Creativity methods applied to environmentally significant behaviour: Exploring creative ideas to improve public transit and 'green' people's perspectives on heating.

摘要

Environmental degradation has far-reaching consequences that affect current and future generations. An important factor to consider is environmentally significant behaviour, which looks at the combined effects of humans on the various ecosystems around them. In this research project, creativity methods were applied to explore ways of positively changing people's perspectives on public transit and residential heating, both of which are environmentally significant behaviours, via lead user experiences. From the research data collected while working to improve the Toronto Transit Commission, it was believed that a retrofitting of their Intelligent Transportation Systems would lead to increased ridership, customer satisfaction and quality of service. The thoughts and comments of five lead users in a residential heating experiment confirmed that it should be relatively easy and feasible to lower the thermostat settings a few degrees during the winter in Canada. For further research, it would be interesting to test people's ideas on the necessity of air-conditioning in a generally temperate Canada.