuel and provided everyone's willingness not to sell or distribute to those who are not entitled to it, as evidenced by a stamped statement.and then need to be aware that vehicles buying diesel fuel are still relatively high, so it needs very strict supervision from gas station operators so that they are always on target in the distribution.Abstrak: Berawal dari banyak berita tentang truck modifikasi untuk pengangkut BBM jenis solar di jalur pantura Demak. Maka diadakanlah Kegiatan Sosialisasi Penyaluran BBM Subsidi Jenis Solar Ke Petugas SPBU Cangkring Di Kabupaten Demak. Sosialisasi PKM ini harus digencarkan kepada petugas SPBU supaya memberikan informasi perihal Kendaraan apa saja yang berhak mengkonsumsi solar, tidak melakukan pelanggaran yang melawan hukum seperti kejadian dari SPBU yang dijelaskan diatas dan banyak tahu tentang ketentuan Pidana BAB XI pasal 53 berbunyi setiap orang yang melakukan pengolahan, pengangkutan dan penyimpanan. Dengan berbagai tahap pelaksanaan seperti Observasi disertai wawancara, melakukan persiapan, proses pelaksanaan berupa briefing dan memberikan surat pernyataan komitmen tidak menyalurkan BBM Solar kepada yang tidak berhak. Kegiatan ini menghasilkan 100% ilmu bermanfaat kepada Operator SPBU tentang penyaluran BBM subsidi jenis solar dan memberikan kesediaan semuanya untuk tidak menjual atau menyalurkan kepada mereka yang tidak berhak dengan dibuktikan dengan surat pernyataan bermaterai. Dan perlu waspada bahwa kendaraan yang membeli solar masih tergolong tinggi jadi perlu pengawasan yang begitu ketat dari Operator SPBU supaya selalu tepat sasaran dalam penyalurannya tersebut.

Although it is commonly understood that the average U.S. new vehicle buyer ranks price and safety above environmental attributes, a stated ranking of one shopping criterion above another is not necessarily maintained when consumers make an actual purchase decision. In fact, the distribution of shopping criteria rankings is not well understood, and it is unclear how rankings translate to the attributes of purchased vehicles. This raises several related questions: What is the distribution of shopping criteria rankings across the U.S. and how do they differ among demographic groups and purchasers of different vehicle fuel types or body styles? How do consumers weigh their purchase criteria? How does the environmental impact of a vehicle rank as a purchase criterion for U.S. new vehicle buyers, and its importance differ among gender, age, or income groups? Do purchase criteria differ for consumers who state that they value the environment? Is a consumer’s shopping criteria ranking of environmental attributes reflected in the vehicles they consider and ultimately purchase? We explore these issues using data from an extensive survey of new vehicle buyers in 2014, 2015, and 2016 (approximately 250,000 respondents per year). We broadly find the environmental criterion outranked by preference for safety and performance, but different patterns emerge across groups defined by household income, purchased vehicle fuel type, and other measures of respondent attitude toward the environment. Stated preferences for environmental attributes align with higher fuel economy and greater likelihood of electric or hybrid fuel type within considered and purchased vehicles.

The Indian passenger vehicle was witnessing slump in sales even before the pandemic hit shores in March 2020. After the pandemic, the sector witnessed low to negative sales, low consumer trust and confidence and the added fear of the virus. The sudden declaration of the harsh lockdown in March 2020 till May 2020 aggravated the issue further. After May 2020 as the economy was gradually unlocking and most sectors were beginning to open up the study was timed between the period of March 2020 and August 2020. Unstructured textual data from online sources (micro blogging site Twitter, social media and digital media) were scrapped to understand the sentiment with respect to car buying when the lockdown was imposed and when the process of unlocking started. In the second stage, different strategies being adopted by car makers were analyzed and finally, the study concludes with how car buying will take place in a post-COVID world. Based on the analysis, factors that emerged as key to revival of car buying are facelift, spot test, voice bots, discounts, advertising and better financing options. The sentiments associated with these features as identified shall help marketers plan for effectively their market strategy.

In this journal, the author discusses the issue of dealer responsibility for indentor in car buying and selling agreements with indent systems. The purpose of writing this journal is to find out the implementation of the sale and purchase agreement with the indent system at PT. Hadji Kalla Toyota Baubau in addition to knowing how the dealer's responsibility if the car received indentor is not in accordance with the promised. This research is an empirical legal paper and uses a qualitative approach with primary data sources obtained from interview results and secondary data obtained from the literature study process. The data analysis method used in this study is qualitative descriptive. The results showed that in the implementation of buying and selling consumers were given an order form in the form of Vehicle Order Letters and paid a finished mark of Rp. 5,000,000-, for a cash-indented car advance of at least 30% while the credit indent was at least 25% of the price of the car ordered. The dealer's responsibility when default is if the car received late the dealer always provides the latest information about delivery, If there is a hidden defect in the dealer's car replaces the damage with factory standards, if the car received does not match the color ordered the dealer offers the car with the same type of different color. PT. Hadji Kalla Toyota Baubau should write clearly in the Vehicle Order Letter important points such as certainty of delivery time, vehicle repayment deadline, and risk of violation of these points and provide assurance to consumers in purchase in indent by maintaining communication between the dealer and the manufacturer to reduce the risk of delays and errors in delivery and the quality of goods (no damage) of the vehicle.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether consumers in pre-owned durable goods markets (such as pre-owned automobiles) purchase products with higher premium/luxury positioning in a vertical line-up compared to consumers in new durable goods markets. The moderating role of brand loyalty on choice is also investigated. Design/methodology/approach The hypotheses are tested using a data set that includes the sales of new and pre-owned vehicles from an independently owned automotive dealer in the Northwestern USA during the first nine months of 2017 (N = 200). An ordered logit regression is used to estimate the relationship between consumers’ purchase of pre-owned vs new vehicles and the premium-level of the model that they choose, while controlling for the vehicle price. Two experimental robustness tests are conducted to provide empirical evidence of the proposed theoretical process. Findings Consumers who purchased pre-owned vehicles chose models with higher premium/luxury positioning compared to consumers who purchased new vehicles, even when controlling for price. This effect was moderated by brand loyalty, such that consumers’ premium-level of purchase was magnified if they previously owned a vehicle of the same brand. The results of an experimental robustness test indicated that consumers’ preference for pre-owned vehicles with higher premium/luxury positioning was because of greater perceptions of the quality along the dimensions of versatility, performance and prestige. Practical implications Sellers of complex durable goods (e.g. automobiles) should consider segmenting their upselling strategies for pre-owned vs new products. They should specifically focus more effort on the upselling of pre-owned durables as buyers appear more likely to pursue premium/luxury alternatives compared to new durables. Further, they should focus upselling efforts for pre-owned durables on brand loyal consumers. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work is the first to examine consumers’ desire for pre-owned durable goods with premium/luxury positioning in a vertical product line-up. Further, it is also the first to explore the role of brand loyalty in shaping consumer preferences for premium/luxury pre-owned durable goods. As such, it makes an important contribution to an emerging literature exploring the appeal of premium and luxury pre-owned goods. Much work in this area has focused on the motivations that consumers have for buying pre-owned premium and luxury nondurable goods, such as vintage clothing or accessories. By contrast, the present research investigates the appeal of premium/luxury positioning for complex, pre-owned durable goods (vehicles), which are more difficult for consumers to evaluate at the point-of-purchase.

Honda motorcycles are in demand by the public as a cheap means of land transportation. CV Hayati is the main motorcycle dealer company in Padang. In carrying out its activities, CV Hayati needs to consider several factors when selling motorcycles that are in demand by consumers. However, CV Hayati still uses manual means in looking at the interest in the motor that will be purchased by consumers. To solve the problem, a system is needed that can help with decision-making by consumers in purchasing motors according to their interests. In this study, the decision to buy a motor that consumers were interested in was done using the fuzzy logic of mamdani method. With the decision-making system in motor interest, it is expected to help and facilitate consumers in determining the motor they are interested in buying. The results of this study can be viewed using the PHP programming language and MySQL database, with the fuzzy logic of the mamdani method. Where in the fuzzyfication process consider several input variables namely: price, oil fuel tank capacity, engine speed, baggage capacity and vehicle weight. So that by defuzzification can be determined the recomedation of motors that are in demand by consumers.

PurposeIn marketing, most research on intention–behavior consistency (IBC) is dedicated to improving the predictive ability of stated intentions for future behaviors, with relatively less exploration into the precursors of IBC, especially those linked to regular durable goods void of ethical consumption characteristics. This study aims to focus on the antecedents of IBC for such products, specifically examining category-level and product-level IBC in light of consumer knowledge.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a two-round survey to collect 3,560 Chinese consumers' vehicle purchase intentions and behaviors. The authors have also leveraged a large vehicle database (containing detailed vehicle attribute information) to measure consumer product knowledge (i.e. product judgment accuracy). A trivariate probit model was proposed to account for the potential selection bias arising from sample attrition while examining the effects of consumer knowledge on category- and product-level intention-behavior consistency.FindingsFindings reveal that 47% of the participants displayed category-level IBC, and within this group, a further 39% exhibited product-level IBC. Notably, product knowledge, manifested as accurate product judgment, correlates negatively with category-level IBC but positively with product-level IBC. Intriguingly, the negative association between inaccurate judgment and product-level IBC is less pronounced for consumers overestimating the target product than for those underestimating it. Furthermore, consumers with direct experience are less prone to show category-level IBC, but are more inclined to display product-level IBC.Practical implicationsVehicle marketers should prioritize consumers who show interest in their products but possess inaccurate knowledge, to retain whom companies can nurture their product knowledge. As for consumers with accurate knowledge, companies should try to expedite their purchase. Vehicle marketers also need to devise suitable advertising strategies to prevent consumers from undervaluing their products. For those overestimating competitors' products, companies can provide information to correct their overestimation and draw attention to possible confirmation biases. Vehicle marketers should encourage potential buyers who have shown interest in their product to participate in test-drive events, exhibitions, and other direct experience opportunities. Yet, for consumers still in the “whether-to-buy” decision-making phase, companies should not rush them into a test drive.Social implicationsIn the policy-making realm, governmental administrators can implement extensive consumer education programs, with a focus on the importance of product knowledge. This may involve providing consumers with accurate information and buying guides through various channels, which can help consumers make informed purchase decisions. Moreover, to foster healthy competition among vehicle companies, governmental administrators can establish regulations that require vehicle companies and other relevant industries to provide accurate and transparent product information, including performance, safety, and environmental aspects. Finally, in order to protect consumer rights, governmental administrators can also strengthen regulations to ensure fair treatment and safeguards for consumers throughout the purchasing process. This includes cracking down on false advertising and fraudulent practices, maintaining market order, and enhancing consumer confidence and purchase consistency.Originality/valueThis study is among the first attempts to examine the relationship between consumer knowledge and intention-behavior consistency, especially for regular durable products void of ethical consumption characteristics. Responding to the call of previous literature (e.g. Morwitz, 1997), the authors distinguish between and examine two forms of intention-behavior consistency simultaneously (using a sample selection model) and obtain more reliable conclusions. Moreover, the study's large-scale two-round survey had obtained individual-level purchase behavioral outcomes, which allowed the authors to measure each consumer's IBC at both category and product levels. More importantly, the authors show the opposite effects of consumer knowledge on the two forms of intention-behavior consistency.

In the last decades, the concept of women empowerment has changed from welfare to equity approach by which the present-day women are participating in decision making process in all aspects of society and developing internal qualities such as self-awareness and self-confidence. In this way, women’s empowerment has become a pre- requisite for the socio-economic development of any community in the process of change. In India, poor rural people face with illiteracy, lack of skills, health care, etc. These are problems that cannot be tackled individually and can be solved through group efforts. Today this collective action is known as Self-Help Group (SHG), considered the vehicle of change for the poor, mostly for marginalized women. The initial idea with the creation of the SHGs was to empower women economically and socially. So, they can become more confident, more assertive, and more likely to participate in family and community decisions. Women empowerment is the word comes to the mind when we talk about Self-Help Groups. The present paper aimed to explore the impact and role of SHGs on rural women. Descriptive- exploratory design was used in the present study. Interview schedule was used for data collection. The study revealed that the women were joined SHG for the attainment, economic independence, to get recognition from society and to develop their self-confidence. Majority of women (90%) opined that they are able to increase their income and 76% women are learning new skills. Further 60% of women opined that they are buying their own stuff without depending their family members. It also reveals that 88%, 80% and 66% of women developed their self- confidence, social status and participating in decision making process with husbands for their family respectively. Through the different kind of activities women are able to earn something on their own without any male assistance and are now able to contribute to their family income.

In this article we consider the ways that parents and children construct an object that has long been associated with North American childhood: the bicycle. We ask the question: is the bicycle a toy or a tool? At first glance, this seems like a straightforward distinction. For example, if an object serves a useful purpose, we classify it a tool. Hammers are tools because they help drive nails into wood. If the object serves no apparent purpose other than our own intrinsic enjoyment, it is a toy. Kites are toys because we gain no instrumental benefit by flying them; kites offer us only amusement and entertainment. Of course, it is not as clear as this. Sometimes toys become tools as ingenious and resourceful people find new uses for them. Tools become toys as we discover other objects that fulfill a function more efficiently or affordably. At times, we engage in public debates about the classification of objects as toys or tools. We saw this recently, when educators debated whether the fidget spinner was a toy that distracted students from learning or a tool that helped students focus on learning (Silver). These examples show that the meanings that objects hold are not inherent to the object but are actively constructed through social processes and situated in specific historical, geographical, and political contexts. Understanding how we make meaning of objects is important because meanings impact on how objects circulate through everyday life and how they are used and valued. In a culture that values work over leisure, tools are socially valued yet ‘toy’ is a word loaded with judgment; although toys are objects of delight they are also associated with superficiality, consumerism, and a desire for status (Whitten). As manufacturers of ‘educational toys’ certainly understand, the construction of an object as a tool or toy shapes when, where, and by whom that object should be used, including the spaces they are allowed to occupy and the ways that children are permitted to engage with and use them (Brougère). The bicycle is many things at once: it moves through space, it requires physical effort of the rider, and it is self-propelled. As an object, the bicycle has also held different meanings depending on the cultural, historical, and political context. Hoffman (6) calls the bicycle a ‘rolling signifier’ in that ‘it carries a diversity of signification depending on its location in time and space’. Throughout its 150-year history in North America, the bicycle has been a leisure-based status symbol of the progressive urban elite, a symbol of women’s liberation, and a transportation vehicle of the working poor, and the focus of a fitness craze (Turpin). Starting out as an adult leisure activity, the bicycle began to be associated with childhood in the 1950s, when the bicycle manufacturing industry began to turn its attention to selling bicycles to children rather than adults (Turpin 1). Through the 1950s and 1970s, advertisements and television shows began to represent the bicycle as a vehicle for childhood freedom, highlighting the bicycle as the quintessential childhood gift and the moment of learning to ride a bicycle a childhood milestone (Turpin; McDonald). Although still constructed as an “indelible part of childhood” (Turpin, 1), the bicycle, and childhood, have changed since the days when the bicycle first gained its iconic status. Although new styles of bicycling (e.g., BMX, mountain) have emerged, the actual bicycling of children in terms of the amount of time spent riding and distance travelled has been on the decline for a generation (Cox; McDonald). Changing ideas about children’s health, development, and parental responsibilities to prepare children for their future have also raised anxieties about how, where, and how much time children spend engaged with ‘toys’ versus ‘tools’, and whether children should be playing or moving around outdoors, in the streets, unsupervised and alone (Alexander et al.; Valentine). A growing body of research highlights the ways in which childhood has become increasingly contained, immobilised, and institutionalised (Karsten; Rixon, Lomax, and O’Dell). In this context the object of the bicycle becomes more problematic given its features of mobility, physicality, and rider autonomy. In this article we investigate the ways that children and parents construct meanings of the bicycle in childhood. We draw on data collected in 2019 and 2020 when we interviewed 24 bicycle-riding children (aged 10-16, rode independently at least once per week) and 19 bicycle-supportive parents about their perspectives and experiences of bicycling in the downtown and suburban areas of the small Canadian city in which they lived. As we elaborate below, children constructed the bicycle as a toy that allowed physical and environmental exploration. For parents, these meanings produced anxiety because they relied on children moving through space unsupervised. In the article we will show how parents managed their desires and worries in ways that at times reconfigured the meaning of ‘bicycle’. We point to the central role of emotion in enabling and limiting children’s bicycling opportunities. We close with a discussion of the implications of these findings in the construction and promotion of children’s bicycling. Children's Constructions of the Bicycle in Childhood Our interviews with children revealed that while it was appreciated as a vehicle that could get them places faster than walking, children primarily constructed the bicycle as a toy. In fact, children constructed the bicycle as two different types of toys. First, the bicycle was a physical toy that afforded riders the opportunity to connect with their environment in novel ways and in so doing, to experiment with their physicality. For MK (boy, 11) the best part about riding was practicing ‘tricks’, or small manoeuvres with a bicycle like popping it up on one wheel, or jumping the bike over an obstacle. He had a number of favourite ‘trick spots’ – curbs, steps, benches, small hills – spread through the city that he would stop at as he made his way across town. Ross (383) sees this as ‘discipline and disorder’, noting, with respect to children’s unaccompanied school journeys, “the potential for impromptu play responding to features along the route”. She adds that “such free-play can only occur when children are able to set their own agenda, making decisions along the way”, implying that journeys may be more ‘playful’ – and bicycles more ‘toylike’ – when adults are not co-present. MK explained that he liked tricks because there was nothing at stake, other than possibly being teased by his brother. At the same time, friends were a source of inspiration and creativity as kids worked together to test out tricks and record their performances: Q: What do you like about tricks? MK: They’re easy to learn. If you mess one up, no one makes fun of you for it, no one laughs at you. Q: What is your least favourite part about riding? MK: When I do miss a trick, my brother makes fun of me. Alternatively, GL (boy, 15) sought out trails in nearby wooded areas on his mountain bike where he would engage with the rocky and rooted terrain at different speeds. For GL, the fun of mountain biking was that anything could happen: Q: What it's like to do the trails? What happens and what do you like about it? GL: Just the craziness of the unexpected sometimes. And like, the downhill obviously, not [to] have to do anything and just roll down the hill through all these roots and rocks and stuff. It is quite challenging. Second, the bicycle was an adventure toy that afforded children the opportunity to explore the local environment with no agenda other than to take in the surroundings and see what’s there. Whereas with riding for transportation “you’re trying to get somewhere, maybe going faster to try to get there faster, obviously, but for leisure you're just having fun enjoying it and just looking around, you see what's around you” (GL). Perhaps less risky than trick riding, adventure riding still required some bravery as it required the rider to venture into the unknown. Given this, it was the experience of exploring and discovering their surroundings that engendered joy and exhilaration. Children enthusiastically described their journeys and the special spots and surprising moments they experienced along the way. Whereas trick and trail riding required focus and intensity, adventure riding encouraged openness and receptivity. NT (boy, 10) explained, “there's no rules that you [need] to go here. It's, just, you can bike wherever you want. And do whatever. Like it's not somebody pushing you to go a certain speed or slow down or anything. I really like that.” Being afforded the autonomy to move as they wanted through space was the most treasured aspect of bicycle-riding. TL (girl, 12) explained, “I get to go places that I wouldn't normally get to go when I’m with other people. And then I get to choose where we go”. SG (girl, 12) related her experience of freedom on a bicycle to her right to autonomy: “you can do whatever you want and however you want, and its your own opinion and you don't have to follow anybody else's. You can be free.” In a culture that values productivity and improvement, toys are sometimes dismissed as objects with little value other than to provide amusement or fill time. This is why we often see toy manufacturers working to establish associations between toys and various improvement-oriented or utilitarian purposes, as this helps legitimise toys as good, valuable, and necessary (Brougère). However, the descriptions above highlight the richness of experience that comes from engaging with objects as toys. Commonalities across these two uses of the bicycle were the elements of creativity, curiosity, and low-stakes outcome, and an emotional experience of joy, satisfaction, and exhilaration. Parents’ Constructions of the Bicycle in Childhood Among parents, the construction of the bicycle as a childhood toy provoked a wider array of emotions that included joy and exhilaration but also fear and worry. For parents, the lesser worry of the two uses of the bicycle was of the bicycle as a physical toy. Parents appreciated the physical skills that their children learned on the bike and acknowledged, with relatively little concern, that injury might result. One parent (LL) described “falling off the bike or a slip, I mean, it happens to the best of bikers. I'm not worried about my kids in terms of their skill, it would just be an accident”. Vastly more troubling to parents was the construction of the bicycle as an adventure toy as the activity produced by this kind of toy – adventuring on bike – involved children moving greater distances through their environment and without adult supervision. Although parents could understand the joy and exhilaration of adventure riding, they were concerned about the dangers posed by the riding environment. Parents were fearful of cars for how they moved quickly and, speaking from their positionality as drivers, how car drivers paid little attention to bicycles. MM lamented that in her suburban neighbourhood drivers didn’t look for bicycles as they backed out of a driveway. This meant that children on bicycles had to assume responsibility for their own safety, and parents worried whether their child had the decision-making and social capabilities for this: Probably getting hurt would be the biggest [fear], even. If we're out and on a busier road, and he were to wipe out or not be paying attention or something. He's not really in any situations right now where he would be. I'd worry about him being approached by anyone or anything like that. (NT) Concerns related to children travelling alone in public space are longstanding. In the 1990s, Valentine reported that parents feared that their children lacked the capabilities to travel safety on their own in public space, and that these fears inhibited children’s autonomous mobilities. Since then, notions of the ‘vulnerability’ of childhood have worked to intensify and expand parenthood to include ‘risk management’ through supervision and monitoring (Lee et al.). Through this, time spent with children, including time spent chauffeuring children from place to place, has also become associated with parental care. McLaren and Parusel argue that this form of “parental mobility care” is one of the ways in which mothers (and fathers to a lesser degree) implement ‘good mothering’ (1426). One parent (NF) noted that although she was comfortable with her child biking alone, she worried about “feedback I might get from neighbours or whatever, right, judging”. Another parent (MM) illustrates the association between knowing your child’s whereabouts and good parenting: The mom’s let them [friend and brother] already go on the bikes together, right. So, he's got that confidence already built with his brother, and by himself. He shows up at my door and rings the door bell and there he is, waving at me, and I'm like, ‘Oh my god, does his mom know where he is?’ (laughs). Managing Feelings and Reconfiguring Meanings Parents simultaneously desired to support their child’s biking and worried about their child travelling alone through public space. They sought ways to manage these competing feelings. Some parents achieved this by reconfiguring their construction of the bicycle in ways that made parental accompaniment more sensible and acceptable. For example, EK, who always accompanied her son on bike rides, highlighted the physical effort required to ride a bicycle and the benefits that resulted from riding, such as greater physical endurance, strength, and skill. In other words, to her the bicycle was less a toy and more a piece of equipment that helped people achieve self-improvement goals. When the focus of riding is fitness, the context of riding – where one travels and with whom – matters only in relation to the achievement of fitness goals. She discussed how she rode with her son so they could fulfill fitness goals together: EK: I want to ride a bike with [son, 12] because I want to have, like, exercise to do, and it’s better. We have YMCA membership, but I prefer outdoors. In the wintertime last year we we were biking at the YMCA on those stationary ones. I enjoy those ones as well. Q: But not the same as going outside? EK: No, we prefer outside. We prefer outdoors. TS, who also accompanied her children on bicycle rides, reconfigured bicycling as an adventurous activity for the family, rather than solely for children. In her interviews, she highlighted bicycling as a way to strengthen family bonds and build great memories from their bike rides together: TS: It's brought us closer together now that we all have a bike. Like, my boyfriend is pretty physical, and he's already got planned out trails he wants to take them on in the summer. So, I think it has brought up some exciting new adventures for us to look forward to and nobody can feel left out because we all can bike together. Certainly, the joy and thrill of riding can be a shared experience for parents and children (McIlvenny). Children did indicate their appreciation for these rides, particularly because they ventured further with parents than they were permitted when riding alone. However, family biking also produced a different kind of bike-riding experience for children, with a shift in position from ‘pilot’ to ‘crew’ and their attention directed inward, toward others in the group: GL (boy, 15): when I'm biking with my friends and family I am always watching out for them, like making sure they're keeping up, or if you're keeping the right pace if you're in the front. When you're by yourself, just like focused on doing, you're not really thinking about anything else. Our intent is not to dismiss the value of the bicycle as child exercise equipment or a family adventure toy. But we do wish to point out the ease with which the bicycle can be made sense of as a range of different-use objects in the context of contemporary childhood. Indeed, in this context, concerns about children’s physical health, development, and preparation for the future have been transforming – both ‘healthifying’ (Alexander et al. 78), and instrumentalising – children’s play for a generation. That said, there were parents who continued to support their children’s engagement with the bicycle as a toy, and their autonomous bike-riding. Although these parents certainly had worries, they connected bicycling to an array of positive emotions – joy, exuberance, pride, calm – and drew on these emotions to bolster their support. Parents often associated these positive emotions with memories of their own childhood biking experiences, which they wanted their children to experience. They also directly observed them in their children, after they returned from a ride. These moments offered parents ‘feedback’ that helped bolster their commitment to holding space for their children’s adventure riding: LL: They're pretty proud when they come home, muddy and dirty. Yeah, they'll tell me things that they saw or just things that would stand out like, ‘oh, the bugs are really bad’, or ‘oh, we found this cool part of a trail’ or [they] don't really meet people that they know on the trail. But yeah, they’ll give me some feedback. ‘RL almost ran into a tree’. ‘JL almost fell off trying to jump a log’: the highlights. The shared experience of the COVID-19 pandemic also connected parents to the emotional experience of bike-riding, bolstering parental support for children’s autonomous bike-riding because the pandemic made the emotional experience of bike-riding so much more apparent to parents. At the time of our spring 2020 interviews, children were just beginning to surface from a three-month lockdown period in which schooling was online, extra-curricular activities had been cancelled, and a public health order had drastically curtailed their movements outside the home. Although now we better understand the extent of the psychological impact of the lockdown on children (Panchal et al.), at that time parents were seeing its impacts on their children first-hand. In this context, the bicycle took on a new meaning as a vehicle that afforded a way for children escape the home and have some time and space to themselves: KK: For [daughter, age 12], definitely there are times that with two younger siblings, she'll just need to go. ‘I'm done. I need space.’ She'll go for a bike ride and that’s a little bit of a calm downtime for her. Right. Anyway, she says she enjoys it, it's healthy and gets her outside and away from your younger siblings. Parents increasingly supported children’s independent riding, again based on their observations of the emotional experience of children’s biking experiences. Both parents and children described these bike rides as mood-changing. Parents were able to recognise how biking offered children a time and space to “cool down” or “unwind from other things that are going on.” JJ [girl, age 13] explained: When I go on bike rides, I was like, kind of in a bad mood. If I'm angry at someone, if I'm sad, if I'm frustrated. Just flick a switch. Like, frustrated to happy; or angry to confident; or something like that. I don't know how it works, but it just boosts my mood every time I go on a bike ride. And then it is a great day. Conclusion This article illustrates the different ways that parents and children construct and negotiate meanings of the bicycle in childhood. It highlights the connections between meaning and use, and the ways that different meanings encourage different ways of thinking about how the bicycle should be used, where, with whom, and for what reasons. The analysis also points to the centrality of emotions in the process of meaning-making. In doing so, it builds on previous research that has illustrated now negative emotions (reluctance, worry, fear, anxiety) work to limit children’s mobilities (Fotel and Thomsen; Rixon et al.). At the same time, it also builds on recent research that illustrates the ways that attention to positive emotions (joy, pride, exhilaration, calm) can enable children’s bicycling (Silonsaari et al.) while centring children’s experiences in conversations about play and toys in contemporary childhood. References Alexander, Stephanie A., Katherine L. Frohlich, and Caroline Fusco. Play, Physical Activity and Public Health: The Reframing of Children’s Leisure Lives. Routledge, 2018. Brougère, Gilles. "Toys: Between Rhetoric of Education and Rhetoric of Fun." Toys and Communication (2018): 33-46. Cox, Peter. Cycling: A Sociology of Vélomobility. Routledge, 2019. Fotel, Trine, and Thyra Uth Thomsen. “The Surveillance of Children’s Mobility.” Surveillance & Society 1.4 (2003). Furness, Zack. One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility. Temple UP, 2010. Hoffmann, Melody L. Bike Lanes are White Lanes: Bicycle Advocacy and Urban Planning. U of Nebraska P, 2016. Karsten, Lia. "It All Used to Be Better? Different Generations on Continuity and Change in Urban Children's Daily Use of Space." Children's Geographies 3.3 (2005): 275-290. Lee, Ellie, et al. Parenting Culture Studies. Springer, 2014. McDonald, Noreen C. “Children and Cycling.” City Cycling 487 (2012): 211-234. McIlvenny, Paul. "The Joy of Biking Together: Sharing Everyday Experiences of Vélomobility." Mobilities 10.1 (2015): 55-82. Panchal, Urvashi, et al. "The Impact of COVID-19 Lockdown on Child and Adolescent Mental Health: Systematic Review." European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (2021): 1-27. Rixon, Andy, Helen Lomax, and Lindsay O’Dell. "Childhoods Past and Present: Anxiety and Idyll in Reminiscences of Childhood Outdoor Play and Contemporary Parenting Practices." Children's Geographies 17.5 (2019): 618-629. Ross, Nicola J. "‘My Journey to School…’: Foregrounding the Meaning of School Journeys and Children's Engagements and Interactions in Their Everyday Localities." Children's Geographies 5.4 (2007): 373-391 Silonsaari, Jonne, et al. "Unravelling the Rationalities of Childhood Cycling Promotion." Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives 14 (2022): 100598. Silver, Erin. "Kids Love Those Fidget Spinner Toys. But Are They Too Much of a Distraction?" The Washington Post (2017). Turpin, Robert. First Taste of Freedom: A Cultural History of Bicycle Marketing in the United States. Syracuse UP, 2018. Valentine, Gill. Public Space and the Culture of Childhood. Routledge, 2017. Valentine, Gill. "'Oh Yes I Can.' 'Oh No You Can't': Children and Parents' Understandings of Kids' Competence to Negotiate Public Space Safely." Antipode 29.1 (1997): 65-89. Whitten, Sarah. "Adults Are Buying Toys for Themselves, and It's the Biggest Source of Growth for the Industry." NBC News, 19 Dec. 2022. <https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/adults-are-buying-toys-s-biggest-source-growth-industry-rcna62354>.

Preferences of Ford brand buyers Developing a successful market in today's competitive environment requires an in-depth familiarity with consumer purchasing patterns. The study's goal is to evaluate how satisfied buyers are with their Ford purchases and identify the factors that contribute to their decision to purchase. The study's primary objective was to learn about current Ford car owners' perceptions of the brand's strengths and weaknesses. Researchers use questionnaires to learn about consumer buying habits in relation to variables like brand. Features, mileage, offers, performance, and service. Telephone callings were also used to get feedback from current car owners on how to make the car-buying/-leasing process more convenient for future customers. To help us evaluate the merits and shortcomings of the vehicles, we surveyed 100 people at random. The primary purpose of this report was to survey Ford customers about their experiences with the company's current products and services and analyse those responses in light of what those customers would like to see Ford offer in the future. Brand recognition, product offerings, and pricing were identified as company strengths, while mileage and customer service were identified as areas for improvement.

Murabahah financing is one of the consumptive financing for purchasing necessities such as buying vehicles, building houses, and renovating houses. The payment is from a permanent salary source or employees such as civil servants, which every month will be deducted directly from the salary. And the contract used is in accordance with customer needs. This research is studied to find out whether this murabahah financing product can attract a large number of customers, considering that Indonesia is a country where the majority are Muslims. By using a marketing mix strategy, in the marketing mix theory proposed by Ali Hasan, there are 4 marketing strategies that must be applied by banks in order to attract prospective customers to take murabahah financing products. The 4P marketing mix strategy includes product, price, promotion, place, people, process, and physical evidence. By analyzing using SWOT analysis, it can be concluded that the marketing mix strategy used is very influential on the addition of multipurpose financing customers at Bank Syariah Indonesia KC Stabat.

AbstractThis article contributes to our existing knowledge through a crime script analysis of contract killings, based on six extensively analyzed police investigations in the Netherlands. Starting from a universal crime script, a more specific crime script for contract killings is elaborated. To provide a clear picture of the whole process, the description of the scenes focuses on requirements, facilitators, modi operandi, and preparatory actions. A comparison of liquidation investigations is made through a crime script analysis, which results in three types of requirements: vehicles, automatic weapons, and technical equipment, including PGP-telephones and beacons. In addition, spy shops turn out to play a major role in liquidations as facilitators. Due to a lack of licensing and regulations, the owners of spy shops can decide to a large extent on their own procedures. This leads to the possibility of buying and selling equipment anonymously and with large amounts of cash, which facilitates the preparation of liquidations and crime in general. Hitmen are the second type of important facilitators. The analysis reveals that all liquidation investigations contain indications of a principal to whom account has to be held. Two investigations clearly demonstrate financial rewards for contract killings.

Al Gore brought climate change into … our living rooms. … The 2008 oil price hikes [and the global financial crisis] awakened the world to potential economic hardship in a rapidly urbanising world where the petrol-driven automobile is still king. (Mouritz 47) Six hundred million cars (Urry, “Climate Change” 265) traverse the world’s roads, or sit idly in garages and clogging city streets. The West’s economic progress has been built in part around the success of the automotive industry, where the private car rules the spaces and rhythms of daily life. The problem of “automobile dependence” (Newman and Kenworthy) is often cited as one of the biggest challenges facing countries attempting to combat anthropogenic climate change. Sociologist John Urry has claimed that automobility is an “entire culture” that has re-defined movement in the contemporary world (Urry Mobilities 133). As such, it is the single most significant environmental challenge “because of the intensity of resource use, the production of pollutants and the dominant culture which sustains the major discourses of what constitutes the good life” (Urry Sociology 57-8). Climate change has forced a re-thinking of not only how we produce and dispose of cars, but also how we use them. What might a society not dominated by the private, petrol-driven car look like? Some of the pre-eminent writers on climate change futures, such as Gwynne Dyer, James Lovelock and John Urry, discuss one possibility that might emerge when oil becomes scarce: societies will descend into civil chaos, “a Hobbesian war of all against all” where “regional warlordism” and the most brutish, barbaric aspects of human nature come to the fore (Urry, “Climate Change” 261). Discussing a post-car society, John Urry also proffers another scenario in his “sociologies of the future:” an Orwellian “digital panopticon” in which other modes of transport, far more suited to a networked society, might emerge on a large scale and, in the long run, “might tip the system” into post-car one before it is too late (Urry, “Climate Change” 261). Amongst the many options he discusses is car sharing. Since its introduction in Germany more than 30 years ago, most of the critical literature has been devoted to the planning, environmental and business innovation aspects of car sharing; however very little has been written on its cultural dimensions. This paper analyses this small but developing trend in many Western countries, but more specifically its emergence in Sydney. The convergence of climate change discourse with that of the global financial crisis has resulted in a focus in the mainstream media, over the last few months, on technologies and practices that might save us money and also help the environment. For instance, a Channel 10 News story in May 2009 focused on the boom in car sharing in Sydney (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=EPTT8vYVXro). Car sharing is an adaptive technology that doesn’t do away with the car altogether, but rather transforms the ways in which cars are used, thought about and promoted. I argue that car sharing provides a challenge to the dominant consumerist model of the privately owned car that has sustained capitalist structures for at least the last 50 years. In addition, through looking at some marketing and promotion tactics of car sharing in Australia, I examine some emerging car sharing subjectivities that both extend and subvert the long-established discourses of the automobile’s flexibility and autonomy to tempt monogamous car buyers into becoming philandering car sharers. Much literature has emerged over the last decade devoted to the ubiquitous phenomenon of automobility. “The car is the literal ‘iron cage’ of modernity, motorised, moving and domestic,” claims Urry (“Connections” 28). Over the course of twentieth century, automobility became “the dominant form of daily movement over much of the planet (dominating even those who do not move by cars)” (Paterson 132). Underpinning Urry’s prolific production of literature is his concept of automobility. This he defines as a complex system of “intersecting assemblages” that is not only about driving cars but the nexus between “production, consumption, machinic complexes, mobility, culture and environmental resource use” (Urry, “Connections” 28). In addition, Matthew Paterson, in his Automobile Politics, asserts that “automobility” should be viewed as everything that makes driving around in a car possible: highways, parking structures and traffic rules (87). While the private car seems an inevitable outcome of a capitalistic, individualistic modern society, much work has gone into the process of naturalising a dominant notion of automobility on drivers’ horizons. Through art, literature, popular music and brand advertising, the car has long been associated with seductive forms of identity, and societies have been built around a hegemonic culture of car ownership and driving as the pre-eminent, modern mode of self-expression. And more than 50 years of a popular Hollywood film genre—road movies—has been devoted to glorifying the car as total freedom, or in its more nihilistic version, “freedom on the road to nowhere” (Corrigan). As Paterson claims, “autonomous mobility of car driving is socially produced … by a range of interventions that have made it possible” (18). One of the main reasons automobility has been so successful, he claims, is through its ability to reproduce capitalist society. It provided a commodity around which a whole set of symbols, images and discourses could be constructed which served to effectively legitimise capitalist society. (30) Once the process is locked-in, it then becomes difficult to reverse as billions of agents have adapted to it and built their lives around “automobility’s strange mixture of co-ercion and flexibility” (Urry, “Climate Change” 266). The Decline of the Car Globally, the greatest recent rupture in the automobile’s meta-narrative of success came about in October 2008 when three CEOs from the major US car firms (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler) begged the United States Senate for emergency loan funds to avoid going bankrupt. To put the economic significance of this into context, Emma Rothschild notes “when the listing of the ‘Fortune 500’ began in 1955, General Motors was the largest American corporation, and it was one of the three largest, measured in revenues, every year until 2007” (Rothschilds, “Can we transform”). Curiously, instead of focusing on the death of the car (industry), as we know it, that this scenario might inevitably herald, much of the media attention focused on the hypocrisy and environmental hubris of the fact that all the CEOs had flown in private luxury jets to Washington. “Couldn’t they have at least jet-pooled?” complained one Democrat Senator (Wutkowski). In their next visit to Washington, most of them drove up in experimental vehicles still in pre-production, including plug-in hybrids. Up until that point no other manufacturing industry had been bailed out in the current financial crisis. Of course it’s not the first time the automobile industries have been given government assistance. The Australian automotive industry has received on-going government subsidies since the 1980s. Most recently, PM Kevin Rudd granted a 6.2 billion dollar ‘green car’ package to Australian automotive manufacturers. His justification to the growing chorus of doubts about the economic legitimacy of such a move was: “Some might say it's not worth trying to have a car industry, that is not my view, it is not the view of the Australian government and it never will be the view of any government which I lead” (The Australian). Amongst the many reasons for the government support of these industries must include the extraordinary interweaving of discourses of nationhood and progress with the success of the car industry. As the last few months reveal, evidently the mantra still prevails of “what’s good for the country is good for GM and vice versa”, as the former CEO of General Motors, Charles “Engine” Wilson, argued back in 1952 (Hirsch). In post-industrial societies like Australia it’s not only the economic aspects of the automotive industries that are criticised. Cars seem to be slowly losing their grip on identity-formation that they managed to maintain throughout “the century of the car” (Gilroy). They are no longer unproblematically associated with progress, freedom, youthfulness and absolute autonomy. The decline and eventual death of the automobile as we know it will be long, arduous and drawn-out. But there are some signs of a post-automobile society emerging, perhaps where cars will still be used but they will not dominate our society, urban space and culture in quite the same way that they have over the last 50 years. Urry discusses six transformations that might ‘tip’ the hegemonic system of automobility into a post-car one. He mentions new fuel systems, new materials for car construction, the de-privatisation of cars, development of communications technologies and integration of networked public transport through smart card technology and systems (Urry, Mobilities 281-284). As Paterson and others have argued, computers and mobile phones have somehow become “more genuine symbols of mobility and in turn progress” than the car (157). As a result, much automobile advertising now intertwines communications technologies with brand to valorise mobility. Car sharing goes some way in not only de-privatising cars but also using smart card technology and networked systems enabling an association with mobility futures. In Automobile Politics Paterson asks, “Is the car fundamentally unsustainable? Can it be greened? Has the car been so naturalised on our mobile horizons that we can’t imagine a society without it?” (27). From a sustainability perspective, one of the biggest problems with cars is still the amount of space devoted to them; highways, garages, car parks. About one-quarter of the land in London and nearly one-half of that in Los Angeles is devoted to car-only environments (Urry, “Connections” 29). In Sydney, it is more like a quarter. We have to reduce the numbers of cars on our roads to make our societies livable (Newman and Kenworthy). Car sharing provokes a re-thinking of urban space. If one quarter of Sydney’s population car shared and we converted this space into green use or local market gardens, then we’d have a radically transformed city. Car sharing, not to be confused with ‘ride sharing’ or ‘car pooling,’ involves a number of people using cars that are parked centrally in dedicated car bays around the inner city. After becoming a member (much like a 6 or 12 monthly gym membership), the cars can be booked (and extended) by the hour via the web or phone. They can then be accessed via a smart card. In Sydney there are 3 car sharing organisations operating: Flexicar (http://www.flexicar.com.au/), CharterDrive (http://www.charterdrive.com.au/) and GoGet (http://www.goget.com.au/).[1] The largest of these, GoGet, has been operating for 6 years and has over 5000 members and 200 cars located predominantly in the inner city suburbs. Anecdotally, GoGet claims its membership is primarily drawn from professionals living in the inner-urban ring. Their motivation for joining is, firstly, the convenience that car sharing provides in a congested, public transport-challenged city like Sydney; secondly, the financial savings derived; and thirdly, members consider the environmental and social benefits axiomatic. [2] The promotion tactics of car sharing seems to reflect this by barely mentioning the environment but focusing on those aspects which link car sharing to futuristic and flexible subjectivities which I outline in the next section. Unlike traditional car rental, the vehicles in car sharing are scattered through local streets in a network allowing local residents and businesses access to the vehicles mostly on foot. One car share vehicle is used by 22-24 members and gets about seven cars off the street (Mehlman 22). With lots of different makes and models of vehicles in each of their fleets, Flexicar’s website claims, “around the corner, around the clock” “Flexicar offers you the freedom of driving your own car without the costs and hassles of owning one,” while GoGet asserts, “like owning a car only better.” Due to the initial lack of interest from government, all the car sharing organisations in Australia are privately owned. This is very different to the situation in Europe where governments grant considerable financial assistance and have often integrated car sharing into pre-existing public transport networks. Urry discusses the spread of car sharing across the Western world: Six hundred plus cities across Europe have developed car-sharing schemes involving 50,000 people (Cervero, 2001). Prototype examples are found such as Liselec in La Rochelle, and in northern California, Berlin and Japan (Motavalli, 2000: 233). In Deptford there is an on-site car pooling service organized by Avis attached to a new housing development, while in Jersey electric hire cars have been introduced by Toyota. (Urry, “Connections” 34) ‘Collaborative Consumption’ and Flexible, Philandering Subjectivities Car sharing shifts the dominant conception of a car from being a ‘commodity’, which people purchase and subsequently identify with, to a ‘service’ or network of vehicles that are collectively used. It does this through breaking down the one car = one person (or one family) ratio with one car instead servicing 20 or more people. One of Paterson’s biggest criticisms concerns car driving as “a form of social exclusion” (44). Car sharing goes some way in subverting the model of hyper-individualism that supports both hegemonic automobility and capitalist structures, whereby the private motorcar produces a “separation of individuals from one another driving in their own private universes with no account for anyone else” (Paterson 90). As a car sharer, the driver has to acknowledge that this is not their private domain, and the car no longer becomes an extension of their living room or bedroom, as is noted in much literature around car cultures (Morris, Sheller, Simpson). There are a community of people using the car, so the driver needs to be attentive to things like keeping the car clean and bringing it back on time so another person can use it. So while car sharing may change the affective relationship and self-identification with the vehicle itself, it doesn’t necessarily change the phenomenological dimensions of car driving, such as the nostalgic pleasure of driving on the open road, or perhaps more realistically in Sydney, the frustration of being caught in a traffic jam. However, the fact the driver doesn’t own the vehicle does alter their relationship to the space and the commodity in a literal as well as a figurative way. Like car ownership, evidently car sharing also produces its own set of limitations on freedom and convenience. That mobility and car ownership equals freedom—the ‘freedom to drive’—is one imaginary which car firms were able to successfully manipulate and perpetuate throughout the twentieth century. However, car sharing also attaches itself to the same discourses of freedom and pervasive individualism and then thwarts them. For instance, GoGet in Sydney have run numerous marketing campaigns that attempt to contest several ‘self-evident truths’ about automobility. One is flexibility. Flexibility (and associated convenience) was one thing that ownership of a car in the late twentieth century was firmly able to affiliate itself with. However, car ownership is now more often associated with being expensive, a hassle and a long-term commitment, through things like buying, licensing, service and maintenance, cleaning, fuelling, parking permits, etc. Cars have also long been linked with sexuality. When in the 1970s financial challenges to the car were coming as a result of the oil shocks, Chair of General Motors, James Roche stated that, “America’s romance with the car is not over. Instead it has blossomed into a marriage” (Rothschilds, Paradise Lost). In one marketing campaign GoGet asked, ‘Why buy a car when all you need is a one night stand?’, implying that owning a car is much like a monogamous relationship that engenders particular commitments and responsibilities, whereas car sharing can just be a ‘flirtation’ or a ‘one night stand’ and you don’t have to come back if you find it a hassle. Car sharing produces a philandering subjectivity that gives individuals the freedom to have lots of different types of cars, and therefore relationships with each of them: I can be a Mini Cooper driver one day and a Falcon driver the next. This disrupts the whole kind of identification with one type of car that ownership encourages. It also breaks down a stalwart of capitalism—brand loyalty to a particular make of car with models changing throughout a person’s lifetime. Car sharing engenders far more fluid types of subjectivities as opposed to those rigid identities associated with ownership of one car. Car sharing can also be regarded as part of an emerging phenomenon of what Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers have called “collaborative consumption”—when a community gets together “through organized sharing, swapping, bartering, trading, gifting and renting to get the same pleasures of ownership with reduced personal cost and burden, and lower environmental impact” (www.collaborativeconsumption.com). As Urry has stated, these developments indicate a gradual transformation in current economic structures from ownership to access, as shown more generally by many services offered and accessed via the web (Urry Mobilities 283). Rogers and Botsman maintain that this has come about through the “convergence of online social networks increasing cost consciousness and environmental necessity." In the future we could predict an increasing shift to payment to ‘access’ for mobility services, rather than the outright private ownerships of vehicles (Urry, “Connections”). Networked-Subjectivities or a ‘Digital Panopticon’? Cars, no longer able on their own to signify progress in either technical or social terms, attain their symbolic value through their connection to other, now more prevalently ‘progressive’ technologies. (Paterson 155) The term ‘digital panopticon’ has often been used to describe a dystopian world of virtual surveillance through such things as web-enabled social networking sites where much information is public, or alternatively, for example, the traffic surveillance system in London whereby the public can be constantly scrutinised through the centrally monitored cameras that track people’s/vehicle’s movements on city streets. In his “sociologies of the future,” Urry maintains that one thing which might save us from descending into post-car civil chaos is a system governed by a “digital panopticon” mobility system. This would be governed by a nexus system “that orders, regulates, tracks and relatively soon would ‘drive’ each vehicle and monitor each driver/passenger” (Urry, “Connections” 33). The transformation of mobile technologies over the last decade has made car sharing, as a viable business model, possible. Through car sharing’s exploitation of an online booking system, and cars that can be tracked, monitored and traced, the seeds of a mobile “networked-subjectivity” are emerging. But it’s not just the technology people are embracing; a cultural shift is occurring in the way that people understand mobility, their own subjectivity, and more importantly, the role of cars. NETT Magazine did a feature on car sharing, and advertised it on their front cover as “GoGet’s web and mobile challenge to car owners” (May 2009). Car sharing seems to be able to tap into more contemporary understandings of what mobility and flexibility might mean in the twenty-first century. In their marketing and promotion tactics, car sharing organisations often discursively exploit science fiction terminology and generate a subjectivity much more dependent on networks and accessibility (158). In the suburbs people park their cars in garages. In car sharing, the vehicles are parked not in car bays or car parks, but in publically accessible ‘pods’, which promotes a futuristic, sci-fi experience. Even the phenomenological dimensions of swiping a smart card over the front of the windscreen to open the car engender a transformation in access to the car, instead of through a key. This is service-technology of the future while those stuck in car ownership are from the old economy and the “century of the car” (Gilroy). The connections between car sharing and the mobile phone and other communications technologies are part of the notion of a networked, accessible vehicle. However, the more problematic side to this is the car under surveillance. Nic Lowe, of his car sharing organisation GoGet says, “Because you’re tagged on and we know it’s you, you are able to drive the car… every event you do is logged, so we know what time you turned the key, what time you turned it off and we know how far you drove … if a car is lost we can sound the horn to disable it remotely to prevent theft. We can track how fast you were going and even how fast you accelerated … track the kilometres for billing purposes and even find out when people are using the car when they shouldn’t be” (Mehlman 27). The possibility with the GPS technology installed in the car is being able to monitor speeds at which people drive, thereby fining then every minute spent going over the speed limit. While this conjures up the notion of the car under surveillance, it is also a much less bleaker scenario than “a Hobbesian war of all against all”. Conclusion: “Hundreds of Cars, No Garage” The prospect of climate change is provoking innovation at a whole range of levels, as well as providing a re-thinking of how we use taken-for-granted technologies. Sometime this century the one tonne, privately owned, petrol-driven car will become an artefact, much like Sydney trams did last century. At this point in time, car sharing can be regarded as an emerging transitional technology to a post-car society that provides a challenge to hegemonic automobile culture. It is evidently not a radical departure from the car’s vast machinic complex and still remains a part of what Urry calls the “system of automobility”. From a pro-car perspective, its networked surveillance places constraints on the free agency of the car, while for those of the deep green variety it is, no doubt, a compromise. Nevertheless, it provides a starting point for re-thinking the foundations of the privately-owned car. While Urry makes an important point in relation to a society moving from ownership to access, he doesn’t take into account the cultural shifts occurring that are enabling car sharing to be attractive to prospective members: the notion of networked subjectivities, the discursive constructs used to establish car sharing as a thing of the future with pods and smart cards instead of garages and keys. If car sharing became mainstream it could have radical environmental impacts on things like urban space and pollution, as well as the dominant culture of “automobile dependence” (Newman and Kenworthy), as Australia attempts to move to a low carbon economy. Notes [1] My partner Bruce Jeffreys, together with Nic Lowe, founded Newtown Car Share in 2002, which is now called GoGet. [2] Several layers down in the ‘About Us’ link on GoGet’s website is the following information about the environmental benefits of car sharing: “GoGet's aim is to provide a reliable, convenient and affordable transport service that: allows people to live car-free, decreases car usage, improves local air quality, removes private cars from local streets, increases patronage for public transport, allows people to lead more active lives” (http://www.goget.com.au/about-us.html). References The Australian. “Kevin Rudd Throws $6.2bn Lifeline to Car Industry.” 10 Nov. 2008. < http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/ 0,28124,24628026-5018011,00.html >.Corrigan, Tim. “Genre, Gender, and Hysteria: The Road Movie in Outer Space.” A Cinema Without Walls: Movies, Culture after Vietnam. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1991. Dwyer, Gwynne. Climate Wars. North Carlton: Scribe, 2008. 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Paradise Lost: The Decline of the Auto-Industrial Age. New York: Radom House, 1973. Rothschilds, Emma. “Can We Transform the Auto-Industrial Society?” New York Review of Books 56.3 (2009). < http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22333 >. Sheller, Mimi. “Automotive Emotions: Feeling the Car.” Theory, Culture and Society 21 (2004): 221–42. Simpson, Catherine. “Volatile Vehicles: When Women Take the Wheel.” Womenvision. Ed. Lisa French. Melbourne: Damned Publishing, 2003. 197-210. Urry, John. Sociology Beyond Societies: Mobilities for the 21st Century. London: Routledge, 2000. Urry, John. “Connections.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 22 (2004): 27-37. Urry, John. Mobilities. Cambridge, and Maiden, MA: Polity Press, 2008. Urry, John. “Climate Change, Travel and Complex Futures.” British Journal of Sociology 59. 2 (2008): 261-279. Watts, Laura, and John Urry. “Moving Methods, Travelling Times.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26 (2008): 860-874. 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Intodays world, Mobile application plays a very important role to process any type of data in hand. The mobile application is mainly developed for the drivers to work in mobile devices and to run on tablets and smart phones. These applications are used for various purposes like web browsing, calendar, buying music, gaming, traveling, entertainment, social networking and productivity. The mobile applications differ from the integrated software systems found in Personal Computers by its isolated functionality. The motor Car belongs to the mechanical world, and the functionality is not aware by all the drivers, thus it becomes a difficult one to handle it. In the existing system, there is no diagnostic system launched in mobile application for the drivers to find the minor problems in each and every car. There is only a manual book given to the drivers for motorcar by the manufacturer to see how to start a car and the parts of the car are given in detail. There is nothingmentioned about the minor problems that happens in the motorcar and the solution to recover it.To overcome the problems faced by the Drivers on the road and to help them in emergency situation, a Self Detection and recovery system is proposed for the Drivers, especially for the Learning drivers to detect the minorproblems in the vehicles and also to recover from those problems by using this automized smart system. Through this smart mobile application, the driver can find solutions for all the minor problems faced in the motorcar. The driver will be aware of exact fault and the driver can take necessary action accordingly. The proposed system acts as a good driver friendly interface for any Driver to detect the minor problem easily by using the alert signals and also to recover from these problems easily by searching through the terms, which usually denote the type of the problem and it accordingly find out the solutions, which would be highly helpful to proceed without interruption. The proposed system a low cost application wherein the driver has to sign up and find the solutions to the problems. This mobile application is secured because only the authorized driver can login and see the solutions but not by anyone else. This application gives the correct and exact solution to all the minor problems encountered by the mobile driver.

Introduction There is, as Andrew Rowan dubs it, a “constant paradox” in the way we treat, relate to, and consume animals in our everyday lives (Arluke and Sanders 4). This paper examines this paradox in relation to the rise of vegetarianism as a new taste and consumer culture in the West. The first part of the paper, drawing upon Bourdieu, argues that vegetarian “taste” is fundamentally a social practice linked to class and gender. It then offers a preliminary theoretical sketch of the sociological drivers and consequences of vegetarianism in late-modernity, drawing on social theory. Having established the theoretical framework, the second part of the paper turns to an empirical analysis of the moral motivations and experiences of a selection of Australian bloggers. The key argument is that the bloggers narrate vegetarianism as a taste practice that entangles self-care with a larger assemblage of non-human responsibility that works to re-enchant a demoralised consumer modernity. Vegetarianism as Taste Practice “Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier”, Pierre Bourdieu famously claimed (xxix). Bourdieu demonstrated the classificatory power of taste not only in relation to music, home décor, and art but also in relation to food. Taste, for Bourdieu, is a social process by which people actively communicate social position through classification of the judgements and preferences of both themselves and others. For example, he highlighted how the working-class dislike for fish was part of a wider class system of dispositions where the middle-class favour “the light, the refined and the delicate” defined in negation of working-class taste for “the heavy, the fat and the coarse” (182–83). How then do we read vegetarianism as a taste practice? First, we need to take Bourdieu’s point that vegetarianism is not simply an expression of personal preference, but is a social practice that articulates identity, group membership, and systems of cultural distinction. Bourdieu, while not writing about vegetarianism, did link meat eating to masculine and working-class displays of embodied strength and power—“warrior food”, as Nietzsche called it (Bennett 141). Meat, Bourdieu wrote, was “nourishing food par excellence, strong and strong-making, giving vigour, blood, and health is the dish for men” (190). On this reading, meat avoidance can be located as part of a middle-class taste for the “light” and the “healthy” but also a rejection of working-class and masculine food taste practices. Vegetarianism, like buying fair-trade, organic, and eco-friendly, might be theorised as a symbolic device for enacting middle-class displays of cultural distinction based on claims to moral purity and virtue. On the gender front, female vegetarians conform to taste trends for middle-class women—light, not fattening, and healthy—whereas for men, vegetarianism is linked to the rejection of “hegemonic” masculinity and patriarchy (Bourdieu; Connell). Empirical research partially lends support to this depiction, showing that vegetarianism is predominantly practiced by female, middle-class, university-qualified professionals working in service-sector or white-collar occupations (RealEat; Keane and Willetts). This kind of Bourdieuian analysis is important in drawing attention to the social configurations of vegetarianism as a taste practice. It, however, misses the ethical substance of vegetarianism and the wider social and cultural changes that are driving its growth in the West. The following section addresses this gap. Theorising Vegetarianism Adrian Franklin explains the growth of vegetarianism in the last part of the 20th century as part of a process of “de-centring” human-animal relations in conditions of late-modernity. Franklin suggests that vegetarianism is part of a wider social and cultural shift where animals make new types of moral claims on humans as they form closer and more intimate emotional bonds. He argues that in the context of widespread feelings of moral decline and disorder, animals are constructed as morally pure and innocent, and humans morally blameworthy and destructive (Franklin 196). From this perspective, vegetarianism is less about an ethical regards for animals but more about what animals reveal about human moral worlds: the reflections are less about an ethical consideration of the “Other” and more about a moral consideration of “ourselves” (Franklin 196). A sticker plastered on the door of my local vegetarian café encapsulates this perspective: it reads, “humans are the real pests.” Unlike Bourdieu and Franklin, Tester is important in moving from a narrow focus on what humans “do” with animals as symbolic or communicative acts to the ethical significance of vegetarianism. Tester makes a critical distinction between the “ethical” and “lifestyle” vegetarian. In Tester’s terms, the “lifestyle” vegetarian avoids meat for health and well-being reasons while the “ethical” vegetarian is concerned for the ethical treatment of animals. The “lifestyle” vegetarian is problematic for Tester due to “the being of the ethical conduct of life” being substituted for “the doing of the consumer” (218). Vegetarianism becomes emptied of moral meaning as it turns into big business marked by the growth of a multi-billion dollar faux meat industry, trendy vegetarian restaurants, lifestyle converts, and celebrity endorsements. In “lifestyle” mode, Tester argues, vegetarian concern for animal cruelty, slaughter, and death is colonised by a narcissistic concern for slimming, youth, and health—for the promotion of a contented consumer self (Humphery). Although Tester highlights the ethical substance of vegetarianism and the challenges it faces in a consumer world, like the rest of the accounts, it tends to be anthropocentric. Animals tend to speak solely to human worlds, ignoring the vitality and “distributed agency” (Bennett 38) of the non-human. The non-human animal tends to be construed as a passive and inert resource existing solely for human intentionality, rather than acknowledging their “vital power” and “liveliness” outside human agendas (133). Bennett claims that eating highlights the inseparability of humans and edible matter, and the capacity for both human and nonhuman bodies to effect social and political change. She proposes that through a greater sense of ourselves as entwined with, and part of, nature as physical entities, we can enchant the world and become energised as co-participants. Here vegetarianism can be understood as part of recognition of the “assemblage” of human and non-human actions, where self, body, nature and planet become mutually constituting and supportive. Vegetarian taste is not just about middle-class concerns for distinction, but an ethics of the non-human. What does vegetarianism as an ethical taste practice look like “on the ground”? What are the moral motivations for becoming vegetarian, and how is this understood and experienced? What roles do lifestyle and ethical motivations play in vegetarian eating behaviours? In the following section, I turn to a selection of Australian bloggers to make a modest contribution to understanding these questions in the contemporary Australian context. The bloggers are taken from a wider study that analysed 44 urban Australian blogs as part of a project on everyday Australian moralities. The blogs were sampled from the blog hosting website LiveJournal (LJ) between 2006 and 2007. Blog usernames used have been fictionalised to maintain anonymity. Specifically, I focus on a selection of three blog case studies: Universal_cloak, a 32-year-old female artistic designer from Melbourne, Starbright, a 28-year-old female student from Brisbane, and Snig, a 25-year-old male paramedic from Melbourne. The bloggers are a representative selection from a wider sample of blog writing on vegetarianism and human-animal relations. The blog narratives complicate Tester’s simplistic distinction between the “ethical” and “lifestyle” vegetarian, articulating vegetarianism as form of ethical practice that works to morally enchant the world in a dialogue between self-improvement, personal well-being, and ethical relationships with animals and the planet (Taylor). Vegetarianism in Practice: “Positive for Me, Positive for Others” Universal_cloak writes how “being hippy—wearing hippy clothes, eating healthy organic food and being full of positive energy” makes her “feel healthier […] like I’m doing a better thing for the world (society in particular) […] like I’m doing something good”. Being “authentic” to a “hippy” identity—“being true to herself”—is connected for Universal_cloak to a wider concern for the non-human—for animals, nature, and the planet. An important component of this link between self-fulfilment and “doing a better thing for the world” is not eating the “corpses of animals.” Universal_cloak describes this in detail, at the same time underlining the environmental dimensions of her vegetarianism: I feel sick to my stomach to think that an animal dies so I can eat. Why is it any different to feel the same way that people are abused, tortured and killed, that eco-systems are ravaged and torn up and irreversibly damaged, just so I can have the choice of four kinds of marinated tuna in a can? So I can have two newsagents to choose from? So I can have Alice Cooper iron-on patches, miniature plastic bowling pins, disposable cameras, instant oats, microwavable popcorn, extra-soft, quilted and fucking fragranced toilet paper? McDonalds fucking everywhere [...] ugh, I can't take it. I need to go to bed. No wonder depression is on the rise—we have a kingdom of putrid revulsion to look down upon. Vegetarianism figures for Universal_cloak as a form of ethical consumption that enables resistance to feelings of modern demoralisation, to the feeling of being “swallowed up by the great hulky polluted monster, with ads and consumer shit everywhere around you.” For Universal_cloak, vegetarianism works to both critique and re-enchant modernity: a way of saying “she doesn’t agree with the modern world” but also building a “better world around herself.” She writes that following her “ideal diet” of “fair-trade, veg-o, organic and local” and not “white bread and processed meat” gives her a strong sense of “staving off her fear that I’m fucking up the planet”. Universal_cloak locates vegetarianism within an assemblage of self-interest, nutritional advantage, ecological sustainability, and anti-consumerism (Bennett). Universal_cloak, ­as Tester distinguishes, is neither a straightforward “lifestyle vegetarian” or “ethical vegetarian” (218), neither avoiding meat-eating solely because of reasons to do with health, well-being, and risk avoidance or due to an ethical regard for the being of animals. Universal_cloak shows up Tester’s critique on two fronts. First, she highlights how vegetarianism comes alive in an assemblage that includes not only the needs of the non-human animal but also the materiality of food production, marketing, consumerism, and issues of ecological unsustainability. Universal_Cloak’s practice reflects a wider “greening of the ‘vegetarian assemblage’.” As an advertisement on the Australian Vegetarian Society’s website states: “reduce your eco footprint—GO VEGO.” Secondly, Universal_cloak underscores how Tester is bound to an overly pessimistic reading of contemporary lifestyle cultures of well-being or self-improvement. Tester reads the “lifestyle vegetarian,” focused on well-being and health, as morally inferior. In contrast, Universal_cloak reveals how vegetarianism built around a culture of self-improvement—being true to her “hippy” identity—connects her to a larger web of interacting material flows and forces constituted between self, body, non-human animals, and planetary concern. As Bennett argues, recognising the entanglement of self within a larger assemblage of the non-human means that self-interest is refashioned as ecological and interconnected ­(119). Starbright, a 28-year-old woman from Brisbane and newly practising Buddhist, further captures the expansion of self-interest within the larger aggregate of ecological and non-human concern. Picking up a copy of Peter Singer’s call to arms Animal Liberation in a second-hand bookshop while travelling in Laos, Starbright describes how she initially decided to make “a firm decision to stick to vegetarianism.” Now a devoted vegan, Starbright abstains from eating and using “anything that comes from an animal”, including clothing and footwear (e.g., wool, silk, and leather), food sources such as eggs, milk, honey or cochineal (red dye from beetles) and cosmetic products that may either contain animal derivatives or have been tested on animals. While requiring rigorous discipline and regulation of the self—a kind of secular version of Weber’s Protestant ascetic—Starbright depicts her decision to become vegan as being “one of the easiest and most rewarding changes I've made in my life.” In explaining this, Starbright, in a manner similar to that of Universal_cloak, invokes the interconnections between humans and ecological and animal life as the basis of her moral motivation. She writes: “I’m just another well-informed individual who has discovered the virtues of not eating meat, like being environmentally and ethically aware.” Starbright positions her choice not to eat meat as both an ethical and political act, which compounds to improve the lives of both human and non-human animals: If I don’t support the meat industry, I make a tiny dent in the consumption rate. Others around me take on vegetarianism, and the effect increases. Others eat less meat around me, and the dent gets slightly bigger [...] Less grazing land needed means less environmental destruction as well. Less crops to feed the animals as well. Veganism is a “rewarding change” not only because “its good to reduce suffering” but also because it is “positive to [her] health”, that she is “happier now” and she “get[s] a positive feeling out of it.” Starbright adds: “it just makes me happy, and it reduces the suffering in the world—that’s the main reason I do it.” Vegetarianism enables Starbright to engage in clearly defined morally “good works,” where there is mutual reinforcement of the “feel-good factor” (Franklin 36) between personal wellbeing and “care for the Other” (Bauman 8): “it just seems positive for me, and positive for others.” This is a form of care not perpetuating a human centred approach, which Bennett (88) warns against, but one that recognises the entanglement of human lives with non-human lives—where humans are called upon to recognise that the plight of animals and the environment is also our own plight. Snig similarly places his practice of vegetarianism within a dialectic of self-fulfilment and interconnection with the non-human world. For him, vegetarianism is about maintaining what he refers to as “internal balance,” enabling him to avoid “over-filling” his “physical needs” bucket at the expense of his “emotional bucket.” Snig believes that much of the “physical or psychic illness, unhappiness and dissatisfaction” experienced in the contemporary West is due to an “over-filling” or “over-satisfaction of one at the expense of another.” Accordingly, he advocates the “positive effects” of “filling the emotional bucket” by “doing good works” which downplay the negative psychological consequences of an “excess of sex but no romantic love” and an “excess of shallow entertainment but no deeper intellectual life.” Snig writes: If you put yourself in a position where you have a greater capacity to do good works, the path to do so becomes easier. But if you’re hopelessly mired in your own filth, any benefit you do to the world will be by accident. If you’re so locked up in your tiny little world of tv-fast-food-boring job, you can’t see what the big wide world has to offer, and what you have to offer it. Step outside and it can become much clearer. Similar to Universal_cloak, there is an emphasis in Snig’s blog on how “doing good works” (which includes vegetarianism, alongside working as a paramedic, living in small flat in the city, and volunteering on conservation projects) enables a kind of moral renewal in a perceived demoralised consumer modernity. Abstaining from eating meat—sometimes alone, but often in conjunction with a range of other eco-friendly acts—works as a way of distancing oneself, of “stepping outside,” from the excess and waste of modernity and a practical way of “doing good,” of “trying to make a better world.” Conclusion This paper has analysed vegetarianism as a contemporary taste and consumer practice. Drawing upon Bourdieu, the first part argued that it is important to recognise vegetarianism as a taste practice with distinct social configurations that are classed and gendered. Vegetarianism is linked to taste as a vehicle of distinction, making and reinforcing social divisions and distance. In such an analysis, Vegetarianism aligns with feminine and middle-class notions of food as “light, healthy and non-fattening” and for men can figure as a rejection of dominant forms of masculinity. It was argued that while Bourdieu is useful for highlighting the social dimensions of taste, this form of analysis underplays the ethical substance of vegetarianism and the wider drivers of change in contemporary human–animal relations. Here the paper drew upon the work of Franklin, Tester, and Bennett. The first two authors underline the tensions between ethics, consumerism, and lifestyle in late-modernity while Bennett highlights the distribution of agency across human/non-human “assemblages.” This theoretical background was used as a framework to investigate blogged accounts of vegetarianism. The bloggers highlight how vegetarianism works as a moral space for performing “good works” and re-enchanting a demoralised consumer modernity. In Universal_cloak’s words, vegetarianism serves as a way of saying “you don’t agree with the modern world”. Critiquing Tester’s distinction between the “lifestyle” and “ethical” vegetarian, the bloggers show how vegetarianism/veganism is constituted in a complex assemblage between health, personal well-being, animal, and environmental concerns. Drawing upon Bennett, it was suggested that vegetarianism emerges as part of a refashioning of self-interest where concerns for self and personal wellbeing are articulated within wider concerns for nature, animals and the planet. This paper raises bigger questions concerning how animals enter into human lives as “particular” Others in conditions of growing human–animal closeness. For example, to what extent will responsibility for and with the non-human grow and how will this impact upon meat eating in the West? Will vegetarianism flourish as part of contemporary middle-class taste trends toward “green,” “healthy,” and “organic” consumption? The question remains whether vegetarianism will primarily be an expression of middle-class distinction or part of a genuine ecological sensibility where the non-human—both animal and planetary—play a significant role in the working out of moral sensibilities. Perhaps Universal_cloak’s practice of vegetarianism provides an important model, where contemporary concern for self-fulfilment, health, and well-being are articulated within a large assemblage of interdependence and connection with animals, nature and the environment. The recent UN recommendation to either reduce meat-intake or adopt a plant-based diet to minimise carbon emissions (Steinfeld et al.) suggests that the nexus between human, animal, and environmental responsibility is, and will continue to be, central to everyday moral negotiation in late-modernity. References Arluke, Arnold, and Clinton R. Sanders. Regarding Animals. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1996. Bauman, Zygmunt. Postmodern Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke UP, 2010. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Harvard UP, 1984. Franklin, Adrian. Animals and Modern Cultures: A Sociology of Human–Animal Relations in Modernity. London: Sage, 1999.Humphrey, Kim. Excess: Anti-Consumerism in the West. Cambridge: Polity, 2009. Keane, Anne, and Anna Willets. Concepts of Healthy Eating: An Anthropological Investigation in South-East London. London: Goldsmiths College, 1996. RealEat Survey Office. The RealEat Survey 1984–1993: Changing Attitudes to Meat Consumption. London: Vegetarian Society, 1995. Steinfeld, Henning, Pierre Gerber, Tom Wassenaar, Vincent Castel, Mauricio Rosales, M. and Cees de Haan. “LiveStock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options”. Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (2006). 10 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM›. Taylor, Charles. The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992. Tester, Keith. “The Moral Malaise of McDonaldization: The Values of Vegetarianism”. Resisting McDonaldization. Ed. Barry Smart. London: Sage, 1999. 207–222.

The release of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and his subsequent training of thousands of Climate Presenters marks a critical transition point in communication around climate change. An analysis of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth presentation and of the guidelines we were taught as Presenters in The Climate Project, show they reflect the marketing principles that the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report Weathercocks and Signposts (Crompton) argues cannot achieve the systemic and transformational changes required to address global warming. This paper will consider the ultimate effectiveness of social marketing approaches to Climate change communication and the Al Gore Climate Project in the light of the WWF critique. Both the film and the various slideshow presentations of An Inconvenient Truth conclude with a series of suggestions about how to “how to start” changing “the way you live.” The audience is urged to: Reduce your own emissions Switch to green power Offset the rest Spread the word The focus on changing individual consumption in An Inconvenient Truth is also reflected in the climate campaign page Get Involved on the website of the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF)—the Australian partner in Al Gore’s The Climate Project (TCP). Al Gore’s Climate Project, with over 3,000 Climate Presenters worldwide, could be seen as a giant experimental test of the merits of marketing approaches to social change as compared to the recommendations in the WWF critique authored by Crompton. In Orion magazine, Derrick Jensen has described this emphasis on “personal consumption” instead of “organized political resistance” as “a campaign of systematic misdirection.” Jensen points out that “even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent.” The latest scientific reports show we are on the edge of a tipping point into catastrophic climate change—runaway warming which would render the planet uninhabitable for most life forms, including humans (Hansen et al 13). To reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change to a still worrying 13% we need significant action between now and 2012, and carbon dioxide levels will need to be stabilised at between 350 and 375 parts per million by 2050 (Elzen and Meinshausen 17). Because Americans and Australians are taking far more than our share of the global atmospheric commons, we need to reduce our emissions to less than 90% below 1990 levels by 2050 as our share of the global emission reduction targets (Elzen and Meinshausen 24; Garnaut 283). In other words, if one takes the science seriously there is a huge shortfall between the reductions which can be achieved by individual changes to consumption and the scale of reductions that are required to reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change to a half-way tolerable level. The actions being promoted as solutions are nowhere near “inconvenient” enough to solve the problem. Like Crompton and Jensen I was inclined to take the gap between goal and means as overwhelming evidence for the inadequacy of marketing approaches emphasising changes to individual consumption choices. Like them I was concerned that the emphasis on consumption in marketing approaches may even reinforce the consumerism and materialism that drives the growth in emissions. Whilst being generally critical of marketing approaches, Crompton says he accepts the importance marketers place on tailoring the message to fit the motivations of the target audience (25). However, while Crompton describes Rose and Dade’s “Values Modes analysis” as “a sophisticated technique for audience segmentation” (21), he rejects the campaign strategies designed around the target audiences they identify (23). Market segmentation provides communications practitioners with the “extensive knowledge of whom you are trying to reach and what moves them” which is one of the “three must haves” of a successful communication campaign (Fenton 3). Rose and Dade’s segmentation analysis categorises people based on the motivational hierarchy in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. They identify three population groupings—the Settlers, driven by security; the Prospectors, esteem driven; and the Pioneers, who are motivated by intrinsic values (1). As with Maslow’s hierarchy these “Values Modes” are developmentally dynamic. The satisfaction of more basic needs, like physical safety and economic security, support a developmental pathway to the next level. Just as the satisfaction of the need for social acceptance and status free the individual to become motivated by self-actualisation, universal and compassionate ethics, and transcendence. Because individuals move in and out of Values Modes, depending on the degree to which economic, social and political conditions facilitate the satisfaction of their needs, the percentage of the population in each group varies across time and location (Rose and Dade 1). In 2007 the UK population was 20% Settlers, 40% Prospectors, and 40% Pioneers (Rose and Dade 1), but the distribution in other countries would need to be determined empirically. Rose et al provide a strategic rationale for a marketing based climate campaign targeted at changing the behaviours of Prospectors, rather than appealing to Pioneers. While the Pioneers are 40% of the population, they don’t like being “marketed at,” they seek out information for themselves and make up their own minds, and “will often have already considered your ideas and decided what to do” (6). They are also well catered for by environmental groups’ existing ethical and issues based campaigns (3). Prospectors, on the other hand, are the 40% of the population which are the “least reached” by existing ethical or issues oriented environmental campaigning; are the most enthusiastic (or “voracious”) consumers, so their choices will sway business; and they tend to be swinging voters, so if their opinions change it will sway politicians (4). Rose et al (13) found that in order to appeal to Prospectors a climate change communications campaign should: Refer to local, visible, negative changes involving loss or damage [In the UK] show the significance of UK emissions and those of normal people (i.e. like them) Use interest in homes and gardens Deploy the nag factor of their children Create offers which are above all easy, cost-effective, instant and painless Prospectors don’t like, and will be put off by campaigns that (Rose et al 13): Talk about the implications: too remote and they are not very bothered Use messengers (voices) which lack authority or could be challenged Criticise behaviours (e.g. wrong type of car, ‘wasting’ energy in your home) Ask them to give things up Ask them to be the first to change (amongst their peers) Invoke critical judgement by others Crompton recommends an environmental campaign that attempts to persuade Prospectors that they are wrong in thinking material consumption and “ostentatious displays of wealth” contribute to their happiness. Prospectors see precisely these sorts of comments by Concerned Ethicals as a judgemental criticism of their love of things, and a denial of their need for the acceptance and approval of others. Maslow’s developmental model, as well as the Value Modes research, would suggest that Crompton’s proposal is the exact opposite of what is required to move Prospectors into the Pioneer value mode. It is by accepting the values people have, and allowing them to meet the needs that drive them, that they can move on to more intrinsically motivated action. Crompton would appear to fall into the common “NGO or public sector campaign […] trap” of devising a campaign based on what will appeal to the 10% of the population that are Concerned Ethicals, but in the process “particularly annoy or intimidate” the strategically significant 40% of the population that are Prospectors (Rose et al 8). Crompton ignores the evidence from marketing campaign research that campaigns can’t directly change people’s basic motivations, while they can change people’s behaviours if they target their existing motivations. Contrary to Crompton’s claim that promoting green consumption will reinforce consumerism and materialism (16), Rose and Dade base their campaign strategy on the results of research into cognitive dissonance, which show that if you can get someone to act a certain way, they will alter their beliefs and preferences, as well as their self concept, to fit with their actions. Crompton confuses a tactic in a larger game, with the end goal of the game. “The trick is to get them to do the behaviour, not to develop the opinion” (Rose, “VBCOP” 2). Prospectors are persuaded to adopt a behaviour if they see it as “in,” and as what everyone else like them is doing. They are more easily persuaded to buy a product than adopt some other sort of behavioural change. The next part of an environmental marketing strategy like this is to label, praise and reward the behaviour (Futerra 11). Rose suggests that Prospectors can be engaged politically if governments are called on to recognise and reward the behaviour “say by giving them a tax break or paying them for their rooftop energy contribution” (“VBCOP” 3). Once governments have given such rewards, both Settlers and Propectors will fight to keep them, where they are normally disinclined to fight political battles. Once Prospectors identify themselves as, for example, in favour of renewable energy, politicians can be persuaded they need to act to get and keep votes, and business can be persuaded to change in order to continue to attract buyers for their products. In order to achieve the scale of emission reductions required individuals need to change their consumption patterns; politicians need to change the regulatory and planning context in which both individual and corporate decisions are made; and the economic system needs to be transformed so it internalises environmental costs and operates within environmental limits. Social marketing analyses have identified changing Prospectors buying habits as the wedge, or leverage point that can lead to such a cascading set of social, political and economic changes. Just as changing Prospector product choices can be exploited as a key leverage point, Al Gore identified getting United States commitment to emission reduction as a key leverage point towards achieving global commitments to binding reduction targets. Because the United States had the highest national greenhouse emissions, and was one of the two industrialised countries who had failed to sign the Kyoto Protocol, changing behaviour and belief in the United States was strategically critical to achieving global action on emissions reduction. Al Gore initially attempted to get the United States to sign the Kyoto Protocol and commit to emission reduction by working directly at the political level, without building the popular support for action that would encourage other politicians to support his proposals. In the movie, Al Gore talks about the defeat of his initial efforts to get the United States to sign the Kyoto Protocol, and of his recognition of the need to gain wider public support before political action would be taken. He talks about the unsuitability of the mass news media as a vehicle for achieving social and political change on climate emissions. The priority given to conflict as a news value means journalists focus on the personalities involved in disputes about climate change rather than provide an analysis of the issue. When climate experts explain the consensus position of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), they are “balanced” with opposing statements from the handful of (commonly fossil fuel industry funded) climate deniers. Because climate emissions are part of a complex process of slow change occurring over long time lines they do not fit easily into standard news values like timeliness, novelty and proximity (Harrison). When Al Gore realised he wouldn’t be able to gain the wider public support he needed through the mass news media he began a quest to spread his message “meeting by meeting,” “person by person.” Al Gore turned his slide show into a movie in order to deliver the message to more people than he could reach face to face, and then trained Presenters to reach even more people. When the movie won an Oscar for Best Documentary it turned Al Gore into something of a celebrity. Al Gore’s celebrity status rubs off on Climate Presenters through their association with him, giving them access to community and business groups across the world. When a celebrity recommends or displays a behaviour, Prospectors are more likely to see it as the in thing and thus more willing to do the recommended action. The movie created an opportunity for Al Gore to be a more persuasive messenger than he had been as a politician. Al Gore began The Climate Project to increase the impact of the movie and spread the message further than he could take it by himself. The multiplication of modes of communicating the message fits with Fenton Communications’ “Rule of Three.” In Now Hear This they say the target audience “should read about us in the paper, see us on TV, hear about us from a neighbour and a friend […] have their kid mention us […] and so on” (17). The Presenter training emphasises the “direct communication, especially face to face” recommended by Rose (“To do” 174). During the Presenter training Al Gore warned of the danger of being too negative as it risked moving people “from denial to despair without stopping to act,” and of the need to present the story in such a way as to create hope. This is backed up by the communications marketing literature, which warns that “negative messages may actually induce despair and actually [sic] paralysis while the positive focus can inspire” (Boykoff 172). While it employs dramatic visual images and animations, the movie tends to downplay the potential severity of the consequences of runaway global warming, and presents these in a way that gives the impression of a contracted time frame for the consequences of warming in order to activate motivation based on near term implications. The movie responds to Prospectors’ disinterest in distant implication of climate change by emphasising near-term threats, such as the rising monetary cost of damages, as well as threats to life and property from disease, drought, fire, flood, storm, and rising sea levels. After training an initial round of American Presenters, Al Gore identified training Australian Presenters as the next strategic priority. While Australia’s collective emissions are small, our per capita emissions are higher than those of Americans, and as the only other industrialised nation that had not signed, it was believed our becoming a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol would increase the pressure on the United States to sign. The ACF provided Australian Presenters with additional slides containing vivid images of Australian impacts, and Presenters were encouraged to find their own examples to illustrate impacts relevant to specific local audiences. The importance of identifying local impacts to persuade and move their audiences is impressed upon Presenters during the training. Regular slide updates reinforce this priority. While authors like Crompton and Jensen note the emphasis on changes in consumption as suggested solutions to climate change, other elements of the presentation are just as important in appealing to Prospectors. Prospectors want to belong and gain status by doing whatever is highly regarded by others. The presentation has numerous slides emphasising who else has made commitments to Kyoto and emission reduction. The American presentation includes lists of other countries, and towns and states in the United States that had signed up to Kyoto. The Australian presentation includes graphics emphasising the overwhelming number of Australians who support action. Prospectors don’t like being asked to give things up, and the presentation insists on the high cost of failing to act, compared to the small cost of acting now. Doing something to stop climate change is presented as easy and achievable. Contrary to Crompton’s claim that promoting green consumption would not build the widespread awareness and support for the more far-reaching government action that is required to achieve systemic change (9), the results of recent opinion research show that upwards of 80% of Americans support effective and wide-ranging action to reduce emissions and develop new renewable energy technologies (Climate Checklist). Whereas it would not have been surprising if the financial crisis had dimmed the degree of enthusiasm for action to reduce greenhouse emissions, the high support for action on climate change in their polling continues to encourage the Australian government to use it as a wedge issue against the opposition. Without high levels of public support, there would be little or no chance that politicians would be willing to vote for measures that will reduce emissions. That the push for change in individual consumption choices was only ever one tactic in a wider campaign is also demonstrated by the other projects instigated by Al Gore and his team. Projects like RepoWEr America and WE can solve the climate crisis leverage the interest developed by the Climate Project to increase public pressure on politicians to support regulatory change. The RepoWEr America and WE can solve the climate crisis sites target individuals as citizens and make it easy for them to participate in the political process. Forms help them sign petitions, write letters and meet with their elected officials, write for newspapers and call in to talkback radio, and organise local community meetings or events. Al Gore’s own web site adds a link to the Live Earth company to add to these arsenals. Live Earth “creates innovative, engaging events and media that challenge global leaders, local communities and every individual to actively participate in solving our planet's urgent environmental crises.” These sites provide the infrastructure to make it easy for individuals to move into action in the political domain. But they do it in ways that will appeal to Prospectors. They involve fun, their actions are celebrated, prizes are offered, the number of people involved is emphasised so they feel part of the “happening” thing. RepoWEr America and WE can solve the climate crisis help Prospectors to engage in political action in order to achieve regulatory change. Finally, or first, Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management Company, operating since 2004, is oriented towards systemic transformation in the economic system, so that economic drivers are aligned with sustainability imperatives. Al Gore and his partner David Blood reject Gross Domestic Product—the current measure of economic growth, and a major driver of unsustainable economic activity—as “dangerously imprecise in its ability to account for natural and human resources” and challenge business to accept the “need to internalize externalities” in order to create a sustainable economy. In their Thematic Research Highlights, Al Gore’s Generation company critiques the “Hedonic Treadmill”—which puts “material gains ahead of personal happiness” (32), and challenges “governments, companies, and individuals [...] to broaden their scope of responsibility to match their sphere of influence” (13). While the Climate Project would appear to ignore the inadequacy of individual consumption change as a means of emission reduction, the information and analysis targeted at business by Generation demonstrates this has not been ignored in the overall strategy to achieve systemic change. Al Gore suggests that material consumption should no longer be the measure of economic welfare, an argument he backs with an analysis showing business that long term wealth creation depends on accepting environmental and social sustainability as priorities. While An Inconvenient Truth promotes consumption change as the (inadequate) solution to Global Warming, this is just one strategically chosen tactic in a much larger and coordinated campaign to achieve systemic change through regulatory change and transformation of the economic system. References Australian Conservation Foundation. “Get Involved.” 27 Aug. 2009 < http://www.acfonline.org >. Path: Campaigns; Climate Project; Get Involved. Al Gore. AlGore.com. 27 Aug. 2009 < http://www.algore.com/ >. An Inconvenient Truth. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Paramount Classics and Participant Productions, 2006. Boykoff, Maxwell T. “Book Review on: Creating a Climate for Change: Communicating Climate Change and Facilitating Social Change. Eds. Susanne C. Moser and Lisa Dilling.” International Journal of Sustainability Communication 3 (2008): 171-175. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.ccp-online.org/docs/artikel/03/3_11_IJSC_Book_Review_Boykoff.pdf >. Climate Checklist: Recent Opinion Research Findings and Messaging Tips. 2007 Sightline Institute. 27 Aug. 2009. < http://www.sightline.org/research/sust_toolkit/communications-strategy/flashcard2-climate-research-compendium/ >. Crompton, Tom. Weathercocks and Signposts. World Wildlife Fund. April 2008. 27 Aug. 2009 < http://www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/weathercocks_report2.pdf >. Den Elzen, Michel, and Malte Meinshausen. “Meeting the EU 2°C Climate Target: Global and Regional Emission Implications”. Report 728001031/2005. 18 May 2005. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.rivm.nl/bibliotheek/rapporten/728001031.pdf >. Fenton Communications. Now Hear This: The 9 Laws of Successful Advocacy Communications. Fenton Communications. 2009. 24 Aug. 2009. < http://www.fenton.com/FENTON_IndustryGuide_NowHearThis.pdf >. Futerra Sustainability Communications. New Rules: New Game. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.futerra.co.uk/downloads/NewRules:NewGame.pdf >. Garnaut, Ross. “Targets and Trajectories.” The Garnaut Climate Change Review: Final Report. 2008. 277–298. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.garnautreview.org.au/pdf/Garnaut_Chapter12.pdf >. Generation Investment Management. Thematic Research Highlights. May 2007. 28 Aug. 2009 < http://www.generationim.com/media/pdf-generation-thematic-research-v13.pdf >. Generation Investment Management LLP 2004-09. < http://www.generationim.com/ >. Gore, Al and David Blood. “We Need Sustainable Capitalism: Nature Does Not Do Bailouts.” Generation Investment Management LLP. 5 Nov. 2008. 28 Aug. 2009 < http://www.generationim.com/sustainability/advocacy/sustainable-capitalism.html >. Hansen, James, Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha, David Beerling, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Mark Pagani, Maureen Raymo, Dana L. Royer and James C. Zachos. “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?” Open Atmospheric Science Journal 2 (2008): 217-231. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf >. Harrison, Karey. “Ontological Commitments and Bias in Environmental Reporting.” Environment and Society Conference. Sunshine Coast, Australia, 1999. Jackson, Tim. Prosperity without Growth? The Transition to a Sustainable Economy. Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Sustainable Development Commission. 30 March 2009. 5 Oct. 2009 < http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications/downloads/prosperity_without_growth_report.pdf >. Jensen, Derrick. “Forget Shorter Showers: Why Personal Change Does not Equal Political Change?” Orion July/Aug. 2009. 5 Aug. 2009 < http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801/ >. Live Earth. Live Earth 2009. 28 Aug. 2009 < http://liveearth.org/en >. RepoWEr America. The Alliance for Climate Protection. 2009. 27 Aug. 2009 < http://www.repoweramerica.org >. Rose, Chris, and Pat Dade. Using Values Modes. campaignstrategy.org 2007 < http://www.campaignstrategy.org/articles/usingvaluemodes.pdf >. Rose, Chris, Les Higgins and Pat Dadeii. “Who Gives a Stuff about Climate Change and Who's Taking Action—Part of the Nationally Representative British Values Survey.” 2008. 27 Aug. 2009 < http://www.campaignstrategy.org/whogivesastuff.pdf >. Rose, Chris, Pat Dade, and John Scott. Research into Motivating Prospectors, Settlers and Pioneers to Change Behaviours That Affect Climate Emissions. campaignstrategy.org 2007. 27 Aug. 2009 < http://www.campaignstrategy.org/articles/behaviourchange_climate.pdf >. Rose, Chris. “To Do and Not to Do.” How to Win Campaigns: 100 Steps to Success. London: Earthscan Publications, 2005. Rose, Chris. “VBCOP—A Unifying Campaign Strategy Model”. Campaignstrategy.org March 2009. 27 Aug. 2009 < http://www.campaignstrategy.org/articles/VBCOP_unifying_strategy_model.pdf >. The Climate Project. 27 Aug. 2009 < http://www.theclimateproject.org/ >. Turner, Graham. “A Comparison of the Limits to Growth with 30 Years of Reality.” Socio-Economics and the Environment in Discussion. CSIRO Working Paper Series. Canberra: CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems. June 2008. 5 Oct. 2009 < http://www.csiro.au/files/files/plje.pdf >. WE Can Solve the Climate Crisis. 2008-09. The Alliance for Climate Protection. 27 Aug. 2009 < http://www.wecansolveit.org >.

Perhaps nothing in media culture today makes clearer the connection between people’s bodies and their homes than the Emmy-winning reality TV program Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Home Edition is a spin-off from the original Extreme Makeover, and that fact provides in fundamental form the strong connection that the show demonstrates between bodies and houses. The first EM, initially popular for its focus on cosmetic surgery, laser skin and hair treatments, dental work, cosmetics and wardrobe for mainly middle-aged and self-described unattractive participants, lagged after two full seasons and was finally cancelled entirely, whereas EMHE has continued to accrue viewers and sponsors, as well as accolades (Paulsen, Poniewozik, EMHE Website, Wilhelm). That viewers and the ABC network shifted their attention to the reconstruction of houses over the original version’s direct intervention in problematic bodies indicates that sites of personal transformation are not necessarily within our own physical or emotional beings, but in the larger surround of our environments and in our cultural ideals of home and body. One effect of this shift in the Extreme Makeover format is that a seemingly wider range of narrative problems can be solved relating to houses than to the particular bodies featured on the original show. Although Extreme Makeover featured a few people who’d had previously botched cleft palate surgeries or mastectomies, as Cressida Heyes points out, “the only kind of disability that interests the show is one that can be corrected to conform to able-bodied norms” (22). Most of the recipients were simply middle-aged folks who were ordinary or aged in appearance; many of them seemed self-obsessed and vain, and their children often seemed disturbed by the transformation (Heyes 24). However, children are happy to have a brand new TV and a toy-filled room decorated like their latest fantasy, and they thereby can be drawn into the process of identity transformation in the Home Edition version; in fact, children are required of virtually all recipients of the show’s largess. Because EMHE can do “major surgery” or simply bulldoze an old structure and start with a new building, it is also able to incorporate more variety in its stories—floods, fires, hurricanes, propane explosions, war, crime, immigration, car accidents, unscrupulous contractors, insurance problems, terrorist attacks—the list of traumas is seemingly endless. Home Edition can solve any problem, small or large. Houses are much easier things to repair or reconstruct than bodies. Perhaps partly for this reason, EMHE uses disability as one of its major tropes. Until Season 4, Episode 22, 46.9 percent of the episodes have had some content related to disability or illness of a disabling sort, and this number rises to 76.4 percent if the count includes families that have been traumatised by the (usually recent) death of a family member in childhood or the prime of life by illness, accident or violence. Considering that the percentage of people living with disabilities in the U.S. is defined at 18.1 percent (Steinmetz), EMHE obviously favours them considerably in the selection process. Even the disproportionate numbers of people with disabilities living in poverty and who therefore might be more likely to need help—20.9 percent as opposed to 7.7 percent of the able-bodied population (Steinmetz)—does not fully explain their dominance on the program. In fact, the program seeks out people with new and different physical disabilities and illnesses, sending out emails to local news stations looking for “Extraordinary Mom / Dad recently diagnosed with ALS,” “Family who has a child with PROGERIA (aka ‘little old man’s disease’)” and other particular situations (Simonian). A total of sixty-five ill or disabled people have been featured on the show over the past four years, and, even if one considers its methods maudlin or exploitive, the presence of that much disability and illness is very unusual for reality TV and for TV in general. What the show purports to do is to radically transform multiple aspects of individuals’ lives—and especially lives marred by what are perceived as physical setbacks—via the provision of a luxurious new house, albeit sometimes with the addition of automobiles, mortgage payments or college scholarships. In some ways the assumptions underpinning EMHE fit with a social constructionist body theory that posits an almost infinitely flexible physical matter, of which the definitions and capabilities are largely determined by social concepts and institutions. The social model within the disability studies field has used this theoretical perspective to emphasise the distinction between an impairment, “the physical fact of lacking an arm or a leg,” and disability, “the social process that turns an impairment into a negative by creating barriers to access” (Davis, Bending 12). Accessible housing has certainly been one emphasis of disability rights activists, and many of them have focused on how “design conceptions, in relation to floor plans and allocation of functions to specific spaces, do not conceive of impairment, disease and illness as part of domestic habitation or being” (Imrie 91). In this regard, EMHE appears as a paragon. In one of its most challenging and dramatic Season 1 episodes, the “Design Team” worked on the home of the Ziteks, whose twenty-two-year-old son had been restricted to a sub-floor of the three-level structure since a car accident had paralyzed him. The show refitted the house with an elevator, roll-in bathroom and shower, and wheelchair-accessible doors. Robert Zitek was also provided with sophisticated computer equipment that would help him produce music, a life-long interest that had been halted by his upper-vertebra paralysis. Such examples abound in the new EMHE houses, which have been constructed for families featuring situations such as both blind and deaf members, a child prone to bone breaks due to osteogenesis imperfecta, legs lost in Iraq warfare, allergies that make mold life-threatening, sun sensitivity due to melanoma or polymorphic light eruption or migraines, fragile immune systems (often due to organ transplants or chemotherapy), cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, Krabbe disease and autism. EMHE tries to set these lives right via the latest in technology and treatment—computer communication software and hardware, lock systems, wheelchair-friendly design, ventilation and air purification set-ups, the latest in care and mental health approaches for various disabilities and occasional consultations with disabled celebrities like Marlee Matlin. Even when individuals or familes are “[d]iscriminated against on a daily basis by ignorance and physical challenges,” as the program website notes, they “deserve to have a home that doesn’t discriminate against them” (EMHE website, Season 3, Episode 4). The relief that they will be able to inhabit accessible and pleasant environments is evident on the faces of many of these recipients. That physical ease, that ability to move and perform the intimate acts of domestic life, seems according to the show’s narrative to be the most basic element of home. Nonetheless, as Robert Imrie has pointed out, superficial accessibility may still veil “a static, singular conception of the body” (201) that prevents broader change in attitudes about people with disabilities, their activities and their spaces. Starting with the story of the child singing in an attempt at self-comforting from Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, J. MacGregor Wise defines home as a process of territorialisation through specific behaviours. “The markers of home … are not simply inanimate objects (a place with stuff),” he notes, “but the presence, habits, and effects of spouses, children, parents, and companions” (299). While Ty Pennington, EMHE’s boisterous host, implies changes for these families along the lines of access to higher education, creative possibilities provided by musical instruments and disability-appropriate art materials, help with home businesses in the way of equipment and licenses and so on, the families’ identity-producing habits are just as likely to be significantly changed by the structural and decorative arrangements made for them by the Design Team. The homes that are created for these families are highly conventional in their structure, layout, decoration, and expectations of use. More specifically, certain behavioural patterns are encouraged and others discouraged by the Design Team’s assumptions. Several themes run through the show’s episodes: Large dining rooms provide for the most common of Pennington’s comments: “You can finally sit down and eat meals together as a family.” A nostalgic value in an era where most families have schedules full of conflicts that prevent such Ozzie-and-Harriet scenarios, it nonetheless predominates. Large kitchens allow for cooking and eating at home, though featured food is usually frozen and instant. In addition, kitchens are not designed for the families’ disabled members; for wheelchair users, for instance, counters need to be lower than usual with open space underneath, so that a wheelchair can roll underneath the counter. Thus, all the wheelchair inhabitants depicted will still be dependent on family members, primarily mothers, to prepare food and clean up after them. (See Imrie, 95-96, for examples of adapted kitchens.) Pets, perhaps because they are inherently “dirty,” are downplayed or absent, even when the family has them when EMHE arrives (except one family that is featured for their animal rescue efforts); interestingly, there are no service dogs, which might obviate the need for some of the high-tech solutions for the disabled offered by the show. The previous example is one element of an emphasis on clutter-free cleanliness and tastefulness combined with a rampant consumerism. While “cultural” elements may be salvaged from exotic immigrant families, most of the houses are very similar and assume a certain kind of commodified style based on new furniture (not humble family hand-me-downs), appliances, toys and expensive, prefab yard gear. Sears is a sponsor of the program, and shopping trips for furniture and appliances form a regular part of the program. Most or all of the houses have large garages, and the families are often given large vehicles by Ford, maintaining a positive take on a reliance on private transportation and gas-guzzling vehicles, but rarely handicap-adapted vans. Living spaces are open, with high ceilings and arches rather than doorways, so that family members will have visual and aural contact. Bedrooms are by contrast presented as private domains of retreat, especially for parents who have demanding (often ill or disabled) children, from which they are considered to need an occasional break. All living and bedrooms are dominated by TVs and other electronica, sometimes presented as an aid to the disabled, but also dominating to the point of excluding other ways of being and interacting. As already mentioned, childless couples and elderly people without children are completely absent. Friends buying houses together and gay couples are also not represented. The ideal of the heterosexual nuclear family is thus perpetuated, even though some of the show’s craftspeople are gay. Likewise, even though “independence” is mentioned frequently in the context of families with disabled members, there are no recipients who are disabled adults living on their own without family caretakers. “Independence” is spoken of mostly in terms of bathing, dressing, using the bathroom and other bodily aspects of life, not in terms of work, friendship, community or self-concept. Perhaps most salient, the EMHE houses are usually created as though nothing about the family will ever again change. While a few of the projects have featured terminally ill parents seeking to leave their children secure after their death, for the most part the families are considered oddly in stasis. Single mothers will stay single mothers, even children with conditions with severe prognoses will continue to live, the five-year-old will sleep forever in a fire-truck bed or dollhouse room, the occasional grandparent installed in his or her own suite will never pass away, and teenagers and young adults (especially the disabled) will never grow up, marry, discover their homosexuality, have a falling out with their parents or leave home. A kind of timeless nostalgia, hearkening back to Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, pervades the show. Like the body-modifying Extreme Makeover, the Home Edition version is haunted by the issue of normalisation. The word ‘normal’, in fact, floats through the program’s dialogue frequently, and it is made clear that the goal of the show is to restore, as much as possible, a somewhat glamourised, but status quo existence. The website, in describing the work of one deserving couple notes that “Camp Barnabas is a non-profit organisation that caters to the needs of critically and chronically ill children and gives them the opportunity to be ‘normal’ for one week” (EMHE website, Season 3, Episode 7). Someone at the network is sophisticated enough to put ‘normal’ in quotation marks, and the show demonstrates a relatively inclusive concept of ‘normal’, but the word dominates the show itself, and the concept remains largely unquestioned (See Canguilhem; Davis, Enforcing Normalcy; and Snyder and Mitchell, Narrative, for critiques of the process of normalization in regard to disability). In EMHE there is no sense that disability or illness ever produces anything positive, even though the show also notes repeatedly the inspirational attitudes that people have developed through their disability and illness experiences. Similarly, there is no sense that a little messiness can be creatively productive or even necessary. Wise makes a distinction between “home and the home, home and house, home and domus,” the latter of each pair being normative concepts, whereas the former “is a space of comfort (a never-ending process)” antithetical to oppressive norms, such as the association of the home with the enforced domesticity of women. In cases where the house or domus becomes a place of violence and discomfort, home becomes the process of coping with or resisting the negative aspects of the place (300). Certainly the disabled have experienced this in inaccessible homes, but they may also come to experience a different version in a new EMHE house. For, as Wise puts it, “home can also mean a process of rationalization or submission, a break with the reality of the situation, self-delusion, or falling under the delusion of others” (300). The show’s assumption that the construction of these new houses will to a great extent solve these families’ problems (and that disability itself is the problem, not the failure of our culture to accommodate its many forms) may in fact be a delusional spell under which the recipient families fall. In fact, the show demonstrates a triumphalist narrative prevalent today, in which individual happenstance and extreme circumstances are given responsibility for social ills. In this regard, EMHE acts out an ancient morality play, where the recipients of the show’s largesse are assessed and judged based on what they “deserve,” and the opening of each show, when the Design Team reviews the application video tape of the family, strongly emphasises what good people these are (they work with charities, they love each other, they help out their neighbours) and how their situation is caused by natural disaster, act of God or undeserved tragedy, not their own bad behaviour. Disabilities are viewed as terrible tragedies that befall the young and innocent—there is no lung cancer or emphysema from a former smoking habit, and the recipients paralyzed by gunshots have received them in drive-by shootings or in the line of duty as police officers and soldiers. In addition, one of the functions of large families is that the children veil any selfish motivation the adults may have—they are always seeking the show’s assistance on behalf of the children, not themselves. While the Design Team always notes that there are “so many other deserving people out there,” the implication is that some people’s poverty and need may be their own fault. (See Snyder and Mitchell, Locations 41-67; Blunt and Dowling 116-25; and Holliday.) In addition, the structure of the show—with the opening view of the family’s undeserved problems, their joyous greeting at the arrival of the Team, their departure for the first vacation they may ever have had and then the final exuberance when they return to the new house—creates a sense of complete, almost religious salvation. Such narratives fail to point out social support systems that fail large numbers of people who live in poverty and who struggle with issues of accessibility in terms of not only domestic spaces, but public buildings, educational opportunities and social acceptance. In this way, it echoes elements of the medical model, long criticised in disability studies, where each and every disabled body is conceptualised as a site of individual aberration in need of correction, not as something disabled by an ableist society. In fact, “the house does not shelter us from cosmic forces; at most it filters and selects them” (Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, qtd. in Frichot 61), and those outside forces will still apply to all these families. The normative assumptions inherent in the houses may also become oppressive in spite of their being accessible in a technical sense (a thing necessary but perhaps not sufficient for a sense of home). As Tobin Siebers points out, “[t]he debate in architecture has so far focused more on the fundamental problem of whether buildings and landscapes should be universally accessible than on the aesthetic symbolism by which the built environment mirrors its potential inhabitants” (“Culture” 183). Siebers argues that the Jamesonian “political unconscious” is a “social imaginary” based on a concept of perfection (186) that “enforces a mutual identification between forms of appearance, whether organic, aesthetic, or architectural, and ideal images of the body politic” (185). Able-bodied people are fearful of the disabled’s incurability and refusal of normalisation, and do not accept the statistical fact that, at least through the process of aging, most people will end up dependent, ill and/or disabled at some point in life. Mainstream society “prefers to think of people with disabilities as a small population, a stable population, that nevertheless makes enormous claims on the resources of everyone else” (“Theory” 742). Siebers notes that the use of euphemism and strategies of covering eventually harm efforts to create a society that is home to able-bodied and disabled alike (“Theory” 747) and calls for an exploration of “new modes of beauty that attack aesthetic and political standards that insist on uniformity, balance, hygiene, and formal integrity” (Culture 210). What such an architecture, particularly of an actually livable domestic nature, might look like is an open question, though there are already some examples of people trying to reframe many of the assumptions about housing design. For instance, cohousing, where families and individuals share communal space, yet have private accommodations, too, makes available a larger social group than the nuclear family for social and caretaking activities (Blunt and Dowling, 262-65). But how does one define a beauty-less aesthetic or a pleasant home that is not hygienic? Post-structuralist architects, working on different grounds and usually in a highly theoretical, imaginary framework, however, may offer another clue, as they have also tried to ‘liberate’ architecture from the nostalgic dictates of the aesthetic. Ironically, one of the most famous of these, Peter Eisenman, is well known for producing, in a strange reversal, buildings that render the able-bodied uncomfortable and even sometimes ill (see, in particular, Frank and Eisenman). Of several house designs he produced over the years, Eisenman notes that his intention was to dislocate the house from that comforting metaphysic and symbolism of shelter in order to initiate a search for those possibilities of dwelling that may have been repressed by that metaphysic. The house may once have been a true locus and symbol of nurturing shelter, but in a world of irresolvable anxiety, the meaning and form of shelter must be different. (Eisenman 172) Although Eisenman’s starting point is very different from that of Siebers, it nonetheless resonates with the latter’s desire for an aesthetic that incorporates the “ragged edge” of disabled bodies. Yet few would want to live in a home made less attractive or less comfortable, and the “illusion” of permanence is one of the things that provide rest within our homes. Could there be an architecture, or an aesthetic, of home that could create a new and different kind of comfort and beauty, one that is neither based on a denial of the importance of bodily comfort and pleasure nor based on an oppressively narrow and commercialised set of aesthetic values that implicitly value some people over others? For one thing, instead of viewing home as a place of (false) stasis and permanence, we might see it as a place of continual change and renewal, which any home always becomes in practice anyway. As architect Hélène Frichot suggests, “we must look toward the immanent conditions of architecture, the processes it employs, the serial deformations of its built forms, together with our quotidian spatio-temporal practices” (63) instead of settling into a deadening nostalgia like that seen on EMHE. If we define home as a process of continual territorialisation, if we understand that “[t]here is no fixed self, only the process of looking for one,” and likewise that “there is no home, only the process of forming one” (Wise 303), perhaps we can begin to imagine a different, yet lovely conception of “house” and its relation to the experience of “home.” Extreme Makeover: Home Edition should be lauded for its attempts to include families of a wide variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds, various religions, from different regions around the U.S., both rural and suburban, even occasionally urban, and especially for its bringing to the fore how, indeed, structures can be as disabling as any individual impairment. That it shows designers and builders working with the families of the disabled to create accessible homes may help to change wider attitudes and break down resistance to the building of inclusive housing. However, it so far has missed the opportunity to help viewers think about the ways that our ideal homes may conflict with our constantly evolving social needs and bodily realities. References Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Tr. Maria Jolas. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969. Blunt, Alison, and Robyn Dowling. Home. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Canguilhem, Georges. The Normal and the Pathological. New York: Zone Books, 1991. Davis, Lennard. Bending Over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism & Other Difficult Positions. New York: NYUP, 2002. ———. Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body. New York: Verso, 1995. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Tr. B. Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. ———. What Is Philosophy? Tr. G. Burchell and H. Tomlinson. London and New York: Verso, 1994. Eisenman, Peter Eisenman. “Misreading” in House of Cards. 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Macgregor. “Home: Territory and Identity.” Cultural Studies 14.2 (2000): 295-310. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Roney, Lisa. "The Extreme Connection Between Bodies and Houses." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/03-roney.php>. APA Style Roney, L. (Aug. 2007) "The Extreme Connection Between Bodies and Houses," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/03-roney.php>.