Week 2 Parking-stress Research

I conducted some web-based research into existing research on the correlation between parking and stress/anxiety/negative mental health and was surprised to find very little hard data.

One very dense study I found took me 10 minutes to figure out that the conductors of the study were using the term 'stress' in parking spheres as a proxy for phrases like 'congestion', 'business', 'use', 'traffic-density' etc, and wasn't actually addressing anything to do with mental health, rather solely efficient city road planning.

I did, however, find multiple articles (most of which coming from UK websites) discussing parking anxiety in semi-colloquial ways, some of which loosely referencing a certain set of statistics from the UK's AA polls.

Here are some screenshots:



https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/jo-wimblegroves/car-park-anxiety-its-a-re_b_15267800.html?guccounter=1



https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/01/motorists-spend-four-days-year-looking-parking-space/





http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-3401389/Drivers-avoid-using-car-don-t-lose-spot-street.html


This last article has the best stats from the AA poll:

"one in 10 surveyed by the AA said there have been times when they decided not to use their car in fear they'd not find another available space on return."
"The survey results showed a big chunk of motorists are stressing about parking. Almost a fifth (19 per cent) said they 'always worry' about being able to park as they near their homes.
The AA polled 25,000 drivers in total, with the results suggesting Londoners have the highest parking-related stress levels.
Of all the capital's drivers surveyed, 36 per cent said they get anxious about parking. Almost a quarter said they postponed or abandoned journeys altogether because they panicked they wouldn't find an available space near where they live."

So although there is no NZ relevant study that I can find, and not much out there at all, the evidence from this UK poll suggests that it is quantifiable in human nature as a city-dweller to become anxious about finding a place to put your car away from home or at home, enough for us to validate our hypothesis that parking is quite a prominent source of city-related stress!

MK


During today's class we went through the collaboration agreement between partners and continued to work through our research and journey mapping, Through some research I have done I have realized that there is a lot of facts and stats to do with parking in the UK and many articles have been based there. I have found articles that talk about peoples experience but haven't found a huge amount about the statistics of parking. There is proof of it being an issue and people struggle with stress and anxiety around the struggle of parking. This can lead to big health problems such as high blood pressure, heart conditions, and many other symptoms.  







SH










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