Citizen-oriented Environmental Information Services: Usage and Impact

Abstract

Citizens are interested in making use of EI services that allow them to have a better overview of the quality of the environment they live in. In addition, such services support environmental awareness and advance the understanding concerning the result that everyday human activity and tasks have to the quality of human life. Yet, the lack of sufficient EI services being made available to citizens, poses difficulties when one needs to draw certain qualitative or quantitative conclusions concerning their usage and impact. An additional difficulty results from the complexity of the human behaviour and the parameters influencing it, as part of the approach that one needs to apply when trying to study changes in human behaviour as resulting from the usage of contemporary electronic EI services. In the frame of the present paper, information concerning the usage, content variation and perception of air quality related, stateof- the-art, electronic information services, are presented, on the basis of the APNEE-TU project outcomes. For this purpose, information resulting from the field trials of certain EI services is used. Conclusions are drawn concerning the concept, the content and the acceptance of such services.