Survey Background

Spare The Air is a program designed to encourage drivers to voluntarily reduce the number of trips they make in their vehicles on days of unhealthy air. Since its inception in 1995, the effectiveness of the program has been measured annually through telephone surveys conducted with residents of the Sacramento region on both Spare The Air days as well as on non-Spare The Air, or Control, days.

Awareness of the program, self-reported driving reduction, and estimated emission reductions are all used in evaluating the success of the program. The use of Control-day interviewing increases the accuracy of the evaluation as it corrects for possible over-estimation of the impact of the program as well as possible over-stated driving reduction due to air quality concerns.

Previous research has indicated that there is a fairly complex relationship among the number of Spare The Air days in a given summer season, the intensity of the episodes (single day vs. multi-day episodes), the advertising budget and media coverage, the temperatures exhibited during the season, whether extraordinary events such as wildfires occur; and awareness of the campaign as well as voluntary driving reduction on the part of the residents.

Below you'll find the several survey results.

This Web site brought to you by the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District and the air districts of the Sacramento region. Copyright 2006. To contact us, please send an e-mail to sparetheair@sbcglobal.net.

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2008
Summer Smog Season

Spare The Air Days: 8

8-hour Exceedances: 30