The COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly affected all aspects of our daily lives worldwide. Each country on the planet has set its measures to protect and restrict the freedom of the individual to be protected. In this context, distance work and education have been significantly utilized. However, several studies show that these changes have created psychological and social problems in the population. In this paper, we examine the perspective of academic teachers concerning distance education during the pandemic. In addition, we examine the burnout level of the teachers and their overall academic satisfaction. Our sample consists of academic teachers residing in Greece and in The Netherlands, to carry out a comparative study between the two countries.207 respondents participated (n: 112 Greeks, m: 95 Dutch) filling in a 54-statements survey regarding job satisfaction and burnout levels. Results show an overall good to very good satisfaction regarding the work conditions, but a quite high percentage of burnout danger (more that 77% for both countries).
LINK
This paper introduces and explores the psychological and social factors that both contribute to and inhibit behaviour change vis-à-vis sustainable (tourist) mobility. It is based on papers presented at the Freiburg 2012 workshop. Specifically, it reviews climate change attitudes and perceptions, the psychological benefits of tourism mobilities, addictive elements of mobility and social norming effects, the attitude-behaviour gap (i.e. cognitive dissonance between understandings of, and responses to, climate change), the psychology of modal shifts, the psychology of travel speed/time and psychological explanations for the perceived importance of long distance travel. It notes that anthropogenic climate change is an inescapable reality and that tourism's share of greenhouse gas emissions appears set to rise substantially. There is little prospect of technical solutions adequately addressing this problem. The paper concludes that, while a comprehensive understanding of tourist psychology is necessary to inform policy-makers, it alone will be insufficient to achieve emission reductions, and bring tourism to a climatically sustainable pathway, if treated in isolation. Radical change in the structures of provision is also necessary. That change may take the form of infrastructure planning, including financial and economic infrastructure (e.g. taxation regimes and emission trading schemes) for sustainable mobility.
LINK
While criminality is digitizing, a theory-based understanding of the impact of cybercrime on victims is lacking. Therefore, this study addresses the psychological and financial impact of cybercrime on victims, applying the shattered assumptions theory (SAT) to predict that impact. A secondary analysis was performed on a representative data set of Dutch citizens (N = 33,702), exploring the psychological and financial impact for different groups of cybercrime victims. The results showed a higher negative impact on emotional well-being for victims of person-centered cybercrime, victims for whom the offender was an acquaintance, and victims whose financial loss was not compensated and a lower negative impact on emotional well-being for victims with a higher income. The study led to novel scientific insights and showed the applicability of the SAT for developing hypotheses about cybercrime victimization impact. In this study, most hypotheses had to be rejected, leading to the conclusion that more work has to be done to test the applicability of the SAT in the field of cybercrime. Furthermore, policy implications were identified considering the prioritization of and approach to specific cybercrimes, treatment of victims, and financial loss compensation.
MULTIFILE
Sustainable business decision-making as villagers of the world In making our society resilient and future-proof we are faced with many complex and multi-faceted challenges and opportunities. Many promising sustainable initiatives require the proactive contribution of businesses to be successful, but fail to reach the required decision making level of individuals and companies, and thus fail to reach their positive impact. The result is a multiple waste: in creativity and innovation, in investment of the organisations involved, in opportunities to improve society and in our overall belief that we can make the necessary changes. In this project we focus on the reasons why individuals and thus companies act and decide negatively on new and existing sustainable innovations and projects, starting from the perspective that a professional’s and a company’s inherent sustainable decision making is at the heart of truly improving society. The aim is to create multiple value (economic, social and ecological) of SMEs by increasing the success rate of sustainability initiatives out of an implicit business professional’s choice to do so. Based on the theory of psychological distance, we combine exploratory case studies of successful pilots with exploratory research via interviews with business decision makers, to analyse what drives professional’s and companies’ decision making, and how this affects sustainable initiatives. The aim is to propose ways to increase the quality of sustainable decision making, and thus the likelihood of success. The learnings are translated to practical guidelines a SME should consider for executing their business in the most sustainable way, and form a base for further applied research on sustainable business behaviour towards a circular economy.
