Oxford Library of Psychology
Oxford Handbooks Online Oxford Library of Psychology The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Subject: Psychology Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Oxford Library of Psychology EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Peter E. Nathan AREA EDITORS:
Clinical Psychology David H. Barlow Cognitive Neuroscience Kevin N. Ochsner and Stephen M. Kosslyn Cognitive Psychology Daniel Reisberg Counseling Psychology Elizabeth M. Altmaier and Jo-Ida C. Hansen Developmental Psychology Philip David Zelazo Health Psychology Howard S. Friedman History of Psychology
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Oxford Library of Psychology David B. Baker Methods and Measurement Todd D. Little Neuropsychology Kenneth M. Adams Organizational Psychology Steve W. J. Kozlowski Personality and Social Psychology Kay Deaux and Mark Snyder
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Oxford Handbooks Online [UNTITLED] The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Subject: Psychology Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
(p. iv) Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 © Oxford University Press 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,without the prior permission in writing of Oxford UniversityPress, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriatereproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above shouldbe sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form Page 1 of 2
[UNTITLED] and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Oxford handbook of environmental and conservation psychology / edited by Susan Clayton. p. cm.—(Oxford library of psychology) ISBN 978–0–19–973302–6 1. Nature – Psychological aspects. 2. Environmental psychology. 3. Human ecology – Psychological aspects. I. Clayton, Susan D., 1960 BF353.5.N37O94 2012 333.701ʹ9—dc23 2012020048 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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[UNTITLED]
Oxford Handbooks Online [UNTITLED] The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Subject: Psychology Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
(p. v) This volume is dedicated to Gabriel Moser, who died in April 2011 shortly after completing work on his chapter for the handbook. Moser was an important figure in environmental psychology, particularly in Europe, where he was the first professor of environmental psychology in France. He had a direct influence in training and supporting young researchers and new groups in environmental psychology in many countries. In addition, he strengthened the institutional framework for environmental psychology, particularly through his efforts on behalf of the International Association for PeopleEnvironment Studies, of which he was president from 2004 to 2008. His many books and papers, which emphasized the urban environment, will have a lasting impact on the field and his warmth and generosity will be remembered by the many colleagues who also consider themselves his friends. (p. vi)
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Oxford Library of Psychology
Oxford Handbooks Online Oxford Library of Psychology The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Subject: Psychology Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Oxford Library of Psychology The Oxford Library of Psychology, a landmark series of handbooks, is published by Oxford University Press, one of the world’s oldest and most highly respected publishers, with a tradition of publishing significant books in psychology. The ambitious goal of the Oxford Library of Psychology is nothing less than to span a vibrant, wide-ranging field and, in so doing, to fill a clear market need. Encompassing a comprehensive set of handbooks, organized hierarchically, the Library incorporates volumes at different levels, each designed to meet a distinct need. At one level are a set of handbooks designed broadly to survey the major subfields of psychology; at another are numerous handbooks that cover important current focal research and scholarly areas of psychology in depth and detail. Planned as a reflection of the dynamism of psychology, the Library will grow and expand as psychology itself develops, thereby highlighting significant new research that will impact on the field. Adding to its accessibility and ease of use, the Library will be published in print and, later on, electronically. The Library surveys psychology’s principal subfields with a set of handbooks that capture the current status and future prospects of those major subdisciplines. This initial set includes handbooks of social and personality psychology, clinical psychology, counseling psychology, school psychology, educational psychology, industrial and organizational psychology, cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, methods and measurements, history, neuropsychology, personality assessment, developmental psychology, and more. Each handbook undertakes to review one of psychology’s major subdisciplines with breadth, comprehensiveness, and exemplary scholarship. In addition to these broadly conceived volumes, the Library also includes a large number of handbooks designed to explore in depth more specialized areas of scholarship and research, such as stress, health and coping, anxiety and related disorders, cognitive development, or child and adolescent assessment. In contrast to the broad coverage of the subfield handbooks, each of these latter volumes focuses on an especially productive, more highly focused line of scholarship and research.
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Oxford Library of Psychology Whether at the broadest or most specific level, however, all of the Library handbooks offer synthetic coverage that reviews and evaluates the relevant past and present research and anticipates research in the future. Each handbook in the Library includes introductory and concluding chapters written by its editor to provide a roadmap to the handbook’s table of contents and to offer informed anticipations of significant future developments in that field. An undertaking of this scope calls for handbook editors and chapter authors who are established scholars in the areas about which they write. Many of the nation’s and world’s most productive and best-respected psychologists have agreed to edit Library handbooks or write authoritative chapters in their areas of expertise. (p. x) For whom has the Oxford Library of Psychology been written? Because of its breadth, depth, and accessibility, the Library serves a diverse audience, including graduate students in psychology and their faculty mentors, scholars, researchers, and practitioners in psychology and related fields. Each will find in the Library the information they seek on the subfield or focal area of psychology in which they work or are interested. Befitting its commitment to accessibility, each handbook includes a comprehensive index, as well as extensive references to help guide research. And because the Library was designed from its inception as an online as well as a print resource, its structure and contents will be readily and rationally searchable online. Further, once the Library is released online, the handbooks will be regularly and thoroughly updated. In summary, the Oxford Library of Psychology will grow organically to provide a thoroughly informed perspective on the field of psychology, one that reflects both psychology’s dynamism and its increasing interdisciplinarity. Once published electronically, the Library is also destined to become a uniquely valuable interactive tool, with extended search and browsing capabilities. As you begin to consult this handbook, we sincerely hope you will share our enthusiasm for the more than 5 -year tradition of Oxford University Press for excellence, innovation, and quality, as exemplified by the Oxford Library of Psychology. Peter E. Nathan Editor-in-Chief Oxford Library of Psychology
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About the Editor
Oxford Handbooks Online About the Editor The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Subject: Psychology Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
About the Editor Susan D. Clayton Susan D. Clayton is Whitmore-Williams Professor of Psychology at the College of Wooster in Ohio. With a PhD in social psychology from Yale, she is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and a past president of the Society for Environmental, Population, and Conservation Psychology. Her research addresses the social context surrounding people’s relationship with the natural environment. (p. xii)
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Contributors
Oxford Handbooks Online Contributors The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Subject: Psychology Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Contributors Susana Alves Faculty of Engineering & ArchitectureDepartment of Architecture Okan Üniversitesi Tuzla KampüsüAkfırat-Tuzla/Istanbul, Turkey
Cláudia Campos Andrade Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) Centro de Investigação e Intervenção Social (CIS-IUL) Lisbon, Portugal
Clare L. Barratt Department of Psychology Texas A&M University College Station, TX
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Contributors
Brittany Bloodhart Department of Psychology The Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA
Marino Bonaiuto CIRPA (Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerca in Psicologia Ambientale) Dipartimento di Psicologia dei Processi di Sviluppo e Socializzazione Sapienza Università di Roma Rome, Italy
Mirilia Bonnes Department of Social and Developmental Psychology Sapienza University of Rome Centre for Inter-University Research in Environmental Psychology Rome, Italy
Barbara B. Brown Department of Psychology University of Utah Salt Lake City, UT
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Contributors
Giuseppe Carrus Department of Cultural and Educational Studies, University of Roma Tre Centre for Inter-University Research in Environmental Psychology Rome, Italy
Louise Chawla College of Architecture and Planning University of Colorado Boulder, CO
Charlotte Clark Centre for Psychiatry Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry London, UK
Susan D. Clayton Department of Psychology The College of Wooster Wooster, OH
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Contributors
Víctor Corral-Verdugo Division de Ciencias Sociales University of Sonora at Hermosillo Los Portales Hermosillo, Mexico
Rosanna Crombie Centre for Psychiatry Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry London, UK
Judith I. M. de Groot School of Design, Engineering & Computing Bournemouth University Dorset, UK
Victoria Derr College of Architecture and Planning University of Colorado Boulder, CO
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Contributors
(p. xiv) Ann Sloan Devlin Department of Psychology Connecticut College New London, CT
Blanca S. Fraijo-Sing Division de Ciencias Sociales University of Sonora at Hermosillo Los Portales Hermosillo, Mexico
Martha Frías-Armenta Division de Ciencias Sociales University of Sonora at Hermosillo Los Portales Hermosillo, Mexico
Robert Gifford Department of Psychology University of Victoria Victoria, Canada
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Contributors
Ferdinando Fornara Department of Psychology University of Cagliari CIRPA (Centre for Inter-University Research on Environmental Psychology) Cagliari, Italy
Harry Heft Department of Psychology Denison University Granville, OH
Florian G. Kaiser Department of Social Psychology Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany
Elisabeth Kals Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology The Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt Eichstätt, Germany
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Contributors
Kalevi M. Korpela School of Social Sciences and Humanities University of Tampere Tampere, Finland
Michael K. Lindell Hazard Reduction & Recovery Center Texas A&M University College Station, TX
Ezra M. Markowitz Environmental Studies Program Department of Psychology University of Oregon Eugene, OR
Melinda S. Merrick Department of Geography and Environmental Studies Northeastern Illinois University Chicago, IL
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Contributors
Taciano L. Milfont Centre for Applied Cross-Cultural Research School of Psychology Victoria University of Wellington Wellington, New Zealand
Gabriel Moser Institute of Psychology University of Paris Descartes LPS, University of Aix-en-Provence Paris, France
Markus M. Müller The Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt Eichstätt, Germany
Olin Eugene Myers Jr. Huxley College of the Environment Western Washington University Bellingham, WA
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Contributors
Blair E. Nancarrow The Fenner School of Environment and Society The Australian National University Ellery Crescent, Acton, Australia
Susan Opotow John Jay College and The Graduate Center City University of New York New York, NY
Kimberly A. Rollings Department of Design and Environmental Analysis Cornell University Ithaca, NY
Keith C. Russell Department of Physical Education, Health and Recreation Western Washington University Bellingham, WA
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Contributors
Charles D. Samuelson Department of Psychology Texas A&M University College Station, TX
(p. xv) Henry Sanoff College of Design North Carolina State University Raleigh, NC
Carol D. Saunders Department of Environmental Studies Antioch University New England Keene, NH
Massimiliano Scopelliti LUMSA University Centre for Inter-University Research in Environmental Psychology Rome, Italy
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Contributors
P. Wesley Schultz Department of Psychology California State University, San Marcos San Marcos, CA
Henk Staats Instituut Psychologie, Sociale en Organisatiepsychologie Leiden University Leiden, The Netherlands
Stephen A. Stansfeld Centre for Psychiatry Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry London, UK
Linda Steg Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences University of Groningen Groningen, The Netherlands
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Contributors
Peter Suedfeld Department of Psychology University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC, Canada
Reuven Sussman Department of Psychology University of Victoria Victoria, Canada
Janet K. Swim Department of Psychology The Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA
Geoffrey J. Syme Centre for Planning Edith Cowan University Perth, Australia
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Contributors
César O. Tapia-Fonllem Division de Ciencias Sociales University of Sonora at Hermosillo Los Portales Hermosillo, Mexico
Jennifer A. Veitch NRC Construction Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Joanne Vining Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL
Rotraut Walden Institute for Psychology University in Koblenz Koblenz, Germany
Arjen E.J. Wals Education & Competence Studies Wageningen University Wageningen, The Netherlands
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Contributors
Nancy M. Wells Department of Design and Environmental Analysis Cornell University Ithaca, NY
Richard E. Wener Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Polytechnic Institute of New York University New York, NY
Carol M. Werner Department of Psychology University of Utah Salt Lake City, UT (p. xvi)
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Introduction: Environmental and Conservation Psychology
Oxford Handbooks Online Introduction: Environmental and Conservation Psychology Susan D. Clayton and Carol D. Saunders The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0001
Abstract and Keywords Environmental psychology has been an established field for half a century. The term “conservation psychology” has a much more recent history. What is conservation psychology, and what is its relationship to environmental psychology? How will the combination affect the further development of the field? This chapter provides a definition and places the terms in a historical as well as a functional context. After an explication of the name of the present handbook, a framework for the organization of the book is presented. Keywords: history, terminology, environmental psychology, conservation psychology
Introduction It is probably fair to say that in the mind of the general public, psychologists focus more on what happens inside a person’s head—the mental and neurological processes that constitute experience and determine behavior—than on what is happening in the surrounding environment. But from the field’s earliest origins, psychologists have recognized, and emphasized, the ways in which people are affected by their environments. Many studies have documented ways in which the social environment is influential, through parental socialization, conformity to social norms, and so on; it is a fundamental tenet of social psychology that we should consider external causes of behavior before making attributions to internal dispositions. Equally important is the physical environment. In addition to providing the materials that either promote or compromise well-being, it shapes behavior through reinforcement contingencies as well as through affordances—although as Gifford (1976) has noted, people are often unconscious of environmental impacts and changes. Because the built environment is amenable to change and to intentional design, its effects have been well studied by psychologists as well as by researchers from other fields. Although the natural environment has received less attention, it was still recognized as important by early to mid-20th-century psychologists (e.g., Adler, 1956). The environmental challenges that have become salient as we begin the 21st century provide a pressing reminder of the ways in which human well-being is bound up with environmental health. These challenges also illustrate the reverse relationship: the impact of human perceptions, attitudes, and especially behavior on environmental wellbeing. This handbook addresses the expanding body of research on these relationships and presents a snapshot of current work on environmental and conservation psychology. Such a snapshot captures a moment in time for an evolving and increasingly important area of research. To understand what this handbook will and will not do, this introductory chapter will situate the field within its temporal context, describing some of the history behind this area as well as its goals.
Environmental Psychology Environmental psychology began to emerge as a self-identified subdiscipline in the 1950s. Certainly (p. 2) the
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Introduction: Environmental and Conservation Psychology visibility of the environmental movement in the 1960s, and the accompanying awareness of limits on environmental resources, were part of the context that led to the institutionalization of the field. Concerns about population growth and environmental degradation during the 1960s led to two task forces within the American Psychological Association—one on psychology, family planning, and population policy and one on environment and behavior— which later joined together to form Division 34, on population and environmental psychology (Richards, 2000). The first core text in environmental psychology, Environmental Psychology: Man and His Physical Setting, was published by Proshansky, Ittelson, and Rivlin in 1970. The same year saw environmental psychology described in American Psychologist (Wohlwill, 1970) and in a volume on “new directions in psychology” (Craik, 1970). Key topics in environmental psychology at this early stage already included perceptions of the environment, social uses of space, use of environmental resources, perceptions of environmental risk, and attributes of built environments. Environmental psychology was alert to social issues involving the natural environment and natural resources. It recognized, too, that a psychological experience of the environment incorporated a confluence of social and physical environments, and that the relationship between people and their environments was bidirectional. However, only a subset of research within environmental psychology is substantially relevant to the natural environment or to problems concerning environmental degradation or depletion of environmental resources. Indeed, in a key article reflecting on the identity of environmental psychology, Stokols (1995) described five promising research trends, only one of which involved threats to and change in the natural environment. One of the main periodicals in environmental psychology, Environment and Behavior, was established in 1969 as an interdisciplinary journal that would publish “rigorous experimental and theoretical work focusing on the influence of the physical environment on human behavior.” Despite the unidirectional nature of this statement (influence of the environment on humans), the journal also welcomes research on the ways in which people conceptualize environments and on policies or planning aimed at changing environments. It is published in association with the Environmental Design Research Association and has traditionally included a strong focus on design and on the built environment. Nevertheless, the publication has also incorporated topics as abstract as morality, attachment, and religious perspectives on environments, as well as practical topics, such as recycling, composting, and energy conservation. A journal more specific to environmental psychology is the eponymous Journal of Environmental Psychology, established in 1981 to “serve individuals in a wide range of disciplines who have an interest in the scientific study of the transactions and interrelationships between people and their physical surroundings.” Topics covered in the journal are very similar to those in Environment and Behavior, with perhaps a greater emphasis on human cognition, human experience, and theory. The inaugural issue included a reflective essay by David Canter and Kenneth Craik that reviewed the progress of the field, including a significant number of international societies and edited volumes, and attempted to define the field. Reflecting its growing influence, environmental psychology was further described in a comprehensive, two-volume handbook edited by Dan Stokols and Irwin Altman in 1987. This handbook included chapters on all the core topics of the field: cognition, personality, and emotion; children and aging; human spatial behavior, territoriality, and crowding; and environmental stress. It also covered a variety of environmental contexts, including residential, school, and work environments; environmental problems including crime, transportation, and diminishing natural resources; and environmental psychology in a number of different countries, from Europe and Asia to Latin America and the Soviet Union. In addition, the 1987 handbook engaged in an extensive evaluation of the field, beginning with four chapters on the origins and scope of environmental psychology and ending with four chapters looking toward its future. A second edition was published in 2002, edited by Robert Bechtel and Arza Churchman. This volume did not try to repeat the focus of the original handbook. Instead the emphasis was on demonstrating the breadth and applicability of environmental psychology. It included chapters making connections to other disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, and clinical psychology, and others describing applications in specific settings (work, museums), for specific groups (women, children), and to specific problems (conflict, disasters, climate). This volume also reflected on emerging new conceptual and methodological approaches within environmental psychology. Particularly significant to the current handbook, the 2002 version included a chapter by Bonnes and Bonaiuto that described a (p. 3) shift over time in environmental psychology’s focus, from an emphasis on the physical environment to a greater concern on sustainable development. They argued for a “full ecology perspective” that would recognize
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Introduction: Environmental and Conservation Psychology human beings as “the major force or organizing principle of…every ecosystem” and thus would attend to human dimensions of environmental issues (Bonnes & Bonaiuto, 2002, p. 34). Environmental psychology emphasized three significant themes that were often overlooked or minimized by other areas of psychology. One was the need to understand behavior in context: people in a specific place. Although controlled laboratory research is valuable, it can never provide a full understanding of behavior, learning, or motivation, any more than the behavior of a caged laboratory rat can tell us everything about rat behavior in the wild. The second was a recognition of the reciprocal relationship between people and their environments. Although people are affected by their surroundings, they also both choose and modify their environments; arguably, this is one of the characteristics that distinguish humans from other species, whose impact is more gradual and less deliberate. This indicates the important practical implications of environmental psychology: understanding how people are affected by their environments might suggest helpful ways to modify those environments, and understanding how people choose and modify their environments suggests some of the ways in which they are affected by those environments. For example, recognizing that people benefit from views of nature suggests that buildings be designed to provide such views, and the fact that people spend great amounts of time personalizing their homes and gardens implies that gardens can affect their sense of self. Finally, a third theme is that from its beginning environmental psychology has emphasized the need to be interdisciplinary: to interface with urban planners, architects, sociologists, biologists, educators, and others to both benefit from their knowledge and share what psychology has to offer.
Conservation Psychology These themes are particularly relevant in conservation psychology, which emerged in the late 1990s and early 21st century. At this time, interest in the natural environment was blossoming, with a growing number of academic programs devoted to environmental studies and an increased awareness of looming environmental problems. A small group of psychologists set about quite deliberately to address a few lacunae: the near-absence of psychology from discussions about environmental issues, both within the academy and in the public sphere, and the limited focus on the natural world in mainstream psychological research. There was also a desire to refocus efforts to use the insights and tools of psychology toward understanding and promoting human care for nature. Several names were considered: Green psychology? Ecopsychology? Psychology of sustainability? Conservation psychology was selected as the name for this new effort, in part because it paralleled the history and goals of the existing field of conservation biology. The term “conservation” does not, in this case, take a position on the historical debate between conserving resources for human use versus protecting nature for its own sake. Rather, it reflects the conservation movement of the late 20th century and particularly the movement’s political focus on responding to environmental challenges, such as pollution, loss of biodiversity, and (more recently) global climate change. Conservation psychology deliberately enlists contributions from the many subdisciplines within psychology toward understanding and promoting healthy and sustainable relationships with nature. The tools it brings to bear are the conceptual and methodological techniques of empirical research in psychology. Like conservation biology, conservation psychology is distinguished by a clear set of goals and values: it values human and ecosystem health, and aspires to enhance the healthy relationship between humans and the rest of nature. Conservation psychology is not just an applied field, and is not just about understanding determinants of pro-environmental behavior. It is about theory and research aimed at understanding the interdependence between human and natural well-being, and its goal is to make linkages between basic academic research and practical environmental issues. Beginning in 2000, a series of workshops hosted by the Chicago Zoological Society and a conference funded by the Rice Foundation brought together groups of researchers to discuss the parameters of the field and the best way to move forward. An early outcome was a special issue (2003) of the journal Human Ecology Review, edited by Carol Saunders and Gene Myers, that focused on conservation psychology—describing it, defining it, and suggesting some important directions. The definition in this issue described conservation psychology as “the scientific study of the reciprocal relationships between humans and the rest of nature, with a particular focus on how to encourage conservation of the natural world” (Saunders, 2003, p. 138). (p. 4) Theoretical perspectives emphasized in the special issue focused on behavior change; emotional connections to natural entities (especially animals and places); and communication about environmental issues. A
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Introduction: Environmental and Conservation Psychology 2005 paper by Clayton and Brook followed, making a further argument for conservation psychology and illustrating a social psychological model of behavior with reference to conservation behavior. Conservation psychology did not represent a new area of study. What it intended was to offer a new label for previous work that existed, which would in turn establish a new focus to motivate future work and a new identity for psychologists interested in this area, encouraging new opportunities for collaboration between conservation professionals and psychologists. Conservation psychology was established in part to provide a framework for work on the topic that met the accepted standards of psychological research and built on established psychological theory. Sommer (2000), discussing ways in which environmental psychology in general has struggled for a clear label, provides a useful definition of the difference between a subdiscipline and a field of study. According to that definition, conservation psychology is more clearly a field: it comprises people who have been trained in different areas, particularly in the various subdisciplines of psychology, and focused on a common problem area. It draws from research in all the established subdisciplines of psychology, including social, developmental, cognitive, and clinical, in addition to environmental. Despite the long history of environmental psychology, there is currently a clear desire among psychologists to have a more explicit focus on the natural environment and to have this focus recognized. In a 2000 article in the flagship journal of the APA, American Psychologist, Stuart Oskamp issued a call to arms, asking psychologists to play a bigger part in addressing environmental challenges (a call that was still seen as necessary by Robert Gifford in 2008). At the same time, conservation professionals had a corresponding desire to learn more from psychologists. In 2003, Mascia et al. wrote an essay in Conservation Biology calling for greater involvement of the social sciences in conservation efforts. As recently as 2008, prominent environmental writer David Orr wrote (also in Conservation Biology): This is an urgent challenge for the discipline of psychology and students of mind more broadly to apply their professional skills to better understand our connections to nature and how to help foster the psychological traits of mind and behavior necessary for a decent future. (p. 821)
Expanding Interest Response to the challenge from both within and outside the discipline of psychology has been accelerating. Several recently established journals reflect this interest. For example, Ecopsychology, whose goal is to make connections between environmental and psychological well-being by publishing papers on such topics as therapeutic aspects of human-nature relationships and concern about environmental issues, first appeared in 2009; PsyEcology, a bilingual journal on topics in environmental psychology, was first published in 2010; and the Journal of Fostering Sustainable Behavior, whose goal is to provide practical research of use to those designing environmental programs, launched its first call for papers in fall 2010. Somewhat further afield, Environmental Communication, which began in 2007, includes work from the field of psychology, as does Conservation Letters, which appeared in 2008 and explicitly encompasses conservation work from the biological and social sciences. New books continue to appear, including Gardner and Stern’s (2002) Environmental Problems and Human Behavior, Schmuck and Schultz’s (2002) Psychology of Sustainable Development, Ray Nickerson’s (2003) Psychology and Environmental Change, and Koger and Winter’s (2010) The Psychology of Environmental Problems. Clayton and Myers’s (2009) Conservation Psychology was the first text to use this term. A listserv and website for conservation psychology have been constructed, and Division 34 of the American Psychological Association recently voted to change its name from the Society for Population and Environmental Psychology to the Society for Environmental, Population, and Conservation Psychology. A number of other organizations around the world promote and support research on the relationships between humans and the natural world, including Division 4 of the International Association for Applied Psychology, the International Association for People-Environment Studies, and the Australian Psychological Society. In addition to academic literature and organizations, psychologists have been working to integrate environmental topics into the curriculum (Koger & Scott, 2007) and to make the results of psychological research more available to conservation practitioners. Recent examples of this include a task force of the American Psychological Association that was (p. 5) convened to examine “psychology and global climate change” (APA, 2009), and several publications from the World Wildlife Fund–UK, one of which examines the relevance of identity factors in promoting conservation (Crompton & Kasser, 2009) and another emphasizing the significance of cultural values
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Introduction: Environmental and Conservation Psychology and frames in encouraging human protection of the natural world (Crompton, 2010). These initiatives are important reflections of the desire to utilize research results to advance conservation initiatives. As conservation practitioners recognize that simply providing people with information is not enough to promote sustainable behavior, there is increased interest in hearing about relevant psychological research (Fraser & Sickler, 2008).
Toward an Integration The relationship between environmental and conservation psychology has been somewhat ill-defined and has led to spirited debates. Some have argued that all the topics within conservation psychology are already present in environmental psychology; others disagree. There are clearly different points of emphasis and different subcultures of people involved, but there are also exciting synergies. As Schultz and Kaiser state in this volume, research on pro-environmental behavior, with its emphasis on changing the person, did not fit easily within environmental psychology, with its emphasis on specific physical contexts. The field of environmental psychology, as a whole, does not have the emphasis on protecting the environment that conservation psychology represents. However, as many of the chapters in this handbook illustrate, themes relevant to conservation psychology can be discerned in most of the core topics of environmental psychology. The goal of the present volume is to present an integration of the established subdiscipline of environmental psychology, and the new field of conservation psychology. Such an integration should acknowledge both the rich history of environmental psychology and the urgency and vision of the conservation agenda; it also helps to overcome the impulse to divide one from the other by making forced and artificial distinctions between “theory” and “application,” “physical” and “social,” or “built” and “natural” environments. Both environmental and conservation psychologies encompass theory and application, physical and social environments, natural and more engineered settings. Some, but not all, environmental psychology is conservation psychology. Some, but not all, conservation psychology is environmental psychology. In the end, they may represent inextricably intermingled bodies of work, distinguishable if at all by the purpose and professional identities of the researchers and practitioners. The aims of this volume are both similar to and different from the two earlier handbooks of environmental psychology. Like the first (Stokols & Altman, 1987), this handbook strives to include many of the foundational areas within environmental psychology, but in a way that promotes their applicability to current environmental issues. A number of the topics from the original handbook are revisited, because they are so central to the field and continue to generate so much new research. But we have not attempted to replicate the ambitious scope of that set of volumes. Like the second handbook (Bechtel & Churchman, 2002), the present one emphasizes applied problems, but with an even greater focus on the natural environment. The chapters are organized so that they proceed from the more abstract and conceptual to the more applied. Environmental and conservation psychology are not purely applied fields but rather include much basic theory and research on how people think about and respond to their environments. Within sections, we also proceed from the more manufactured to more natural environments. Thus, the first section encompasses research and theory on human perceptions, attitudes, values, and emotions. We also look at the role of environments, particularly natural environments, in children’s development and in the development of a sense of self and identity. Acknowledging that the physical cannot be fully separated from the social environment, we include an examination of cultural differences in attitudes and perceptions. The next section examines some specific environments that have prompted extensive research. We start with built environments, such as residential and work environments; move through environments that are explicitly focused on effecting change in their occupants, such as schools, health care settings, and correctional environments; and end with natural and extreme environments. The focus of these chapters is on understanding these environments, in ways that may contribute to our understanding of human psychology as well as enhancing our ability to design interventions that make the environments more healthy or effective. The third section emphasizes the ways in which people are affected by their environments. Much of this research has focused on negative influences: environmental stressors, such as noise, and natural (p. 6) disasters, and the characteristics of environmental conflicts. But environments also have great potential, in a way we are just beginning to recognize, for positive effects. We include research on therapeutic effects, restorative effects, and the role of nature in promoting health, peak experiences, and positive social interactions.
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Introduction: Environmental and Conservation Psychology In our last section, we flip the causality around. Given the many ways in which humans have harmful effects on the natural environment—from habitat destruction and pollution to global climate change—how can people be encouraged to behave more sustainably, to minimize their environmental footprint? Starting with child development, we examine the promotion of pro-environmental behavior more generally; look at specific examples related to water conservation and cooperation over environmental resources; and focus on effects that occur at a societal level, through education. We close with a review of how psychological research may be able to help mitigate the effects of global climate change, or at least identify ways in which we can adapt. It is not possible to define environmental and/or conservation psychology as static areas of research. Awareness of societal concerns, developing theoretical perspectives, and cross-fertilization from other disciplines all serve to generate new research questions and methodologies. A final chapter looks back at the chapters that make up the volume to consider what it means to combine environmental and conservation psychology and to sketch out directions in which we see the field developing. One thing that is clear is that environmental and conservation psychology must speak to those outside psychology as well as professional psychologists. Thus, this handbook aspires to serve as a resource for both audiences. The need, and the responsibility, for psychology to contribute to current environmental challenges are urgent.
Acknowledgments We thank the Ittleson Foundation for its contributions to advancing the field of conservation psychology, as well as its support for this handbook and for the integration of conservation with environmental psychology.
References American Psychological Association Task Force on the Interface Between Psychology and Global Climate Change (2009). Psychology and global climate change: Addressing a multi-faceted phenomenon and set of challenges. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from www.apa.org/science/about/publications/executivesummary.pdf. Ansbacher, H., & Ansbacher, R. (Eds.). (1956). The individual psychology of Alfred Adler. New York: Basic Books. Bechtel, R., & Churchman, A. (Eds.). (2002). Handbook of environmental psychology. New York: Wiley. Bonnes, M., & Bonaiuto, M. (2002). Environmental psychology: From spatial-physical environment to sustainable development. In R. Bechtel & A. Churchman (Eds.), Handbook of environmental psychology (pp. 28–55). New York: Wiley. Clayton, S., & Brook, A. (2005). Can psychology help save the world? A model for conservation psychology. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 5(1), 87–102. Clayton, S., & Myers, G. (2009). Conservation psychology: Understanding and promoting human care for nature. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Craik, K. (1970). Environmental psychology. In K. Craik, R. Kleinmuntz, R. Rosnow, R. Rosenthal, J. Cheyne, & R. Walters (Eds.), New directions in psychology (Vol. 4, pp. 1–122). New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Crompton, T. (2010). Common cause: The case for working with our cultural values. Surrey, UK: WWF-UK. Crompton, T., & Kasser, T. (2009). Meeting environmental challenges: The role of human identity. Surrey, UK: WWF-UK. Fraser, J., & Sickler, J. (2008). Conservation psychology: Who cares about the biodiversity crisis? State of the Wild 2008–2009. Washington, DC: Island Press. Gardner, G., & Stern, P. (2002). Environmental problems and human behavior (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Custom Publishing.
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Introduction: Environmental and Conservation Psychology Gifford, R. (1976). Environmental numbness in the classroom. Journal of Experimental Education, 44(3), 4–7. Gifford, R. (2008). Psychology’s essential role in climate change. Canadian Psychology/psychologie canadienne, 49, 273–280. Koger, S., & Scott, B. (2007). Psychology and environmental sustainability: A call for integration. Teaching of Psychology, 34, 11–18. Koger, S., & Winter, D. (2010). The psychology of environmental problems. London: Psychology Press. Mascia, M. B., Brosius, J. P., Dobson, T. A., Forbes, B. C., Horowitz, L., McKean, M. A., & Turner, N. J. (2003). Conservation and the social sciences. Conservation Biology, 17, 649–650. Nickerson, R. (2003). Psychology and environmental change. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Orr, D. W. (2008). The psychology of survival. Conservation Biology, 22, 819–822. Oskamp, S. (2000). A sustainable future for humanity: How can psychology help? American Psychologist, 55, 496– 508. Proshansky, H., Ittleson, W., & Rivlin, L. (1970). Environmental psychology: Man and his physical setting. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Richards, J. M. (2000). A history of Division 34: The division of population and environmental psychology. In D. A. Dewsbury (Ed.), Unification through division: Histories of the divisions of the American Psychological Association (Vol. 5, pp. 113–136). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Saunders, C. (2003). The emerging field of conservation psychology. Human Ecology Review, 10(2), 137–149. (p. 7) Saunders, C., & Myers, O. E. (Eds.). (2003). Special issue on “conservation psychology.” Human Ecology Review, 10(2). Schmuck, P., & Schultz, P. W. (2002). The psychology of sustainable development. New York: Springer. Sommer, R. (2000). Discipline and field of study: A search for clarification. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 20(1), 1–4. Stokols, D. (1995). The paradox of environmental psychology. American Psychologist, 50, 821–837. Stokols, D., & Altman, I. (Eds.) (1987). Handbook of environmental psychology. New York: Wiley. Wohlwill, J. (1970). The emerging discipline of environmental psychology. American Psychologist, 25, 303–312. (p. 8) Susan D. Clayton Susan D. Clayton is Whitmore-Williams Professor of Psychology at the College of Wooster in Ohio. With a PhD in social psychology from Yale, she is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and a past president of the Society for Environmental, Population, and Conservation Psychology. Her research addresses the social context surrounding people’s relationship with the natural environment.
Carol D. Saunders Carol D. Saunders Department of Environmental Studies Antioch University New England Keene, NH
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology
Oxford Handbooks Online Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology Harry Heft The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0002
Abstract and Keywords Environmental psychology developed in the midst of a wave of scientific and social movements of the past century rooted in large measure among the ecological sciences. And yet work in the field proceeded mostly untouched by an ecological perspective, as it remained wedded to a mechanistic mode of thought that has long gripped psychology more broadly. Frameworks more sympathetic to ecological thinking had been simmering among psychology’s early writings, notably in William James’s radical empiricism and Kurt Lewin’s field theory, but became realized only in the 1960s through the works of James J. Gibson, Roger G. Barker, and others. These frameworks share many of the assumptions of the ecological sciences and, collectively, can be located within a transactional worldview. When applied to psychology, this perspective emphasizes the central place of meaning in psychological phenomena. These approaches can function to guide environmental psychology into the fold of the ecological sciences. Keywords: ecological psychology, eco-behavioral science, affordances, behavior settings, ecological sciences, meaning
Introduction The value of theories and concepts reside in their possibilities for ordering our thinking, and in doing so, for directing further inquiry. This value can be undercut, however, when the same label is used to refer to different theoretical approaches, and when concepts rooted within a particular theoretical perspective are detached from that perspective and employed in an eclectic manner. As a case in point, consider ecological psychology. The designation “ecological psychology” was adopted by three psychologists over the second half of the 20th century to describe their distinct, independent theoretical approaches and associated research programs: the perceptual psychologist James J. Gibson (1903–1979), the child/social psychologist Roger G. Barker (1903–1990), and the developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917–2005). Even a cursory examination of their writings shows minimal overlap in the psychological issues they each explored, and few instances where they even cite one another’s work. That all three approaches at one time or another adopted the label “ecological psychology” has no doubt been a source of confusion to many, while diminishing the distinctive character and value of each. As it turns out, this problem of multiple referents for “ecological psychology” resolved on its own accord over time due to changes within these frameworks. At present, Gibsonians alone have retained the term “ecological psychology,” whereas Barker eventually came to call his approach “eco-behavioral science,” and Bronfenbrenner later employed the “bio-ecological model” to describe his program of research. But only those closely following the developments within each approach are likely to be aware (p. 12) of these changes. The initial adoption of “ecological psychology” by all three is apt to be a lingering source of misunderstanding.
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology One goal of this chapter is to bring some order to this potentially confusing state of affairs. An obvious step to take is to articulate the differences between these programs, and this I intend to do. However, while drawing distinctions is vital, it is not enough. Despite their minimal overlap, there are striking underlying commonalities among at least two of them: Gibson’s and Barker’s frameworks. These commonalities reveal a broadly similar style of thinking and, for this reason, open up possibilities for identifying what an ecological approach to psychology entails. Further, the relationship between these approaches reflects the nested hierarchical perspective so characteristic of Bronfenbrenner’s framework and the ecological sciences more generally. (For the purposes of this chapter, however, remarks about Bronfenbrenner’s framework will be limited.) A theoretical approach in a science can be viewed as belonging to a family of theories that share common metatheoretical assumptions. By meta-theoretical assumptions I mean the set of basic tenets presupposed and often unstated in a particular theory that operate at a fairly high level of abstraction. They function as over-arching presuppositions applied to the principal subject matter of a theory. Two theories that focus on somewhat different subject matter may share a set of overarching assumptions. In this chapter, I argue that despite their obvious differences, Gibson’s ecological psychology and Barker’s eco-behavioral science share many meta-theoretical commitments. Importantly, to a considerable extent what they share reflects their connections to the ecological sciences generally. In this respect, these two ecological approaches stand apart from many others that have been employed by environmental psychologists over the field’s brief history. The value of a theoretical perspective can also be undercut when key concepts rooted within it are extracted from that perspective and employed in a different theory, especially one that embraces contrasting meta-theoretical assumptions. The eclectic use of concepts has understandable appeal. When attempting to formulate an account of some issue, it often seems desirable to draw together potentially useful concepts from diverse approaches. Central concepts from Gibson’s and Barker’s approaches, such as affordances and behavior settings, respectively, have both been employed in just this way. Frequently such uses helpfully extend thinking, but more often than not they do so at the cost of watering down the concept in question. Over time such eclecticism can drain the initial power of the concepts at hand, and their distinctive contributions can be lost. The fresh insights and new directions that a perspective might offer can be squandered when its concepts are lifted from their theoretical moorings and included in a mash-up of concepts from diverse frameworks. This concern is not merely terminological quibbling. There is a practical value in being sensitive to the metatheoretical commitments of concepts and of theoretical approaches. Viewing theories and their attendant concepts within the wider meta-theoretical framework to which they belong will help to keep our thinking clear and consistent, and in turn will contribute to the development of a conceptually coherent perspective. And it is from a well-ordered, conceptually coherent perspective that advances in science are usually made. Environmental psychologists are often fond of invoking Kurt Lewin’s (1943) comment, “There is nothing so practical as a good theory” (p. 69). I couldn’t agree more! The first half of the chapter will examine some of the foundational issues that underlie an ecological approach to psychology. The initial step in spelling out these foundational issues will be to identify some of the distinctive features of the ecological sciences, followed by a consideration of the broader transactional metatheory that illuminates some of the qualities that underlie an ecological mode of inquiry. After that, some formative, historical antecedents for an ecological approach within psychology will be examined. These sections will be largely of a philosophical and historical nature, and they will set up a more targeted focus on ecological psychology in the remainder of the chapter. Accordingly, the second half will offer a detailed examination of two recent products of this style of thinking as it has been applied to psychological concerns, Gibson’s ecological psychology and Barker’s eco-behavioral science.
Ecological Science
Primary Attributes Ecology is a subdomain of biology that is concerned with dynamic, interdependent processes constituting natural systems that are comprised of living and nonliving things. Such systems are referred to as ecosystems. They are dynamic in the sense that ecosystem processes are continually in flux even as they function to maintain the
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology stability of the system as a whole—that is, they are quasi-stable systems. Ecosystems are self-organizing, which means that their dynamic structure arises from the ongoing interrelationships among their constituents. The (p. 13) quality of interdependence that is characteristic of ecosystems refers to the fact that any living constituent of the system is viable only as a participant in that network of interdependent processes over time. From an ecosystems perspective, it is apparent that living things function neither in isolation as self-contained units nor as individual passive entities that are solely shaped or buffeted by external influences. Rather, living things viewed from an ecosystems perspective are active participants in a web or network of reciprocal influences. Importantly, this network of ecosystem interdependencies is in place as a result of the individual and joint histories of constituent processes. An ecosystem, considered at a specific moment in time, is a resultant of a particular functional history, and the character of the ecosystem cannot be adequately appreciated without an awareness of that history. Over time, the dynamic integrity of systems is likely to be threatened by new contingencies, and systems successfully continue to operate only by effectively preserving the existing dynamic relations (stabilities) through adjustments within the system, or less commonly by settling on a new quasi-stable pattern of dynamic relations. In short, ecosystems have a history that is continually taking shape in the face of ongoing, contingent events. For this reason, an essential quality of an ecosystems perspective is time: the temporal course of events that has led to the present circumstances; the temporal course of ongoing events within the ecosystem; and the possibilities for change over time that either preserve some fundamental properties of the system or transform them. An ecosystems perspective also recognizes the fact that natural systems operate at multiple, nested levels of organization. As we have seen, any single system is constituted by the collective, dynamic relations among its components. Loosely, we might think about these relations as “upward” influences that constitute overarching system properties. Reciprocally, the operations of this system as a whole limit or constrain, in a “downward” fashion, the functioning of the constituents that generate it. This is because in their functional interdependency that constitutes the overall system structure, component functioning must be self-limiting in particular ways. For example, a collection of cells must function in a particular interdependent manner so to constitute a functioning organ of the body. Moreover, a set of systems that operate at a comparable level of organization can be functionally interrelated such that they constitute a higher-order or superordinate system. Several organs of the body, for example, operate jointly to constitute a functional system of the body, for example, digestion. And again, systems functioning at this level of organization can operate as constituents of higher-level systems, and so forth (Weiss, 1973). From an ecological perspective, natural systems function within nested, hierarchical structures, at successively more macro- and microlevels of organization, including influences both upward as well as downward between adjacent system levels. Although this viewpoint has been commonplace in the biological sciences for a very long time, it has had surprisingly little effect on the way in which psychological issues are conceptualized and research is conducted. Ecological approaches to psychology are the exception here. Indeed, Bronfenbrenner was particularly explicit about the need for a hierarchical systems approach in fashioning an adequate psychology, memorably employing as an analogy nested Russian dolls (matryoshkas). While useful as a starting point, this analogy remains quite limited in that it fails to convey the dynamic qualities of both within-level processes and between-level processes that must be in place for nested systems to be viable. Bronfenbrenner (1994) was somewhat more sensitive to these issues in later writings concerning chronosystems. In summary, the distinctive qualities of an ecosystem include the following: (a) its constituents function as participants in a dynamic network of interdependent processes (within system relations); (b) the system operates dynamically to maintain the existing quasi-stable patterns of relationships, or failing that, either collapsing or giving rise to a new quasi-stable pattern; (c) systems are nested hierarchically such that between-level influences are operative; and (d) the system grows out of a history of relationships among its constituents that is continually taking shape in the face of ongoing, contingent events that often originate in comparatively more macro- and microlevel systems.
Historical Considerations This way of thinking grew out of extensive studies of natural history in the 18th and 19th centuries, the most famous of which to modern readers is the voyage of the Beagle (Darwin, 1839). The culmination of this line of
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology investigation was, of course, Darwin’s account of natural selection. The term “ecology” is attributed to the German biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), who was (p. 14) Darwin’s chief expositor among European scientists (Richards, 2009). At first glance, the intrinsically dynamic character of ecosystems may seem at odds with the mechanistic manner in which Darwin’s ideas are often portrayed. This neo-Darwinian take has it that new forms of life are randomly tossed off mostly through mutation, and then passively winnowed out by selection processes. However, to see Darwin as a mechanistic pure and simple is an erroneous reading. It is important not to confuse the dispassionate and purposeless direction of natural selection1 with the dynamic and historical character of the natural processes that Darwin studied in such meticulous detail (Richards, 1989). Haeckel’s formulation of ecology flows directly from this dynamic viewpoint. The timing of these ideas, coming in the second half of the 19th century, points to the beginnings of an important transformation in scientific and philosophical thought. In the sciences there is the start of a dramatic shift in emphasis from mechanistic models based on Newtonian physics to the emerging relativistic field theories, and decades later in the life sciences, to the rise of systems theory. With a few notable exceptions, mainstream psychology has been unaffected in substantive ways by these changes occurring in other sciences. This field-theoretic trend in the sciences was paralleled by proposals in late 19th-century American philosophy that called for a shift from a focus on elements and their causal connections to relational, process thinking. At the forefront of this wave of ideas are the American pragmatists: C. S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Their process ontology makes explicit what scientific practice reveals, namely that inquiry does not lead to fixed, settled truths, but instead to empirical “truths” that are provisional. This point of view stems from embracing Darwinian thinking (Bernstein, 2010; Menand, 2002). The emerging dynamic, field-theoretic approach represented a break from existing mechanistic modes of thought. The ecological approaches in psychology developed separately by Gibson and Barker bear the qualities of the ecosystems perspective, and in the case of Gibson, at least, of pragmatist philosophy (Heft, 2001). Indeed, it is their common connection in ecosystems thinking that partially accounts for their compatibility, while also pointing to one way in which they both stand apart from other theories within psychology. To illuminate this style of thinking, let us briefly consider one account of the range of approaches that have been employed in psychology.
Worldviews in Psychology In the first Handbook of Environmental Psychology (Stokols & Altman, 1987), Altman and Rogoff presented a masterful elucidation of the principal metatheories or worldviews that have influenced 20th-century psychology, and environmental psychology in particular. They based their analysis on the seminal work World Hypotheses (1942), by the philosopher Stephen Pepper—a book that for decades had been passed around quietly in some corners of psychology. Taking a long historical view, Pepper proposed that each philosopher and scientist brings to his or her work a broad conceptual framework (“world hypothesis”) that serves as an organizing structure for making sense of their subject matter. World hypotheses are typically tacit, always operate at a very high level of abstraction, and have their origins in the cultural and pedagogical climate within which individuals develop intellectually.2 Altman and Rogoff (1987) identified four worldviews or metatheories (I will use these terms synonymously here) modeled on Pepper’s (1942) scheme and within which psychologists have been working since the beginning of the 20th century. They designated the four metatheories as the trait, the interactional, the organismic, and the transactional worldviews. (Pepper used a slightly different nomenclature.) The first three of these metatheories, trait, interactional, and organismic, have been much more in evidence within psychology than has transactionalism, which subsumes ecosystem thinking. Below I describe these three metatheories briefly, while giving transactionalism—our primary concern here—comparatively greater attention. For a more detailed discussion, see Altman and Rogoff (1987). 1. The trait metatheory adopts as its unit of analysis the individual as a semi-isolated, bounded, self-contained entity. Examples of the expression of a trait metatheory in psychology are attempts to explain behavior with reference primarily to intra-psychic variables—that is, qualities or dispositional properties “within” the person—
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology such as personality or temperament that operate independently and somewhat autonomously of environmental circumstances. Within environmental psychology, the trait approach has played a relatively minor role because the environment is treated as a subsidiary factor much of the time. 2. The interactionist metatheory, in contrast, has been without question the most influential approach not only in environmental psychology, but also in the discipline of psychology as a whole (p. 15) over the past 100 years. It has dominated theoretical and conceptual formulations, problem selection, and research methodology. In essence, this manner of conceptualizing psychological processes takes the individual as a bounded, independent entity existing among other independent entities and their influences. The image that is often invoked to illustrate this view is a collection of billiard balls, each fully independent of all the others, while being susceptible to a change of state (position) as a result of impacts from any of the others (Clark, 2002). Pepper (who refers to this viewpoint as mechanism) emphasizes that such an approach is driven most fundamentally by conceptualizing the phenomenon in question in machine-like terms, with parts affecting other parts in a linear, causal sequence. Western thought has a long history, going back to the 15th century, of invoking machine-like metaphors, such as a clockwork, to explain natural occurrences. A mechanistic conceptualization of natural processes has profoundly influenced scientific thought and technology, from Kepler’s description of the solar system in clockwork terms and Descartes’ mechanical account of the body. This conceptualization is later formally articulated in the framework of Newtonian physics. The philosophical roots of much psychological theory is based on British empiricist and associationistic philosophy, which was inspired by Newtonian science. For the past 40 years in psychology, the mechanistic metaphor of choice has been the computer. Several features of this approach in psychology are especially important to emphasize in the present context. Because these features are interrelated, there is some unavoidable repetition here: (a) The unit of analysis is the individual viewed as a bounded, independent entity, operating separately from the surround, while subject to influences from outside its boundaries. Two variations of this view can be identified: (1) Typically, the individual is taken to be a passive receiver of environmental influences or stimuli (inputs). The emphasis from this perspective is on the ways the environment shapes and fashions the individual, or in more contemporary terms, eventuates in mental representations of the environment. (2) Other proponents of this metatheory sometimes embrace the view that built-in biological tendencies (e.g., instincts) are in place to direct behavior in certain ways. In modern form, this view assumes that biological predispositions are in place due to the species’ phylogenetic history and that they are “triggered” by environmental influences. This perspective was revived in the 1970s by sociobiology, and in its contemporary form is self-described as “evolutionary psychology.” What both of these views share is their treatment of the individual and the environment as distinct and separate domains that can each affect the other. (b) The source of change in the state of the individual, as indicated above, lies outside the psychological domain, located either in the environment or among biological conditions or predispositions operating within the individual. In these regards, the individual is either buffeted by outside causal influences (e.g., the physical environment) or pushed from inner forces (e.g., biological needs, genetic predispositions). This is a mechanistic point of view whereby the individual is in effect like a cog pushed by extrinsic forces, that is, by forces operating beyond the individual considered as a whole. Since the 1930s, neo-behaviorist psychology has typically supplemented such mechanistic accounts by positing mediating processes that are themselves products of environmental stimulation or of drive states. Such processes are viewed as modulating an organism’s responses to environmental circumstances. Postulation of these processes marked a shift from S-R to S-O-R models. By the 1960s, this version of the mechanistic account took on a more modern form as information-processing models posited linear and iterative sequences of mediating cognitive processes intervening between stimulus “input” and response “output.” This step permitted psychologists to propose models of memory, planning, concept formation, and so on, while retaining the essentially linear causal structure between environment and the individual, as well as their distinct natures, as is especially characteristic of the interactionist metatheory. (c) Causal influences tend to be seen as operating linearly in an antecedent-consequent manner (i.e., classically referred to as “efficient causality”). This type of causal thinking has been so pervasive in 20th-
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology century psychology that the word “cause” is typically taken to be synonymous with antecedentconsequent relations, despite alternative causal accounts as reflected in field theories and in systems theories of the physical and life sciences. That the interactionist metatheory has been the prevailing mode of thought within environmental psychology should not be too surprising, because this framework has dominated thinking in its parent field for so long. The individual frequently cited (p. 16) as a major precursor to environmental psychology, Kurt Lewin, is often portrayed as advocating such an interactionist view with his formula B = f(P,E). As we will see, however, Lewin’s proposal is in fact an explicit rejection of that viewpoint. Such is the power of dominating theoretical approaches that sometimes even rejections of the position are read as confirmations. 3. The organismic metatheory shares some of the features of the interactional metatheory. For this reason, to streamline this presentation, I will keep the description of the organismic approach to a minimum. As in the interactionist metatheory, the individual, on the one hand, and environmental features, on the other, are treated as separate domains. In the organismic framework, however, the individual is seen as an agent, engaging or operating on the environment, and undergoing transformations as a result of those actions. Operations are viewed as issuing from active cognitive structures that stand apart from the environment, even as they are transformed by engaging it. The philosophical roots of organismic thinking rest in certain areas of Continental philosophy, in particular in Kantian and neo-Kantian frameworks. Psychologists are apt to be most familiar with this metatheory as it is expressed in Piaget’s genetic epistemology, and to some extent, in psychodynamic approaches stemming from Freud. In the first decades of environmental psychology, some researchers drew on a Piagetian approach (e.g., Hart & Moore, 1973; Moore, 1976), and even some neo-Freudian-inspired writings (e.g., object relations theory) have appeared (Chawla, 1992, 2007), but the influence of the organismic metatheory has remained somewhat small to date. 4. The transactional metatheory takes as its unit of analysis the person-environment dynamic system. The components of this system operate in a relational, interdependent manner, rather than as independent entities. That being the case, they take on the functional character that they have by virtue of their place in the system as a whole. Within psychology, we can distinguish between, on the one hand, those person-environment systems that operate at the level of an individual-in-context, and on the other hand, those systems that are composed of a collection of individuals functioning in context. In this section, we will concern ourselves only with the former system, although much of what follows applies to both. First, it is important to note that from a transactional perspective individuals are participants in a dynamic system. Specifically, individuals are viewed as goal-directed agents whose actions are ongoing, and the form that their actions take is contingent on a wide range of situational factors that themselves are typically changing. This latter fact is a simple illustration of how components of the system are interdependent. Consider simple cases such as reaching for and grasping a cup of coffee, or using a hammer to drive in a nail. Reaching for the cup is not an action of an individual taken in isolation, because the form of the action is contingent on a variety of factors, such as the size and position of the cup, and the shape and position of the handle; some of these factors are liable to change from reach to reach, while others change across occasions. That is, reaching is an action that requires continual attunement to changing circumstances, and its ongoing character reflects its place in the personenvironment action under consideration. It is for these two reasons that reaching, as well as all other goal-directed actions, cannot be driven by a fixed, predetermined program, such as the running off of a motor schema or a script. Action continually needs to be tuned and retuned with respect to such changing circumstances. This point is even clearer in the case of hammering a nail. With each stroke of the hammer, the height and position of the nail changes, and also most likely the position of the body. For these reasons, the hammering action must be continually recalibrated “on the fly” over time, with its dynamic pattern taking shape within the cycle of action. Although a person can try to engage in a highly repetitive, mechanical series of movements that run off in a scriptlike fashion, most of the time such a method would be highly ineffectual because the situation itself is fluid. Instead, skilled actions are marked by a sensitivity and a responsiveness to a dynamic field of contingent factors. These actions are effective because of their precise tuning and retuning in light of changing conditions. In short, psychological functioning must be viewed with respect to a dynamic person-environment system.
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology Second, the inclusive boundary of the person-environment system—that is, what counts as the personenvironment system at any moment—is not fixed, but instead continually shifts as the focus of the individual’s action changes. For example, when reaching for a cup, properties of that cup, its position, my body position, and so on are among the circumstances that contribute to the form of the action, but the books on the shelf behind me do not. However, when I turn to reach for a book on (p. 17) the shelf, the position of the cup will typically have little bearing on that action. In short, the field of contingent factors that is operative when an individual engages in a particular task shifts when a different action is taken up, and as noted above, actions are typically ongoing in contexts. For these reasons, the inclusive boundaries of the person-environment system shift over time. This quality of shifting inclusive boundaries in dynamic systems is rather inconvenient from the standpoint of those worldviews wherein properties and their characteristics are relatively fixed. But it is inescapable in a dynamic system. Third, in addition to the boundary that encompasses the person-environment system at any given time, there is also the boundary within the system that is often experienced between the self and the world. However, this, too, is an ever-shifting boundary. Although we may commonly think of that boundary as being located at the surface of the body, that is not always so. When we are using a tool, such as a hammer or even a pencil, the boundary between the body and the world is not experienced where the hand grips the hammer’s handle, or the fingers grip the pencil, but instead at the hammerhead where it strikes the nail, or at the tip of the pencil where it makes contact with the paper. This consideration of self-world boundaries points to the fact that psychological processes commonly extend to incorporate aspects of the environment, such as tools. Indeed, in some cases activities can be so immersed in the field of action that a boundary between self and world is no longer apparent functionally. In these respects, directed action cannot be said to be limited to processes occurring only in the person, much less “in the head” (Clark, 2008; Wilson, 2004). It is commonplace to act and even to think with and through our tools. Any boundary that is drawn between self and world within a person-environment system has only temporary analytic utility. Fourth, the person-environment system operates in an ongoing fashion to maintain its integrity in the face of threats to its stability. For example, an object that one is engaging can change over the course of engagement—the nail bends to one side with hammering or the pencil point breaks—and the individual makes adjustments to restore effective action. The system operates to maintain a dynamic or quasi-stability in the context of directed action. Finally, to attain a “thick” appreciation of any particular instance of person-environment processes, it is necessary to recognize that there is a nesting of processes operating over different time frames. Following Vygotsky, these time frames are phylogenetic (species history), cultural-historical (the sociocultural context), ontogenetic (the life history of the individual), and microgenetic (time course of the task). To return to the previous example of reaching for a cup of coffee, reaching and grasping any object over a particular time span (microgenesis) are possible only for organisms with a particular evolutionary history (phylogenesis). Further, the practices of imbibing coffee and of drinking from cups are rooted in a particular sociocultural tradition (cultural-historical). From the perspective of individual development (ontogenesis), drinking from a cup (much less drinking coffee) is an acquired action. This is a mundane example, to be sure, but one illustrating that any goal-directed action can be understood as occurring at the nexus of multiple historical currents. In this light, it is worth noting that Pepper (1942) viewed the historical event as the “root metaphor” for transactionalism. A historical event emerges with the confluence of multiple occurrences, each of which may have very different qualities and may operate on different time scales. The historical event is not one thing, but a textured multiplicity of many occurrences converging at a single period in time. The event in question is rarely reducible to any single factor or to one underlying cause, any more than a confluence of tributaries giving rise to a river is ultimately reducible to one of the tributaries. We should bear in mind the root metaphor of a historical event when considering the bases for psychological events as well, which are rarely reducible to single causes. It should be evident that these attributes of the transactional metatheory bear a close resemblance to the earlier discussion of an ecosystem. Living things viewed from an ecosystems perspective are active participants in a network of shifting interdependent relations. These relations stem from a history of intersecting contingent events, and the system operates to maintain the functional stability of its processes. In addition, like ecosystems, personenvironment systems are embedded in nested processes operating over multiple time scales.
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology A Transactional View of Person-Environment Processes The transactional metatheory focuses on processes, and it adopts a relational view (ontology) of system properties. As for the former, sometimes we find it difficult to think in such process terms because our (p. 18) psychological language is so noun-based. We typically speak and write of “faculties,” such as perception, cognition, thought, memory, and the like, rather than functions of biological organisms, such as perceiving, thinking, and remembering. Processes characterizing living organisms tend to be obscured by such objectcentered language. To illustrate this point, consider biological functions, such as respiration or digestion. First, and most obviously, they are processes, not things. One cannot locate either respiration or digestion in a single bodily site. Instead, they are processes that stretch across the coaction of multiple, interrelated structures. They are functions, and as Dewey often pointed out, the use of nouns to refer to them is not helpful for promoting this understanding. Breathing and digesting are surely more apt. The same point can be extended to psychological functions. Terminology such as ““perceiving,” “thinking,” “remembering,” and so forth keeps the emphasis on action and function, where it needs to be. Likewise, our use of object-centered language leads us to draw boundaries between things, while overlooking the critical relational properties of living processes. Breathing is possible only when an animal is situated in an aerobic environment. Strictly speaking, it is not a function of an organism, but of an organism in context. In the absence of air, breathing does not occur. It is a relational functional property of an organism-environment system with a particular history reaching back millennia. Reciprocally, the medium that supports breathing cannot be specified independent of some organism, as is evident in the differences between terrestrial and aquatic animals. These points are even clearer with respect to digestion. Digesting is a functional process of an animal-environment system, not an animal considered in isolation, and what counts as digestible matter can vary across species. That is, what counts as food can vary across different evolutionary histories, and such differences can be understood only against such histories. In this light, food is a relational property of an organism-environment system. As the pragmatist G. H. Mead (1934) once noted: It is a difficult matter to state just what we mean by dividing up a certain situation between the organism and its environment. Certain objects come to exist for us because of the character of the organism. Take the case of food. If an animal that can digest grass, such as an ox, comes into the world, then grass becomes food. That object did not exist before, that is, grass as food. The advent of the ox brings in a new object. (p. 129, emphasis added) This same point can also be demonstrated with respect to briefer historical time frames, such as change over the span of generations, as in the case of human tolerance for dairy products coevolving with herding of cows (Richerson & Boyd, 2006), and even dietary changes within an ontogenetic time frame, such as allergies. The central point to be made here is: when our focus is on organism-environment systems, properties of this system that are often of greatest interest to us will be relational in nature. Furthermore, the causal processes that are operative in organism-environment systems are bidirectional and reciprocal, not unidirectional. Although it is now commonplace to acknowledge the bidirectionality of causal influences, in practice environmental psychologists tend to utilize unidirectional models. The reciprocal influences at work in social interactions are difficult to overlook, but this quality holds as well for phenomena that are not so immediately social. Take cases of niche construction that have been recently receiving much deserved attention. Animals not only adapt to existing conditions, but also change the character of the environment to function better in it. Examples of these phenomena run the gamut from spiderwebs and beaver lodges to bird nests and termite hills to all manner of human construction (see Odling-Smee, Laland, & Feldman, 2003). Especially remarkable about these phenomena, once our attention is drawn to them, is their sheer ubiquity across natural systems. These instances of reciprocal influences further highlight the interdependencies among constituents of a dynamic systems functioning over time. The mechanistic view of an isolated, bounded, ahistorical entity standing apart from an environment—along the lines of an individual “atom” sharing some spatial region with other individual atoms—is simply not viable when considering living things. Dewey (1938) put the point this way: Whatever else organic life is or is not, it is a process of activity that involves an environment. It is a
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology transaction extending beyond the spatial limits of the organism. An organism does not live in an environment; it lives by means of an environment…The processes of living are enacted by the environment as truly as by the organism; for they are an integration. (p. 25) (p. 19) Finally, in these general remarks let us consider a considerable conceptual benefit of a dynamic systems mode of thinking. A major conceptual obstacle that has vexed psychology for centuries is how the “stuff” of the environment “out there” crosses the body boundary and gets “into” the head. This, of course, is a variation of the classic mind-body conundrum, and it is irresolvable as long as the environment and the person are viewed as separate, bounded domains, typically of quite different makeup. From a transactional systems perspective, as we have seen, there are no fixed boundaries that need to be crossed between the self and the world. Instead, as we have seen, the structure of the person-environment field is reconfigured as task focus changes and as tools and artifacts extend operations of the body.
Two Early Antecedents of an Ecological Approach Before taking up the ecological approach to psychology specifically, it will be in keeping with the historical character of this approach to consider briefly two of its antecedents within psychology. Although what follows may seem to the reader to be tangential to the concerns of environmental psychology, I hope to show that, to the contrary, it is quite central to them. . The primary value of the following discussion is to provide a deeper appreciation for the issues underlying the ecological psychology frameworks of Gibson and Barker to be examined. In addition, doing so will allow us to see that the ecological approach, rather than being idiosyncratic, is connected to a wider set of slowly evolving ideas within psychology over the previous century. That said, it is important to add that neither Gibson nor Barker would fully embrace all aspects of the antecedents to be examined, but it is fair to say that they each stem from a shared theoretical impetus.
William James’s Radical Empiricism In psychology’s early years, when the discipline’s primary concern was identifying the contents of the conscious mind, the difficulties accompanying psychology’s long-standing embrace of environment-mind dualism were not too pressing. However, the problem of how minds connect to the environment became a vital matter—or should have become one—once psychology took a post-Darwinian functional turn. For how are organisms to function adaptively if minds are cut off from the environment? No work had greater influence on initiating the functional shift in thinking in psychology than William James’s The Principles of Psychology (1890). And yet James was quite ambivalent in this work about how to best handle the apparent dichotomy between an external world and an inner subjective domain, and for the most part, he set aside that vexing issue in this book. In the decade following the publication of The Principles, however, he formulated a resolution to this dilemma through his philosophy of radical empiricism (James, 1912). Unfortunately, radical empiricism is little known among psychologists. Symptomatic of this state of affairs are the numerous histories of psychology that write off James’s later writings by stating he abandoned psychology in the early 1890s for philosophy (e.g., Leahey, 2000; Hergenhahn, 2008; Mandler, 2007). This assertion has little merit. The psychological and the philosophical both thread through James’s writings over the course of his career, and it is in his later writings in particular that he tries to come to grips with the relationship between environment and mind.
Environment-Person Relations and Environmental Psychology But why should environmental psychologists, who as a group are committed to practical matters, care very much about philosophical concerns, such as the dichotomy between an external world and an inner subjective domain, much less about historical matters? Environmental psychologists are typically focused on concrete, present-day issues, after all. The reason they should is that environmental psychology adopted the traditional dichotomy between environment and mind as a matter of course from its parent discipline, despite the fact that this framework undercuts what should be environmental psychology’s most distinctive contribution. Environmental psychology arose in response to the discipline’s long-standing neglect of the environment, which in turn handicapped efforts to ameliorate conditions that adversely affect human well-being, and to explore conditions that promote human flourishing. However, without a clear sense of how to best conceptualize the environment in ways that are most relevant to psychological functioning, one is at a loss to know how to best intervene.
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology The most obvious step to take, and among the most useful to date, has been to identify physical and socioeconomic indices of environmental conditions that are correlates of psychological well-being. Such indices include population density measures (especially at the level of dwelling space), ambient noise levels, measures of poverty, and so on. Such (p. 20) measures are informative of environment-psychological relations at the aggregate level. However, the limitations of such physical/demographic indices became apparent to researchers early on whenever their focus became more aligned with the experience of individuals rather than populations. Variables such as density, noise, and poverty per se proved to be less valuable as correlates of psychological functioning than were factors such as crowding (as distinct from density), controllability of conditions, and availability of social capital, none of which can be specified independently of an individual. Instead of being properties of either the environment or an individual considered alone, they characterize particular environmental conditions from the standpoint of an individual. Further, a critical environmental consideration in such cases is a quality wholly absent from physical/demographic measures, namely, meaning. In the case of environmental stressors, it is not usually the sheer presence of some conditions (e.g., noise) that produces adverse outcomes, but the ways in which such conditions interfere with meaningful activities (e.g., communication). Likewise, social capital and social support reside in the quality of meaningful interactions, not the sheer numbers of persons residing in a residence or neighborhood. And yet where do we locate meaning in our conceptualization of the environment-person relationship? Is it a property of environments or a property of an individual’s mind? If we hold on to a categorical distinction between the physical environment and psychological processes, then the meaningful character of environments would seem to stem from “mind” imposing meaning on neutral environmental experience. That appears to be the only option, because clearly meaning is not a property of things of the world considered from a physical standpoint. However, viewing meaning as having a solely subjective basis makes the environmental psychologist’s task nearly hopeless. If meanings are judged as being imposed on the environment by minds, how can we identify psychologically significant properties of the environment (Wohlwill, 1973; also see, Heft, 1988a)? We each remain trapped in an enclosed mental realm, while the psychological character of environments will continue to elude our grasp. For this reason, finding a psychologically adequate way of conceptualizing the environment-person relationship is a vital interest for environmental psychologists. These considerations lead us back to William James because he recognized the inadequacy of an environmentperson dichotomy for a host of reasons, and one of his greatest career achievements was to develop an alternative that stems from his philosophy of radical empiricism (James, 1912). If readers limit their consideration of James’s writings to The Principles (1890)—which is what environmental psychologists have done to date—they will miss it. The practical value of these somewhat abstract ideas will become most apparent below when we turn to Gibson’s and Barker’s programs.
Experience as a Function of the Individual in Context James’s intimate familiarity with centuries-long debates over mind convinced him that treating consciousness initially as a subjective entity standing apart from a physical world only leads to a morass of problems. Three of these problems are critically important for the development of environmental psychology. For one thing, as already noted, taking the subjective domain as the seat of psychological experience over against the objective domain of the environment begs the question of what properties of the environment matter from a psychological standpoint. Second, if there is a sharp boundary (indeed, an ontological boundary) separating environment and mind, how does the environment get into the mind? Third, if awareness is solely a subjective (“inner”) state possessed by each individual, we are faced with the prospect of so many separate individuals trapped inside their individual mental realms. This state of affairs would seem to make our social existence, and the communication and coordination it requires, nearly impossible to explain. For some of these reasons, as well as others, James (1912) urged that we abandon the view that consciousness or immediate awareness is an inner subjective state, and instead he proposed that we view consciousness or awareness as most basically a function of mind in context. We considered earlier respiring and digesting as functions of organisms in context. Similarly, awareness is such a function, and in this case, the function is a process of knowing. Further, as a function of mind in context, knowing has what James refers to as a “doublebarreled” character, simultaneously pointing to the knower and the thing known. We will return to the significance of this point.
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology To elaborate, “the psychological”—what is experienced “now” (which for James is an extended present) by an individual—emerges from the intersection of two sets of simultaneously transpiring event streams: one specific to the history of the environment within (p. 21) which the individual is currently situated, and the other specific to the person’s own life history. As an example, he suggests that his readers consider their immediate experience (awareness) in the room where they are currently seated. The room has its own history, “a lot of previous physical operations, carpentering, furnishing, warming, etc.,” up to the present moment, and the individual has his or her own embodied biographical history. The “psychological” is constituted at the intersection of these events. Psychological phenomena are not in the environment in a physicalistic sense, nor are they located in the body, except perhaps in some latent manner. The psychological arises out of the transaction of environment and person. Further, because each stream of events at the “moment” of their intersection bears with it a history, for that reason, the environment and the individual carry with them an inertia (hysteresis) that inclines each to a future direction shaped by its past. In that way, when environment and person intersect—all action is situated—the ongoing course of each event stream constrains the other. For example, a room that was designed for educational functions rules out many other possibilities regardless of its occupants’ intentions, and inversely, environments rarely directly determine an individual’s behavior, which carries with it a history of habits or previous situated actions. In short, rather than taking the psychological to be an “inner” subjective state mirroring some “outer” reality that somehow enters onto the mind (Rorty, 1979), the psychological is a relational domain that cuts across this dichotomy, yet simultaneously is both at a particular time. As Gibson (1979) stated in a different context, “It is both objective and subjective, and yet neither.” Can we say more about experience as situated, rather than as an isolable state of mind? James (1912) asserts that the “pragmatic equivalent” of awareness is to be found in “realities of experience” (p. 1, emphasis added). That is to say, awareness in its most basic form is awareness of structure specific to the environment from the standpoint of a perceiver, and this structure consists of objects and their relations. This simple claim has great significance for psychology and for understanding knowing. Historically, accounts of perception and cognition assume that immediate experience is composed solely of individual units, such as objects or elements, and little more. The organization of experience is assumed to be the contribution of the perceiver. Hence, relations between the objects of experience are assumed necessarily to be inferred by way of cognitive processes, often on associative grounds, or imposed on immediate experience by innate mental structures. But if this is so—if order is imposed on the experience of the environment by way of mental contributions—then environmental experience is necessarily a subjective state as it stitches together the objects of awareness. The individual mind stands apart from the environment, in effect, constructing a mental replica of it. By asserting, to the contrary, that immediate experience consists of objects and their relations, James is making the radical claim that the relational field constituted by the transaction of environment and knower has an intrinsic order and that ultimately meaning resides within that relation (rather than being constructed in a separate subjective realm). This radical empiricism framework is a wholesale abandonment of any form of environment-mind dichotomy and its irresolvable problems. Its practical utility for environmental psychology, locating meaning as it does within environment-person relations, will be cashed out below. This very brief description of the starting point of James’s radical empiricism captures several features of the transactional analysis already discussed: (a) The unit of analysis for psychology is the environment-individual relationship, or to use the terminology of the example just employed, the intersection of environmental events and the individual’s life course at a particular moment. (b) The properties of the psychological domain are relational in nature, rather than residing solely on one side or the other of the environment-individual dichotomy. (c) Essential for understanding the “present” psychological phenomenon is an appreciation of both the history of the environment, which is in part a sociocultural history (see below), and the history of the individual, with respect to species’ phylogeny and individual ontogenesis. (d) What is immediately experienced are “objects” and their relations. This Jamesian program, with its transactional character, is carried forward into the 20th century via two parallel lines of philosophical thought. The more direct line is that of American pragmatism, and notably the work of John Dewey. A less direct route is via European phenomenological thought at the outset of the 20th century. This is a propitious time in the history of science because field theory in physics is also on the ascent. Field theoretical
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology thinking and phenomenology merge in Gestalt psychology.
Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) was an active participant in the early years of Gestalt psychology, (p. 22) although his thinking soon took on its own distinctive character. He is most familiar to environmental psychologists for his formula B = f(P,E), which sometimes has been taken as anticipating the later development of the field. Whether this is so depends on one’s reading of this assertion. If Lewin merely intended B = f(P,E) to indicate that explanations of behavior must attend not only to the person but also to the environment—that is, if he claimed that behavior is the combination of these factors taken as separable, independent factors—then it can be seen as foreshadowing of those efforts in environmental psychology that adhere to an interactionist line of thought. The problem is, however, that is not what Lewin intended with this formula.
Lewin’s Transactionalism B = f(P,E) expresses Lewin’s view that psychological functioning (behavior) is to be explained with reference to “the psychological field at a given time” (P,E), with person and environment jointly constituting the field of action. The “psychological field” is not a product of two independent factors (P and E), but together they give rise to the psychological field. Lewin (1946) was completely clear on this point: In this formula for behavior, the state of the person (P) and that of his environment (E) are not independent of each other. How a child sees a given physical setting (for instance, whether the frozen pond looks dangerous to him or not) depends upon the developmental state and the character of that child and upon his ideology.… In this equation the person (P) and his environment (E) have to be viewed as variables which are mutually dependent upon each other. In other words, to understand or to predict behavior, the person and his environment have to be considered as one constellation of interdependent factors. (pp. 239–240) Lewin referred to this constellation of interdependent factors as a “field” in the scientific sense of a “totality of coexisting facts which are conceived of as mutually interdependent” (p. 240). In short, Lewin was operating within a transactional metatheory. To make this perspective clearer, it will be useful to distinguish between interacting factors and interdependent (constitutive) factors. The interaction of two (or more) independent variables indicates that some outcome measure is not attributable to one or the other variable operating independently, but to their joint influence. However, because these variables are independent of each other, either alone can also in principle produce an effect (main effect) on an outcome measure. In the case of constitutive factors, the phenomenon (i.e., the “effect”) in question exists only through the joint action of two (or more) variables. The presence of either one alone cannot produce or generate the resultant in question. To borrow an example from Keller (2010), the sound of a drum is constituted by a drummer and a drum. Considered independently, neither can produce any effect. The effect (the sound) occurs at the intersection of these two events. Let us examine what this claim means with reference to an example in a Lewinian vein. A plate of food (E) in the vicinity of a hungry person (P) has the psychological character of a desirable object: it possesses a positive valence in the psychological field. Conversely, that same object in the vicinity of someone who is ill may well have an aversive quality (a negative valence). However, the plate of food considered independently of any person has no psychological value, being describable solely in nonpsychological terms, such as its chemical composition. But this does not mean that value is subjectively imposed on the object. A block of wood could not have a positive valence for eating no matter how hard the person tried to construe it in that way. The character of the object counts just as much as the current state of the individual. The plate of food as a desirable or undesirable—that is, as a meaningful object—is a relational property. The seemingly mundane character of this example belies its significance for psychology, for it speaks to the very nature of psychological phenomena. Conceptualizing the person-environment field as “a constellation of interdependent factors,” as Lewin did, opens the door to considering meaning or value as properties of the psychological field, rather than an intra-subjective quality. What Lewin claimed, as James did before him, is that the domain of psychological phenomena is to be found in a field of “mutually interdependent” factors. This is not to
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology rule out examining the environment and the individual separately. Physics and neurobiology, respectively, as well as some other domains of inquiry, do just that. When we are concerned with psychological phenomena, however, the focus is on the field of properties jointly constituted by environment and person at a particular time. Likewise, when we view the environment from a psychological standpoint, constituted by environment and person factors, then meaning is a property of, is intrinsic to, the psychological field. As such, the essential and distinctive phenomena of psychology cannot be reduced to either the physical or neurobiological alone. (p. 23) Finally, one further feature of Lewin’s approach needs to be emphasized. Time, or the historical dimension, plays a central role in his field theoretical analysis of psychological events. The field physics that inspired Lewin takes space/time as its framework. From this perspective, the properties of any “entity”—in the present case, psychological phenomenon—must be taken in relation to “where”/“when” it is. In the previous example, “what” is experienced—and experience is a uniquely psychological and natural phenomena—depends on the individual being in the vicinity of food (“where”) at a time “when” he is hungry. Trait theories, as we saw above, give short shrift to the “where.” Interactionist theories tend to be ahistorical, neglecting the “when” in the sense of disregarding when in the course of sociocultural and ontogenetic histories particular psychological events occur. In keeping with Newtonian physics, interactionism treats space and time separately. In contrast, transactional theories take “where” and “when” as jointly fundamental to any considerations of the psychological.
The Environment Psychologically Considered A science of psychology requires a way of conceptualizing the environment that meets the rigorous standards of science, while at the same capturing the distinctive qualities of human experience. The standard approaches in psychology that describe the environment utilizing reductive concepts from the physical sciences or information theory admirably meet the first criterion, while failing at the second. Conversely, employing first-person descriptions of psychological experiences, such as phenomenological descriptions that remain disconnected from a public realm of experience and material properties, leaves individuals’ mental experiences adrift. These shortcomings are clearly mirror images. They stem from efforts to describe the environment from either side of the environment-mind dichotomy. Attempting to do so has produced predictable and justifiable complaints from opposing camps. On the one hand, critics of physicalistic treatments judge them to be sterile, coarse, and remote from human experience, while subjectivistic descriptions of environmental experience are often criticized as lacking in rigor, at times romanticized, and verging on the solipsistic. But, as we have seen, there is a third way. The transactional metatheory is grounded in relational thinking and accordingly, has a dual character encompassing (“pointing both ways”) the environment and the person jointly. James, Dewey, and Lewin made some initial efforts to elucidate this perspective. In each case, there is recognition that in some fundamental way meanings and values are as much of the environment as they are of the mind. What is at stake here from a transactional standpoint is “the place of value in a world of facts” (Kohler, 1939). From a different quarter the renowned ecologist Wendell Berry (2000) has raised similar concerns about the use of reductive language when considering the environment and experience. He wrote: The problem, as it appears to me, is that we are using the wrong language. The language we use to speak of the world and its creatures, including ourselves, has gained a certain analytical power (along with a lot of expertish pomp) but has lost much of its power to designate what is being analyzed or to convey any respect or care or affection or devotion to it. (p. 8) The language of affordances and behavior settings would surely not satisfy Berry’s wishes either: they are too analytical in nature. Still, the relational perspective they embrace, and the first person perspective they are ultimately rooted in, may help to move discourse further in the direction that he envisions. After all, the features of the environment are experienced by us as being meaningful and value-laden. Examples fill the environmental psychology literature. As we know from the environmental aesthetics literature, we are attracted to some landscape features and wary of others. Or as we know from the children and environments literature, children are drawn to engage some features of the environment, and over time establish attachments to objects and places. Likewise, individuals develop feelings of ownership to possessions and to territories. These examples all revolve around value. How do we even begin to make sense of findings that link meaning and value to the
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology environment if we assume that environmental experience is something that happens “inside the head”? And how could environmental psychology fulfill its intentions to contribute to environmental design if it has no way to embed psychological experience in environmental properties? Still, in my view, James and Lewin struggled unsuccessfully with reconciling these seeming contrary challenges. Although they claimed that the object of psychological experience was relational, they lacked a systematic way to connect the relational object to environmental structures. James, in particular, was painfully aware of this problem as he struggled with the question, “How can two (p. 24) minds that each have private experiences know the same thing?” (James, 1912, pp. 123–136; also see Heft, 2002). We see this same dilemma in the case of Lewin’s field theory, where those aspects of the environment not currently experienced are delegated to the so-called “foreign hull” outside of the psychological field, lending a subjectivist cast to his account that has been difficult to shake. How individual experience could be both personal and “of the environment”—neither subjective nor objective, and yet both—is not well worked out in either case. It is here that Gibson’s ecological psychology makes a crucial contribution to the transactional approach.
James Gibson’s Ecological Psychology The primary focus of James J. Gibson’s research and writing over the course of his career was the nature of perceiving. He developed his ecological approach to perception over many years, and it is most fully articulated in two books that were published more than a decade apart: The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (1966) and The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979). Each book is devoted to developing different aspects of the ecological approach, as we will see, with the later book also refining some earlier ideas. Gibson begins both books by asking: How should the environment be conceptualized from the standpoint of the active perceiver? Let’s be clear at the outset what is meant by an active perceiver. It is common in many formerly information-processing, now cognitive science approaches, to use the adjective “active” to refer to posited mental operations, such as encoding, storage, assimilation, activation of mental representations, and so on. In the ecological approach, “active” has a much more mundane, literal meaning. With respect to vision, it refers to animate movements, such as moving one’s eyes, head, torso, and whole body for the purposes of exploring and detecting the properties of the environment. Although that observation may seem almost too obvious to make, the fact is that very few psychological theories take animacy to be an essential quality of complex organisms, if indeed it is a quality that is considered at all. There are encouraging signs that psychology’s stance may be changing in this respect, with the emergence in recent years of accounts of embodied cognition (e.g., Johnson, 2007; Rowlands, 2010; Shapiro, 2011; Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991), with Gibson typically cited as one antecedent of these approaches. Especially important in the present context, if our analysis encompasses the active individual as a whole, when our focus shifts to the environment, it is considered at a commensurate level of complexity rather than reductively. In contrast, the standard format for treatments of perception is to begin with analyses of the sensory processes, and commensurately, the physical energies that initiate neural responses at the receptors. Consequently, treatments of visual perception usually start out with a discussion of the physical basis for light, followed by a neuroanatomical and functional account of the retina and the optical neural pathways. While such analyses are invaluable at this more microlevel of analysis, they fail to consider perceiving as a function of an active individual taken as a whole. In turn, the environment commensurate with the level of analysis of an active individual—which is where meaningful, functional properties are to be found—is completely overlooked. From an ecological/evolutionary standpoint, the active individual is the appropriate place to begin one’s analysis. Natural selection operates at the level of the whole organism, not at the level of individual receptors or processes. Fitness applies to the functioning of the organism as a whole, and reproductive success—the criterion for fitness— concerns the overall functioning of the organism. Whether a particular receptor system or process (or “gene,” for that matter3 ) is adaptive depends on its place in overall organism functioning (Dupre, 2003). With an active perceiver as a starting point, it is instructive to consider the relationship between perceiving and acting. All living things require access to resources, and the capacity for animate motion, for example, locomotion, widens enormously the possibilities for and access to needed resources. And yet, locomotion without some means of guiding that action would be a rather hit-or-miss affair. For this reason, perceiving processes surely evolved
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology alongside action possibilities as a means for guiding them. Further, and critically, not only does perceiving help to guide action, but reciprocally, action facilitates the detection of environmental properties. For example, whereas object perception can at times be equivocal from a stationary position, Gibson (1979) demonstrated that distinctive, invariant object properties are revealed through movement. Hence, rather than treat perception and action as separable processes—a step that continues an unproductive tendency of designating distinct psychological “faculties”—it is proper from a functional standpoint to view perception and action as operating jointly as a common (p. 25) synergistic system, or a perceptual system (Gibson, 1966). That said, what aspects of the environment should be the starting point for psychological analysis? Most immediately relevant for the animate individual are those properties of the environment that have significance for action. Gibson coined the term “affordances” to refer to those properties of the environment that have functional significance for an active individual taken as a whole.
Affordances The Gibsonian concept that is most familiar to the current generation of environmental psychologists is affordance. Even though this concept appears explicitly only in Gibson’s (1979) later writings, it is a good place to begin an examination of ecological psychology because it reveals the distinctive character of the ecological approach, while at the same time conveying its wider connections to a transactional style of thinking. An affordance is a psychological property of the environment. That is to say, an affordance is a property of the environment taken with reference to the functional possibilities of an individual. For example, a horizontal surface that is approximately knee-height to an individual and whose material structure can support that individual’s weight affords sitting-on for that individual. Indeed, the surface is perceived as a place to sit. That same surface, however, may not be perceived as affording sitting-on for another individual whose leg length and weight are quite different. Affordances, in short, are perceived properties of the environment from the standpoint of an individual. They are specified by properties of environmental features considered in relation to the action possibilities of an individual. In other words, affordances are relational properties, referring simultaneously to the environment and the individual. Individuals most immediately (nonreflectively) perceive the environment in terms of its affordances (Gibson, 1979; Heft, 1993, 2003). One may adopt an analytical stance with respect to the environment, focusing on particular abstract properties, such as the geometric shape of objects, but from an ecological perspective, the environment is experienced most immediately with respect to its functionally (psychologically) meaningful properties. Viewed from the perspective of an interactionist metatheory, affordances would seem to be conceptually incoherent. Recall that for interactionism, there exist two autonomous domains of reality: the physical environment (objective reality), on the one hand, and the psychological (subjective experience), on the other. And yet affordances are posited to be psychological properties of the environment. How can a property of the physical environment be psychological—even meaningful? The concept of affordance, however, is incommensurate with interactionist thinking. Instead, affordance, and the ecological psychology framework out of which the concept grows, abandons a dualistic mode of thought rooted in interactionism in favor of the kind of relational thinking that characterizes the transactional framework. Gibson was not the first person to call attention to such properties. In their own ways, and using different terminology, James, Lewin, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger did as well (Heft, 2001; Johnson, 2007). What Gibson uniquely accomplished, however, was to give the insight scientific, empirical footing by grounding it in an account of environmental perception and ecological optics. This achievement can be illustrated with reference to W. H. Warren’s (1984) investigations of perceiving a step affordance. Warren tested a sample of individuals who were either short or tall relative to the average height of his population. Each individual was asked to judge whether he or she could walk up several sets of stairs that varied across trials in riser height, that is, the vertical distance between the horizontal surfaces. Not surprisingly, short and tall individuals’ judgments varied systematically, averaged over trials, with the riser height that was judged to be climbable on 50% of the trials differing between the two groups. More critically, when judgments of both groups were evaluated in relation to individuals’ ratio of leg length to riser height (pi = leg length/riser height), rather than an absolute height measure (leg length alone), the pi value was constant across both groups. In other words, the riser height judged to be climbable 50% of the time was constant across all participants when the stair height was scaled in relative rather than absolute terms. This finding
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology indicates that the affordance, a climbable stair, was perceived relative to the individual. Notably, this affordance property is objectively specifiable—the pi value is calculable—as well as being perceptually meaningful. The psychological literature is filled with references to properties of the environment that are either objectively specified but lacking in meaning (e.g., wavelength composition of light), or meaningful, but difficult to ground in some objective, measureable manner (e.g., the meaning of a place). The limitations of each type of description derive from thinking about environment-person relations in a (p. 26) dichotomous manner. The concept of affordance cuts across the standard objective-subjective distinction.
Investigations and Extensions of the Affordance Concept A substantial research literature has developed within experimental psychology over the past two decades leading to a deeper understanding of affordance-related issues. Studies have documented that children and adults perceive the affordance properties of a wide range of objects and structures in relation to their own action possibilities (e.g., Adolph, 1997; Carello et al., 1989; Mark, 1987; Mark et al., 1990; Wagman & Malek, 2008; Warren & Wang, 1987). Research has also shown that a perceiver can judge affordances that require the joint participation of a second person, such as in the case of an individual perceiving that he needs another to carry an object (Richardson, Marsh, & Baron, 2007), and that perceivers can assess affordance possibilities for others (Rochat, 1995; Heft & McFarland, 1999). Further, it is clear that perceiving affordances is a dynamic process rather than a judgment gauged in relation to a fixed body standard (e.g., a motor schema). Mark et al. (1990) demonstrated that when eye height is altered, as in the case of having individuals wear blocks on their shoes, judgments of affordance possibilities of objects are recalibrated through action. At times, ecological psychology, and the concept of affordance in particular, has been presented in the secondary literature in an overly restrictive manner. I refer here to statements to the effect that affordances concern only “physical” properties of the environment, while disregarding culturally grounded meanings. In this criticism we face yet another dubious dichotomy, this time between the natural and the cultural (Gibson, 1979; Heft, 1989, 2001; Reed, 1988). From an ecological perspective, perceiving is a process of detecting regularities in the environment, and regularities arise not only from the “furniture” of the world, such as surfaces and objects, but also from actions of others (Baldwin et al., 2008), from language (Saffran, 2003), and quite likely from the normative practices of groups and the wider culture within which they participate (Heft, 1989, 2001).
Affordances, Direct Perception, and Environmental Psychology The concept of affordance, and ecological psychology overall, would seem to have great utility for environmental psychology because the focus of the ecological approach and the goals of environmental psychology appear so well aligned in at least one respect. Both are explicitly concerned with, and take as primary, the relationship between the environment and psychological functioning. In contrast, cognitivism, and the cognitive turn that interactionist theories took post-1960, while often professing a focus on this relationship, promptly shift the analysis primarily to one facet of this relationship—namely, to the detached workings of the mind in its efforts to make sense of the environment “out there.” Long before the “cognitive revolution” of midcentury, Dewey (1920) referred to this approach pejoratively as the “spectator theory” of knowing, in contrast to a view in which the individual actively engages the environment. What is the rationale for a cognitivist stance in the first place? It is important to see that the inclusion of mentalistic concepts into an account of psychological functioning is considered by many to be unavoidable because our experience of the environment is underdetermined by the standard physicalistic descriptions of stimulation. After all, in the case of vision we do not experience the environment in terms of wavelengths of light, or even as a flat projection of objects on the retinal surface. Instead, we perceive objects and features of the environment that are meaningful and that retain their constant size and shape as we move relative to them. Further, visual experience has a quality of continuity rather than being a string of discrete retinal snapshots or pictures. For these reasons and more, perceptual processes would seem necessarily to “go beyond the stimulus information given.” Visual stimuli seem so obviously to underdetermine perceptual experience that the latter surely must be mediated by enriching cognitive processes. This claim underwrites the epistemological position of indirect or representational realism, which holds that perceivers can have indirect awareness of the environment only through mediating mental structures or processes.
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology However, if true, this position places environmental psychology in a rather peculiar position. It would seem to put the environment necessarily out of reach not only of individual perceivers, but also of researchers and designers. If the environment is experienced “in the head,” isn’t it forever beyond the immediate grasp of perceivers? Although such a view may not have troubled many 17th- and 18th-century thinkers, it surely should have become unsettling once an evolutionary perspective took hold in psychology. Moreover, if the (p. 27) environment is remote and out of reach epistemologically, how does one examine the properties of the environment for research purposes? Or if the environment that is experienced is tucked away into so many separate brains of individual perceivers, how does one design environments with a sensitivity to psychological criteria? If designs are intended for users (in the plural), and yet experience is assumed to be idiosyncratic, what is a planner or architect to do? Oftentimes, seemingly intractable problems can be attributed to the manner in which they are framed in the first place. Perhaps that is the situation perceptual theory—and by extension, much of design—has created for itself here. The apparent necessity of indirect realism may result from how the environment has been described historically for the purposes of perceptual theory. Beginning with his first book, The Perception of the Visual World (1950), Gibson proposed that the seeming inadequacy of environmental “input” to account for the experience of the environment may be a consequence of the framework chosen to describe and measure the environment. The ecological approach to visual perception took shape over the course of Gibson’s later books (1966, 1979), where he developed the complementary conceptualizations “ecological optics” and “perceptual systems.” With ecological optics, Gibson analyzed how light from a radiant source is structured as it reflects off of object and ground surfaces. He demonstrated how the structured array of reflected light (the ambient optic array) provides information about the environmental layout to an active perceiver. In a coordinate fashion, as we have already seen, he clarified how movements of the eyes, head, and whole body—the visual perceptual system—play an instrumental role in the detection of the information in the optic array. It is in this respect that ecological optics and perceptual systems are complementary facets of an account of the direct perception of the environment. (A more detailed account of ecological optics and perceptual systems is beyond the scope of this chapter.) Finally, standard approaches treat space perception and time or event perception as distinct topics, consistent with the separation of space and time in interactionist approaches. However, if perceiving is conceptualized most basically as the detection of information over time through action, that distinction collapses, which, as we have seen, is characteristic of how transactional thinking treats space/time.
Applying the Ecological Approach to Environmental Psychology How might the ecological approach to perception inform research and practice in environmental psychology and environmental design? Let us briefly consider a few possibilities here.
Affordances as a Tool for Environmental Evaluation and Design The concept of affordances prompts environmental psychology researchers and designers to think about environments in terms of the functional possibilities they offer to prospective user groups. In this regard, the concept of affordances has been applied to considerations of environments from the standpoint of children’s activities. Heft (1988b) initially proposed a taxonomy of children’s environments based on descriptive studies of children’s daily actions, and in a later study found support for its predictive validity (reported in Heft, 1997). Subsequent research by Kytta (2002, 2004) has demonstrated how the affordance concept can be used in a comparative study of different residential areas and towns, linking differences in activity levels to the available affordance possibilities. Moore and Cosco (2010) have effectively employed the concept of affordances in the evaluation of children’s playground and school facilities, and utilized those findings to formulate design recommendations. The concept has also been used by Clark and Uzzell (2002) in an examination of the affordances of a town from the perspective of adolescents. The concept of affordance can contribute to the growing interest in the design of “child-friendly cities” (e.g., Horelli & Prezza, 2007). The design layout of neighborhoods, towns, and urban areas can be structured so as to make resources such as parks and shopping areas more accessible to children. Providing bikeways and walkways that circumvent threats from traffic broadens opportunities for children’s independent exploration and territorial range (Heft & Chawla, 2006). Related considerations apply to individuals of all ages. Safe pathways and walkways that
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology are free of hazards, such as uneven surfaces that can trip up the elderly, are sorely lacking in many residential and commercial areas. These functional concerns have a direct bearing on the growing recognition that the design of residential environments can promote activity and exercise for individuals of all ages (Ward Thompson, in press). Because the concept of affordance prompts us to consider the functional character of the environment in relation to prospective users, it should spur (p. 28) ongoing efforts to design environments that are suitable for diverse populations.
Wayfinding as a Process of Perceiving the Temporal Structure of a Path over Time The analysis of wayfinding in environmental psychology has followed along the lines established in experimental psychology generally. That approach emphasizes the central role of a mental representations of the environment, a “cognitive map,” in directing wayfinding. These mental representations are usually conceptualized as being configurational in character, adopting the vantage point of a bird’s-eye view of a landscape. A cognitive map is considered to be necessary because the perceiver, who is located at any moment at a single position, can apprehend only a relatively small part of the environment. It is assumed to be a product of mediating, cognitive processes that “assemble” the separate momentary views of the environment detected by a stationary perceiver into an integrated, mental representation (for a critical analysis of this approach, see Heft, 2012). The joint conceptualizations of ecological optics and perceptual systems suggest an alternative to the configurational, mental representation–driven account of wayfinding. From an ecological perspective, as the individual travels along paths in the environment, he or she generates an optic flow of perceptual information produced by moving relative to a feature-rich environment. Specifically, an envelope of visible landscape features, including the ground surface texture and the various objects that are currently in view, radially streams around and past the individual in the opposite direction of her movement. This optic flow provides compelling information for movement through the immediate environment (Lee & Lishman, 1977), and it serves as information for guiding locomotion (R. Warren, 1976). Perceiver-generated optic flow can be differentiated into two classes of perceptual information: (1) perspective structure, which is the flow of perceptual information specific to landscape features and generated by action; and (2) invariant structure, which is structure in the flow of perspective structure that remains constant across transformations produced by action. The flow of perspective structure serves as information for the perceiver that he or she is moving relative to environmental layout, and a particular flowing perspective structure will, in most cases, be specific to a particular path of locomotion. The concurrent invariant structure specifies the fixed layout of the environment, that is, the structure that can be detected over time across multiple vantage points and paths of locomotion. (For a more detailed discussion and supporting research, see Heft, 1979a, 1996.) In this account, knowledge of the configuration of the environment (a cognitive map) may play little or no role in many instances of wayfinding. Finding one’s way involves moving through the landscape to generate a previously learned flow of information, analogous to how a musician might generate a familiar melody by re-creating a previously experienced temporal structure. Both a path of locomotion and a melody have, respectively, a visual and an auditory temporal structure that is perceivable only over time (Jones & Boltz, 1989). Still, it is obvious that an awareness of overall layout of the environment can arise from wayfinding experiences over time, much like an awareness of an object’s shape is not tied to any single vantage point. Such knowledge of overall layout can be drawn upon when encountering a detour along a familiar route or when disoriented. However, even in such instances, map-like (configurational) representations need not be necessary, as the extensive literature on path integration in humans, nonhuman animals, and insects has shown (Foo et al., 2005; Wehner & Srinivasan, 2003). Of course, individuals can, with varying degrees of success, draw maps or build models on demand, but these artifacts do not necessarily constitute evidence for the existence of cognitive maps. Instead they may reflect the uses to which awareness of layout, in whatever form it is understood, can be applied. That knowledge of environmental layout need not be configurational in nature is supported by evidence from several non-Western cultures that shows skillful navigation under demanding circumstances without any apparent map-like understanding of the environment (e.g., Hutchins, 1995; see Heft, 2012).
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology Implications for Methods in Environmental Perception and Aesthetics Researchers in environmental psychology have long faced the challenge of maintaining rigorous methodological standards when conducting investigations in everyday environments. For this reason, among others, environmental psychologists have amassed a research literature based on a mixture of “natural” experiments, epidemiological (p. 29) methodologies, field experiments, and laboratory research, with a preponderance of the latter. Laboratory research that explores issues relating to environmental perception understandably has utilized surrogates of environments, such as photographs. And yet, the adequacy of these displays as surrogates for “the environment as it is experienced beyond the laboratory” has not received sufficient, careful scrutiny.4 Importantly, whenever their adequacy is assessed, photographs are compared to stationary viewpoints in situ, not to dynamic experience. Considering the extensive use of photographs and other types of static representations of environment, researchers appear to be operating more on faith than on empirically grounded confidence that they are indeed investigating environmental experience as opposed to picture perception. Indeed, there have been several investigations that raise doubts about the adequacy of pictures when compared to dynamic experience of environments (Heft & Nasar, 2000; Heft & Poe, 2005; Hull & Stewart, 1995). The latter study is particularly noteworthy. Individuals’ evaluations of landscape views while hiking were compared with their evaluations of those same landscapes presented as photographs. It is striking that while group means across the two conditions were comparable, individuals’ ratings varied considerably across the two conditions. Comparing group means, as is typically done in comparative studies, may only mask the possible variability of evaluations made by the same individuals of the same landscape in situ and represented in a photograph. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the research literature on environmental preference and aesthetics within environmental psychology is exclusively a literature based on individuals looking at pictures of environments. Why hasn’t the adequacy of this methodology been examined more thoroughly? There are at least two reasons: First, it is taken for granted that the use of static displays of environments (i.e., photographs) merely parallels how visual perception normal functions, namely, as an image-capturing process. The long-held eye-as-camera metaphor continues to influence views of visual perception, even in the area of environmental perception. However, perceiving regularly occurs in the course of movement and exploration, and critically, these actions facilitate the detection of information for perceiving. It is for this reason that the use of photographs or pictures in the study of environmental perception can be misleading. It remains an open question whether findings produced with these procedures are representative of the perceptual experiences of active perceivers in environments that surround them and are extended. Second, the use of pictures and even stationary views in situ is fully in keeping with much of aesthetic theory since the 18th century that was centered on experiencing picturesque landscapes in paintings and later in photographs (Carlson, 2000). The study of environmental aesthetics through the use of photographs may represent but one limited type of experience in environments, and an experience that is tied very much to recent Western cultural traditions. The ecological approach and transactionalism (Dewey, 1938) suggest another form of aesthetic experience in environments, namely, the affective experience accompanying our active engagement with features of the environment. Often individuals seek out particular environments because of the distinctive affective experiences they afford when we engage with them. In the way that a well-made tool is pleasurable to utilize because it has a particular “feel” in use, so, too, environments may well have a particular “feel,” such as a pleasing ground surface or a pleasant slope when walking (Mausner, 2004), or even a particular flow of information when moving through it (Lynch, 1960; Thiel, 1997). These affective qualities are not properties of the environment taken apart from the individual, nor are they subjective features imposed willy-nilly on an environment’s features. Rather they are properties that exist within the active engagement of perceiver and environment, and in this respect, they are transactional in nature (Berleant, 1992; Dewey, 1934; see Heft, 2010). In our overly intellectualized approach to cognition, it might be well to remember William James’s (1890) insistence that our “mental life” consists of thoughts and feelings; and “affectional facts” are often relational qualities (James, 1912).
Barker’s Eco-Behavioral Science
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology The focus of Roger Barker’s eco-behavioral science, as it came to be called by the mid-1970s, bears little resemblance to Gibson’s ecological psychology in either problem selection or methodology. At midcareer and already an accomplished laboratory investigator in the still-fledgling area of child development circa 1940, Barker began to develop reservations about what that work revealed. It troubled him that as child psychologists were beginning to accumulate knowledge about the lawful relationships between experimental conditions manipulated in the laboratory and children’s resulting (p. 30) behavior, their knowledge of what children do and what they experience in their day-to-day lives was meager and, at best, anecdotal. This state of affairs was striking because in the absence of information about the incidence of psychological phenomena in the daily circumstances of people’s lives, psychologists have little way of knowing how representative, in a Brunswikian sense, any pattern of behavior generated in the laboratory is. Indeed, it occurred to Barker that psychology was singular among the sciences in not knowing the frequency and distribution of its principal subject matter. He wrote: Chemists know the laws governing the interaction of oxygen and hydrogen, and they also know how these elements are distributed in nature. Entomologists know the biological vectors of malaria, and they also know much about the occurrence of these vectors over the earth. In contrast, psychologists know little more than laymen about the distribution and degree of occurrence of their basic phenomena: of punishment, of hostility, of friendliness, of social pressure, of reward, of fear, of frustration. (Barker, 1968, p. 2) Psychology would appear to be unique among the sciences in starting out as an experimental science, while failing to develop a descriptive, natural history phase. All of the sciences, and especially the life sciences, maintain ongoing field investigations of a descriptive nature to establish how living things function in context—all, that is, with the exception of psychology. In response to these shortcomings, Barker took the unusual step in psychology of establishing a field research station in a small town where the activities of its residents could be observed and recorded in situ. His initial methodological approach was quite simple and yet painstaking. Individual observers working in tandem observed and recorded in writing the activities of individual children over the course of the waking hours of an entire day. Subsequently, these “specimen records” were examined to determine whether the data revealed specifiable regularities and predictive patterns. Two somewhat distinct research programs emerged from this work.
The Behavior Stream The first research program concerned the structure of ongoing activity. Observing an individual’s behavior over time revealed a sequence of episodes that have a discernable beginning, middle, and ending, as the individual engaged in one task, then another, and another, and so on. For example, a particular child may have had breakfast, followed by walking to school, attending English class, participating in orchestra practice, and so on. Each action episode had a spatial locus: it occurred in some place, and it also had a temporal character—a duration. In keeping with the field theoretic thinking characteristic of transactionalism, action episodes are spacetime phenomena. A closer examination of the records of individual children’s activities indicated that typically there was a good deal more complexity in the structure of ongoing episodes than one following another in serial fashion. It was common for an episode to begin before the preceding episode ended (overlapping episodes), and at other times, for an episode to begin and end all within a more inclusive episode (nested episodes). Analyses of the behavior stream prompt a variety of empirical questions: Does the relative degree of complexity among episode structures change with age? In this regard, Barker found that whereas younger children tended to engage in one action at a time, with little nesting or overlapping of episodes, older children exhibited a greater amount of both types. Further, with increasing age, children engaged in fewer episodes, but for longer periods of time. These findings are but a few that resulted from an analysis of specimen records (see Barker & Wright, 1955, pp. 225–302). Other questions prompted by the analysis of episode structure readily come to mind: Are there systematic differences in episode structures within the different settings that children encounter? Historically, have there been changes in the complexity and duration of children’s episode structures from the time Barker collected his data (1954–1955, 1964–1965) to our present time? Anecdotal evidence would suggest so, but substantive evidence is needed. Related to that, what is the relationship between the character of episode structure complexity
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology and indices of children’s and adult’s well-being? This question brings a dimension to studies of well-being that has rarely been examined. The investigation of action episodes received little attention for decades, with the notable exception of Newtson’s research concerning the perception of structure in the behavior stream (Newtson & Enquist, 1976; Newtson, Enquist, & Bois, 1977). Recently, however, the topic of perceiving action episodes has been reinvigorated through the work of Zacks and his colleagues (e.g., Zacks, Tversky, & Iyer, 2001) and by Baldwin et al. (2008). Research of this nature can be extended to issues of considerable (p. 31) interest to environmental psychologists, such as the possibility that informative patterns of action are available to be perceived that are specific to particular types of settings. For decades, cognitivists have proposed that behavior in social settings is directed by mental “scripts.” However, this claim begs the question of the perceptual basis for identifying settings in the first place. Moreover, it may well turn out that if the patterns of action characteristic of different types of settings are perceivable, participation in settings may be more reasonably viewed as a perception-action process of detecting and contributing to patterns of collective action within a place (a space-time locus), rather than being attributable to the control of action by a mental script. Could, for example, scripts be of sufficient generality or abstractness to cover variation of setting types (e.g., varieties of restaurants), while at the same time being specific enough to guide action in any particular instance of those settings? Here, as we saw earlier, do cognitive structures leave us too disconnected from the moment-to-moment circumstances? Such conjectures about action in specific settings leads to the second line of Barker’s research that came out of the specimen record data.
Behavior Settings The second research program is more familiar to environmental psychologists, and it is also the research on which Barker invested most of his efforts. I refer here to his work on behavior settings. The concept of the behavior setting is best appreciated by reviewing how Barker was led to the discovery of this eco-behavioral structure. One of the early goals of the field research station investigations was to determine whether individuals’ actions could be systematically and functionally linked to environmental occurrences. Barker initially hypothesized that the behavior episodes of the children would follow in a stimulus-response fashion from the antecedent actions of other individuals—that is, from “proximate social inputs.” However, this did not prove to be widely the case. Although a sizeable proportion of behaviors did seem to follow immediately from social inputs, much of the time they did not. To Barker’s surprise, actions of other individuals that were directed toward the child were only a weak to moderate predictor of that individual child’s behavior. As the data on the behavior stream also indicated, in most cases the actions of individual children appeared to be initiated spontaneously rather than being instigated by others (Barker & Wright, 1955, p. 298). If one was looking for some systematic and highly predictive relationship between the environment and behavior, that goal seemed at first blush to be unattainable. However, Barker took note of something else in the data they had collected from observations of individual children. As each child moved from one locale or setting to another over the course of the day, for example, from the classroom to the playground to the home, behaviors changed appreciably. In noting these patterns of behavior with respect to each individual child, he also began to recognize another pattern that on reflection took on greater significance than it is usually accorded. While the individual child’s behavior varied across settings, there was a great deal of commonality among the actions of different children in the same setting. Indeed, the actions of different children in the same setting had greater similarity than the actions of an individual child across different settings. Said differently, the variability in behavior of different children in the same setting at a particular time was smaller than the variability in behavior of the same child across his or her entire day. This finding runs counter to two prevailing assumptions in psychology: first, that the actions of a particular individual can be readily predicted with reference to internal, or dispositional attributes, such as personality, temperament, or motivation; second, that behavior is best predicted by proximate inputs, often in light of their immediate consequences. Barker’s data pointed to an entirely different set of factors operating that were neither dispositional nor proximate: the dynamics of the “overarching” setting as such. We found, in short, that we could predict some aspects of children’s behavior more adequately from knowledge of the behavior characteristics of … [the settings they] inhabited than from knowledge of the
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology behavior tendencies of particular children. (Barker, 1968, p. 4) In short, it seemed apparent that in some way, where an individual child’s actions took place mattered a great deal. Hence, even though a high percentage of actions observed appeared to be spontaneous rather than instigated, it was not the case that these actions were random. How does one square, on the one hand, the apparent spontaneous and autonomous actions of individuals, on the other hand, with some degree of determinateness of those same actions? This is where the concept of behavior setting comes in. (p. 32) Barker (1968) posited the existence of dynamic eco-behavioral entities that operate at a higher level of complexity than the individual, and these entities are constituted by the collective actions of individuals in conjunction with the physical milieu (affordances) of the setting (also see Schoggen, 1989). That is to say, through their collective actions, and with the support of affordances, groups of individuals generate naturally occurring, dynamic extra-individual structures—behavior settings. Instances of such dynamic structures are abundant: a game on a playground, a meeting of the local Democrats, a public hearing by the city council, the operations of a bake shop, a school orchestra concert, and so on. Behavior settings emerge from the mutually interdependent character of behaviors and affordances. Let us consider the dynamics of these processes more closely. By the very process of joining in on some collective pattern of action, an individual’s choices are constrained as a matter of course much of the time, falling within the range of appropriate actions that maintain the workings of that collective pattern. For example, if a child joins a game of baseball on a playground, she is obliged to operate within the parameters of that game to be a participant. By the fact of joining the game, which may be either instigated (an invitation to join) or spontaneous (asking to join), the individual’s actions are constrained and, within some range, determined. In this respect, “the phenomena of psychology and the environments in which [they occur] are interrelated; they are interdependent … in the way a part of a system and a whole system are interdependent” (Barker, 1978, p. 41). The actions may appear spontaneous when examined at the level of the individual, but when considered from the standpoint of the behavior settings, the actions are constrained. Indeed, settings vary between themselves in terms of the degrees of freedom they afford. Compare play at recess to a classroom English lesson. As psychologically relevant properties of the environment, behavior settings convey a quality that is quintessentially psychological: they are meaningful. Individuals must be able to identify the setting type to participate in the collective processes in appropriate ways. Barker referred to this property of behavior settings as their perceptible “physiognomic” qualities, although this property did not receive much attention in his work. My expectation is that an individual ought to be able to perceive what kind of setting he is entering based on the patterns of action that are ongoing. In the case of a behavior setting whose operations are already familiar to its participants, they will know when the setting has been established by monitoring the patterns of action that are collectively generated. Likewise, they can monitor the relative stability of the setting over time through the perception of its ongoing, dynamic structure. With respect to the latter, behavior settings, like other types of selfregulating dynamic systems, function to preserve their integrity in the face of ongoing perturbations. When the functional integrity of the setting is threatened, perturbations should be perceivable in the dynamics of the setting. Participants who threaten the setting’s operations are then prodded or cajoled into line by other setting participants. When such measures are unsuccessful, the individuals creating the disturbance may even be ejected from the setting entirely by its leaders or through group consensus. Such “forces” that operate to preserve the setting’s operations derive from the functional interdependencies among its constituents, and perceptual information is critical for individuals to monitor the status of the setting’s operations. Barker and his colleagues went on to study the properties of behavior settings in a variety of ways (Barker & Gump, 1964; Barker & Schoggen, 1973), resulting in a rich analysis of these dynamic structures that account for a great deal of the order we see in everyday social activity (Barker, 1968, 1978; Schoggen, 1989; Wicker, 1987). One of the significant outcomes of this work came from considering some psychological consequences of participating in settings that vary in terms of the degree to which the necessary roles in the behavior setting are filled by its participants. In Big School, Small School (Barker & Gump, 1964) and in other work, it was found that children who participated in behavior settings where there is a suboptimal number of participants relative to roles to be filled (understaffed settings) behaved in those settings and experienced them differently than did children participating in settings where the number of participants exceeded the requisite number of roles (overstaffed settings). For example, children in understaffed settings were more active in the setting, participated in more varied
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology roles, and more often held positions of responsibility, while feeling more valued in the setting, feeling a greater degree of responsibility in the setting, and experiencing more satisfaction from their involvement as well as more social pressures to participate. To the extent, then, that small schools and large schools (and other institutions) differ in the level of staffing of their settings—and the evidence (p. 33) indicates that they tend to do so—the psychological consequences for children in those schools will differ appreciably. Alternative explanations that posit self-selection of children to small or large schools can be ruled out because of school districting policies, but if there were any doubt on this point, later research that examined both schools and churches showed that levels of participation by the same populations dropped when the institutions in which they were participants/members shifted from a small to comparatively larger size through a merger (Baird, 1963; Wicker & Kauma, 1974). Like the concept of affordances, the concept of behavior settings can be used as a tool to describe the psychological-functional resources of the environment. To highlight this utility, Barker and Schoggen (1973) undertook a comparative study of two small towns, one in the United States and one in England. By detailing the types of behavior settings in each town, the frequency and duration that they operated, and other information of this sort, Barker and Schoggen were able to offer insight into what public life was like for inhabitants of each town without knowing anything about the dispositional attributes of individuals. To take a general example, knowing that there were more operating public behavior settings per individual (number of settings/population size) in the US town than in the UK town indicates that in the former case, residents were involved in more public settings (they had to be to sustain the setting’s existence) and hence, that community life was more active in the US town. This finding barely scratches the surface of the rich comparative analysis that they provide. It is offered as an illustration of how the behavior setting concept could be employed to compare different communities and even the same community over time.
Eco-Behavioral Science As we have seen, Barker started off attempting to gain insight into the daily lives of individual children. But his research led him to the discovery of higher order, extra-individual dynamic structures: behavior settings. It turned out that knowing which behavior setting children participated in was an exceptionally valuable predictor of behavior, and learning about the properties of individual behavior settings (e.g., level of staffing) provided additional insight into individuals’ likely experiences in those settings. However, in the process, Barker’s initial psychological aim of predicting individual behavior needed to be recast. Barker learned quite early in his research that he was unable to account for individual behavior at that level of specificity. Behavior setting analysis informs about the likely range of actions and experiences of individuals without specifying what will occur in any single case and at any particular moment. The range of possibilities (i.e., degrees of freedom) can vary across types of settings, from those with diverse possibilities, such as a playground, to those with quite narrow ones, such as a church service. Within those ranges, prediction is at best probabilistic owing to individual agency. It is for this reason that Barker recognized that what his work led to was not a psychology qua individuals—at least not of the sort that psychology tends to envision—but a science of the contexts that are constituted by individuals and that simultaneously constrain individual activities in daily life. In short, Barker’s framework transformed as a matter of course from ecological psychology to eco-behavioral science. This refashioned framework is in accord with the view of environments that we have seen to be characteristic of the ecological sciences overall: environments are composed of nested dynamic structures across different levels of organization. Eco-behavioral science is concerned with the functional character of higher order, extra-individual dynamic entities, and on these grounds, their operations are unlikely to be reducible to the actions of individuals. Barker was led to the conclusion that eco-behavioral science will require concepts specific to phenomena operating at this level of complexity. For this reason, the science of psychology and eco-behavioral science, while complementary, are not equivalent. But it is worth asking, is being able to identify the constraints within which an individual operates at any particular time, but not the specific actions of that individual at that time, a limitation of Barker’s approach? Or is it what psychological analysis ultimately affords? While we loosely talk as if research predicts particular outcomes, “between subject” variation is ever present, even if measures of central tendency sometimes lead us to forget that. Individuals enter any setting—those of laboratories and those of daily life—as agents with a developmental history that intersects with the extra-individual dynamics and other moment-to-moment contingencies of that
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology particular setting. We previously saw this claim both in the writings of James and Lewin. These realities preclude exacting prediction of individual actions. Our tradition of linear, causal thinking (interactionism) gives rise to a limited notion of prediction, and yet the precision (p. 34) one might expect along these lines is rarely realized. If this is a failing, it is a failing of our mechanistic tradition, pointing to how unsuitable it is for the subject matter of psychology. By the same token, it points to the fact that an ecological perspective, with its transactional metatheoretical grounding, may be a better fit for the study of psychological phenomena.
Ecological Psychology and Eco-Behavioral Science Individually, Gibson’s ecological psychology and Barker’s eco-behavior science are highly original theoretical programs that have generated distinct bodies of empirical research. Each stands quite capably on its own, as they singly have done for the past half century. Still, they can be viewed as complementary approaches that jointly offer a more comprehensive ecological framework than either does separately. Their complementarity is possible because even though they operate at different levels of analysis, focus on different phenomena, utilize strikingly different methodologies, and do not refer to each other in the least, they possess common, essential metatheoretical features, In summary, Gibson’s ecological approach takes its unit of analysis to be the dynamic perceiver-environment relation. If we limit our discussion here to vision, the constituents of this system include the information carried by the ecological optics of the situation and the actions of the perceiver (the visual perceptual system). What is perceived (or constituted) within the dynamics of this relationship are the affordances of the environment. Barker’s eco-behavior science takes as its unit of analysis standing patterns of activity (behavior settings) whose constituents consist of individual participants and milieu (affordances). In the case of Gibson’s ecological approach, affordances are properties that reside within the dynamic perceiver-environment relation, whereas for eco-behavioral science, affordances are among the constituents of behavior settings. In short, the functions and properties of interest to ecological psychologists—ongoing perceiver-environment processes—are nested within behavior settings. For this reason, an analysis of particular instances of perceiver-environment processes will be further illuminated by recognizing the behavior settings, and more broadly, the sociocultural contexts within which they occur (Heft, 2007). Likewise, analysis of the operations of a behavior setting can be enriched only by a detailed examination of the affordances operative in that setting. In these ways, both approaches jointly offer psychology a framework for examining person-environment processes in everyday life. In addition, Gibson’s and Barker’s frameworks both offer an opening for tackling what is at once the most central feature of human experience, and perhaps the most neglected in interactionist thinking. This is the meaningful character of human experience. As we have seen, neglect of the meaningful character of environmental experience primarily stems from the physicalistic approach to the environment that is typical of interactionist approaches. However, meaning is not a property of the domain of the physical sciences: it is a psychological property. From a transactionist perspective, the psychological domain is constituted jointly by environment and person processes, and for that reason, its meaningful properties are relational. The rejection of interactionist modes of thought by both approaches is also apparent in their treatment of causality. From an interactionist perspective, processes are mechanical and causality operates seriatim, with one part of a system imparting change on another part. Specifically, mechanical or “efficient” causality refers to the transmission of force or energy from one entity to another. This formulation is suitable for many things of interest to psychologists, such as when a light (electromagnetic energy) stimulates photoreceptors and thereby results in a neural impulse. But it is a limited view, as strides in dynamic systems theory have made plain (e.g., Thelen & Smith, 1994). Among other things, it is not suitable for giving theorists an opening to address the issue of meaning. The ecological and social transmission of information, as in the cases of perceiving affordances and participating in a behavior setting, are not energetic processes. Meanings are not “caused” in that sense. Instead, meaning involves the sharing of structure within a dynamic system. Take the case of affordances. Because individuals experience the environment relative to the body and its “projects” (Merleau-Ponty, 1962), they are attuned to its affordances. The affordance does not cause the perception of the affordance property; “no thing” or entity moves across a boundary separating the environment and the perceiver. Instead, structure or form comes to be shared within and across the system under
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology consideration. Affordances are meaningful within the dynamic person-environment system. Likewise, behavior settings do not cause particular patterns of action among participants. (p. 35) Barker was inclined to say that settings coerce rather than cause behavior, and this means that individuals conform to the operations of a behavior setting by virtue of participating in them. Participation entails engaging in actions that are situationally normative, and normativity is conveyed and sustained through meanings that are carried within the behavior setting’s overall dynamic structure.
The Ecological Approach and Environmental Psychology Environmental psychology developed in the midst of a wave of scientific and social movements of the 1950s and 1960’s that at their core were concerned with the quality of the biosphere, the quality of human habitats, and social justice. Although interest in these issues long predated this surge of activity, what was new was a growing appreciation for the fact that environmental and social conditions operate in a domain of mutually interdependent systems. In place of a view that natural conditions and human activity function as separate spheres, their interconnectedness as constituents of more inclusive systems came to the fore, especially in the life sciences. The adjective “ecological” is typically associated with this shift in thinking, and with it, a heightened recognition that natural processes, which include human activities, are embedded in an interdependent field of hierarchically nested systems. When American psychology entered this arena, however, it was at somewhat of a disadvantage because its dominant metatheoretical framework, interactionism, did not lend itself very well to ecological systems thinking. Earlier efforts by many individuals—from William James to the Gestalt psychologists, and even Piaget—to effect a shift from linear causal thinking to more dynamic, field-oriented thinking in psychology rarely took hold, except among some perceptual and developmental psychologists. Also, at the very time when ecological and field theoretic thinking was becoming commonplace in other sciences, experimental psychology was increasingly diverted by the allure of computer technology and artificial systems. Part of the draw was surely due to these exciting new “thinking” machines arriving on the scene and their potential applicability to long-standing problems in psychology. But critical in the embrace of computer models was the fact that the linear processing framework underlying their operations fit so comfortably with the mechanistic S-O-R way of thinking that had long dominated the field. Early leaders in this movement, such as Bruner and Miller, soon came to recognize that rather than serving as a “cognitive revolution,” these developments were not much more than a retooling of familiar modes of thinking (Bruner, 1990; Miller, 1985). Consequently, psychologists continued to conceptualize individuals from an interactionist perspective as being bounded, independent entities that could be causally affected by environmental conditions and that could affect the environment in turn: in short, elegant, if disembodied, input-output systems (Dreyfus, 1972). Taking the environment-person dichotomy as its starting point, the psychology that follows from this stance sustains the view of the individual operating at a remove from the environment as a spectator and interpreter of the external world. The dominance of this style of thinking kept at bay, or at best marginalized, alternative ways of thinking about psychological processes that are more in keeping with the ecological sciences, such as Gibson’s and Barker’s approaches. Such alternatives embrace the view that psychological processes are realized only as individuals develop and function as participants in a network of influences, with this dynamic network collectively constituting a psychological system. Because of the interdependencies that compose the system, boundaries between its components are both permeable and shifting as the system in its goal-directedness is always in the process of preserving some stabilities or establishing new ones. In all this, the interwoven histories of the constituents of the system must remain in focus, if we are to understand any one of them adequately. Following independent paths, both Gibson and Barker arrived at this type of conceptualization in large part because when they each examined topics of central concern to them beyond the laboratory, the interactionist framework failed them. For Gibson, the study of visual perception in the field forced him to rethink the standard view that environmental stimulation is imposed on a passive perceiver (Reed, 1988). Instead, he gradually came to the conclusion that perceiving is best conceptualized as the operation of perception-action systems, and that what is perceived most fundamentally are the psychologically meaningful properties of the environment taken with
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology reference to an individual—affordances. As for Barker, his prior background in experimental investigations of children’s behavior led him to expect that antecedent social inputs would account for a child’s actions in the field, just as they seem to do in the laboratory. (p. 36) However, this linear sequence of input-action did not obtain. Instead, to account for the order in children’s behavior over the course of their day, Barker needed to take into consideration the contexts or the fields of action. This refocusing led to his discovery of behavior settings as higher order structures that children participate in throughout their daily lives, even as they contribute to the constitution of settings through their participation. The ecological approach—and more generally, the transactional framework with its longer lineage—has been profitably employed in the study of only a few other environmental psychology issues, with transactionalism applied most notably by Altman and his colleagues’ insightful investigations of privacy regulation processes (e.g., Altman, 1976; Werner, Brown, & Altman, 2002). At various places in the preceding discussion, I tried to suggest, if only briefly, a few additional possibilities where transactionalist thinking can be applied to environmental psychology. In this respect, quite apart from the significant individual contributions that Gibson’s and Barker’s landmark works have already made, they can also illuminate a style of thinking that may help to bring environmental psychology more squarely into the fold of the ecological sciences.
Future Directions In keeping with the expected format for the volume, this chapter will conclude with a consideration of future directions for ecological psychology, particularly as they relate to environmental psychology. Most of the following brief comments build on the more extensive foregoing discussion. 1. The interactionist approaches that have informed environmental and conservation psychology to date have been useful, most especially when operating at the level of aggregate data. However, at the same time they have limited the scope of inquiry by directing researchers to conceptualize the environment in nonpsychological terms (e.g., physical properties), while locating the psychological domain in an intra-psychic realm (i.e., “the environment in the head”). An approach grounded in a transactional metatheory points instead to relational properties in the individual-environment system that by their very nature are psychological in character and meaningful. The value of such an approach has been demonstrated not only within ecological approaches, with the elucidation of novel concepts such as affordances and behavior settings; it has also been revealed by research on perceived control, privacy, and social capital, each of which is properly viewed as a phenomenon that resides within an individual(s)environment system. Additional gains from applying transactional thinking to environmental and conservation psychology await. 2. There exist many ways to evaluate the material resources of environments, but relatively few for assessing the psychological resources of environment for individuals, excepting some initial inventories developed decades ago for home environments (e.g., Bradley et al., 1979; Heft, 1979b, 1985; Wachs, 1979). How should one proceed in making an assessment of the psychological resources within environments taken at a broader scale, such as neighborhoods, communities, and other public areas? Several steps are required here: (1) particular possibilities need to be proposed for what may serve as an eco-psychological resource (e.g., a particular type of affordance); (2) a means of assessing the availability of these resources in some locale needs to be developed; and crucially, (3) linkages between availability of these resources and positive outcomes must be established. We have yet to develop a battery of sound measures of environmental quality in a psychological vein. The concepts of affordances and behavior settings offer a good starting point, however. There is already some indication in the developmental literature of the positive value of home environments rich in particular types of affordances, such as objects that are responsive to children’s actions (Heft, 1983). A recent volume edited by Evans and Wachs (2010) also provides some new insights into children’s environments. Schools marked by understaffed behavior settings (Barker & Gump, 1964), are associated with positive developmental outcomes, as we have seen. Initial efforts applied to outdoor environments with respect to affordances have been made (Heft, 1988b; Kytta, 2004), but much more work is needed. Yet to be explored is the relationship between available behavior settings and community life, with the exception of Barker & Schoggen (1973). Environmental psychologists should be in a position both to evaluate the relative quality of existing environments and to anticipate the impact of design choices from a psychological standpoint for various user populations.
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Foundations of an Ecological Approach to Psychology 3. It is well established that affordances play a role in the effectiveness of sustainable practices, even though this terminology is rarely employed in this context. For example, where recyclables can be disposed, and what materials are recyclable, is a continuing source of confusion for the public. Instead of resorting to signs, which are themselves (p. 37) often confusing, affordances can sometimes serve this purpose in a more immediate way. As a case in point are recycling containers with a narrow slit as an opening that afford the disposal of paper but not bottles. The concept of affordances can serve as a lens for identifying “eco-ergonomic designs” and programs, as well as evaluating impediments to sustainable practices. 4. The study of environmental perception and aesthetics has been examined almost exclusively through the use of photographs and other static representations of the environment (i.e., the “spectator view”). This domain of inquiry can be broadened, as we saw above, by taking into consideration the experience of environments from the dynamic perspective of participants as agents (Heft, 2010). Doing so will require the development of research methodologies that emphasize the central place of actively engaging the environment in perceptual experience, while also focusing on the temporal dimensions of person-environment transactions. 5. The relationship between activity levels and health is becoming well established, especially within the public health literature. Surely the character of the environment matters here, either in promoting or hampering activity. For example, affordances associated with the quality and the grades of surfaces are likely to be relevant, as are competing factors such as noise and hazards from automobile traffic. Further, it is evident that certain environments are more pleasurable than others for walking, running, or biking. Could a contributing factor here be the particular optic flow that is generated from the standpoint of an individual moving through the environment? As discussed above, the environment contiguous to paths of locomotion contributes to the character of the optic flow. In this respect, does the optic flow have an aesthetic dimension, as some have suggested (Lynch, 1960; 1997)? If so, the nature of the environment as it is experienced from the point of view of a moving perceiver may have a bearing on activity levels. Little attention has been given to this temporal dimension of experiencing environments as it might relate to activity promotion. 6. Wayfinding in indoor and outdoor environments can be a challenge due to the repetitive pattern of hallways and street configurations, respectively. The typical post hoc remedies often leave behind a bewildering array of signs. The ecological account of wayfinding described earlier suggests a different approach. Research indicates that certain segments of the perspective structure (i.e., structure of the optic flow) are especially valuable for finding one’s way. These segments (transitions) occur when a new vista comes into view, as in the case of making a turn. It is here, at these functionally significant portions of a route, that repetitive patterns in indoor/outdoor environments are problematic as, for example, each succeeding hallway or streetscape looks like the previous one. Distinctive transitions may well facilitate wayfinding and orientation. Generation of a distinctive sequence of transition flow will require more variation than is often found in modern designed environments (Heft, 1997). In less repetitive environments, such as parks and urban areas, transitions tend to be distinctive as a matter of course. At this point in the relatively short history of environmental psychology, the value of an ecological approach for efforts to understand some of the field’s most central concerns has barely been explored, although notable inroads have been made. Individually and jointly, Gibson’s ecological psychology and Barker’s eco-behavioral science hold out the promise for changes in the field that are both substantive and transforming.
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Notes: (1.) Although there is good reason to believe that Darwin himself did not hold this view (Richards, 2004). (2.) Readers may be more familiar with Kuhn’s later notion of paradigms than with Pepper’s world hypotheses. They are broadly similar, although Kuhn placed far more attention on the practices of scientific communities in his analysis and how scientific paradigms sustain particular approaches to a domain of inquiry. (3.) The very concept of a gene is hotly contested in the developmental biology literature, and many of these critiques operate in the spirit of the transactional worldview being examined here (Moss, 2003; Oyama, 1985). (4.) Meta-analyses showing a positive relationship between preference for photographs of buildings and for “actual buildings” (cited in Stamps, 1994) amass such a diverse set of studies that employ a wide variety of procedures and viewing conditions that, in my assessment, it is impossible to state with any precision what relationships are operating or judge the comparability of the studies. Harry Heft Harry Heft Department of Psychology Denison University Granville, OH
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Environmental Perception: Wayfinding and Spatial Cognition
Oxford Handbooks Online Environmental Perception: Wayfinding and Spatial Cognition Ann Sloan Devlin The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology, Cognitive Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0003
Abstract and Keywords This chapter on wayfinding and spatial cognition provides a literature review of the major topics in the field beginning with Tolman and Lynch, as well as directions for new research employing advances in technology. Reflecting the major emphasis in the field, the focus is on research in the built environment. The major areas of study include the development of wayfinding expertise in children and adults (specifically the progression from landmarks to route to configurational knowledge) and in those with cognitive and/or visual impairments; the problem of verisimilitude in wayfinding tasks; the areas of brain function underlying wayfinding behavior, specifically the role of the hippocampus; the extent of gender differences in wayfinding, including mental rotation, pointing accuracy, and use of landmarks and cardinal directions; and the role of software and technologies employed in research on wayfinding, from Space Syntax analysis to virtual reality with head-mounted devices (HMD). As an integrative strategy for the chapter, attention is periodically drawn to the shifting balance between theory and application in the research. Keywords: allocentric, cognitive map, egocentric, gender differences, simulation, spatial cognition, virtual reality, wayfinding
Introduction This chapter focuses on the relationship between wayfinding and spatial cognition as a topic of investigation in environmental psychology and reviews the research on wayfinding as a specific application of spatial cognition. The relationship of wayfinding to spatial cognition is of long-standing interest in environmental psychology, perhaps emanating from the work of Lynch in his seminal book, The Image of the City (1960), and in psychology more generally in the work of Tolman (1948/1973). Environmental psychology as a discipline has a multidisciplinary flavor; this is also true of the study of wayfinding. That interdisciplinarity leads to challenges, not the least of which is how to define wayfinding and spatial cognition. Of necessity in a document just a chapter in length, the literature on a given topic, for example, visuospatial working memory, centers on researchers who invoke this cognitive concept in the service of understanding wayfinding, rather than vice versa. The chapter will begin with definitions and then consider topics that have captured the interest of environmental psychologists: the cognitive map, neurophysiological underpinnings, verisimilitude of wayfinding tasks, development of wayfinding expertise and performance (including the elderly and those with cognitive and visual impairments), gender differences, and wayfinding aids.1 Throughout, efforts are made to include the role of technology, especially the use of virtual platforms. Also, as is true of many areas in environmental psychology, the topics of wayfinding and spatial cognition provide an intersection (p. 42) of conceptual and applied research, which the chapter highlights.
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Environmental Perception: Wayfinding and Spatial Cognition Wayfinding: A Definition Wayfinding is literally finding one’s way, or the process of purposefully moving from an origin to a destination (Golledge, 1999). Wayfinding can therefore be viewed as a process or activity, and in Passini’s view “includes all the mental processes which are involved in purposeful mobility” (1996, p. 322). At least one research group has differentiated navigation from wayfinding (Golledge, Jacobson, Kitchin, & Blades, 2000), although commonly the two terms are used interchangeably (e.g., Chen & Stanney, 1999). Navigation involves updating position and rate of travel as one moves along a specific course toward a target destination; in contrast, wayfinding “involves selecting path segments from an existing network and linking them as one travels along a specific path” (Golledge et al., 2000, p. 95). In their chapter on navigation in virtual environments, Darken and Peterson (2002) limit wayfinding to “the cognitive element of navigation” (p. 494) sans movement. For them, “Navigation is the aggregate task of wayfinding and motion” (p. 494). Outside the domain of psychology, other disciplines have invoked concepts such as skill mastery to explain wayfinding behavior, as opposed to the construction of a cognitive map (Istomin & Dwyer, 2009).
Spatial Cognition: A Definition In and of itself, spatial cognition is an enormous topic, and more than a few researchers have lamented the difficulty in defining the concept (e.g., Foreman & Gillett, 1997). Broadly speaking, spatial cognition is the knowledge or understanding of the self in relation to our surroundings (built or natural), objects, or people (Devlin, 2001). Unlike perception, cognition can occur in the absence of perceptual input (e.g., we can imagine our surroundings). Spatial cognition of the built or natural landscape is the focus here, and environmental psychologists are concerned with where we are physically in space, how we update that understanding, and how we use that understanding (often called a cognitive map) to plan our movements through space, whether physical or virtual. Although some cognitive researchers have emphasized theory concerning the intersection of brain and behavior (e.g., the role of the hippocampus) in wayfinding, environmental psychologists often focus on the environmental structure (e.g., the role of a major street or landmark) that facilitates finding your way. Historically, one of the problems in linking spatial cognition to wayfinding is that spatial cognition itself is not a single, unified entity. McGee (1979) reviewed factor analytic studies of spatial cognition and argued that the data support at least two different factors, one dealing with visualization, the other with orientation. The visualization factor emphasizes the ability to mentally rotate an object in space. A commonly used assessment of this ability is the Vandenberg and Kuse Mental Rotations Test (MRT; 1978), originally a paper-and-pencil test in which a threedimensional object presented as a drawing is a template against which the participant must select which two of four choices are this same figure rotated through space. Later research by Linn and Petersen (1985) employing metaanalysis argued for the existence of three factors: “1) spatial perception (determining spatial relations with respect to one’s own body; a gravitational kinesthetic process); 2) mental rotation (a Gestalt-like analogue process); and 3) spatial visualization (multistep manipulation of spatially presented information)” (Devlin, 2001, p. 45). What differentiates their model from McGee’s earlier outline is that mental rotation is a separate entity; Linn and Petersen argue that as a multistep process, spatial visualization may include parts of the other factors (mental rotation and spatial perception). For many, it is helpful to define the factors through the tests that are used to measure them. Examples from Linn and Petersen include the rod-and-frame test for spatial perception; the MRT for mental rotation; and the embedded-figures and paper-folding tests for spatial visualization. When a formal measure of spatial cognition is employed in research on wayfinding, the MRT is often the choice. In this chapter, the boundaries are drawn to understand spatial cognition as it serves the function of wayfinding. We may think that spatial cognition involves a mental activity of some sort, and spatial knowledge is put into action to serve wayfinding. What form of knowledge provides a basis for action? One answer is a cognitive map.
The Cognitive Map: Historical Perspective Environmental researchers have spent considerable energy on the concept of the cognitive map, with the early work more likely to be conceptual than applied (i.e., focusing on the mental representation, not the environmental structure that (p. 43) fostered it). As Kitchin argued in his 1994 paper, the cognitive map construct has been defined in a host of ways, perhaps reflecting the multidisciplinarity represented in those who study it. The concept
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Environmental Perception: Wayfinding and Spatial Cognition of the cognitive map has been viewed as a map (i.e., explicitly) and as an analogy, a metaphor, and a hypothetical construct (pp. 3–5). Kuipers (1982) and Downs (1981), among others, evaluated the limitations of the “map in the head” metaphor. Given this lack of agreement, researchers have selected what made sense from their own perspectives. Kaplan’s (1973) discussion of the cognitive map is useful for its clarity. The cognitive map is a mental representation that links perception and decision-making; it makes possible knowing “where one is,” “what is likely to happen next,” determining whether the outcome “will be good or bad” (e.g., whether a pleasurable outcome, such as low traffic volume on a particular route, is anticipated), and “some possible courses of action” (p. 65). Kaplan’s model is rooted in evolutionary concerns for humans as animals that process information as their fundamental activity. In other words, Kaplan’s model of the cognitive map addresses the survival requirements of an information-processing animal. Other often-cited definitions that share the flavor of Kaplan’s model come from Downs and Stea (1973a) and Passini (1984). For Passini (1984), “Wayfinding describes a person’s ability, both cognitive and behavioral, to reach spatial destinations. This ability which is based on three distinct performances, decision making, decision execution and information processing, is a spatial problem solving ability” (p. 154). Although many researchers view the cognitive map as a storage mechanism, others go further to discuss the links to action, through travel plans (e.g., Gärling, Böök, & Lindberg, 1986), or a sequence involving decision-making and decision execution (Passini, 1984). An edited volume by Downs and Stea titled Image & Environment: Cognitive Mapping and Spatial Behavior (1973b) laid the groundwork for our understanding of the cognitive map that continues to serve researchers today. That volume included the seminal 1948 paper by Tolman, “Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men,” Kaplan’s “Cognitive Maps in Perception and Thought,” Appleyard’s “Notes on Urban Perception and Knowledge,” Hart and Moore’s “The Development of Spatial Cognition: A Review,” and Orleans’s “Differential Cognition of Urban Residents: Effects of Social Scale on Mapping.” There was even a piece by Lynch (“Some References to Orientation”), excerpted from his well-known book The Image of the City (1960). Tolman’s early paper (1948/1973) is often credited with introducing the term “cognitive map” and importantly challenged the stimulus-response approach to spatial cognition. Instead of a stimulus-response account, much like a telephone switchboard, Tolman provides evidence that that spatial knowledge is in fact organized in a kind of “map control room” (p. 31), reflecting the theoretical approach of field theorists. Not only is the paper important to environmental psychologists, but it also reflects the nature of psychology in America in the late 1940s, and a fascinating part of the paper is its concluding section discussing the conditions under which one might develop a narrow strip-like map versus one that is more broad and comprehensive. Admittedly not a clinical or social psychologist, he nevertheless tackles the areas of regression, fixation, and displacement of aggression onto outgroups (p. 48). Although much of the early work on cognitive mapping tended to be more theoretical, some of those topics in the Downs and Stea volume had a broader scope and are pursued today. As an example, a paper by Orleans (1973) in that volume investigated the relationship between cognitive maps and both our socioeconomic status and the physical barriers in our environment. In related research, during the early 1970s Appleyard (1970, 1976) linked our cognitive maps to the kind of travel mode we use. In Appleyard’s research, travelers who drove cars possessed more coherent cognitive maps than did those who took the bus. Recent research essentially combined these two threads using residents of Los Angeles who were interviewed at malls or transportation hubs (Mondschein, Blumenberg, & Taylor, 2010). In this research, participants made significantly different estimates of distance related to the type of transportation they used. These estimates were fairly accurate, but people who used public transportation modes, such as the bus, tended to have larger estimates of distance. The researchers see implications for the perception of employment opportunity. “To a carless job seeker, job opportunities not easily reached by transit are effectively out of reach, and even transparent, regardless of Euclidean distance” (p. 864). These findings demonstrate the potential relationship in environmental psychology between research and policy.
Lynch’s Contribution: The Legibility of Place When we turn to the topic of the legibility of the environment, or the way it is understood, the (p. 44) application of spatial cognition, as opposed to the theory, is highlighted. The legibility of the environment is fundamentally related to the ease of wayfinding within it; moreover, it has been argued that spatial understanding of the city is influenced by the organization of structural elements, such as paths and landmarks. With the publication of Lynch’s small
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Environmental Perception: Wayfinding and Spatial Cognition book The Image of the City in 1960, he gave us structural elements that have been used since then to describe city structure: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. Paths and edges are linear elements, districts correspond to regions, and nodes and landmarks are point elements. Although Lynch was not an environmental psychologist, his work has been embraced by our discipline. Researchers who work on the scale of wayfinding in the city typically start with Lynch’s five structural elements. Lynch has arguably done the most to foster the connection between spatial cognition and urban planning (Devlin, 2001), with implications for how cities might be structured to facilitate legibility. The legibility of the city is not a trivial issue; when we are lost, we are frightened; when we understand our surroundings, we derive psychological comfort. Others have offered principles that intertwine with legibility, among them Appleton (1975), who talks about the importance of having a vista (prospect) and a place for retreat (refuge). How one structures one’s mental map reflects the extent to which one knows the city, from districts (if you are unfamiliar) to landmarks (if you are quite familiar); those with a moderate degree of familiarity may rely more on paths. Among the structural elements, the path is most important; path legibility benefits from both regularity and distinctiveness. For example, a grid is usually beneficial, but there has to be distinctiveness within the grid. In research based on Lynch, DeJonge (1962) stated, “Formation of a map image is easiest where there is a street plan with a regular pattern, and a single dominant path, characteristic nodes, and unique landmarks” (p. 274). Early on, Appleyard (1969, 1970, 1976, 1979) studied what environmental aspects shape legibility, specifically by examining the development of Ciudad Guayana in Venezuela (1976). He emphasized the role of spatial and sequential elements; paths and nodes are sequential, whereas landmarks, districts, and edges are spatial. Clear identity emerges when there is a clustering of activity and a road system around it. The problem of lack of distinctiveness as it relates to legible environments has been pursued in the urban planning literature. In particular commentators have focused on this lack of distinctiveness in new towns such as Brasilia (Epstein, 1973; Gruen, 1964). Illegible environments often pose problems in the creation of cognitive maps, but even in more clearly organized environments structural errors may exist. In fact, errors are commonplace in cognitive maps; these maps are not Euclidean, they are utilitarian. A cognitive map may be good enough to get you home, and generally is, but that doesn’t mean it is error free. Sketch maps that participants are asked to produce in research often poorly represent the actual Euclidean distances involved (McNamara, Ratcliff, & McKoon, 1984; Moeser, 1988). It is possible that Gestalt principles such as similarity and good continuation contribute to the errors revealed in people’s sketch maps. In a study of students who had been in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for about two years (Hirtle & Jonides, 1985), students underestimated distances within subjective landmark clusters they had generated and overestimated such distances across clusters. Although any number of studies make some assessment of Euclidean expertise when people draw maps or give distance estimates, people giving directions more often talk about geometric aspects (straight, curved), turns (left, right), and distance in blocks (if it is a neighborhood) (Hill, 1987).
Brain Areas Underlying Wayfinding Before proceeding further, it is important to review some of the literature relating wayfinding, spatial cognition, and neuroscience. This literature has a decidedly theoretical emphasis and typically highlights basic research. It might seem illogical to jump from the macroscale of the city to the microscale of the brain, but investigating the role of brain processes in wayfinding and spatial cognition is increasingly common in the literature. The Decade of the Brain that began in 1990 (www.loc.gov/loc/brain) has impacted environmental psychologists whose research interest is wayfinding. The availability of technologies such as fMRIs and PET scans to understand brain processes has enabled environmental psychologists as well as cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists more generally to better grasp the parts of the brain that support wayfinding. What brain areas are involved in wayfinding and why might knowing about them be useful? As argued elsewhere (e.g., Devlin, 2001), a better understanding of brain processes may ultimately help in creating environments that are not only understandable but also pleasant. For example, (p. 45) O’Neill (1991a) linked wayfinding to a biologically based model of spatial cognition. As a refresher, the neocortex of the brain has two hemispheres, and each of four lobes (frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital) is represented in each hemisphere. There are two visual cortical systems, one dorsal (on top), the
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Environmental Perception: Wayfinding and Spatial Cognition other ventral (underneath). Connections between the parietal and occipital lobes lobe have often been referred to as constituting a dorsal “whereness” system, and connections from the temporal lobe to the occipital lobe as constituting a ventral “whatness” system (see, for example, Kosslyn, 1987, 1991; Morrow & Ratcliff, 1988; Ungerleider & Mishkin, 1982). Knowledge about brain function comes from a variety of sources, among them brain lesions; dissociations of function; fMRI studies; PET scans; cerebral blood flow; and hormonal abnormalities. Research on wayfinding focusing on brain function is no longer limited to those with brain aberrations, thanks to advances in technology. The hemispheres are lateralized and functionally asymmetrical. Historically, there has been more emphasis on the right hemisphere in wayfinding tasks, and in particular there has been great interest in the hippocampus (its name derived from the fact that the structure resembles a seahorse), located in the medial temporal lobe. If our brains are sensitive to the whereness and whatness aspects of the environment, then first understanding their role in wayfinding and then making use of this information to better design both our environments and our wayfinding aids is of interest to environmental psychologists. At this point in the development of the neuroscience of spatial cognition, we are just beginning to realize its potential application to environmental design. Although the hippocampus has been implicated in wayfinding behavior, it is not exclusively used for wayfinding and serves memory more generally (Squire, 1987, 1992, 1993; Squire & Knowlton, 1995; Zola-Morgan & Squire, 1990). And increasingly there is the sense that wayfinding involves extra-hippocampus structures such as the parahippocampus (e.g., Morris & Parslow, 2004). Still, some researchers strongly emphasize the wayfinding functions of the hippocampus (e.g., Maguire, 1997; Maguire et al., 1998; Maguire, Frackowiak, & Frith, 1996, 1997). Among the more innovative studies coming out of the Maguire lab was the use of PET scans on experienced taxi drivers in London (Maguire et al., 1997), whose task it was to describe the shortest legal route from a given point A to point B. Only the right hippocampus was engaged when these routes were recalled. Attention was directed to the role of the hippocampus in wayfinding by the early work of Milner (1965), followed by O’Keefe and Nadel (1978) in their book The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map. Early discussions of the wayfinding role of the hippocampus involved place response (finding a location without a visible cue) as opposed to cue response, in which animals learn to approach a target location in the presence of a cue (Black, Nadel, & O’Keefe, 1977). Later the wayfinding system was described as involving orientation, guidance, and place learning (Nadel, 1990). Of these components, only place learning was hypothesized to rely on the hippocampus. Orientation is also known as dead reckoning, where you make your way using your body as a frame of reference, essentially an egocentric perspective. Guidance involves awareness and use of landmarks and objects in space for wayfinding. Place learning involves relational or configural or survey knowledge, where an allocentric perspective has been achieved that gives more flexibility to the spatial representation. When the hippocampus is compromised, place behavior is deficient. Other spatial cognition systems (e.g., a perception- action system and a cognitive system) have been linked to these anatomical structures, and a useful overview is presented in Allen and Haun (2004). Other research using MRI assessment has pointed to the role of the hippocampus in place learning and the caudate nucleus in response learning (Etchamendy & Bohbot, 2007). These results indicated some wayfinders in virtual environments are able to switch between response and place learning strategies depending on task demands. An example of the sophistication of recent research is work by Janzen and Jansen (2010), who investigated the more subtle aspects of the brain’s ability to differentiate useful from redundant or ambiguous wayfinding information using a virtual maze. Data from fMRI readings pointed to the role of the parahippocampal gyrus in responding to navigationally relevant objects that had been viewed only once. Although beyond the scope of this chapter, it is worthwhile noting that the topic of wayfinding is emerging strongly in cognitive psychology, for example, the role of spatial memory (e.g., Postma, Jager, Kessels, Koppeschaar, & van Honk, 2004) and visuospatial working memory (e.g., Meilinger, Knauff, & Bülthoff, 2008) based on the model of working memory by Baddeley (1986). Given the (p. 46) dominance of neuroscience in psychology more generally, it is likely that the interest in linking wayfinding behavior to neural correlates will continue, and researchers in environmental psychology will either become knowledgeable about these techniques themselves or collaborate with those who are.
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Environmental Perception: Wayfinding and Spatial Cognition Verisimilitude in Wayfinding Tasks The research on verisimilitude has been a blend of theory and application, combining an interest in the cognitive interpretation of such simulations (e.g., ability to understand orientation) and the degree to which such simulations produce results similar to experiencing the environment directly. Researchers studying wayfinding have a history of using representations of the real environment in their studies, whether maps, models, drawings, photographs, or virtual platforms. Determining the degree of correspondence in wayfinding behavior that results from exposure to these iconic simulations, as Winkel and Sasanoff (1970) called them, is an important part of such research strategies. Researchers continue to grapple with the extent to which research using a substitute or representation of reality provides information that is useful in reaching conclusions (and decisions) for real-world applications. And this is not a trivial issue. Early concern dealt with the extent to which viewing a model or photograph(s) was a substitute for “being there” (e.g., Kaplan, Kaplan, & Deardorff, 1974). Shuttleworth (1980) reported a case study in which judgments based on semantic differentials (e.g., high-low scenic value; varied-monotonous; bleak-cheerful) were viewed as comparable whether using black and white photographs, color photographs, or site visits. His research further suggested that color photographs were better than black and white photographs in paralleling responses made on site. Further, Seaton and Collins (1972) had semantic differential judgments based on the facades of four campus buildings evaluated in situ by campus visitors, and contrasted those with judgments made on the basis of threedimensional models, color photographs, or black and white photographs. Color photographs seemed to best correlate with judgments made of the real facades, but the authors noted that while “the qualities that buildings impart to viewers are generally similar over simulations,” they are not congruent (p. 6–10–10). Thorndyke and Hayes-Roth’s (1982) often-cited study reveals some of the differences acquired with exposure to maps versus wayfinding in an environment (in this case the first floor of the Rand Corporation building in Santa Monica, California). Initially participants (all women) with no exposure to the building who viewed a map were better at estimating the location of objects than at judging orientation; with more experience, participants in the navigation condition were as accurate in judging object locations as those in the map condition. Thorndyke and Hayes-Roth argued that using a map facilitates the formation of survey knowledge but that the map users may have difficulty changing the perspective they have acquired from the map, evident in poorer performance in orientation tasks (italics added). An important theme in the research on wayfinding is the acquisition of a particular perspective even in the development of survey knowledge from map exposure. This kind of problem with orientation appears as well in the research using virtual reality platforms (e.g., Richardson, Montello, & Hegarty, 1999). The research using virtual reality platforms has demonstrated reasonable correspondence between the simulation and the actual environment, the orientation issue notwithstanding. Often this research has an applied emphasis or holds the promise of application to real environments. In an important applied example, research by Shih, Lin, and Yang (2000) showed similarities in fire evacuation time from a real versus a virtual building. Research by Westerdahl et al. (2006) demonstrated that virtual reality models and real buildings were described similarly on a semantic environment description scale. Further, based on a virtual environment representing a campus in Marseille, Péruch and Wilson (2004) pointed to similarities in outcome between the real and virtual worlds when a high-fidelity virtual world is created. A chapter by Darken and Peterson (2002) reviews the circumstances under which exposure to virtual reality could be expected to facilitate transfer of training and provides principles for the ways in which navigable virtual reality environments can be designed. One might expect that advances in technology will improve the ecological validity of virtual platforms and the extent to which they truly give you the sense of being immersed, which was not the case in some of the earlier work (e.g., Wilson, 1997). One of the clear advantages to research with virtual platforms is their flexibility, and although cost was a limiting factor in the early days of this research, the tools are becoming more affordable. These tools also provide an excellent approach to studying those with various kinds of disabilities (e.g., visual, (p. 47) cognitive). With increasing numbers of students being exposed to virtual reality research, even at the undergraduate level, we may expect such research on wayfinding and spatial cognition, and its real-world applications, to grow. When virtual environment (VE) wayfinding information is misaligned vis-à-vis its real-world template, problems occur just as they do using standard you-are-here maps (e.g., Levine, 1982; Levine, Marchon, & Hanley, 1984). In
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Environmental Perception: Wayfinding and Spatial Cognition research (Richardson et al., 1999) using a building with multiple floors, VE participants had higher directional estimate errors than either participants in a map condition of the building or participants in the walking condition when pointing between floors after multiple turns. The authors suggested that learners in VE may need to be attuned to alignment following a change of heading, and their research showed the importance of aligning wayfinding maps with the actual environment. Similarly, research by Werner and Schindler (2004) demonstrated the impact of misalignment on wayfinding performance using floor plans of four virtual environments based on an existing office building with a complex structure. When the area around the elevator was misaligned with the rest of the floor plan, this configuration caused decrements in measures of wayfinding. Thus, reflecting the concern that has guided much of the research on verisimilitude, an ongoing issue is the extent to which experience in VE matches the experience of actual travel. Actual travel, map study, and travel in virtual environments have been differentiated in a number of ways. Montello, Hegarty, Richardson, and Waller (2004) pointed to differences between direct travel and relying on the memory of a map, noting that spatial memory typically uses a reference system that is more egocentric than not, which may be related to the kinds of misorientation difficulties that map users sometimes experience. Maps may be helpful, but direct travel results in better route acquisition. The authors argue that survey knowledge can be developed through both real and virtual experience, but that such survey knowledge is not identical to the survey knowledge provided through the study of maps, a point made earlier by the research of Thorndyke and Hayes-Roth (1982). But cognitive errors are an equal-opportunity employer, as it were, because similarities across the different kinds of exposure to wayfinding information include errors. Many of these errors reflect a kind of Gestalt quality, such that turns and angles, in remembering, are regularized and straightened out (Montello et al., 2004). A small number of researchers see usefulness in simulations that intentionally deviate from realism (Durlach et al., 2000). Examples of such deviations are what they call supernormal features, such as the ability to look through objects to see what is beyond. They also argue for the use of worlds in miniature (WIM), that is, miniature models in 3-D that would allow some flexibility in scale and viewpoint. If supernormal features are used, the researchers suggest offering the same perspective (egocentric viewpoint) as would be engaged in the real-world version and employing the same kind of movement (e.g., simulations of walking, driving, climbing over barriers) as well as including the same kind of aids (e.g., you-are-here maps). In summary, underlying concerns in the work on verisimilitude have been the extent of agreement between direct contact with the environment and a simulation of that environment, and the variables that are particularly susceptible to distortion. These concerns continue to be raised in work on VE.
Developmental Theories When we turn to developmental theory (and later to developmental behavior), the emphasis in the literature is primarily theoretical; there is little focus on how this knowledge can be used to enhance wayfinding. In general terms, most researchers view the ontogenetic development of spatial cognition as advancing from an egocentric perspective (organized around the self) to an allocentric perspective (independent of the self). Further, this development is often described as one that relies first on landmarks, moves to an ability to use route structure, and reaches its highest form of knowledge when a configurational or survey understanding is available. Although researchers may point to the work of Piaget to begin their discussion of the developmental progression of spatial understanding that supports wayfinding, many spend more time with the work of Siegel and White (1975). One reason environmental researchers may spend less time with Piaget (Piaget & Inhelder, 1948/1956) is that his discussion of the development of spatial cognition was less well articulated than was his discussion of the traditional periods (i.e., sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, formal operations). The developmental sequence of spatial cognition is hypothesized to move from topological, through perspective, and finally Euclidean relationships. The infant is fundamentally an actor and experiences space through movement. Although proposing it (p. 48) as a stage theory, Piaget and Inhelder argued that the perspective and Euclidean understandings were maturing at the same time, with a later resolution of Euclidean understanding. In addition to the developmental sequence, Piaget’s research paradigm, particularly the three-mountains problem, has made an impact on environmental psychologists. In the three-mountains problem, which involves a small-scale model of three mountains mounted on a board, the researcher investigates what the child sees from his/her
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Environmental Perception: Wayfinding and Spatial Cognition location, and examines whether the child can identify the photo that represents the view that would be visible from other sides of the model. A primary research question is the age at which the child decentralizes from his/her egocentric perspective. The developmental sequences of Piaget and of Siegel and White have a similar emphasis on the progression from a disorganized and limited (read egocentric) understanding of the environment, ultimately progressing to a coordinated perspective, which allows the user an independence from any particular point of view (hence, allocentric). Siegel and White present this progression as moving from reliance on landmarks to route knowledge, to configurational or survey knowledge. Other developmental models that have received attention in the environmental literature are those of the anchor-point theory of spatial cognition (Couclelis, Golledge, Gale, & Tobler, 1987; Golledge, Smith, Pellegrino, Doherty, & Marshall, 1985), which stressed a hierarchical structure provided by anchors; travel plans (Gärling et al., 1984); and Huttenlocher and Newcombe’s location coding (1984; Newcombe, 1989). Golledge et al. (2000, p. 94) also reinforced a progression of three increasingly more sophisticated kinds of knowledge related to wayfinding (route learning; contextual route understanding; configurational knowledge). In the anchor-point theory of spatial cognition, the anchor (e.g., where one lives) provides an organizing function for the understanding of spatial relationships. Rather than scale, the hierarchy is organized by cognitive salience (Couclelis et al., 1987). In this model, the child and adult progression of spatial cognition is parallel (going through the same sequence). Gärling’s model of spatial cognition viewed as travel plans (Gärling et al., 1984, 1986) is similar in many ways to the anchor-point model. Here, the idea of a hierarchy revolves around a sequence of steps in planning travel (applied to adults), including acquiring the information you need for the trip, where you want to go, the logical order to visit those places, and the routes to be used to get there. In the case of newcomers, the roles of landmarks and choice points are critical (Gärling et al., 1986); other researchers have emphasized the organizing function of landmarks (Devlin, 1976; Moore, 1976; Siegel & White, 1975). Although researchers typically find a general progression in performance from younger to older individuals in both wayfinding performance and spatial knowledge, such a difference in exploratory behavior is not always found, suggesting a dissociation between spatial knowledge, wayfinding performance, and exploration behavior. JansenOsmann, Schmid, and Heil (2007) argued that often, spatial behavior and knowledge have been investigated separately. Using regular and irregular virtual mazes, they measured exploration and the effect of environmental structure in participants about 8, 11, and 24 years of age. Participants had to locate a target in the maze and learn the shortest route. There were no age group differences in exploratory behavior, but there were differences in spatial knowledge progression and wayfinding performance. In other virtual environment research by JansenOsmann (Jansen-Osmann & Fuchs, 2006) focusing on the role of landmarks, there were developmental differences in wayfinding performance and orientation behavior, but landmarks were equally useful to children (second and sixth graders) and adults (in their mid-20s). With regard to the developmental progression, Newcombe (Newcombe & Sluzenski, 2004) stated that the movement from egocentric to allocentric perspectives is not really that nice and neat, and that children in the first half year of life make use of response learning and cue learning, as well as dead reckoning, whereas place learning, involving distance in the absence of a standard, is available for four-year-olds. In commenting on the importance of methodology as it relates to investigating spatial development in children, Newcombe (1997) delineated how the tasks we pose, specifically our choice of dependent measures, affect the conclusions we draw with regard to spatial development. The importance of methodology was also pointed out by Liben (1982) and Siegel (1981). Liben (1982) argued that the tasks that are selected have a major impact on the accurate estimation of the child’s competence, and that no single task should be used to infer level of competence. Siegel (1981) also pointed to the need to refine methodology to ask better questions and uncover ways to better externalize internal spatial knowledge. Recently researchers also argued that a (p. 49) strict developmental progression is a poor fit for the behavior that is exhibited, with survey representations developing along with landmark and route representations (Hölscher, Meilinger, Vrachliotis, Brösamle, & Knauff, 2006). A very good review is offered by Blades (1997), who covered the major theoretical approaches that have emerged to explain the wayfinding of children, specifically Piaget (Piaget & Inhelder, 1948/1956) and Siegel and White (1975), and the common techniques used to investigate their spatial knowledge (e.g., route description, sketch
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Environmental Perception: Wayfinding and Spatial Cognition maps, models, estimates of distance and direction, route recognition, real-world wayfinding).
Developmental Behaviors The work on developmental behavior continues the emphasis on theory, as opposed to application. What most people would consider bona fide wayfinding—that is, finding your way in macroenvironments—is not typically represented in the research on infants or children younger than school age. That research tests ontogenetic theories of spatial cognition, focusing on such issues as when children understand that a map or model can stand for some place in the real world (e.g., Blades & Cooke, 1994; Scholnick, Fein, & Campbell, 1990). The term “wayfinding” is used very loosely to describe the tasks in many of these studies on young children, for example, when kindergarteners arranged the furniture of their classroom using a scale model (Siegel & Schadler, 1977), or when Blaut and Stea (1974) investigated toy activity to make a street corner during unstructured play. Moving to school-age children, a sizable number of studies have investigated the developmental ability to judge distances and to read maps. Still, the size of the environment in question is pretty small, including the school playground (Blades & Spencer, 1987, 1990), or rooms of various sorts, including those that are collapsible (Acredolo, 1977; Bluestein & Acredolo, 1979; Hazen, Lockman, & Pick, 1978) or subdivided into smaller spaces with barriers of different permeability, either opaque or transparent (Kosslyn, Pick, & Fariello, 1974). The focus ranges from children’s memory to the role of distinctive cues in the environment and environmental familiarity (Acredolo, Pick, & Olsen, 1975). What stands out from the Acredolo et al. research is not only the developmental timeline (by the time children are eight they are able to make metric judgments as to whether the environment is distinctive), but also the importance of landmark distinctiveness. Such distinctiveness helps younger children who have not given up their reliance on topological relationships. The environments that have been employed for research are often familiar to the participants, including areas around their homes, schools, and neighborhoods (Conning & Byrne, 1984; Doherty, Gale, Pellegrino, & Golledge, 1989), and spaces such as libraries or gymnasiums within buildings (Acredolo et al., 1975; Biel, 1982; Cohen, Weatherford, Lomenick, & Koeller, 1979; Cousins, Siegel, & Maxwell, 1983; Herman, Kolker, & Shaw, 1982; Kahl, Herman, & Klein, 1984). When the scale of the research moves beyond rooms or relatively small-scale environments such as playgrounds, the research is more likely to fit our operational definition of bona fide wayfinding, especially in a group of studies where participants carried out an actual wayfinding task (Cornell & Hay, 1984; Cornell, Heth, & Broda, 1989; Cornell, Heth, & Rowat, 1992; Cousins et al., 1983). Other studies have presented the large-scale environment through simulation, including slides (Allen, 1981; Allen, Kirasic, Siegel, & Herman, 1979; Doherty et al., 1989; Doherty & Pellegrino, 1985; Siegel, Allen, & Kirasic, 1979). The Cornell and Hay (1984) study incorporated a good range of macroscale testing conditions and addressed a variety of theoretical issues, but with little emphasis on application. The testing conditions included walking the designated route across a university campus, seeing slides of that route, or viewing a video of that route; it contrasted second graders with children in kindergarten. Across conditions, older children performed better. Importantly from the standpoint of assessing the issue of simulation, children who went on the guided walk had fewer errors than those in the video-viewing condition. Moreover, half the participants were also tested along the reverse route, and those in the walking condition made fewer errors than did those in either of the simulation (slides, video) conditions. Here is another instance in which simulation does not produce the same results as walking along the actual route. The benefits of walking a route are reminiscent of an early study by Terence Lee in which he discussed how sociospatial schemata are formed (Lee, 1957). The school adjustment of rural children who rode the bus to school was contrasted with those who walked. And although adjustment decreased with time spent in travel, the walkers had significantly higher adjustment than did the bus users for the same length of time. Lee argued that the walkers had the opportunity to integrate the schemata of home and school (p. 50) in a way not available to the bus riders due to the circuitous route taken by the bus. In summary, throughout these two sections (developmental theories and behaviors), the primary emphasis is to advance theory; secondary concern is given to applying theory to improve wayfinding. When we turn our attention to those with cognitive and visual impairments, there is more emphasis on application in the research.
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Environmental Perception: Wayfinding and Spatial Cognition Wayfinding in Populations with Challenges: Cognitive and Visual Impairments
Cognitive Impairments Extending wayfinding research along the developmental spectrum to populations with cognitive and/or visual challenges is of interest to environmental psychologists for practical as well as theoretical reasons. Regularly we hear of elderly who wander away from a home base and do not return safely. Understanding the wayfinding competence of these elderly may help them and translate into universally applicable design principles. Older adults with Alzheimer’s disease and even those without cognitive impairment may struggle to understand wayfinding signage, a reason for researchers to contribute solutions to this problem. The addition of text to wayfinding signs (e.g., for stairwell, airport, bus station, restaurant) with icons (e.g., symbols, pictures) generally improves wayfinding even for older adults who were healthy (Scialfa et al., 2008). The number of diagnosed cases of Alzheimer’s disease continues to increase, with 1 in 85 people worldwide expected to have the disease by 2050. In North America, that prediction is for 8.8 million by 2050, with 3.1 million cases in 2010, according to the msnbc.msn.com website in June 2010. Alzheimer’s dementia is often characterized by a decline in spatial orientation (Passini, Pigot, Rainville, & Tétreault, 2000), and for that reason has received considerable attention from wayfinding researchers (e.g., Weisman, Cohen, Ray, & Day, 1991). One suggestion is that Alzheimer’s disease affects the hippocampal place neurons, rendering maintenance of cognitive maps more difficult (Parnetti & Calabresi, 2006, p. S77). In addition to the loss of tissue in the right posterior area of the hippocampus, others point to an involvement of parietal areas as well (delpolyi, Rankin, Mucke, Miller, & GornoTempini, 2007). In research by Passini et al. (2000) on individuals with advanced Alzheimer’s disease (AD), wayfinding was hindered by a monotonous architectural environment and lack of reference points to aid orientation. Where it was possible for patients to see ahead (visual access), wayfinding was improved. Signage reinforces goal-directedness and is important to reduce the wayfinding deficits created through memory impairment. Elevators were particularly challenging, causing significant confusion. The study also pointed to the role of decoration, in particular to floor patterns, as presenting a possible source of disorientation for patients. The authors suggested that the use of pictograms for AD patients might be worth investigation; they also pointed out that the names given to rooms need to relate to the function the rooms serve. Research by Kirasic (1985), among others, pointed to difficulty the elderly may have finding their way in unfamiliar environments. But Ohta and Kirasic (1983) as well as others (e.g., Lavoie & Demick, 1995) also demonstrated that laboratory studies of the spatial cognition of the elderly may underestimate their performance in real-world settings. Research conducted in a suburban mall showed that information presented in a number of different forms could be helpful, including as a map/model, as a videotape, or as a verbal description (Kirasic & Mathes, 1990). In research employing virtual reality mazes and MRI scans (Head & Isom, 2010), the hippocampus was implicated in wayfinding whereas the caudate nucleus was associated with route learning. Older people (mean age in the low 70s) in this study acquired less knowledge about the environment, traveled a greater distance to locate specific targets, had poorer recall for landmarks in the virtual environment, and were less good at assimilating the route than were younger participants (college students). Further, research by Cushman, Stein, and Duffy (2008) comparing young (YNC) and older normals (ONC), participants with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and those with early AD (EAD) was important in showing the viability of virtual environment analysis of wayfinding abilities. These authors persuasively argued how difficult it is to do valid real-life wayfinding evaluation in impaired individuals (and normals, for that matter) and highlighted the viability of research with virtual environments. They tested the connection between visual scenes and locations using eight subtests for both real and virtual conditions. The focus (real and virtual) was a lobby of a hospital following a path of about 1,000 feet, which lasted about four minutes (with all participants pushed in a wheelchair). YNC had the best performance, followed by ONC, MCI, and finally EAD; those in the virtual condition had (p. 51) lower scores across groups, but virtual reality equally affected all groups, and real-world and virtual scores correlated at r = .73. “The learning of navigational landmarks is equivalent in real-world and virtual environments, suggesting that cognitive mechanisms are similarly engaged under both conditions” (Cushman et al., 2008, p. 892). Passini, Rainville, Marchand, and Joanette (1995, 1998) suggested that people who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease
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Environmental Perception: Wayfinding and Spatial Cognition are hampered by the inability to make wayfinding travel plans, although there is some evidence that AD patients could execute subplans (parts of an overall plan) in a complex, multipart wayfinding task from a bus stop to the site of the dental clinic within a hospital. Passini et al. (1995, 1998) commented that while disorientation may begin in unfamiliar environments, the progress of the disease brings with it an inability to successfully navigate in familiar environments. While some of this research emphasized areas of brain function (e.g., Head & Isom, 2010), other research, such as that of Cushman et al. (2008), showed more clearly the applied context within which the research on cognitive impairments can be situated. Research on those with cognitive impairments, especially AD, reflects a likely model for future investigation by integrating an interest in brain regions and environmental structure (e.g., usefulness of landmarks).
Visual Impairments In addition to those with cognitive impairments, people with visual impairments provide a population of interest for environmental psychologists from a practical as well as a theoretical perspective. Theoretically, environmental psychologists who take a cognitive perspective have been interested in the extent to which individuals with visual impairments form cognitive maps. An extension of this interest is the role of wayfinding assistance (i.e., aids) for the visually impaired. Research suggests those who are blind or have severe visual impairments nevertheless have spatial representations of the environment (Fletcher, 1980; Juurmaa, 1973; Kennedy, Gabias, & Heller, 1992; Klatzky, Golledge, Loomis, Cicinelli, & Pellegrino, 1995; Landau, Spelke, & Gleitman, 1984; Passini, Proulx, & Rainville, 1990; Strelow, 1985). In research with 30 participants including those who were blind, visually impaired, or not impaired, repeated experience over a 1.2-mile route led to equivalent wayfinding performance. The authors suggested that it is not lack of spatial ability but rather deficiency of sight that may explain initial differences in performance (Golledge et al., 2000). To facilitate wayfinding, it seems likely that those with severe visual impairments make more use of a self-referent system (awareness of where their bodies are in space) than do sighted individuals (Dodds, Howarth, & Carter, 1982; Haber, Haber, Penningroth, Novak, & Radgowski, 1993). In a “low-tech” approach, wayfinding difficulties have been identified through the use of goggles to simulate a variety of visual impairments (e.g., glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, cataracts, and macular degeneration). Participants had difficulty with such decorative elements as floor patterns with changes and tiles that are shiny or look wet. Lighting changes can mislead those with vision impairments to misjudge the size of corridors and doorways. Wayfinding signage itself caused difficulty due to variability in size, illumination, and location (Koneczny, Rousek, & Hallbeck, 2009). Research by Espinosa, Ungar, Ochaíta, Blades, and Spencer (1998) suggested some advantages in giving people who are blind or visually impaired the use of tactile maps in learning the spatial representation of a new environment rather than relying solely on direct experience sans wayfinding aids. The authors suggested the use of both direct experience and tactile maps by orientation and mobility instructors who work with visually impaired individuals. Espinosa et al.’s research gave more importance to tactile maps than has generally been reported in the literature. In summary, research on those with cognitive and visual impairments has been a successful merger of theory and application in wayfinding and spatial cognition.
Gender Differences The research on gender differences in wayfinding and spatial cognition has often been situated within the context of performance deficit. Typically, little emphasis has been given to the practical implication of any behavioral differences between men and women that may exist. Gender differences in spatial cognition and wayfinding have been reported in much of the environmental psychology literature and in some cases have been a focus of such research. Reported gender differences can be organized into three general areas: (1) mental rotation, (2) spatial anxiety and confidence, (3) behavioral dependent measures (accuracy; distance; use of cardinal directions and landmarks).
Mental Rotation
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Environmental Perception: Wayfinding and Spatial Cognition The difference between men and women on mental rotation tasks is significant (Hyde, 1990; (p. 52) Masters & Sanders, 1993) and repeatedly reported (e.g., Corballis, 1982; Halpern, 1986; Herman & Bruce, 1983; Sanders & Soares, 1986; Sanders, Soares, & D’Aquila, 1982). The mean effect size of mental rotation as measured by the Vandenberg and Kuse task (1978) was .94, reported in Linn and Petersen’s 1985 meta-analysis; Masters and Sanders (1993) did not find the gender difference on the mental rotation task to be shrinking. A significant body of research suggests that the mental rotation differences do not emerge until late childhood/adolescence (Pezaris & Casey, 1991; Snow & Strope, 1990; Waber, 1976, 1977; Waber, Carlson, & Mann, 1982), with a large study reporting reliable difference by age 10 (Johnson & Meade, 1987). However, one recent study reported a difference in three- to four-month-old infants related to male infants’ preference for the mirror image of a stimulus over a novel rotation of a familiar stimulus, whereas female infants divided their attention between the two (Quinn & Liben, 2008). Despite the reported gender differences in mental rotation performance in the lab, MRT scores are not necessarily predictive of performance on real-world wayfinding tasks, and not all of these tasks show gender differences in performance (discussed in the section on behavioral measures).
Anxiety and Confidence Lawton (1994, 1996; Lawton, Charleston, & Zieles, 1996) developed a number of scales that have been widely used in the research on wayfinding and spatial cognition. One of these tests assesses spatial anxiety (1994), in which the respondent characterizes the level of anxiety likely to be experienced in indoor or outdoor wayfinding situations. Lawton also introduced other scales that often reflect gender differences. The Wayfinding Strategy Scale (Lawton, 1994) measures the extent to which one prefers to use an orientation strategy or a route strategy when driving to a new place. Tracking your position in reference to orientation points underlies the orientation strategy, whereas focusing on a sequence of steps with an emphasis on landmarks characterizes the route strategy. Women were more likely to use a route strategy whereas men were more likely to report using an orientation strategy (Lawton, 1994). A number of studies beyond Lawton (1994) reported a higher level of spatial anxiety by women. Gender differences in spatial anxiety appear in young teenagers, ages 10 to 17 (Schmitz, 1997), with girls reporting higher levels, which correlate with slower movement through a maze. In general anxiety may reduce the use of an orientation strategy (Kallai, Kerekes, Osvath, Makany, & Jarai, 2003). Men are more confident in their wayfinding ability (e.g., Devlin & Bernstein, 1995; Kozlowski & Bryant, 1977; Lawton, 1996) and more confident in their sense of direction (Holding, 1992; Hölscher et al., 2006; Kozlowski & Bryant, 1977; Streeter & Vitello, 1986) than are women. Women report more difficulty in wayfinding related to driving than do men (Burns, 1998). It is reasonable to say that more studies show gender differences in confidence related to wayfinding than do not, and there is a relationship between confidence and performance. For example, research has indicated significant relationships between lower error scores and greater confidence in wayfinding (e.g., Devlin & Bernstein, 1995) and between larger pointing errors and higher spatial anxiety (Lawton, 1996).
Wayfinding Measures Dependent measures of wayfinding take a variety of forms, from navigating through an environment (e.g., Cornell et al., 1989; Cornell et al., 1992; Lawton et al., 1996; Lövdén et al., 2007; Matthews, 1987; Webley, 1981), drawing sketch maps (Doherty et al., 1989; Matthews, 1987), listing elements of a campus (Holding, 1992), giving distance estimates (e.g., Kirasic, Allen, & Siegel, 1984), and pointing to origins or destinations (e.g., Anooshian & Young, 1981). In addition to such variables as accuracy (as in the pointing task or distance estimation), time can be assessed as well as whether the target destination is actually reached. One difference that is not infrequently reported is that women make more pointing errors than do men (e.g., Holding, 1992; Holding & Holding, 1989; Lawton, 1996). Although women are often less accurate than are men at pointing from a destination back to an origin, this deficit is not necessarily related to their ability to find their way back to the origin or to their performance on some spatial relational learning tasks (e.g., Lavenex & Lavenex, 2010). An instructional study is one by Lawton et al. (1996) in which women did as well as men in the actual navigation portion of a task, finding their way through connecting hallways in a campus building, as measured by time to complete the return trip, elements of the verbal protocols, or the specific wayfinding pattern chosen. The large difference in pointing accuracy, where the errors for women
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Environmental Perception: Wayfinding and Spatial Cognition were a mean of about 89 degrees versus a mean of about 48 degrees for men, did not seem to impede women’s wayfinding (p. 53) success. As the study by Lawton et al. (1996) indicated, there is less evidence for gender differences in tasks of macrospatial cognition (see also Pearson & Ferguson, 1989) than for assessments that require precision, such as pointing accuracy. Men and women may use different wayfinding strategies. Some researchers suggest that men and women differ in the approach to organizing topographic space (McGuinness & Sparks, 1983), with a Euclidean emphasis by men (e.g., Coluccia, Iosue, & Brandimonte, 2007; Matthews, 1987) and a landmark emphasis by women (Galea & Kimura, 1993; Miller & Santoni, 1986), although the female predilection for greater landmark use does not always appear (Herman, Kail, & Siegel, 1979). When men and women provided verbal directions from a map representing an unfamiliar environment (Ward, Newcombe, & Overton, 1986), there were differences in the use of cardinal directions and mileage indicators (more by men), whereas women made more errors of omission and commission when asked to recall the map from memory. It is likely that task demands heavily influence these outcomes in terms of whether the information provided must be exhaustive, which in turn would influence performance variables (Devlin, 2001). Women seem to be at a disadvantage in performance when angular judgments are required. When relative judgments are required, for example, in selecting which photograph represents a scene that is closer to a target scene (Allen, 1981), selecting scenes high in landmark potential (Allen et al., 1979), or recognizing scenes (Doherty & Pellegrino, 1985), there is more likely to be gender parity. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to evaluate the origins of sex differences in spatial ability; as many as seven different explanations (dispersal, fertility and parental care, female foraging, male foraging, range size, male warfare, and female choice) have been posited (Jones, Braithwaite, & Healy, 2003). Jones et al. evaluated these explanations and pointed to differences in range size as the most viable option. A comprehensive summary of the gender differences in spatial orientation (i.e., location of the individual with regard to a reference point) was provided by Coluccia and Iosue (2004), who advanced the role of visuospatial working memory in resolving some of the contradictions in the literature. Their summary of the literature showed a high percentage of studies with an advantage to men in pointing tasks (about 64%) and wayfinding tasks (about 61%), whereas in map drawing and in distance estimates about 55% and 71%, respectively, of the studies reported no difference. In none of these categories did performance by women exceed that of men across studies. The authors reviewed biological factors, environmental factors, interactionist approaches, evolutionary explanations, strategy differences, and personality factors. Their assessment was that gender differences emerge during difficult orientation tasks, and one way of evaluating task difficulty is the load the task puts on working memory. The advantage to men in wayfinding appears in virtual environments as diverse as water mazes and shopping centers. In research involving a virtual water maze, men were typically faster in locating the hidden platform (Astur, Tropp, Sava, Constable, & Markus, 2004). This difference is also reported in children (Newhouse, Newhouse, & Astur, 2007). Woolley et al. (2010) suggested men may process distal features in the environment (i.e., visual cues that are outside the wall of the water maze pool) differently than do women and start out these tasks heading more in the correct direction than do women. These researchers attributed gender differences in performance on this task to this difference in the ability to search for the correct trajectory initially, not to a spatial learning deficit for women. In a very different kind of virtual environment, a shopping center with 14 shops and 6 targets, women performed less well on a variety of dependent measures. They took more time, made more navigational errors, had lower accuracy on target placement, and demonstrated poorer performance returning to the origin (Tlauka, Brolese, Pomeroy, & Hobbs, 2005). In trying to sort out these gender differences in wayfinding, some researchers have examined the role of confounding variables. For example, by testing men and women with instructions based on Euclidean information (cardinal directions and distance estimates) and separately for instructions based on landmarks (e.g., the red bench), Saucier et al. (2002) were able to tease apart gender differences in spatial ability and spatial strategy preference, confounded in most research, by having men and women follow directions using Euclidean instructions or landmark-based instructions. Women following instructions based on Euclidean information had more errors and took longer to reach the target destinations than either men or women in the landmark-based condition or men in the Euclidean condition. The authors suggested that men and women use different navigational strategies, which
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Environmental Perception: Wayfinding and Spatial Cognition lead to differences in performance. (p. 54) They suggested, “Women may commit more errors in Euclidean navigation because of a reduced ability to maintain orientation with respect to north” (p. 409). Other researchers also have pointed to use of different strategies as a way to understand gender differences in wayfinding (e.g., Choi, McKillop, Ward, & L’Hirondelle, 2006). But with some adjustments in the kinds of aids provided, women’s performance can be enhanced, with implications for the way in which virtual interfaces are designed (e.g., flying, driving) (Chen, Chang, & Chang, 2009). In research in a virtual aquarium, women were better with egocentric supports (guide signs) than with allocentric support (you-are-here maps); the difference in type of support did not significantly impact the performance of men. Rather than simply documenting gender differences, researchers may want to elucidate the kinds of aids that improve performance, as was done in the Chen et al. study. One challenge for environmental researchers interested in gender differences in spatial cognition is to move beyond the restrictions of the performance deficit argument and develop wayfinding aids that match the different approaches that may be taken by men and women.
Analytical Tools: Space Syntax and Geographic Information System (GIS) As indicated in this chapter, increasingly research on wayfinding and spatial cognition is being shaped by advances in technology. Beyond assessing brain activity with fMRIs and PET scans, analytic techniques such as space syntax and geographic information provide sophisticated tools to understand the factors that influence wayfinding.
Space Syntax Space syntax analysis is a technique that enables researchers to evaluate the connectivity of spaces; that is, how spaces are connected to one another. With regard to wayfinding, this technique has been used to better understand the functional spatial configuration of a building (e.g., Haq, 2003; Haq & Zimring, 2003; Tzeng & Huang, 2009), or a larger space such as a neighborhood (Nenci & Troffa, 2006), and the complexity of such spaces may predict performance on wayfinding tasks, such as pointing to targets that are not visible and drawing a sketch map of the space. Space syntax may offer one way of expressing how cognitive maps are connected (literally) to wayfinding behavior and is one way to approach configurational analysis (Haq, 2003). “In terms of applicability, space syntax analysis may be a good way of testing for possible wayfinding difficulties in buildings and projects, and the role of local and relational qualities for new users potentially helps fine-tune these methods” (Haq & Zimring, 2003, p. 159). Interested readers are directed to the January 2003 issue of Environment and Behavior, which focuses on space syntax, and to the seminal work of Hillier and Hanson (1984).
GIS Not surprisingly given his training as a geographer, Golledge was enthusiastic in describing the role of geographic information systems (GIS) in environmental psychology and laid out that case in a chapter for the Handbook of Environmental Psychology (Bechtel & Churchman, 2002). GIS “is a set of computer procedures for geocoding, storing, decoding, analyzing, and visually representing spatial information” (Golledge, 2002, p. 244). Golledge (2002) presented GIS as two-faced, like Janus: one side applied and the other theoretical. When he wrote the chapter, Golledge saw unrealized potential, especially in linking qualitative and quantitative analysis, in the use of GIS by environmental psychologists. Ten years after he wrote this, some headway has been made in more widespread use of GIS for wayfinding research, although the “virgin territory” of environmental psychology to engage GIS described by Golledge (2002, p. 252) essentially remains. Using the Scopus database, entering the terms “wayfinding” and “GIS” yielded 16 entries on July 12, 2010, of which 13 were published after 2000. Similarly, that same day “GIS” and “cognitive map” yielded 18 entries, 9 of which were published after 2000. But there is some progress. For example, a role of GIS in the recovery of lost persons has been proposed (Heth & Cornell, 2007), and Borst et al. (2009) used GIS to investigate the characteristics of streets that encourage (e.g., front gardens) or discourage (e.g., litter, slopes, stairs) walking by elderly individuals when they go shopping, to a health care facility, or to visit a friend or relative. Mandel (2010) reports that GIS can be used to map the most popular routes used by library patrons within the library, and a combination of GIS (for planned route behavior) and person-based GPS (for actual route behavior) was used to assess the degree to which where we say we plan to go
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Environmental Perception: Wayfinding and Spatial Cognition and the route we actually use to get there coincide (Papinski, Scott, & Doherty, 2009).
(p. 55) Making a Difference: Applications of Wayfinding Research Almost 15 years ago in a special issue on cognitive mapping research in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, Jackson and Kitchin (1998) pointed to the importance of practical applications for cognitive mapping research, and there is recognition that the architectural field could benefit from an understanding of cognitive principles (Werner & Long, 2003). As indicated in this chapter, there are points of intersection between theory and application, but the research on wayfinding and spatial cognition has on balance been more theoretical, and the practical applications that Jackson and Kitchin recommended have yet to be fully realized. Arguably one practical outcome of the research on spatial cognition and wayfinding is to create environments, from the scale of a building to a city, that enhance our ability to successfully find our way, as well as effective wayfinding aids. Research on existing wayfinding aids, such as you-are-here maps (e.g., Levine, 1982; Levine et al., 1984), has led to a better understanding of what needs to be represented and how it needs to be represented if the aid is to work. The work of Levine and his colleagues emphasized two principles: The orientation principle states that the you-are-here map needs to parallel the terrain. The forward-up equivalence principle states that people operate as if moving forward equals what is shown as “up” on the map. And just because experts make them doesn’t mean that maps are easily comprehended. Maps don’t always help people, as was demonstrated when 20 newcomers to New York City could not use the 1972 subway map to carry out a route that incorporated four segments that were connected (Bronzaft, Dobrow, & O’Hanlon, 1976). Regarding signage, placing signs at choice points is recommended (Carpman & Grant, 1993), but as the research on you-are-here maps (Levine, 1982; Levine et al., 1984) so vividly demonstrated, such manifest cues for wayfinding (i.e., cues that are intended to aid in wayfinding) do not necessarily serve their intended purpose. In a nursing home, (p. 56) research by Weisman (1987) demonstrated that the latent wayfinding cues (i.e., cues not necessarily designed for wayfinding, such as a barbershop pole) more often serve as distinctive wayfinding landmarks than do their manifest counterparts. In this study, 82% of the cues residents mentioned belonged in the latent category. Researchers have also investigated the limits to complexity depicted on maps (e.g., Eastman, 1985; Kovach, Surrette, & Aamodt, 1988) and the use of color (Kosslyn, 1994; Olson, 1987; Smallman & Boynton, 1990; Travis, 1991). As was found earlier in the research by Kaplan et al. (1974), humans make good use of fairly simple depictions of the environment. Related to the appearance of signage, color has been more the domain of researchers in statistical graphics than for researchers involved in wayfinding. Some of the best advice comes from Tufte (1983, 1990), who recommends the use of gradations of gray to indicate changes in quantity. A number of wayfinding studies have incorporated an evaluation of color (e.g., Devlin & Bernstein, 1997; Garland, Haynes, & Grubb, 1979) with mixed results. In the Garland et al. study evaluating city bus maps, more errors occurred in the black and white version with high detail than in the color version with the same level of detail; thus color helped to differentiate detail. But to manage costs (because color is expensive), the authors suggested eliminating minor streets and using a black and white version. Devlin and Bernstein (1997) found no advantage of color in their evaluation of maps of a tourist attraction, but there was little color differentiation in the versions of the maps used in their study, which were shown to participants using a touch-screen monitor mounted in a computer kiosk. Some researchers (e.g., Jansen-Osmann & Wiedenbauer, 2004) reported improved wayfinding performance in both children and adults in a virtual environment in the condition in which the three main routes were presented in different colors versus the routes represented in gray, although the use of color still did not lead to better formation of a survey map than did the use of gray. It has been argued that color by itself is not an effective wayfinding aid and works better if incorporated into thematic content (Devlin, 2001), if the aim is to use color to differentiate floors of a building. One problem with the use of color by itself is that users are not necessarily educated to view color as a wayfinding aid (Selfridge, 1979). Further, color-blindness as well as changes in perception of color in the elderly also limit the usefulness of color as a wayfinding aid.
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Environmental Perception: Wayfinding and Spatial Cognition Although sign placement and color are important, the layout of the building is arguably more important. Properly placed, signs have the ability to facilitate wayfinding, but legibility must begin with the building itself. Research has demonstrated that if the building is not planned with regard for legibility, wayfinding problems will ensue. Early research by Weisman (1981) demonstrated that the judged simplicity of the layout predicted 56% of the variability in scores on wayfinding tasks, whereas familiarity with the buildings explained only 9% of the variance. The complexity of the floor plan was reflected in the number of angles. O’Neill (1991b) similarly found a negative relationship between floor plan complexity and wayfinding success. This was a study in which the availability of signage on wayfinding success was measured and reduced the number of wrong turns by 50% and travel time by 13%. Another stunning example is research by Moeser (1988) on a complex hospital environment in which student nurses who had been in the building for a number of months demonstrated poorer wayfinding ability than did new students who performed wayfinding tasks after memorizing a floor plan to criterion and taking a tour. Certainly posting signs helps wayfinding (Tang, Wu, & Lin, 2009) as does having perceptual access (i.e., views) (Gärling, Lindberg, & Mantyla, 1983), but the basic floor plan is the foundation of legibility (pun intended). We are beginning to see the applications of spatial cognition and wayfinding extend to such activities as emergency response and fire evacuation. Knowledge of spatial cognition indirectly tied to wayfinding is even being used in selecting students for entry into dental school; for medical students, spatial cognition ability predicts performance in laparoscopic surgery, although the good news is that for those with lower spatial ability, training can also improve performance (Hegarty, Keehner, Cohen, Montello, & Lippa, 2007). As researchers examine such behaviors as evacuation during fire drills (Kobes et al., 2009), they better understand the wayfinding implications of both building structure and signage. These researchers used smoke and placed exit signs down low to investigate the impact of those variables on wayfinding in actual hotels during fire drills, using what is called the technique of serious gaming. Although that term is often applied to computer games, here it applies to real-world exercises. People will generally exit through the main entrance without the presence of smoke; in the presence of smoke they are more likely to use the fire exit, and low-placed signs facilitate the use of the fire exit nearest the evacuee. People who used the fire exit evacuated more quickly than those who used the main exit, so using environmental design and wayfinding aids to facilitate this behavior is relevant. Further familiarity with hotel stays was related to exit strategy; with less experience, people are more likely to exit via the main entrance, not the fire exit. Building on earlier studies using head-mounted displays to enhance wayfinding, Wilson and Wright (2009) examined the use of head-mounted displays (HMD) integrated into the facemask of firefighters to help their navigation inside a complex building on the University of California–Berkeley campus. There were advantages of speed, shorter distance traveled, and fewer errors for those with the HMD. “The significantly higher accuracy and consistency suggest that the HMD helped the subjects to form more effective cognitive maps” (p. 682). This research involving first responders and evacuation during fires is an exciting application of wayfinding and spatial cognition to environmental safety and has policy implications.
Research on Wayfinding in Natural Environments With regard to wayfinding and spatial cognition, little research has specifically addressed natural environments. Where the natural environment has been studied, more similarities than differences emerge in the components that serve wayfinding in natural as compared to urban environments. For example, in Brosset, Claramunt, and Saux’s (2008) study of the reflections of 15 experienced orienteers in a foot orienteering race, the role of linear features predominated, as a way of reflecting the underlying structural network of the environment. In the same study, this linear emphasis contrasted with the point emphasis (i.e., landmarks) that emerged in Brosset et al.’s analysis of two studies conducted in urban environments. Yet overall the authors argued that the relative importance of geometrical primitives (i.e., points, lines, areas/polygons) in natural and urban environments is “mostly similar” (p. 29). The role of linear elements also appeared in the work of Fontaine, Edwards, Tversky, and Denis (2005), who in a series of studies compared the sketch maps that experts and non-experts drew of a park. Additional participants who were familiar or unfamiliar with the park in question were then asked to identify which of the map elements would be essential to retain; paths were selected as the elements that make a park map effective. Other research reflects the importance of signs at junctions in a trail park (Soh & Smith-Jackson, 2004). Thus, across a limited number of studies, elements such as paths that assist wayfinding in the urban environment (see, for example,
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Environmental Perception: Wayfinding and Spatial Cognition Appleyard, 1976; DeJonge, 1962; Lynch, 1960) also assist wayfinding (p. 57) in natural environments. Moreover, providing signage at choice points addresses underlying cognitive requirements, whether in natural or urban environments.
Conclusion Research in environmental psychology linking wayfinding and spatial cognition is growing, spurred by advances in technology that permit great flexibility with increasing affordability. Theoretically we see less commitment to a strict developmental progression of landmark to route to survey/configurational knowledge. Gender differences continue to be examined, and the often-reported difference between men and women on the mental rotations test continues. At the same time, there is increasing evidence that men and women may use different strategies for successful wayfinding. This knowledge may eventually be incorporated into different options for men and women in the kind of wayfinding information they select from wayfinding technology (e.g., GPS devices). Environmental psychology has been affected by the dominance of neuroscience in psychology, as wayfinding researchers attempt to pinpoint the brain areas (most likely the hippocampus and parahippocampus) underlying place learning. Finally, moving beyond the contribution of you-are-here maps and the location of signage, research linking spatial cognition and wayfinding is being applied to first responders, such as firefighters, as well as increasingly to populations with cognitive and/or visual impairment.
Future Directions Based on this review of the literature, it is likely researchers interested in wayfinding and spatial cognition will continue to examine the degree of correspondence between iconic simulations, in particular virtual reality, and wayfinding in real environments. Virtual reality has many advantages, such as its flexibility and its application to populations with cognitive challenges, but the field must continue to examine the areas of both divergence and convergence in verisimilitude before relying too heavily on this technology. Similarly, psychology, including environmental psychology, is experiencing unprecedented interest in neuroscience and brain mechanisms, and this interest brings with it a host of associated sophisticated technologies, such as fMRI and PET scans. As the field pursues neuroscience to better understand the relationship between wayfinding and spatial cognition, what is the role of research that relies on less sophisticated technologies? Many researchers continue to view women’s wayfinding performance (e.g., pointing) and spatial cognition (e.g., mental rotation) as deficient and men’s as superior. Rather than this limited perspective, more research is needed on the differential use of navigational strategies by men and women. Practical application as well as theory evaluation can be fostered by better understanding what conditions maximize wayfinding performance for each gender. Finally, for research on wayfinding and spatial cognition to influence policy, practical applications need to be highlighted.
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Notes: (1.) In organizing the topics for this chapter and reviewing the literature prior to 2000, I have been guided by my 2001 book, Mind and Maze: Spatial Cognition and Environmental Behavior. Ann Sloan Devlin Ann Sloan Devlin Department of Psychology Connecticut College New London, CT
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Environmental Attitudes
Oxford Handbooks Online Environmental Attitudes Robert Gifford and Reuven Sussman The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0004
Abstract and Keywords Environmental attitudes are important because they often, but not always, determine behavior that either increases or decreases environmental quality. Traditionally, attitudes have cognitive, affective, and conative elements, but environmental attitudes might be better described as having preservation and utilization dimensions. Proenvironmental attitudes rise and fall with current events and vary with age, gender, socioeconomic status, nation, urban-rural residence, religion, politics, values, personality, experience, education, and environmental knowledge. Environmental education aims to improve environmental attitudes but has mixed results. The mass media have been both helpful and harmful. Two prominent theories for explaining environmental attitude-behavior relations are the theory of planned behavior and value-beliefs-norm theory, which offer the benefit of parsimony and the shortcoming of incompleteness. Researchers have, for example, suggested additions to the theory of planned behavior, noting that pro-environmental behaviors vary in their effort to complete, which influences the attitudebehavior relation, and that many barriers to behavior change exist. Keywords: attitudes, attitude structure, environmental concern, attitude-behavior relations, variations in environmental concern
Introduction An attitude is a latent construct mentally attached to a concrete or abstract object (otherwise known as an “attitude object”—a person, place, entity, or idea). Traditionally, attitudes have three components: cognitive (thoughts about the object, usually including an evaluation), affective (feelings about the object), and conative (behavioral intentions and actions regarding the object) (Breckler, 1984). Attitudes can be confused with other constructs, such as values, beliefs (sometimes considered the cognitive component of attitudes), opinions, personality dispositions, and personal norms. Although all these concepts relate to the three attitude components to some extent, they also differ in subtle but important ways. For example, “beliefs list toward the cognitive; values are broader than attitudes and more culturally bound. Opinions, historically in competition with attitudes, are more cognitive” (Shrigley, Koballa, & Simpson, 1988, p. 659). Personality traits differ from attitudes in that, like values, they are not focused on a particular object, are not necessarily evaluative, and are not easily changeable (Ajzen, 2005). Another construct that has recently gained favor in environmental psychology research is “personal norm,” originally proposed by Schwartz (1977). Unlike attitudes, proenvironmental personal norms are internalized social norms that directly influence behavior through feelings of guilt (Bamberg, Hunecke, & Blöbaum, 2007; Bamberg & Möser, 2007).This chapter focuses on environmental attitudes, which are defined as concern for the environment or caring about environmental issues (sometimes (p. 66) referred to as pro-environmental attitudes). Five topics will be examined: the importance of studying environmental attitudes, the structure and measurement of environmental attitudes, variables that affect concern for the environment, methods for encouraging environmental attitudes, and factors that inhibit or promote attitudes
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Environmental Attitudes influencing behavior.
The Importance of Studying Environmental Attitudes The most intuitive reason for studying environmental attitudes is that they may determine behavior. However, this relation is tenuous; many people evince higher levels of concern than is expressed in their behavior (Jurin & Fortner, 2002). Some studies have demonstrated a strong link between attitudes and pro-environmental behavior (Heberlein & Black, 1981; Iversen & Rundmo, 2001; Kuhlemeier, van den Bergh & Lagerweij, 1999; Poortinga, Steg, & Vlek, 2004; Tarrant & Cordell, 1997; Vogel, 1996), but others have not (e.g., O’Riordan, 1976; Scott & Willits, 1994). One explanation for this discrepancy in the research findings may rest with the methods used to collect behavioral information. Typically, a strong association exists between attitudes and self-reported behavior (Borden & Schettino, 1979; Dispoto, 1977), but self-reported behavior is frequently overreported (e.g., Chao & Lam, 2011) and may be the result of different influences than actual (observed) behavior (Manzo & Weinstein, 1987; Syme & Nancarrow, 1992). Weaker associations are found between environmental attitudes and observed behavior. A second reason environmental attitudes are not strongly predictive of pro-environmental behavior is specificity. General attitudes may not predict specific behaviors well because each behavior has a unique set of predictors associated with it (Balderjahn, 1988; Homburg & Stolberg, 2006; Nemiroff & McKenzie-Mohr, 1992; Sivek & Hungerford, 1989; Tanner & Kast, 2003). However, general attitudes can predict general trends in large numbers of behaviors (Kaiser, 1998; Weigel & Newman, 1976), and specific attitudes can predict specific behaviors (Bamberg, 2003; Mobley, Vagias, & DeWard, 2010). Attitudes may predict specific behaviors, but they may have some general predictiveness as well. That is, environmental attitudes that predict individual behaviors may also predict other similar behaviors. For example, recycling may be the first step toward adopting other pro-environmental behaviors or supporting political action (Berger, 1997; Daneshvary, Daneshvary, & Schwer, 1998), and a generalized energy conservation ethic (predicting multiple energy-reducing behaviors) may exist for a small number of households (Painter, Semenik, & Belk, 1983). The study of environmental attitudes is also useful for gauging the level of public support for environmental action. Policy makers, park superintendents, fish and game officers, forestry officials, building managers, and recycling coordinators have all made use of environmental attitude research (Heberlein, 1989). One problem with environmental attitude research is that measured attitudes can be subject to a social desirability bias. Given that individuals tend to see environmental concern as socially desirable (Bord, Fisher, & O’Connor, 1998) and that most environmental attitude measures are based on self-reports, participants may provide responses that are biased toward appearing more concerned than they actually are. However, social desirability in one recent study was only weakly related to self-reported attitudes, and was not related to pro-environmental behavior, thus lending credibility to the self-reported measurement of environmental attitudes (Milfont, 2008).
The Measurement and Structure of Environmental Attitudes As described above, attitudes have been traditionally defined as being composed of cognitive, affective, and conative components. However, some theorists have postulated alternative structures for environmental attitudes. Several measurement tools for environmental attitudes, based on alternative ways of defining attitudes, have been proposed.
Measuring Environmental Attitudes At least 15 measures of environmental attitudes and concern have been developed since the 1970s (Gifford, 2007). Experimenters often prefer to develop and use a new measure rather than use a measure that has been previously constructed, validated, and tested. When measures differ in their definition (and the specificity) of environmental attitudes, cross-study comparisons can be difficult. However, it can be useful having a variety of questionnaires and scales because attitudes can be context- or behavior-specific, requiring more specific and up-
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Environmental Attitudes to-date measures. Thus, several environmental attitudes measurement instruments that may be useful for researchers are described next, in the order in which they were developed. (p. 67) The 1970s saw the earliest development of environmental attitudes scales. The Maloney-Ward Ecology Inventory (Maloney & Ward, 1973; Maloney, Ward, & Braucht, 1975) was based on the traditional definition of attitudes and contained subscales measuring knowledge (cognitive component), affect, and verbal/actual commitment (conative component). Later, the Weigel Environmental Concern Scale was developed (Weigel & Weigel, 1978), which was shorter but contained no subscales. The most frequently used environmental questionnaire was created in the same year by Dunlap and Van Liere (1978). The New Environmental Paradigm measured the degree to which respondents believe that Earth is sacred and deserves protection for its own sake. The revised version, the New Ecological Paradigm Scale (Dunlap, Van Liere, Mertig, & Emmet Jones, 2000), contains 16 items and has been factor analyzed, revealing several possible dimensions (Bechtel, Corral Verdugo, & de Queiroz Pinheiro, 1999; Noe & Snow, 1990). In the early 1990s, two German scales were developed to measure environmental concern and environmental pessimism, respectively (Schahn & Holzer, 1990; Sohr, 1994). A third scale, also developed around that time, was created to measure environmental worry about exposure to organic solvents (Bowler & Schwarzer, 1991). Worry was conceptualized as different from pessimism in that pessimism is fatalistic, whereas worry may motivate appropriate action. Yet another instrument, the Environmentalism Scale, was based on the work of previously developed values questionnaires (Banerjee & McKeage, 1994). It comprises subscales that measure substantive environmentalism (attitudes about the severity of environmental problems), external environmentalism (attitudes about environmental issues outside the self, such as those about legislation), and internal environmentalism (attitudes about one’s own connection to nature and personally relevant issues). In the late 1990s, three scales were created to examine pro-environmental behavior, and one was developed to measure specific environmental attitudes. The Motivation Toward the Environment Scale was designed to measure motivation to engage in environmentally responsible behavior (Pelletier, Tuson, Green-Demers, Noels, & Beaton, 1998) and was supported by at least one study (Villacorta, Koestner, & Lekes, 2003). The same research group later developed a scale measuring amotivation to engage in pro-environmental behavior (Pelletier, Dion, Tuson, & Green-Demers, 1999). Another measure, the Survey of Environmental Issue Attitudes, was designed to measure attitudes toward particular environmental issues and to measure attitudes regarding various specific environmental issues (Schindler, 1999; Kinnear & Taylor, 1973; Larsen, 1994). Self-report measures have also been developed to assess environmental attitudes in children (Larson, Green, & Castlebury, 2010; Musser & Diamond, 1999).
A Different Structure? In proposing their environmental attitude structure, Milfont and Duckitt (2004) conducted a thorough analysis of existing attitude measures. They combined eight measures of environmental attitudes into a 99-item questionnaire that was administered to 455 participants. After several rounds of factor analysis, they identified 10 attitude components that could be further divided into two overarching factors: preservation (including pro-environmental behavior) and utilization (including economic liberalism and the idea that the environment needs to be preserved for human consumption). This structure was also found in a four-nation study (Bogner & Wiseman, 2002). Recently, model was further expanded and called the Environmental Attitudes Inventory was created (Milfont & Duckitt, 2010). This newer inventory draws questions from additional environmental attitudes measures and parses preservation and utilization into 12 subfactors. After testing and refining the scale with samples from multiple countries, the 200-item scale was reduced to 120 items. Although lengthy, the Environmental Attitudes Inventory is comprehensive and appears to have strong theoretical and empirical support.
Variables That Affect Concern for the Environment
Levels of Environmental Concern Public environmental concern changes over time. For example, two surveys of American college students reported
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Environmental Attitudes that beginning in the 1970s, environmental concern and willingness to give up goods to alleviate environmental problems was declining (Gigliotti, 1992; Thompson & Gasteiger, 1985). In contrast, a study comparing American adults in 1984 and 1988 found that concern was higher in 1988 (Arcury & Christianson, 1990), and in 1993, a survey found that college students had “strong concern” for the environment (but an unwillingness to change their lifestyles to address their concern; Krause, 1993). Between 1976 and 2005 (with the exception of the early 1990s), American high school students’ concern (p. 68) for the environment, especially their sense of personal responsibility, appeared to decline while their value of materialism slightly increased (Wray-Lake, Flanagan, & Osgood, 2010). However, a 47-nation survey showed that adult environmental concern was higher in 2007 than in 2002 (Pew Research Center, 2007). Fluctuations in levels of pro-environmental attitudes (cognitive, affective, and behavioral intentions) probably are related to individual determinants (such as knowledge, values, experience, or lifestyle) and social determinants (such as business or government action; Lorenzoni, Nicholson-Cole, & Whitmarsh, 2007) In recent years, human-caused (anthropogenic) climate change has been flagged by environmental scientists as possibly the single most important global environmental issue. This message has been met by a general increase in public awareness of the problem since the late 1980s (e.g., Leiserowitz, 2005), but a small chorus of global warming deniers remains vocal. One survey reported that 84% of US scientists agreed that anthropogenic global warming is occurring, but only 49% of the public held this belief (Pew Research Center, 2009). Concern exists that although awareness of anthropogenic global warming is increasing, denial of the problem may also be increasing— resulting in a strong polarization of opinions.
Age Most research supports the conclusion that younger people have higher levels of environmental concern than older people (Arcury & Christianson, 1993; Honnold, 1984–1985; Klineberg, McKeever, & Rothenbach, 1998; Zhang, 1994). This holds among teenagers as well—younger teens appear to be more concerned about environmental issues than older teens (Szagun & Mesenholl, 1993). However, older individuals may also have greater variability in their levels of concern than younger individuals (Wright, Caserta, & Lund, 2003). The difference in level of concern between young and old is explained by an “age effect” only for young adults (Honnold, 1984–1985). That is, the effect of getting older reduced the level of environmental concern over time for young adults, but an “era effect” explained the reduction in environmental concern for the rest of the study population. Older adults experienced a reduction in pro-environmental attitudes because previous eras were more liberal minded in general than the current one.
Gender With the exception of a few studies (e.g., Mukherjee, 1993), women tend to show higher levels of environmental concern than men (Blocker & Eckberg, 1997; Gutteling & Wiegman, 1993; Tikka, Kuitunen, & Tynys, 2000; Zhang, 1994). However, women also seem to exhibit lower levels of pro-environmental behavior and environmental knowledge than men (Arcury & Christianson, 1993; Gambro & Switzky, 1999; Gifford, Hay, & Boros, 1982–1983). That women have less environmental knowledge but more environmental concern is supported by several studies (Arcury, Scollay, & Johnson, 1987; Gifford et al., 1982–1983; Grieve & Van Staden, 1985; Schahn & Holzer, 1990; Stern, Dietz, & Kalof, 1993), and is consistent with the notion that environmental knowledge is not necessarily associated with concern. Lower levels of knowledge among women may be related to a lack of encouragement to study science, and higher levels of concern may be related a higher level of altruism and concern for health and safety (Davidson & Freudenburg, 1996; Dietz, Kalof, & Stern, 2002). However, research on gender and environmental attitudes is now somewhat dated and should be revisited.
Socioeconomic Status Individuals engage in political action if they possess the time, resources, and passion to do so. Thus, environmentalists are generally reported to be middle- or upper-middle-class citizens (Balderjahn, 1988; Howard, Delgado, Miller, & Gubbins, 1993; Ray, 1981, March). In Africa, a higher income also correlates with a greater knowledge of environmental issues (Chanda, 1999). However, sometimes a passion to engage in environmental action is enough on its own. One large study reported that low-income earners may display greater levels of
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Environmental Attitudes environmental concern than high-income earners (Uyeki & Holland, 2000).
International Differences Countries often differ in their average level of environmental concern. For example, in a four-nation study evaluating environmental knowledge and self-reported belief in the protectiveness of environmental actions, people from Japan had the highest environmental knowledge score, but believed their actions were least protective (Eisler, Eisler, & Yoshida, 2003). The same study found that Americans had the least environmental knowledge, and that Germans had the lowest felt connection to (p. 69) the sea. Germans and Swedes believed their behaviors were more highly protective of the environment (relative to the other two countries). Wealthier countries are frequently reported to be more concerned about the environment (Franzen, 2003; Inglehart, 1995), but occasionally individuals from less developed countries display equal or greater concern (Furman, 1998; Sarigöllü, 2009), and environmental issues may be mentioned more often in developing than in industrialized countries (Dunlap, Gallup, & Gallup, 1993). These seemingly conflicting findings may be partly explained by differences in societal-level concern and individual concern. Higher GDP (gross domestic product), for instance, is associated with greater concern at the national level, but not at the individual level (Kemmelmeier, Król, & Young, 2002). Within the United States, racial groups may hold, on average, different environmental attitudes. Early studies suggested that African Americans held lower levels of environmental concern than Euro-Americans, but these measures were culturally biased and less relevant to African Americans than others (Arp, 1996). More recent studies suggest that African Americans have similar (Parker & McDonough, 1999) or greater environmental concern than Euro-Americans (Mohai & Bryant, 1998; Uyeki & Holland, 2000). New immigrants may also be more concerned about the environment than their more acculturated counterparts (Hunter, 2000; Schultz, 2000a). Environmental concern appears to be high around the world. In the 1990s, surveys found that Chinese teens rated pollution as their biggest concern (Dodds & Lin, 1992), Spanish citizens rated environmentalism as a “central element” of their belief system (Herrera, 1992), and urban Indians rated local air pollution as a major problem (Dietz, Stern, & Guagnano, 1998). Children surveyed in Portugal, Brazil, and the United States to have approximately equal levels of environmental concern (Howe, Kahn, & Friedman, 1996; Kahn & Lourenço, 2002), and a recent report from the European Commission (2009) states that members of European countries rank climate change as the second-worst problem facing the world. The structure and level of environmental attitudes differ internationally. For example, US citizens are more likely than Mexicans or Brazilians to perceive environmental issues as humans competing against nature (Bechtel et al., 1999; Corral-Verdugo & Armendáriz, 2000). The similarities in structure of attitudes toward nature and the environment have also been compared across nations. The structure of American and European environmental attitudes is rather similar, but distinct from that of the Japanese (Zheng & Yoshino, 2003). Environmental concern priorities may also differ between rich and poor countries. Residents of wealthy countries may be more concerned about global environmental issues, and residents of less wealthy nations may be more concerned about local environmental issues (Brechin, 1999). Perhaps this is because pressing environmental problems are less apparent in richer countries.
Urban-Rural Residence Some differences exist in the level of environmental concern for urban and rural dwellers, but again the evidence is mixed. Farmers and other rural residents, with their need to use environmental resources directly, tend to be more anthropocentric (believe that nature should be preserved as a resource for consumption) than city residents who tend to be more ecocentric (believe that nature should be preserved for its own sake) (Bjerke & Kaltenborn, 1999; Rauwald & Moore, 2002). A German study revealed that urbanites showed greater verbal commitment to act on environmental issues than rural inhabitants, but the groups did not differ in any other measure of environmental concern (Bogner & Wiseman, 1997). A Canadian study showed that both urban and rural residents had high levels of environmental concern (Lutz, Simpson-Housley, & de Man, 1999).
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Environmental Attitudes Religion and Politics A debate exists about the role of Judeo-Christian religion in reducing environmental concern. Fundamentalist Christians, for example, appear to have generally lower levels of environmental concern than other groups (Eckberg & Blocker, 1989; Greeley, 1993; Newhouse, 1986; Schultz, 2000b), and this may be related to a message of mastery over the environment espoused in some passages of the Bible (Eckberg & Blocker, 1996; Hand & Van Liere, 1984). That is, some groups interpret the Bible as saying that the earth and its resources were given to humans to use as desired. However, other groups interpret this message differently—that humans are charged with taking care of the earth and preserving it, that is, acting as stewards. This may be why one study found no significant association between biblical literalism or Bible salience and environmental concern (Wolkomir, Futreal, Woodrum, & Hoban, 1997). Religiosity is also associated with (p. 70) engagement in social and political issues. Thus, in some cases religion can empower people (especially minorities) to take action on social issues such as the environment (Arp, 1997). Conservative politics, traditionally associated with religious values, also predicts lower levels of environmental concern (Eiser, Hannover, Mann, & Morin, 1990; Schultz, 1994). Belief in anthropogenic global warming in the United States may be increasingly becoming a partisan issue (rather than an issue of scientific integrity); Democrats more often accept that humans influence climate change than do Republicans (Akerlof & Maibach, 2011; Dunlap & McCright, 2008).
Personality and Values As noted earlier, environmental values and personality are distinct from attitudes. For example, one personality trait, (greater) self-efficacy, is related to higher levels of concern (Axelrod & Lehman, 1993). Greater agreeableness and openness to experience are also associated with more environmental concern (Hirsh, 2010).The effect of environmental values on behavior appears to be mediated by environmental attitudes; that is, values trigger attitudes that, in turn, lead to behavior (Milfont, Duckitt, & Wagner, 2010). Several values in particular affect environmental attitudes. Biospheric, altruistic, and post-materialist values, as well as increased levels of tolerance and understanding, all predict high levels of environmental concern (McAllister & Studlar, 1999; Milfont & Gouveia, 2006). These values indicate a general disposition for caring about others and caring about selfimprovement or freedom rather than material goods. Post-materialists also differ from materialists in that they tend to be concerned about global rather than local issues (Gökşen, Adaman, & Zenginobuz, 2002), but the value of post-materialism may not be as important as other factors (such as direct experience) in determining proenvironmental attitudes (Drori & Yuchtman-Yaar, 2002). Other values can also influence environmental attitudes. For example, individuals who put their faith in technology or the free-market have lower levels of concern (Heath & Gifford, 2006; Kilbourne, Beckmann, & Thelen, 2002). People with both egalitarian and individualist values tend to see local environmental threats as less problematic than distant threats, but egalitarians hold this belief significantly stronger (Lima & Castro, 2005).
Direct Experience with Nature Engaging in nature-related outdoor activities often is associated with increased concern for the environment (Hausbeck, Milbrath, & Enright, 1992; Palmer, 1993). However, the type of outdoor recreation matters (Teisl & O’Brien, 2003). For example, cyclists show more concern for the environment than off-road-vehicle drivers (Schuett & Ostergren, 2003). One theory suggests that individuals who participate in consumptive outdoor activities, such as hunting, have less pro-environmental concern than those who participate in non-consumptive activities, such as photography (di Nenna, Paolillo, & Giuliani, 1987). Direct experience can also affect environmental attitudes. For example, warmer local outdoor temperatures seems to increase acceptance of global warming (Joireman, Truelove, & Duell, 2010), and living close to a landfill or waste disposal area increases concerns related to that area (Arp, 1996; Bassett, Jenkins-Smith, & Silva, 1996; Elliott, Taylor, Walter, & Stieb, 1993). In Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, local residents’ attitudes toward nuclear power became less favorable after the reactors harmed the local environment (MacGregor, 1991) but with time, opinions became more varied (Midden & Verplanken, 1990) and, overall, concern largely returned to pre-meltdown levels
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Environmental Attitudes (Verplanken, 1989). In the wake of a major earthquake and tsunami in 2011, Japan also experienced a Chernobylsized nuclear accident, and it will be interesting to learn whether residents of that country are also follow this pattern of reaction.
Education and Environmental Knowledge Environmental knowledge is often assumed to be closely linked to environmental concern. Some evidence supports this: children who learn about nature informally (by reading, watching movies, or talking about it) and teens with knowledge of specific environmental issues (or science in general) show higher levels of concern (Eagles & Demare, 1999; Lyons & Breakwell, 1994). However, the knowledge-attitude association is not always found (e.g., Bang, Ellinger, Hadjimarcou, & Traichal, 2000). The manner in which knowledge is acquired appears to matter. Individuals who read newspapers report higher levels of environmental concern than those who watch TV (Ostman & Parker, 1987), unless those people spend most of their time watching science shows, news, or nature documentaries (Eagles & Demare, 1999; Holbert, Kwak, & Shah, 2003). In general, however, TV watchers are less (p. 71) willing to sacrifice aspects of their lifestyle for the environment (Shanahan, Morgan, & Stenbjerre, 1997). The type of education people receive can affect their environmental attitudes. Private-school students usually have more concern about the environment than public-school students (Arcury & Christianson, 1993; Chanda, 1999; Hsu & Roth, 1996; Klineberg et al., 1998), but sometimes the opposite is observed (Grendstad & Wollebaek, 1998). In university, business and technology majors report lower concern and commitment to pro-environmental behavior than environmental education students or students engaging in ecological restoration projects (Gifford et al., 1982–1983; Tikka et al., 2000). However, in all these cases, the students may have had different environmental attitudes before beginning their degrees (Bogner, 1998; Bowler, Kaiser, & Hartig, 1999; Reid & Sa’di, 1997).
Methods for Improving Environmental Attitudes
Media and Messages The media can have a positive or negative effect on public environmental attitudes. For example, American mass media has been cited as a major driver of climate change skepticism and a possible cause of reduced support for the Kyoto protocol in the United States (Antilla, 2005; Boykoff & Boykoff, 2007). However, mass media was also successfully employed to educate the public about how to recycle (Gillilan, Werner, Olson, & Adams, 1996). Campaigns to raise public environmental concern in general or about specific issues inevitably involve mass media participation. Therefore, understanding how to effectively communicate a persuasive environmental message can lead to substantially increased environmental concern. Many principles for message crafting have been suggested. For example, less dire messages may lead to an increased public understanding of climate change (Feinberg & Willer, 2011). Empowering messages are more effective than sacrifice messages (Gifford & Comeau, 2011). Most of these principles have been summarized in a recent review (Moser, 2010). In general, four guidelines lead to an effective message: it must be internally consistent, tap the audience’s mental model, keep the audience’s attention, and have an emotional component. Strong images can increase pro-environmental behavior (Hine & Gifford, 1991), but negative emotions, such as worry or fear, should be evoked only if an option for alleviating that emotion is presented. Moser warns that the design of every message must take into account not only the goal of the message, but also the audience, the message itself, the communicator, the channel of communication, and the context in which the message will be received. No single environmental message will be useful in every context, and environmental messages require particular attention because mitigation lacks immediacy (e.g., the positive outcomes appear distant and the immediate benefits of action are not apparent).
Environmental Education Increased levels of environmental concern can be facilitated through formal teaching situations. However, teaching programs that include environmental education components are not always effective (Eagles & Demare, 1999) and sometimes even have reverse effects (Bull, 1993). A meta-analysis that reviewed 34 such programs found that
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Environmental Attitudes only 14 had positive effects (Leeming, Dwyer, Porter, & Cobern, 1993). Given a bias for publishing significant (as opposed to null) results, many more studies showing programs to be unsuccessful may be sitting in researchers’ file drawers. Sometimes environmental education programs (in a university or elementary school) succeed in increasing knowledge, but not concern (Keen, 1991; Yount & Horton, 1992). This may occur because direct nature experiences are more likely than indirect experiences to result in increased concern (Duerden & Witt, 2010). For example, high school students who participated in a six-day wilderness experience subsequently displayed increased environmental concern (Gillett, Thomas, Skok, & McLaughlin, 1991), and children (ages 9 to 14) in a summer-camp environmental education program had higher levels of environmental concern than they started with, particularly if they were first-time campers or stayed at camp for a longer duration (Shepard & Speelman, 1985). Some environmental education methods appear to be more effective than others. For instance, using a simulation of local energy use and conservation, presenting the problem as a story (pre-teens), or incorporating games (children) may improve attitudes toward the problem and increase corresponding action (Dresner, 1989; Hewitt, 1997; Monroe, 1992). A technique known as Issue Investigation and Action Training (IIAT) also appears to hold some promise. By focusing on specific environmental issues and guiding students to develop creative solutions for them, IIAT students gain enhanced knowledge about the issues, skills to solve environmental problems, and a belief that they can solve them. Engagement in active problem solving (p. 72) leads to subsequent engagement in proenvironmental behavior. This program has been successfully employed with middle- and high-school-age children (Jordan, Hungerford, & Tomera, 1986; Ramsey & Hungerford, 1989; Ramsey, 1993). Several suggestions for successful environmental education programs have been offered (Boerschig & de Young, 1993; Newhouse, 1990; Pooley & O’Connor, 2000). These can be summarized as follows: (1) gear the program to the student’s current level of knowledge, attitudes, and moral development; (2) explain both sides of every issue; (3) encourage contact with nature or the outdoors; (4) promote a sense of personal responsibility; (5) engender feelings of control over the issue; (6) know potential action strategies and employ action skills; (7) learn about the issue before teaching it; (8) develop social norms that favor environmental conservation and protection; (9) enhance environmental sensitivity; and (10) involve emotional components in the program.
Factors That Inhibit or Promote Environmental Attitudes Leading to Behavior
Theories to Explain How Attitudes Influence Behavior To understand how to increase the likelihood that attitudes lead to behavior, one must first understand how attitudes influence behavior in general. Several theories have been proposed to explain this link. The most commonly used model, and the one with greatest support (e.g., Heath & Gifford, 2002; Laudenslager, Holt, & Lofgren, 2004) is the theory of planned behavior (TPB; Ajzen, 1991). In this model, pro-environmental behavior is predicted by specific behavioral intentions, which are, in turn, predicted by attitudes, perceived social norms, and perceived behavioral control. A recent meta-analysis provided support for TPB but suggested that personal moral norms also predict behavioral intentions (Bamberg & Möser, 2007). The value-belief-norm model (VBN) is often used to explain the attitude-behavior association (Stern, 2000). In it pro-environmental values are postulated to lead to pro-environmental beliefs (or attitudes), which lead to proenvironmental behaviors (Milfont et al., 2010). Strong altruistic or biospheric values, accompanied by weak egoistic values, are said to encourage individuals to adopt pro-environmental beliefs. Pro-environmental beliefs, defined as high scores on the New Ecological Paradigm Scale (Dunlap et al., 2000), lead individuals to believe that their actions can have adverse environmental consequences, which precedes the belief that individuals have perceived behavioral control over environmental problems. If these beliefs are adopted, individuals may then activate a personal norm that they are obliged to behave proenvironmentally. This personal norm then is postulated to directly influence pro-environmental behaviors such as organizational action (e.g., promotion of composting at work), private action (e.g., choosing to bike), public nonactivist action (e.g., attending meetings), or activist actions (e.g., protesting). The VBN model has successfully accounted for pro-environmental behaviors, in particular non-activist behaviors (García-Mira, Deus, Rodríguez, &
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Environmental Attitudes Martínez, 2003; Steg, Dreijerink, & Abrahamse, 2005; Stern, 2000). A Swedish study validated the VBN as an appropriate model for explaining action, but also elaborated it by demonstrating that self-transcendence (versus self-enhancement) values may precede more specific pro-environmental values, which only then activate beliefs (Nordlund & Garvill, 2002). Cognitive dissonance theory may also explain how environmental attitudes predict corresponding behavior (Thøgersen, 2004). It proposes that people are motivated to maintain attitude-behavior consistency. Therefore, in situations in which individuals hold a specific pro-environmental attitude, but behave in a manner inconsistent with that attitude, they will change either their attitude or their behavior. Bringing attention to a person’s attitude-behavior inconsistency (i.e., hypocrisy) is an effective means of reducing shower times (Dickerson, Thibodeau, Aronson, & Miller, 1992) and increasing energy conservation (Kantola, Syme, & Campbell, 1984); however, the effect of hypocrisy was seen only in the first week of the two-week energy conservation study. In the second week, evoking hypocrisy did not have an effect beyond that of providing energy-saving tips and/or feedback on consumption. Of course, dissonance may work in a negative way, too: if one holds anti-environmental attitudes, one may achieve consistency by refusing to engage in pro-environmental actions.
Environmental Attitudes and Other Constructs Lead to Pro-Environmental Behavior More than Attitudes Many factors can encourage pro-environmental behavior. For example, people who partake in pro-environmental (p. 73) behaviors often do so for reasons unrelated to the environment (Whitmarsh, 2009). Some recycling behaviors are predicted by concern for the environment (i.e., reusing and reducing), but others (i.e., using a recycling bin) may not be (Barr, 2007). Indeed, on their own, attitudes do not predict behavior very well, and therefore any behavioral intervention should also address the costs and benefits of the behavior, individuals’ morals and values, social norms, emotions, habits, and contextual factors (Steg & Vlek, 2009). Other factors that may influence behavior (with or without pro-environmental attitudes) are seeing others behave in proenvironmental ways (Sussman & Gifford, 2011), feelings of personal responsibility or guilt (Kaiser & Shimoda, 1999; Kaiser, Ranney, Hartig, & Bowler, 1999), and individual motivation (Pelletier et al., 1999), especially self-determined or internalized motivation (Green-Demers, Pelletier, & Ménard, 1997; Osbaldiston & Sheldon, 2003; Séguin, Pelletier, & Hunsley, 1998).
Mediators and Moderators A variety of factors promote the conversion of environmental attitudes to behavior (e.g., Gill, Crosby, & Taylor, 1986). Several of these serve to increase environmental concern (and were discussed earlier) but are cited again here because they also facilitate the connection between attitudes and behavior. The ease of enacting a behavior influences whether pro-environmental attitudes will be turned into behavior. The low-cost hypothesis states that environmental attitudes predict easily enacted behaviors but not difficult ones (O’Connor, Bord, Yarnal, & Wiefek, 2002; Schultz, 1996). For high-cost (difficult) behaviors, people find more reasons to justify the gap between their attitudes and behaviors and are less likely to change (Diekmann & Preisendörfer, 1992). For example, the low-cost hypothesis is fulfilled when employees support greenhouse-gasreducing actions as long as they do not affect their jobs (O’Connor et al., 2002), or when farmers engage in soil conservation practices only when they can afford to (Lynne & Rola, 1988). Several demographic and individual difference factors influence the strength of the attitude-behavior association. For example, being a student or public-sector employee seems to facilitate the translation of morals and attitudes into action (Axelrod & Lehman, 1993; Nilsson, von Borgstede, & Biel, 2004). Community members are more motivated by tangible rewards than by morals or attitudes (Axelrod & Lehman, 1993), and private-sector employees are less likely to behave in accordance with pro-environmental values than public-sector employees (Nilsson et al., 2004). Individuals with pro-environmental attitudes also exhibit less pro-environmental behavior if they have conservative values, higher income, and less education (Tarrant & Cordell, 1997). Furthermore, even for people with environmental knowledge, accurate assessment of the environmental problem and concurrent arousal to act often are required before pro-environmental activity can take place (Syme, Beven, & Sumner, 1993).
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Environmental Attitudes
Meta-analyses (studies that empirically combine the results of multiple studies) have identified a number of important factors for the mediation or moderation of an environmental attitude-behavior correspondence. People are more likely to engage in pro-environmental behavior if they (1) know about the issues, (2) know about action strategies, (3) have an internal locus of control, (4) state a verbal commitment to act, (5) are concerned about the issues, and (6) feel responsible to act on them (Bamberg & Möser, 2007; Cottrell, 2003; Hines, Hungerford, & Tomera (1986)). Several aspects of the environmental issue itself may also make acting on it more likely. If, for example, the problem appears to be personally threatening (as in the case of global warming in Southern California), individuals are more likely to behave pro-environmentally (Baldassare & Katz, 1992). Behavior is also more likely if the action that is required is publicly observable rather than private (Liu & Sibley, 2004).
Factors That Inhibit Attitudes from Leading to Behavior Factors that promote a strong attitude-behavior link are insufficient on their own to explain the relation. Frequently, pro-environmental knowledge or attitudes exist without being converted into action because seven categories of important psychological barriers exist (Gifford, 2011). Five of the seven barriers are particularly pertinent here. These are: limited cognition (including problems of uncertainty about the problem or the results of action, and a lack of perceived behavioral control), comparisons with others (including negative social norms about action, social comparison, and perceived inequality), sunk costs (including previous financial investments, conflicting goals and aspirations, and behavioral momentum), perceived risks (including (p. 74) physical, financial, social, functional, psychological, and temporal risks), and limited behavior (including engaging in small token behaviors, and justifying environmentally harmful behavior by engaging in positive but simple, relatively unimportant proenvironmental behaviors).
Conclusion Environmental attitudes have been extensively studied. Their structure and definition have been carefully specified and many instruments exist to measure and quantify them in a variety of populations and contexts. Internationally, environmental knowledge is growing and concern is strong. Numerous demographic, dispositional, political, religious, and experiential factors increase or decrease environmental concern. Unfortunately, strong concern does not always result in pro-environmental behavior. Although a clear link exists between attitudes and behavior (mediated by intentions and other variables), additional factors also importantly influence behavior and must be considered. Several of these may help make the attitude-behavior link stronger and others may act as psychological barriers. Some can either increase or decrease environmental concern (e.g., social norms). Increasing attention to appropriate media campaigns and well-designed pro-environmental messages can strengthen environmental attitudes and thus make appropriate behavior more likely. Given the current level of interest in environmental attitudes research, the future looks bright for discoveries of factors that will further increase the frequency of pro-environmental behaviors arising from environmental attitudes.
Future Directions Implicit attitude measurement is one fruitful potential avenue for future environmental attitude research. Implicit attitudes are activated automatically without conscious awareness and apparently have some ability to direct behavior (Dijksterhuis & Aarts, 2010). In other research areas, such as on stereotypes, implicit attitudes often differ in content from explicit (self-reported) attitudes and can independently influence behavior (Greenwald, Smith, Sriram, Bar-Anan, & Nosek, 2009). Implicit attitudes toward genetically modified foods in Great Britain have also been found to differ from self-reported explicit attitudes (Spence & Townsend, 2006), and an implicit association task has been used to demonstrate that connectedness to nature may be positively associated with biospheric concern and negatively associated with egoistic concern (Schultz, Shriver, Tabanico, & Khazian, 2004). This area of environmental attitudes research deserves further investigation.
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Environmental Attitudes 0RK9-RP0J-E7HH Yount, J. R., & Horton, P. B. (1992). Factors influencing environmental attitude: The relationship between environmental attitude defensibility and cognitive reasoning level. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 29, 1059–1078. doi:10.1002/tea.3660291005 Zhang, J. (1994). Environmental hazards in the Chinese public’s eyes. Risk Analysis, 14, 163–167. doi:10.1111/j.1539–6924. 1994.tb00041.x Zheng, Y., & Yoshino, R. (2003). Diversity patterns of attitudes toward nature and environment in Japan, USA, and European nations. Behaviormetrika, 30, 21–37. doi:10.2333/bhmk.30.21 Robert Gifford Robert Gifford Department of Psychology University of Victoria Victoria, Canada
Reuven Sussman Reuven Sussman Department of Psychology University of Victoria Victoria, Canada
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Environmental Values
Oxford Handbooks Online Environmental Values Linda Steg and Judith I. M. de Groot The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0005
Abstract and Keywords Values are desirable goals that serve as guiding principles in people’s life. As such, values can influence multiple beliefs, attitudes, norms, and behaviors simultaneously. Values determine what people attend to, what knowledge becomes cognitively most accessible, how people evaluate various aspects of the situation, and what alternatives are being considered, which in turn affects actual behavior. Different individuals may endorse the same values, but they are likely to prioritize various values differently, resulting in different preferences, beliefs, attitudes, norms, and choices. In this chapter, we discuss relevant value theories and elaborate on four types of values that are particularly relevant in the environmental domain: hedonic, egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric values. Values typically influence behavior indirectly, via behavior-specific beliefs, preferences, attitudes, and norms. Values are particularly influential when they are strongly endorsed, and when they are activated, cognitively supported, central to the self, and part of our self-identity. Values reflect a broad range of motivations (notably hedonic, egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric motivations) and as such differ from ecological worldviews and environmental concerns that focus on environmental motivations. Keywords: values, social value orientations, hedonic values, egoistic values, altruistic values, biospheric values, self-enhancement values, selftranscendence values, ecological worldviews, environmental concern, environmental beliefs, norms, environmental behavior
Introduction Many pro-environmental actions involve a conflict between individual interests in the short term and collective interests in the long term: individuals need to restrain egoistic tendencies to benefit the environment (e.g., Nordlund & Garvill, 2003; Samuelson, 1990; Steg, Dreijerink, & Abrahamse, 2005). For example, traveling by car is generally believed to be more comfortable than using public transport, and organic products are often more expensive than regular produce, while environmental quality would improve if individuals reduced car use and bought organic products. Yet, many people do act pro-environmentally, even though this may be associated with higher individual costs in the short term. For example, in many countries recycling levels are high, and many people have insulated their homes. Besides the fact that people may benefit from environmental protection, at least indirectly and in the long term, one important reason for this may be that individuals value the environment and want to protect environmental quality. In other cases, people may refrain from pro-environmental actions because they value their comfort higher than the environment: for example, many people prefer to drive rather than to travel by public transport. Indeed, human values are believed to play an important role in pro-environmental actions (Dunlap, Grieneeks, & Rokeach, 1983; Naess, 1989). Some values may inhibit pro-environmental actions, while other values promote such actions. (p. 82) In this chapter, we first provide a definition of values, and explain why it is important to study relationships between values, beliefs, attitudes, norms, and behavior in the environmental domain. Subsequently, we discuss some prominent theories on values and provide empirical evidence for the significance of values in predicting
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Environmental Values beliefs, norms, and behavior in the environmental domain. We also describe how values affect environmental behavior, and under which circumstances values are particularly influential. Finally, we discuss conceptual differences between values and other general antecedents of environmental beliefs, attitudes, norms, and behaviors, notably ecological worldviews and environmental concern.
What Are Values? Schwartz (1992) defines values as “desirable goals, varying in importance, that serve as guiding principles in people’s lives” (p. 21). This definition highlights four key features of values. First, values reflect general beliefs concerning the desirability or undesirability of certain end-states, such as equality, ambition, or environmental quality. As such, values have an oughtness quality (Feather, 1995). Second, values are abstract and transcend specific situations, that is, values may affect beliefs, attitudes, norms, intentions, and behavior of different kinds. Values are relatively stable over time, whereas specific beliefs, attitudes, and norms can change more easily (Feather, 1995; Gardner & Stern, 2002; Rokeach, 1973). This implies that changes in (the priority of) values are likely to result in changes in a wide range of behavior-related beliefs and norms, intentions, and behaviors simultaneously. This feature makes it particularly relevant to understand the value basis of pro-environmental beliefs, attitudes, norms, intentions, and actions. Third, values serve as a guiding principle for the selection or evaluation of behavior, people, and events. Values determine what people attend to, what knowledge becomes cognitively most accessible, how people evaluate various aspects of the situation, and what alternatives are being considered. Also, values function as criteria or frameworks against which present experience can be tested (Feather, 1995). Fourth, individuals prioritize the importance of different values. Although values are culturally shared and different individuals may endorse the same values, they are likely to prioritize various values differently. This implies that when people face conflicting values, they will base their choice on the values that they consider the most important to act upon, resulting in different choices for people who prioritize their values differently. For example, individuals who prioritize environmental values are more likely to buy organic produce than those who prioritize egoistic values, even though both may endorse environmental values. So, it is the relative importance of values that matters most.
Value Theories Two prominent theories on values that are most widely used in the environmental domain are the theory on social value orientations (e.g., Messick & McClintock, 1968) and Schwartz’s (1992) value theory. We briefly introduce both theoretical frameworks below. Next we explain the significance of biospheric values and explain why biospheric values are particularly relevant for understanding environmental beliefs, norms, intentions, and behavior. Furthermore, we discuss which values are most important to understand environmental action, and review relevant empirical evidence.
Social Value Orientations Messick and McClintock (1968) proposed that choices in social dilemma situations depend on social value orientations. A social dilemma is a situation in which individual and collective interests are at odds. Many environmental decisions involve a social dilemma, as our examples in the introduction illustrate. For example, it is in one’s individual interest to use a car rather than to travel by public transport, but collectively we would be better off if all people drove less. Also, an individual may prefer to take long showers, while society as a whole would be better off if all would save water and energy by reducing showering time. The extent to which people are likely to act in line with the collective interest is believed to depend not only on the costs and benefits of different alternatives, but also on social value orientations. Social value orientations reflect individual differences in which goals are prioritized (viz. individual or collective), which in turn influence the choices people make in social dilemma situations. Four social value orientations can be distinguished (but more simple as well as more differentiated distinctions have also been proposed in the literature) that differ in preferences for distributions of outcomes for oneself and others or the collective (e.g., Liebrand, 1984): 1. individualistic: preference to maximize own outcomes with no concern for the outcomes of others (p. 83) 2. competitive: preference to maximize own outcomes relative to the outcomes of others
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Environmental Values 3. altruistic: preference to maximize the outcomes of others 4. cooperative: preference to maximize joint outcomes The four value orientations are often combined into two general, overarching social value orientations: proself values, in which people are concerned particularly with their own interests (ad. 1 and 2) versus prosocial values, in which individuals are concerned mainly with the interests of others (ad. 3 and 4). Some studies found that prosocial values were positively related, while proself values were negatively related, to pro-environmental preferences (Van Vugt, Meertens, & Van Lange, 1995) and intentions (Joireman, Lasane, Bennett, Richards, & Solaimani, 2001). Furthermore, preferences for traveling by public transport or for carpooling depended more strongly on the likelihood of congestion for those with strong proself values as compared to those with strong prosocial values, suggesting that possible negative individual consequences more strongly influenced preferences for choices in the collective interest of those with strong proself values than those with strong prosocial values (Van Lange, Van Vugt, Meertens, & De Ruiter, 1998). Also, egoistic environmental consequences appeared to be more salient to individuals with strong proself values, while social-altruistic environmental consequences appeared to be more salient to those who strongly endorsed prosocial values (Gärling, Fujii, Gärling, & Jakobsson, 2003; Joireman et al., 2001). However, relationships between social value orientations and environmental beliefs, preferences, and intentions are generally weak, and sometimes even not significant. For example, social value orientations were not significantly related to preferences for commuting by car versus public transport (Joireman, Van Lange, & Van Vugt, 2004) and environmental behavior (Joireman et al., 2001). In sum, empirical evidence of the relevance of social value orientation for pro-environmental beliefs, preferences, and actions is mixed.
Schwartz’s Value Theory Schwartz (1992, 1994) developed one of the most widely used value typologies. Schwartz’s value theory is based on earlier work by Rokeach (1973), who aimed to develop a value hierarchy based on a universal set of values. Rokeach (1973) argued that a distinction should be made between instrumental values reflecting beliefs concerning desirable means (e.g., being honest, or “honesty”) and terminal values reflecting preferable end-states of existence (e.g., a world at peace). Schwartz (1992) further developed and extended Rokeach’s universal value typology and proposed a value typology comprising 56 values. However, Schwartz’s (1992) typology no longer made a distinction between instrumental and terminal values, as he did not find empirical support for this distinction. Schwartz (1992) found that values can be grouped into 10 value clusters that describe individual differences in value priorities: conformity, tradition, universalism, benevolence, power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation, selfdirection, and security. The first four value clusters refer to social values, while the other six clusters reflect individualistic values. The 10 value clusters can be plotted in a two-dimensional space (see Figure 5.1). The first dimension distinguishes self-enhancement from self-transcendence values, which is similar to the distinction between proself and prosocial values in the social value orientation framework described above. The second dimension distinguishes openness to change from conservation values, reflecting whether individuals are open to new things and ideas versus whether they have a preference for tradition and conformity. Values in the same value cluster are prioritized in a similar way, while values belonging to clusters that are wide apart from each other are typically prioritized very differently. The closer together values are in this two-dimensional space, the more compatible they are, while values that are wide apart are more likely to conflict. When values conflict in a particular situation, people are most likely to act upon the values they prioritize. Schwartz’s value typology has been tested and validated in many countries and cultures around the world (e.g., Collins, Steg, & Koning, 2007; Schwartz, 1992, 1994; Schwartz & Sagiv, 1995; Spini, 2003), and the majority of the values demonstrate high cross-cultural consistency of meaning (Schwartz & Sagiv, 1995). This implies that the structure of values is the same in different cultures and countries; however, people may differ in the way they prioritize different values.
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Environmental Values
Figure 5.1 Schwartz’s value typology: 10 value clusters in a two-dimensional space.
Studies in the environmental domain generally revealed that environmental beliefs, attitudes, norms, intentions, and actions are particularly related to the self-enhancement and self-transcendent values: individuals who strongly endorse (p. 84) self-transcendent values are more likely to have pro-environmental beliefs and norms and to act pro-environmentally, while the opposite is true for those who strongly endorse self-enhancement values (e.g., Collins et al., 2007; Kalof, Dietz, Stern, & Guagnano, 1999; Nordlund & Garvill, 2002, 2003; Schultz, Gouveia, Cameron, Tankha, Schmuck, & Franěk, 2005; Stern, Dietz, & Guagnano, 1998; Stern, Dietz, Kalof, & Guagnano, 1995; Thøgersen & Ölander, 2002; Stern, 2000). Thøgersen and Ölander (2003) also found that environmentalfriendly behaviors are more likely to spread to other areas of one’s consumption pattern among those with strong self-transcendence values, indicating that so-called spillover effects are more likely when self-transcendent values are strong. A few studies found (weak) relationships between openness to change and conservation values and pro-environmental beliefs, norms, intentions, and behavior (e.g., Karp, 1996; Kalof et al., 1999; Poortinga, Steg, & Vlek, 2004; Schultz & Zelezny, 1999; Stern et al., 1998). For example, the more strongly individuals endorsed openness-to-change values, the more energy they used for transportation purposes (Poortinga et al., 2004). Those who strongly endorse conservation values were less likely to be concerned about environmental problems (Schultz & Zelezny, 1999) and to be vegetarians (Kalof et al., 1999), and less willing to sacrifice to benefit the environment (Stern et al., 1998). In sum, self-enhancement and self-transcendence values seem to be particularly relevant to understand beliefs, preferences, attitudes, norms, and behavior in the environmental domain.
Biospheric Values Recently, various environmental psychologists suggested that it is important to examine whether biospheric values can be distinguished as a separate cluster of self-transcendence values, next to altruistic values (e.g., Stern & Dietz, 1994; De Groot & Steg, 2008). These scholars proposed that biospheric values may play an important role in encouraging pro-environmental beliefs, norms, and behaviors. Biospheric values emphasize the intrinsic value of nature and the environment. The intrinsic value of nature has long been advocated within environmental ethics (e.g., Leopold, 1949; Naess, 1989; Reid, 1962; Singer, 1975), but the significance of biospheric values was not studied systematically until recently. Biospheric values reflect a concern with the quality of nature and the environment for its own sake, without a clear link to the welfare of other human beings. As such, they differ from altruistic values that reflect a concern with the welfare of other human beings. Both altruistic and biospheric values reflect self-transcendence or prosocial values. This means that altruistic and biospheric values are expected to correlate positively, that is, those who endorse altruistic values are also likely to endorse biospheric values, and vice versa. Also, in many cases both altruistic and biospheric values are likely to promote pro-environmental beliefs, norms, and actions, because such actions generally benefit the (p. 85) well-being of others and the biosphere. However, in some situations altruistic and biospheric values may conflict, for example, when one has to decide to vote for a green or a social party, or to buy fair-trade or organic products. Recent studies revealed that altruistic and biospheric values can indeed be distinguished empirically (De Groot & Steg, 2007, 2008, 2010; Grønhøj & Thøgersen, 2009; Nilsson, von Borgstede, & Biel, 2004; Steg et al., 2005; Steg, De Groot, Dreijerink, Abrahamse, & Siero, 2011). Altruistic and biospheric values are positively correlated (e.g., De Groot & Steg, 2007, 2008; Nilsson et al., 2004), which is in line with Schwartz’s value theory, as both reflect selftranscendence values. However, not surprisingly, biospheric values are generally more predictive of pro-
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Environmental Values environmental beliefs, norms, and actions than are altruistic values (e.g., De Groot & Steg, 2007, 2008; Nilsson et al., 2004; Steg et al., 2005). More important, when choices affect altruistic and biospheric values differently, and thus when altruistic and biospheric values conflict in a particular situation, they predict intentions differently, in the expected direction. For example, De Groot and Steg (2008) examined relationships between values and likelihood of donating money to either environmental or humanitarian organizations. Respondents were forced to make a choice between donating 10 euros to an environmental or a humanitarian organization. Respondents were offered five choice sets, each comprising one humanitarian and one environmental organization that were similar with regard to (internationalization) of aid and publicity. A brief description of the mission of each organization was added. It appeared that people with strong biospheric values were more likely to donate money to environmental rather than humanitarian organizations, while those with strong altruistic values were more likely to donate money to humanitarian rather than environmental organizations (De Groot & Steg, 2008). In sum, recent studies have suggested that it is indeed important to make a distinction between altruistic and biospheric values. First, even though altruistic and biospheric values are correlated, they can be distinguished empirically. Second, biospheric values appear to be more predictive of pro-environmental beliefs, intentions, and behaviors than are altruistic values. Third, when altruistic and biospheric values conflict, strong biospheric values promote pro-environmental choices, while strong altruistic values make pro-environmental choices less likely. Based on the above, it has been proposed that three types of values are particularly relevant to understanding pro-environmental beliefs, norms, intentions, and actions: egoistic values, reflecting a key concern with individual outcomes, altruistic values, reflecting a concern with the welfare of others, and biospheric values, reflecting a concern with nature and the environment (see also Stern, Dietz, & Kalof, 1993; Steg et al., 2005; De Groot & Steg, 2007, 2008). Individuals who strongly endorse egoistic values will particularly consider costs and benefits of environmental actions for them personally, and act pro-environmentally when the perceived benefits of such actions exceed the perceived costs (and vice versa). For example, a person who strongly endorses egoistic values is likely to act pro-environmentally if the pro-environmental option also happens to be the cheapest or most comfortable option. In contrast, individuals who strongly endorse altruistic values will focus on the perceived costs and benefits of actions for other people. They may, for example, engage in pro-environmental actions, such as purchasing organic produce, when this benefits the health of their children. Finally, individuals who strongly endorse biospheric values will mainly base their choices on the perceived costs and benefits of actions for nature and the environment, and act pro-environmentally when these actions are likely to reduce environmental problems. Although all three value types provide a distinct basis for pro-environmental actions, and thus all may promote pro-environmental beliefs and choices, studies generally reveal that individuals who more strongly endorse altruistic and particularly biospheric values have more positive pro-environmental beliefs and norms, and are more likely to engage in pro-environmental behavior than those who strongly endorse egoistic values (e.g., Honkanen & Verplanken, 2004; De Groot & Steg, 2008, 2010; Karp, 1996; Nilsson et al., 2004; Steg et al., 2005; Steg et al., 2011; Stern et al., 1998), probably because many pro-environmental behaviors have individual disadvantages, as explained at the very start of this chapter. The significance of biospheric values implies that environmental considerations are part of people’s morality and that both human and nature rights are protected by values (cf. Lindenberg & Steg (in press)). Inglehart (1977) proposed that the concern about environmental issues in Western societies is due to the emergence of so-called post-materialistic values in post-industrial societies. The basic idea of Inglehart’s (1977) value revolution theory is that (p. 86) improvements in standards of living and education levels in Western societies resulted in improved physical and economic security, which makes it more likely that basic materialistic values are fulfilled. Because of this, individuals can prioritize post-materialistic values that emphasize autonomy and self-expression. Inglehart (1977) assumed that people will prioritize post-materialistic values only when materialistic values are fulfilled and survival needs can be taken for granted. This implies that biospheric values will emerge only when basic needs are fulfilled and that biospheric values are more likely to emerge in Western industrialized societies where affluent levels are high, while poor people probably cannot afford to support biospheric values since their basic levels of subsistence are not fulfilled. However, recent studies found support for the distinction between altruistic and biospheric values in non-Western countries (e.g., Mexico and Indonesia; Helbig, 2010; Hiratsuka, 2010) as well, even among relatively poor populations (Helbig, 2010). This suggests that the emergence of biospheric values is not mainly a product of a post-materialist cultural shift, but rather results from multiple sources, such as observation of or information on environmental degradation (cf. Brenchin and Kempton, 1994), or a stronger
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Environmental Values reliance on environmental systems. This implies that biospheric values may be important and a separate cluster of values in developing countries and cultures that did not face a post-materialism shift as well.
Hedonic Values Above we argued that studies generally revealed that values from the self-enhancement versus selftranscendence value dimension are most strongly related to environmental beliefs, preferences, norms, and actions. Also, we showed that when studying environmental issues, it is important to make a distinction between altruistic and biospheric values, representing subclusters of self-transcendence values. It may be useful to distinguish two types of self-enhancement values to understand environmental beliefs, attitudes, norms, and actions as well. This proposition is based on two lines of research. First, goal framing theory (Lindenberg & Steg, 2007) proposes that (environmental) behavior is guided by three overarching goals: hedonic goals “to feel better right now,” gain goals “to improve one’s resources,” and normative goals “to act appropriately.” Goal framing theory suggests that one goal is focal (i.e., one goal is strongest) in a particular situation and influences preferences and decisions most, while the other goals are in the background and influence the strength of the focal goal. A priori, hedonic goals are strongest, while normative goals are most in need of external support. Values determine the likelihood that a particular goal is focal in any situation, as they influence the extent to which goals are chronically accessible. This implies that normative goals to act appropriately are more likely to be focal in a particular situation when people strongly endorse altruistic or biospheric values, while gain goals are more likely to be focal when people strongly endorse egoistic values. In a similar vein, hedonic goals are more likely to be focal when people strongly endorse hedonic values. So, based on goal framing theory, we would expect that hedonic values are an important predictor of environmental beliefs, attitudes, norms, and behavior, as hedonic goals are more likely to be activated among those who strongly endorse hedonic values. Second, research on the hedonic value of the possession and use of consumption goods (which are typically associated with environmental impact and are thus examples of environmentally harmful behavior) also suggests that environmental behavior may be rooted in hedonic values. Indeed, many material products with environmental impact, such as cars, are purchased and used because of their hedonic value (e.g., Dittmar, 1992; Hirschman & Holbrook, 1982), and because people derive pleasure from using these products (Steg, Vlek, & Slotegraaf, 2001; Steg, 2005; Gatersleben, 2007). It is likely that hedonic consumption is rooted in hedonic values, as those with strong hedonic values are more likely to appreciate hedonic consequences of behavior. So, both goal framing theory and theories on consumer behavior, in particular the theory on the meaning of material possessions (e.g., Dittmar, 1992), suggest that it may be important to distinguish two types of self-enhancement values to understand environmental beliefs, attitudes, norms, and actions: hedonic and egoistic values. There is some empirical evidence for the significance of hedonic values in the environmental domain. For example, Honkanen and Verplanken (2004) found that positive attitudes toward genetically modified (GM) food, and intention to buy GM food, were more likely among those who strongly endorsed hedonic values, and less likely among those who strongly endorsed biospheric values. More recently, Steg and colleagues (2012) systematically examined whether it is worthwhile to include hedonic values in studies in the (p. 87) environmental domain. First, they found that hedonic values can indeed be clearly distinguished empirically from egoistic values. Not only studies in the Netherlands, but also in Japan, Indonesia, and Mexico validated the distinction between hedonic, egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric values (Helbig, 2010; Hiratsuka, 2010), indicating that hedonic and egoistic values form distinct value clusters. Hedonic and egoistic values were correlated, which is in line with Schwartz’s (1992) value typology, as both reflect self-enhancement values. In many cases, hedonic values appeared to be more strongly and negatively related to environmental beliefs, preferences, norms, and actions than were egoistic values, suggesting that particularly hedonic values may inhibit pro-environmental actions (Steg et al., 2012). Furthermore, Steg et al. (2012) found that the four types of values were systematically and consistently related to valuecongruent preferences. In this study, individuals were asked about their preference for a series of restaurants that systematically varied in hedonic, egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric aspects. Individuals who strongly endorsed hedonic values were more likely to base their choice of restaurant on the hedonic attribute varied in the restaurant descriptions (i.e., whether the food served was tasty), while those who strongly endorsed altruistic values more strongly based their choice on the working conditions in the restaurant (representing the altruistic attribute included in the description of the restaurants) and those who endorsed biospheric values particularly considered
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Environmental Values whether organic products were served (i.e., the biospheric attribute). So, preferences were systematically linked to values; people particularly considered the characteristic of the restaurant that was congruent with their values. Together, these studies indicate that it is indeed important to include hedonic values in studies on environmental beliefs, preferences, norms, and actions.
How Do Values Affect Behavior? We indicated above that values appear to be correlated with various psychological constructs including preferences, beliefs, norms, intentions, and even behavior. But how do values affect behavior? Do they affect behavior directly, or mainly indirectly, via, for example, beliefs and preferences? Value theories generally assume that values are general beliefs reflecting stable dispositions that structure and guide specific beliefs, norms and attitudes that are more likely to change over time (Feather, 1995; Rokeach, 1973). These beliefs, norms, and attitudes in turn affect behavior. So, it is assumed that the effect of values on behavior is mediated by more specific beliefs, attitudes, and norms. Indeed, various studies showed that values mostly influence behavior indirectly, via behavior-specific beliefs, attitudes, and norms (e.g., De Groot, Steg, & Dicke, 2008; Gärling et al., 2003; Kalof et al., 1999; Nordlund & Garvill, 2002, 2003; Nilsson et al., 2004; Poortinga et al., 2004; Steg et al., 2005). For example, Nordlund and Garvill (2003) found that values were related to awareness of environmental problems and personal norms (that is, feelings of moral obligation) to reduce car use, while personal norms were the only significant predictor of willingness to reduce car use, suggesting that the effects of values on willingness to reduce car use is mediated by behavior-specific beliefs and norms. Similarly, Steg et al. (2005) found that values (in particular biospheric values) predicted general awareness of environmental problems (i.e., NEP; we explain this concept in the section “Distinction Between Values, Ecological Worldviews, and Environmental Concern”) and behavior-specific beliefs (in this case awareness of consequences of energy problems, feelings of responsibility for energy problems, and personal norms to reduce energy use) but that personal norms were the only significant predictor of acceptability of energy policies. So behavior-specific beliefs and norms mediated the effects of values on non-activist behavior in the public sphere as well (in this case acceptability of energy policies; cf. Stern, 2000). However, some studies showed that values can affect behavior directly as well, even when mediating variables such as specific beliefs, attitudes, and norms are controlled for (e.g., Schultz & Zelezny; 1998; Stern, Dietz, Abel, Guagnano, & Kalof, 1999; cf. Stern, 2000). For example, Schultz and Zelezny (1998) found that selftranscendence values were significantly related to self-reported pro-environmental behavior, even when general awareness of environmental problems and feelings of responsibility for environmental problems in general were controlled for. However, these studies typically measured general beliefs toward the environment, while studies that showed that values affect environmental behavior indirectly typically included behavior-specific or contextspecific beliefs, attitudes, and norms. This suggests that the influence of values on behavior is most likely to be mediated by behavior-specific beliefs, attitudes, and norms, but not by general environmental beliefs. (p. 88) It is generally believed that values, and particularly values that are strongly endorsed by a person, direct attention to value-congruent information, which in turn affects beliefs and norms related to pro-environmental action and (willingness to) act pro-environmentally (Stern & Dietz, 1994; Stern et al., 1995; Nordlund & Garvill, 2002, 2003). Values affect the way a person perceives a situation so that some actions and potential outcomes are seen as attractive whereas other actions are seen as aversive (Feather, 1995). Values are more influential when they are activated in the particular situation. For example, Verplanken and Holland (2002) found that people were more likely to acquire information on the environmental performance of a TV set and, in turn, to actually choose a TV set with a better environmental performance when biospheric values were activated, but only when they strongly endorsed biospheric values in the first place. In this study, biospheric values were activated via a scrambled word task in which participants had to make sentences out of words presented to them, where many of the resulting sentences happened to refer to environmental issues; the true aim of the task was masked via a cover story. This suggests that priming particular values to make them salient in the particular situation enhances attention to and the weight of information related to these values. This increases the likelihood of value-congruent actions, but only when the relevant values are central to the particular person. On the other hand, priming values is less likely to promote pro-environmental preferences and choices when people do not strongly endorse these values in the first place. Verplanken and Holland (2002) also found that enhancing a self-focus (in this case by circling self-related words in a text, such as “I,” “me,” “my,” “mine” as opposed to
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Environmental Values “the,” “it,” “a,” “an”) activates central values, which promotes value-congruent actions. More specifically, they found that people were more likely to donate money to a humanitarian organization (i.e., Amnesty International) when self-focus was high and when participants strongly endorsed altruistic values. However, a self-focus did not significantly increase donations to a humanitarian organization when people did not strongly endorse altruistic values, suggesting that a self-focus particularly promotes value-congruent actions among those who strongly endorse the relevant values. Together, these results indicate that strong values promote value-congruent actions, especially when the relevant values are activated and/or when people are self-focused. When altruistic or biospheric values are linked to or integrated in our self-concept, acting pro-environmentally can make us feel like a moral person (rather than a selfish person), which is likely to promote pro-environmental actions as people like to see themselves as morally right (Aronson, 1969; Bolderdijk, Steg, Geller, Lehman, & Postmes, 2012). Maio and colleagues (Maio & Olson, 1998; Maio, Olson, Allen, & Bernard, 2001) argued that making values cognitively more accessible is not sufficient to promote value-congruent actions. Rather, values need to be cognitively supported; that is, individuals should be able to provide reasons for their values. Maio et al. (2001) argued that value-incongruent actions may result from seeing values as truisms, where people lack cognitive support for values. In such situations, values are vulnerable to change when they are challenged, because people have no clear rationale for defending them. In contrast, when values are cognitively supported, they are perceived to be more rational and activated and people can generate counterarguments when these values are challenged, thereby counterbalancing situational factors to engage in value-incongruent actions. For example, when the value helpfulness is cognitively supported and activated, people may help another in need even though this may be costly to them, while they are less likely to do so when this value is not cognitively supported. In sum, values are most strongly related to specific beliefs, attitudes, norms, and consequently to behaviors when they are strongly endorsed, and when they are activated, part of one’s self-concept, and cognitively supported. When values are closely linked to or integrated in one’s self concept, they may become an important part of one’s identity, that is, people may mention values to describe themselves (Hitlin, 2003). Indeed, research has shown that an environmental identity, that is, the extent to which individuals indicate that environmentalism is a central part of the self, correlates strongly with biospheric values. Moreover, relationships between biospheric values and environmental behavior are mediated by environmental identity: values were no longer significantly related to environmental behavior when environmental identity was controlled for (Van der Werff, Steg, & Keizer, 2012), suggesting that values affect behavior indirectly, via self-identity. When people strongly endorse biospheric values, it is likely that these values become part of one’s self-identity, resulting in a strong environmental (p. 89) identity, which in turn increases the likelihood of pro-environmental actions.
Distinction Between Values, Ecological Worldviews, and Environmental Concern Besides values, various other general antecedents of environmental behavior have been studied, notably worldviews and environmental concern. Like values, worldviews and environmental concern are also believed to influence a wide range of specific beliefs, attitudes, norms, and behaviors. It is important to make a clear conceptual distinction between these different general antecedents of environmental behavior, to avoid misinterpretations. It is commonly understood that values are central and relatively stable elements of one’s personality that reflect the relative importance of different guiding principles in life. The previous sections demonstrated that values reflect multiple motivations, that is, they reflect hedonic (e.g., pleasure), egoistic (e.g., power), altruistic (e.g., equality), as well as biospheric (e.g., unity with nature) motivations (Steg et al., 2011). In contrast, ecological worldviews and environmental concern reflect less general beliefs and focus on environmental issues (see Steg et al., 2011). More specifically, ecological worldviews reflect primitive beliefs (i.e., basic truths) on relationships between humans and the environment. The most popular conceptualization of ecological worldviews is the New Environmental (or: Ecological) Paradigm (NEP; Dunlap & Van Liere, 1978; Dunlap, Van Liere, Mertig, & Jones, 2000), which reflects people’s beliefs about humanity’s ability to upset the balance of nature, the existence of limits to growth for human societies, and humanity’s right to rule over the rest of nature. Environmental concern refers to the evaluation of environmental issues, including beliefs on the need for environmental protection; the severity, likelihood, and immediacy of environmental problems; the seriousness of
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Environmental Values environmental problems; worries about environmental problems; general attitudes toward the environment; the importance of consequences of environmental problems for oneself, others, and the biosphere; and affective responses to environmental problems (e.g., Axelrod & Lehman, 1993; Baldassare & Katz, 1992; Bamberg, 2003; Biel & Nilsson, 2005; Fransson & Gärling, 1999; Gatersleben, Steg, & Vlek, 2002; Maloney & Ward, 1973; Schultz, 2000, 2001; Schultz et al., 2005; Schultz, Shriver, Tabanico, & Khazian, 2004; Stern et al., 1993; Weigel & Weigel, 1978). So, values reflect a broader range of motivations and are more encompassing than ecological worldviews and environmental concern, as values reflect multiple motivations, and not only environmental considerations. Based on this, one could argue that values should affect ecological worldviews and environmental concern, which in turn affect behavior-specific beliefs, norms, and environmental actions. In fact, this is exactly what is proposed by the value-belief-norm theory of environmentalism (Stern, 2000; Stern et al., 1999). Indeed, studies have shown that values predict NEP and environmental concern (De Groot & Steg, 2008; Schultz et al., 2005; Schultz & Zelezny, 1999; Steg et al., 2005). However, a recent study by Steg et al. (2011) showed that egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric values predicted a significantly higher proportion of the variance in personal norms toward energy conservation and in environmental activism, respectively, than did ecological worldviews and environmental concern. This suggests that values are better predictors of pro-environmental norms and intentions than are ecological worldviews and environmental concerns, probably because values reflect a wider range of motivations (rather than only environmental concerns). So, although worldviews and environmental concerns may be rooted in values, they do not necessarily fully mediate the effects of values on environmental beliefs, norms, and actions, and values are generally more predictive of pro-environmental beliefs, norms, intentions and behavior than are ecological worldviews and environmental concern.
Future Directions In this chapter, we discussed the importance of values in understanding and promoting pro-environmental behavior. We indicated which values are particularly important in the environmental domain, and how values affect environmental actions. Also, we described under which circumstances values are particularly predictive of environmental beliefs, norms, intentions, and behavior, and indicated important conceptual differences between values and other types of general antecedents of environmental beliefs, attitudes, norms, and behaviors, notably ecological worldviews and environmental concern. Throughout the chapter, we discussed relevant empirical evidence on these topics. Although a rich body of literature is available on values and environmental beliefs, attitudes, norms, and behavior, there are some important topics to be addressed in future studies. First, studies revealed (p. 90) that particularly biospheric values strengthen pro-environmental beliefs, attitudes, norms, and action. An important topic for future research is therefore how biospheric values can best be strengthened and activated to enhance proenvironmental actions. Such studies can build on the important work by Verplanken and Holland (2002) and Maio et al. (Maio & Olson, 1998; Maio et al., 2001) discussed in this chapter. Second, future studies could examine under which circumstances values are more likely to affect behavior indirectly, and when direct influences are likely as well. We suggested that values may be less likely to affect behavior directly when behavior-specific or contextspecific (rather than general) beliefs, attitudes, and norms are controlled for, but this assumption needs to be tested empirically. A third important topic for future research is to examine how people manage possible conflicts between values, such as conflicts between hedonic or egoistic values with biospheric values. Which factors affect the likelihood that one value will be prioritized over other values, and how can we promote that people act upon their biospheric values when they strongly endorse such values? We hope to be able to provide answers to these questions in the coming years.
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Environmental Values Nilsson, A., von Borgstede, C., & Biel, A. (2004). Willingness to accept climate change policy measures: The effect of values and norms. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 24, 267–277. Nordlund, A. M., & Garvill, J. (2002). Value structures behind pro-environmental behavior. Environment and Behavior, 34, 740–756. Nordlund, A. M., & Garvill, J. (2003). Effects of values, problem awareness, and personal norm on willingness to reduce personal car use. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 23, 339–347. Poortinga, W., Steg, L., & Vlek, C. (2004). Values, environmental concern and environmental behavior: A study into household energy use. Environment and Behavior, 36, 70–93. Reid, L. (1962). The Sociology of Nature. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books. Rokeach, M. (1973). The nature of human values. New York: Free Press. Samuelson, C. D. (1990). Energy conservation: A social dilemma approach. Social Behaviour, 5, 207–230. Schultz, P. (2000). Empathizing with nature: The effects of perspective taking on concern for environmental issues. Journal of Social Issues, 56, 391–406. Schultz, P. W. (2001). The structure of environmental concern for self, other people, and the biosphere. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 21, 327–339. Schultz, P. W., Gouveia, V. V., Cameron, L. D., Tankha, G., Schmuck, P., & Franěk, M. (2005). Values and their relationship to environmental concern and conservation behavior. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 36, 457– 475. Schultz, P. W., Shriver, C., Tabanico, J. J., & Khazian, A. M. (2004). Implicit connections with nature. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 24, 31–42. Schultz, P. W., & Zelezny, L. C. (1998). Values and pro-environmental behaviour: A five-country study. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 29, 540–558. Schultz, P. W., & Zelezny, L. C. (1999). Values as predictors of environmental attitudes: Evidence for consistency across 14 countries. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 19, 255–265. Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structures of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental psychology (Vol. 25, pp. 1–65). Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Schwartz, S. H. (1994). Are there universal aspects in the structure and contents of human values? Journal of Social Issues, 50, 19–45. Schwartz, S. H., & Sagiv, L. (1995). Identifying culture-specifics in the content and structure of values. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 26, 92–116. Singer, P. (1973). Animal liberation: A new ethics for our treatment of animals. New York: New York Review/Random House. Spini, D. (2003). Measurement equivalence of 10 value types from the Schwartz Value Survey across 21 countries. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34, 3–23. Steg, L. (2005). Car use: Lust and must. Instrumental, symbolic, and affective motives for car use. Transportation Research-A, 39(2–3), 147–162. Steg, L., De Groot, J. I. M., Dreijerink, L., Abrahamse, W., & Siero, F. (2011). General antecedents of personal norms, policy acceptability, and intentions: The role of values, worldviews, and environmental concern. Society and Natural Resources, 24(4), 349–367. Steg, L., Dreijerink, L., & Abrahamse, W. (2005). Factors influencing the acceptability of energy policies: Testing
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Environmental Values VBN theory. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 25, 415–425. Steg, L., Perlaviciute, G., Van der Werff, E., & Lurvink, J. (2012). The significance of hedonic values for environmentally-relevant attitudes, preferences, and actions. Manuscript under review. Steg, L., Vlek, C., & Slotegraaf, G. (2001). Instrumental-reasoned and symbolic-affective motives for using a motor car. Transportation Research-F: Psychology and Behaviour, 4(3), 151–169. Stern, P. C. (2000). Toward a coherent theory of environmentally significant behavior. Journal of Social Issues, 56(3), 407–424. Stern, P. C., & Dietz, T. (1994). The value basis of environmental concern. Journal of Social Issues, 50(3), 65–84. (p. 92) Stern, P. C., Dietz, T., Abel, T., Guagnano, G. A., & Kalof, L. (1999). A value-belief-norm theory of support for social movements: The case of environmentalism. Human Ecology Review, 6, 81–97. Stern, P. C., Dietz, T., & Guagnano, G. A. (1998). A brief inventory of values. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 58(6), 984–1001. Stern, P. C., Dietz, T., & Kalof, L. (1993). Value orientations, gender, and environmental concern. Environment and Behavior, 25, 322–348. Stern, P. C., Dietz, T., Kalof, L., & Guagnano, G. A. (1995). Values, beliefs, and pro-environmental action: Attitude formation toward emergent attitude objects. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 25, 1611–1636. Thøgersen, J., & Ölander, F. (2002). Human values and the emergence of a sustainable consumption pattern: A panel study. Journal of Economic Psychology, 23, 605–630. Thøgersen, J., & Őlander, F. (2003). Spillover of environment-friendly consumer behavior. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 23, 225–236. Van der Werff, E., Steg, L., & Keizer, K. (2012). The value of environmental identity: The relationship between biospheric values, environmental self-identity, and environmental preferences, intentions and behaviour. Manuscript under review. Van Vugt, M., Meertens, R. M., & Van Lange, P. A. M. (1995). Car versus public transportation? The role of social value orientations in a real-life social dilemma. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 25, 258–278. Van Lange, P. A. M., Van Vugt, M., Meertens, R. M., & De Ruiter, R. A. C. (1998). A social dilemma analysis of commuting preferences: The role of social values and trust. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 28(9), 796–820. Verplanken, B., & Holland, R. W. (2002). Motivated decision making: Effects of activation and self-centrality of values on choices and behaviour. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 434–447. Weigel, R. H., & Weigel, J. (1978). Environmental concern: The development of a measure. Environment and Behavior, 10, 3–15. Linda Steg Linda Steg Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences University of Groningen Groningen, The Netherlands
Judith I. M. de Groot Judith I. M. De Groot School of Design, Engineering & Computing Bournemouth University Dorset, UK
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions
Oxford Handbooks Online Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions Geoffrey J. Syme and Blair E. Nancarrow The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology, Forensic Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0006
Abstract and Keywords Water management is principally used here to review current knowledge in relation to social justice in the allocation of natural resources and environmental management. The sphere of human needs provided by water is described, and a water benefits approach to measuring the overall well-being from water allocation decisions is introduced. The basic concepts of social justice—procedural, interactive and distributive justice, equity, fairness, and lay environmental ethics—are outlined, along with their limitations when applied in different cultures. The premise of scale and justice judgments is posed with the example presented in watershed development in Andhra Pradesh, India. The requirement for research into ways that justice can be incorporated within the dynamic systems approaches that are becoming prevalent in ecosystems management is proposed, with the example of a fisheries-based management cycle provided to demonstrate how this can occur. The importance of incorporating and integrating time, spatial, and social dimensions into framing justice research is demonstrated. Suggestions for future research are made throughout. Keywords: allocation, fairness, equity, ethics, dynamic systems, scale, time, space, benefits
Introduction The concepts of justice, fairness, and equity and all their synonyms are of preeminent importance for environmental management and environmental psychologists. From their survey of the Lexis-Nexis database of major newspapers, Clayton and Opotow (2003) noted that for justice issues, the term “environmental” was mentioned more than “industrial” or “legal” references. It is unfortunate, therefore, that justice issues have not played a more central role in environmental and conservation psychology, and that the psychological study of justice has not had more impact on environmental decision-making (Nancarrow & Syme, 2001). Justice in environmental management is largely to do with the allocation or sharing of the benefits from natural resources, and the disbenefits associated with access to limited resources or exposure to polluted resources. While there is a large contribution that can be made by psychology in encouraging conserving behaviors at household or individual levels (Bamberg & Moser, 2007) and understanding the determinants of support for environmentally protective policies (Nilsson, von Borgstede, & Biel, 2004), it is evident that even with these innovations, the potential for conflict around access to natural resources is likely to rise significantly in the 21st century. Land, fossil fuels, and water will all be subjected to increased competition between users and uses. Specific allocations for environmental purposes will also need to be made if we are not to lose the crucial biodiversity upon which human survival depends. These environmental allocations will need to be made in the face of short-term economic interests. Therefore, the rights of the environment will need to be defined and then delivered (p. 94) amid widespread public debate. All these issues will demand much greater attention by
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions conservation and environmental psychologists than is currently the case. The concern is that much of the psychologically based literature in justice relates to human services and financial and organizational issues.
Water and Justice In this discussion, water is primarily the focus as an exemplar of the justice issues associated with environmental decision-making and natural resources management. Water and the necessity of access for human life is a vivid illustration that everyone can connect with. Water is a renewable resource with multifaceted uses. It has dimensions of quality and quantity. The benefits from water are wide-ranging both for ecosystems and for humans. Hoekstra, Saveneji, & Chapagain (2001) have pointed out that the same volume of water as it travels through the environment can provide multiple outcomes ranging from the maintenance of biodiversity to the provision of water for irrigation and urban supply, and multiple other benefits. Syme, Porter, Goeft, and Kington (2008) have shown these benefits as a “Sphere of Needs” as depicted in Figure 6.1. Because of the wide range of benefits that can be derived from water, from health to spirituality, some economists have stated that it cannot be seen as a normal “economic” good (Batten, 2007) and allocated in a purely utilitarian fashion. Infact, Ajzen, Rosenthal, and Brown (2000), among others, have shown that fairness perceptions are an important determinant of willingness to pay for environmental goods and, as such, intention to pay cannot automatically be interpreted as a purely utilitarian variable that relates only to the market as nonutilitarian motives are intertwined. Therefore, water allocation policies require a social means for evaluating the justice outcomes from them. It is the justice of how these benefits are shared between differing parties that underlies many cultures and their constituent institutions. For example, community-based water management in Spain has been a central part of the culture for centuries and reflects the view that water sharing underlies community stability and integrity.
Click to view larger Figure 6.1 Sphere of Needs (SON) met by water. Reprinted from Syme et al., 2008, with permission from the copyright holders, IWA Publishing.
When justice is not seen to be done, the potential for conflict regionally and between nations is exacerbated (Brooks & Trottier, 2010). Access to water in many cases reflects the relative power of nations. If there is ongoing injustice, conflicts can emerge. Uitto and Wolf (2002) in their introduction to a special issue on this topic, while acknowledging the association between water and conflict, pointed out that the nuances of the negotiations in the settlement of some of these disputes are intriguing. Often what begin as water conflicts end up with communitybased solutions that last. In other cases, despite their importance, power differentials leave water matters off the bargaining table but concessions (p. 95) are made in other economically important areas. In either peace or conflict, therefore, water allocation issues have much relevance to the development of social justice theory and practice. Applying justice concepts to water is difficult, but the lessons learned will apply to all natural resources. One of the important contributions that can be made by psychology is to move the argumentation away from allocating volumes of water, which is the common frame of reference, toward allocating benefits from water. These benefits can incorporate all of the rings of the Sphere of Needs, including environmental and economic components. We contend that the most important outcome of water resources management for people is the subjective overall benefit that they derive from it (Syme & Nancarrow, 2008). That is, it is the human aspirations associated with the social benefits, perceived environmental goals, and required economic outcomes that are the
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions key elements of sustainable water resources management. We contend that while some of these benefits can be measured in dollar terms, some cannot (Ackerman & Heinzerling, 2004). Many of these noneconomic dimensions, such as culture or spirituality, are firmly in the social category. While Western nations have measured the national welfare from water and other natural resources, Bhutan prefers to view its national welfare in terms of happiness (Zurick, 2006). This is a rich concept and is compatible with that of measuring benefits. The important advantage of using the benefits concept is that once benefits have been established, water quality and quantity criteria for attaining them can then be defined and delivered. For example, water quality underpins almost all of the benefits associated with the Sphere of Needs. Water quantity underpins recreational amenity benefits, and so on. Nevertheless, for most nations, both economic and social benefits are important and both need to be included in any evaluative analysis with environmental benefits in the same metric if our water management is to be understood. How basic psychological measurement can be successfully used to achieve this is described for the case of Lake Mulwala in southern Australia (Syme & Nancarrow, 2008; McIntyre et al., 2006), where there was considerable conflict between water agencies and the local community over the development of a water management plan. This benefits approach must be underpinned by social justice theory. The need for such theory to help create robust decision-making is becoming ever more evident in the light of the uncertainties created by climate change that has already markedly altered the pattern of precipitation in many regions of the world, thus creating ever more difficult water allocation challenges. Further, one of the most concerning aspects of climate change in many areas is the uncertainty of future rainfall and its effects on the productive capacity of different regions. If water sharing arrangements demand to be changed, justice issues will be paramount in the ability of communities to cope and adapt to potentially altered resource availability. While many of these issues are shared with other natural resources, water is a preeminent connector of individuals, communities, and regions. How water is managed in one situation always has multiplier effects on others. For this reason water and its management have often formed the basis of enduring institutional and political structures (Guillet, 2006) and often ongoing tensions between and within nations. Justice in relation to water management needs to be understood and negotiated between groups of humans and between humans and the environment. Justice problems can occur at all scales. Micro-issues include managing water “fairly” between groups upstream and downstream in a small watershed. Meso-level issues include water sharing between regions or basins. Macro-issues include those associated with international competition for water. But the issue of scale when considering justice is not simply the geographic area associated with the water resource; it has temporal, political, institutional, sociological, and psychological dimensions that are not necessarily commensurate. The psychological dimension, whether at individual, group, or community level, underpins each of these dimensions of justice. Finally, the benefits concept has two levels of consideration: those benefits from water that emanate directly from outcomes at a local or national level, and those associated with the “trading” of virtual water1 between nations. Can the sharing of water benefits between water-rich and water-poor countries at a local level be simultaneously considered from a moral or justice perspective with the idea of virtual water? That is, can justice be achieved by providing virtual water to alleviate imbalances between rich and poor countries? Water management has often been labeled a “wicked” problem (Head, 2008), in that a “solution” to one problem is often a precursor to the advent of another problem, and each should be solved within an adaptive justice framework. This framework needs to incorporate environments and (p. 96) ecosystems as well as people if sustainable management is to be reached and then maintained. Because justice is at its root a subjective judgment, psychology needs to be a basic component in the development of how we can better share water for the overall public interest. Following is a brief review of the basic concepts of the social psychology of justice as they apply to water-resource and environmental management.
Understanding and Evaluating Justice Outcomes This section primarily focuses on the empirical social psychological literature that attempts to understand and
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions apply knowledge to the ways in which justice actually expresses itself in human decision-making and behavior associated with environmental management and resource allocation. The key concepts of social psychological theory and the understanding of lay ethics can provide a basis for sharing natural resources among humans, and between humans and the environment. However, while these concepts have been very useful, they have often been found to be rather simplistic by the community in real-world environmental allocation problems. There has been a long history of theories of justice as they relate to natural resource allocation from virtue theory to various forms of utility theory and the procedural justice theories of people such as Rawls (1971). This theoretical development continues today (e.g., Sen, 2010). The ongoing interaction between this literature and psychology is fragmented. The difficulty for psychologists is that often, philosophical principles concerning the assessment of allocation are conditional statements that do not lend themselves readily to traditional psychometric measurement. Nevertheless, in studies of lay philosophical approaches, the elicitation of such principles using the language of those affected by the allocation issues can provide effective evaluation of alternative sharing options at community levels, and also at a more global level.
Equity The social psychological literature began with research based on three primary concepts: equity, procedural justice, and distributive justice. Equity seems to have the largest literature and generally follows the formulation of Rasinski (1987) as having two components: “proportionality” and “equality.” Thus in environmental terms, proportionality can be reflected, for example, in the effort and investment made by irrigators to utilize their land and allocated water resources. Simply put, those who have invested in an extensive irrigation system and have a record of high agricultural production because of carefully planned husbandry deserve more water in times of shortage than those who have simply flooded their crops and “hoped for the best.” Alternatively, equality suggests that each entity (both human and environmental) should have equal opportunity to access an adequate amount of water for basic purposes. These components are used in both individual and community decision-making with different emphases for differing problems. The equality component of equity is often referred to as a “social allocation” in water resources management. The exact amount of water that should be allocated to everyone is often determined on a needs basis. Generally, for example, it is interpreted in terms of the amount of clean water that will be needed to allow basic human requirements for health and food preparation, and these basic needs are sometimes referred to as aspirational rights in international documents (e.g., Oda and Toyoma, 2002). In agricultural terms, the same social allocation concept could be related to an adequate supply of food in some cultures, or basic income in others. The definition of environmental needs is more difficult, and consequently, environmental rights are equally problematic. For example, how much land or water should be maintained as “pristine” or conserved is the basis of enduring public arguments about environmental needs and rights. These deliberations are even more difficult when the environment has already been highly modified through urban development, agriculture, or mining. The proportionality component is reflected in the maintenance of relatively high water use due to the investment, effort, and productivity involved (Syme, Nancarrow, & McCreddin, 1999). It may be noted that a third concept of accountability is significant in the interpretation of when and how proportionality is used in people’s equity decision making (Johansson-Stenman & Konow, 2010). Accountability refers to the joint concepts of proportionality and responsibility. Responsibility simply refers to the degree of control a person has over the outcome. Thus, if the person or group can control a positive outcome from water use by extra measures to protect the environment and/or productivity, they are considered to be accountable, and therefore the effort is proportionally rewarded. On the other hand, if the improved water management is outside their control through environmental or economic (p. 97) constraints, the principle of equality seems to be invoked.
Procedural Justice The concept of procedural justice gained prominence with the publication of Lind and Tyler’s (1988) volume, The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice. It has most commonly been applied to issues relating to nonenvironmental problems, but it has a great relevance to natural resource issues, where it has been relatively neglected. Procedural justice research concentrates on the characteristics of a decision-making process that
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions make it seem just to people who are vulnerable to the consequences. Procedural justice identifies and measures generalizable dimensions of interaction between the decision makers and stakeholders such as “voice” (or evidence that people had the chance to have a say and were listened to), and in the case of wider public input to environmental decision-making, the “representativeness” of those involved in the process. There are also a number of other dimensions. A review of procedural justice concepts and how they may relate to natural resource decisions is provided by Lawrence, Daniels, and Stankey (1997). The importance of procedurally just decisionmaking in enhancing the role of science in climate adaptation is described by Paavola (2008), who indicated the need for community influence on setting the priorities for scientific research to assist in just allocation of costs, benefits, and risks of climate adaptation strategies. The major hypothesis of procedural justice is that if it is demonstrated in a decision-making process, then the outcome is more likely to be accepted by those affected. To some extent, this hypothesis has been supported by environmentally relevant research, but the relationship may not be a simple one. Oberholzer-Gee, Bohnet, and Frey (1997) found a strong association between procedurally just processes (incorporating respect, impartiality, adequate information, consent, and fairness) and acceptance of siting of nuclear facilities in Sweden. Lauber and Knuth (1999) found in regard to public participation in moose management that the presence of voice, equal opportunity for people to participate, and the adequate representation of interested parties did not have a relationship with acceptance of the moose management policy, as hypothesized by procedural justice theory. Nevertheless, the procedural justice issues that did correlate with overall support for the decision outcome were the receptivity of the management agency, evidence that the public involvement program did influence decision makers, the perceived degree of knowledge of the managing agency, and feelings of improved relationships between the community, stakeholder groups, and the agency. Syme and Nancarrow (2002) evaluated procedural justice characteristics of a large-scale wastewater public involvement program. They measured participants’ perceptions of the ease with which they could participate, the sufficiency of the information given to them, the degree of opportunity they felt they had to contribute to the process, the adequacy of the variety of opinions expressed, the perceived responsiveness of the water authority conducting the program, the likelihood that the water authority would make the best decision (measured during the process), and whether the best decision was made after the process had been completed. While the relationship between the acceptance of outcome of the program and perceptions of procedural justice were somewhat equivocal, there was a measurable relationship between positive perceptions of procedural justice from the program and commitment to participating with the water authority in the future. Given that trust in environmental agencies has been shown to relate to acceptance of outcomes (Edelenbos & Klijn, 2007) and that trust is built up by a sense of community with the agency, this relationship between procedural justice and commitment is important. As has been observed by several authors, environmental management decisions don’t result in a rational one-off solution as originally proposed by the scientific community. They are made on an ongoing basis around what is the best current estimate of a solution and consist of values and emotions as well as logic (Cortner & Shannon, 1993). Thus adaptive learning and reframing of problems are integral to environmental decision-making and must incorporate community input and preference. To achieve this, agencies need commitment from the community and trust in their processes (Harstone, Failing, & Gregory, 2007). Some authors separate procedural justice issues into two components: “procedural justice,” which describes the structure and organization of the decision-making process, and “interactional justice,” which pertains to the way in which the person has been treated in terms of courtesy and respect (Bies, 2005). Thus the role of “improved relationships” through public involvement in encouraging acceptance of outcome in the Lauber and Knuth (1999) situation seems a good example of the significance of interactional justice. While there is some (p. 98) contention as to whether an interactional justice categorization is justified, it would seem that it is worthy of investigation in the environmental justice context. This is possibly because it is the interactive justice issues that are most likely to arouse the emotional as well as the cognitive dimension of decision-making (Epstein, 1994). This is important, as it has been demonstrated that in many instances it is the emotive rather than the cognitive part of assessment that leads to behavior. The emotive component is likely to occur during an individual’s interaction with decision makers on an interpersonal basis. If the interaction is “pleasant,” a commitment to continuing the interaction is likely. Alternatively, if the individual is ignored or treated in a way that is seen as disrespectful, negative emotion will arise and protest against “injustice” is more likely to occur. Judgments of procedural justice, on the other hand, are more
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions likely to be cognitive in nature, as the opportunities for involvement and influence can be seen in the timelines of planning documentation. While there has been relatively little formal research on the structure and significance of interactional justice in environmental decision-making, it would seem important in terms of justice and, more important, “injustice” perceptions (Miller, 2001). This is particularly the case in the context of perceived past injustices affecting future participation. There are many examples of an agency’s public involvement program being spurned by the community because of the past “rude” behavior of individual agency employees. Finally, procedural justice has a central role in considering the “rights” and the representation of the environment in public discussion and decision-making. The question is often posed as to who represents the environment’s interests (Bryson, 2008). There is obviously no one group “anointed” in this regard. Scientists have access to knowledge, which is an important component of achieving procedural justice and may assist in assessing environmental needs. For example, scientists can inform us about the thresholds of environmental change that will threaten ecosystem integrity. However, scientists have no particular mandate in regard to the values underpinning trade-off decisions that define what is ultimately assigned for environmental conservation. This means we need to be aware of the nature of the values we are trading off to ensure that we are aware of which values are represented in the final decision. Without such public awareness, the justice considerations are often tacit and are not necessarily representative of either the values of the community or the fundamental needs of the environment. The only way the justice of sharing resources between humans and the environment can be adequately interpreted is through processes that create overt public discussion by a wide range of interests. How this is accomplished requires an expanded research and evaluation effort into publicly accountable and procedurally just decision-making.
Distributive Justice Distributive justice as a concept is related to the evaluation of whether an outcome is “just” in terms of the distribution of a resource between individuals. In this way, equity and distributive justice are closely related concepts, as the dimensions of equity seem to be significant in making distributive justice decisions. It is clear, however, that it is not just the two dimensions associated with equity that are used when environmental distribution evaluations are made by individuals. There are many other approaches that have been applied over the centuries in the development of our moral philosophies. These can vary from the simplest, that of virtue theory, which claims that rich people are rich because they are virtuous (therefore, rich people should be allocated more land and water than poor people), through models of sharing such as Kant’s moral imperative (e.g., people at the top of a watershed should ensure that they do not take water in a manner that will negatively affect people at the bottom), various models associated with rights (e.g., I believe the environment should have the same rights as people), to a variety of utilitarian philosophies associated with economic means for reallocating water (including rules for compensating losers) (Wenz, 1988). All have distributive justice outcomes and create clear expectations about who should get what. Syme and Nancarrow (1996) showed that many of these philosophies were held intuitively by the Australian public when expressing their opinion of environmental policy. Syme et al. (1999) and subsequent case studies found that these ethical positions, nominated by stakeholders in environmental decision-making, could be measured and used to assess the overall distributive justice and “fairness” of particular actions that would change access to the natural environment. Many of the philosophies of allocation present in the academic literature were voiced in simple language by water users. A sample of the attitudinal questions derived from these lay philosophies are provided in Syme et al. (1999). Distributive justice has been found to correlate positively with procedural justice in a number of (p. 99) studies, although, as stated earlier, there have been relatively few of these for environmental decision-making. But because of this relationship, one formulation of fairness theory was developed, the “fairness heuristic” (e.g., van den Bos, Lind, Vermunt, & Wilke, 1997a; Syme & Nancarrow, 1997), which combined the two as an ongoing interactive system.
Fairness According to Peterson (1994), “Once an impression of fairness has been produced it becomes extremely resistant to change … because it provides a cognitively available summary judgment in lieu of a more complicated analysis of policy each time they are asked.” Reliance on fairness heuristics is likely to occur in situations that are ongoing;
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions where there is unlikely to be a clear-cut end point; and when an individual’s knowledge is incomplete. Environmental allocation issues are typical of such situations. In addition, environmental issues are replete with examples of framing perceptions of fairness differently (e.g., Messick, 1993), according to whether one is considering the acceptability of decisions in general or disinterested terms, or specifically where the impact is likely to impact personally or locally. These have been termed “universal fairness” and “situational fairness,” respectively (Syme et al., 1999). Universal fairness judgments are those that examine the wider principles surrounding an environmental problem. Situational fairness judgments relate to specific examples of the problem. Alternative parallel concepts are macro-justice (group level) and micro-justice (individual level) (Clayton, 1994). An example of a macro-justice or universal fairness principle would be, “We should protect our ecosystems for the next generation.” A micro-justice or situational fairness principle would be, “I should be compensated if my water allocation is to be taken away for ecosystem benefit.” In many ways, these concepts can be seen to be associated with scale. That is, at the macrolevel, governments are expected to derive policies that apply the principles of justice and reflect the national interest within a culture, whereas micro-justice may place greater emphasis on one’s individual interests within that overall framework. Micro-justice (justice perceived at the individual level) or situational fairness (fairness related to specific aspects of a problem) has often been associated with a justice or fairness bias in that people tend to view fairness judgments from a self-interested perspective. For example, Lange, Loschel, Vogt, and Zeigler (2010) found that people in different geographic regions generally favor rules that impose lower costs on their regions and higher costs by implication on other regions. This is perhaps consistent with literature that suggests that people will rationalize their own contribution to water conservation, or any other environmental issue, as they see themselves as being naturally more responsible than other members of the community (Tyler & Blader, 2000). Self-interest, of course, may not be the only motivation, but it is evident that people construct fairness judgments on the basis of arguments from their own viewpoint to justify their own positions. For example, an argument may be promoted: “Compared with rich people, I use much less water and energy, so they should take responsibility for achieving a higher proportion of savings than me.” This argumentation is at the basis of much of the relative deprivation literature (Major, 1994; D’Ambrosio & Frick, 2007). Feelings of relative deprivation tend to occur when people identify others as being comparable in terms of their justification for using a resource. A good example has occurred in Perth, Western Australia, where vegetable growers use groundwater to grow produce. The government wished to meter them to ensure usage was not in excess of their allocation. The growers pointed out that householders in nearby suburbs also using groundwater bores and not being metered (or even given an allocation) were comparable users as a group. Therefore, relatively they were being treated unjustly. Since there is also a tendency to view others as less responsible than oneself or one’s own group, a fairness bias toward oneself and one’s own group is often observed, and arguments about fairness are constructed accordingly (Tyler & Blader, 2000; Clayton & Opotow, 2003). Presumably this bias is countered in public policy by the dispassionate macro-justice or universal fairness principles that are applied by decision makers in their disinterested role as public servants, or (hopefully) politicians’ judgments in relation to the overall public good. Bias should also be tempered through well-designed public involvement programs that ensure that these macro-justice or universal principles are met. Syme et al. (1999), for example, have collected universal fairness principles in regard to water allocation from a community and then matched specific (or situational) solutions to them. The universal principles did have some variability among the community, although there were many similarities, which may be expected in any culture. But by mapping the range of universal principles to the individual solutions, the inclusiveness of the (p. 100) components of the water allocation solutions could be demonstrated both to the decision makers and to the wider community. This acted to allow situational, or group bias but curbed its excessive implementation from a publicinterest viewpoint. Nevertheless, fairness bias needs to be recognized and its contribution to fairness judgments identified. It is not surprising from the discussion so far that Wilke (1991), in his review of resource allocation gaming experiments, identified three factors governing people’s allocation of resources. These are greed, efficiency, and fairness. Therefore, the contribution of justice or fairness to overall decision-making needs to be interpreted in association with the self-interest motive and the perception of the efficient use of resources (see also Eek & Bies, 2003).
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions Self-interest has been commonly studied as the source of motivation in allocation games and has been demonstrated as a consistent and powerful motivator of sharing behavior. Sometimes, however, the significance of the variable has been overemphasized at individual, social, and cultural levels (Miller, 1999). Concentration by policy makers on the self-interest motive in environmental decision-making has created a unidimensional view of human character and the devaluing of pro-social motivation in human and environmental affairs (Montada, 1998). This has, at its extreme, led to national policies that undervalue human concerns for long-term sustainability and the need for public policy to meet those concerns. The inclusion of wider lay ethics in the design and encouragement of public discussion needs to be facilitated by government to give a more balanced approach to allocation decisions from the “fairness” perspective. Finally, the concept of efficiency has an economic legacy where it is intended to indicate maximizing overall wealth from the resources available. But there is a broader way in which to consider efficiency and that is in a moral or ethical way (Syme et al., 1999). There is a universal ethical principle that states that natural resources should not be wasted when there are alternatives to use less. This is combined with the accountability component of equity when considering support for policies of resource allocation between people, and between people and the environment. Examples of this have been shown in Australia by farmers who advocated taking significant amounts of water away from irrigators in their community who had not invested in modern water-efficient irrigation technology when they could afford to. The same approach has been taken where farmers have criticized the return of water to the environment when specific ecological outcomes cannot be demonstrated for the amount of water being allocated. That is, scientists are not behaving accountably through their failure to use their knowledge to achieve efficient environmental outcomes. Often because of the difficulty of producing the knowledge to provide specific answers to the environmental outcomes, intractable arguments have occurred between conservationists and irrigators worldwide.
Scale and the Dimensions of Justice Decisions While each of the above concepts provides us with the intellectual foundations for dealing with water allocation issues, they need to be applied at differing environmental, social, and economic scales on an ongoing basis. The issue of scale is an important one when considering justice issues within water and other natural resource policy. Generally there is a tendency for psychologists to measure justice concepts at a microlevel of experiments or surveys that are based on individual responses in a prescribed setting. These are then aggregated by group, and through comparison and contrast, allocation issues are understood. Logically it may seem that this results in microjustice issues being measured rather than macro-justice concepts in areas where there is conflict, except when the individuals have no personal stake in the outcomes. The literature has suggested that people tend to use macro-justice judgments except when there is substantial conflict. Even then, those supporting environmental rights in their argumentation tend to operate at more of a macrolevel, while opponents to environmental allocations tend to prefer individual rights in their argumentation (Clayton, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000). However, in using the concept of fairness to derive solutions to a contentious groundwater reallocation problem, Syme et al. (1999) found that both macro- (universal) and micro-judgments (situational) of fairness could be collected from the same individual. Micro-solutions could be mapped onto macro-judgments to demonstrate the overall consequences of a series of specific solutions for sharing the pain of less water. This mapping formed the basis for discussion and negotiation in community forums. For example, a universal principle of fairness identified by the community was that those who invested in water resource efficiency should be treated on a proportionality basis and rewarded for their investment. The specific situational fairness (p. 101) principle was derived by the community as those who had not invested in four key water-saving technologies should lose 10% of their allocation. Similarly another universal-fairness principle was that water reallocation in the valley should protect the smaller “family” farms (an equality principle). In this case it was decided that a viability base be set for smaller farms to ensure that they did not reach a threshold whereby they would be forced out of business by water cutbacks. Both situational solutions were feasible given the water resource. While this literature represents distinct progress within the traditional social psychological framework, it has challenges when attempting to incorporate social justice concepts into overall policies at regional, national, and international levels that will contribute to long-term sustainability. In this case, the requirement is for measures to be
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions integrated at conceptual and physical scales that make sense to physical scientists such as hydrologists, economic sense to economists, and institutional sense to policy makers. This is a vexed question, as hydrologists tend to work on hydrological basin or watershed levels, and economists frequently at a much wider regional or national level. Finally, policy makers may wish to use natural resource policies in general to deliver macro-social goals, such as increasing the role of women in decision-making, or ensuring the rights of future generations are protected.
The Example of Watershed Development An instructive example of the importance of directly addressing scale can be seen in the evaluation of the national Watershed Development (WSD) policy in India. Since the early 1980s, the Indian WSD programs in rain-fed dryland agriculture have been developed and implemented at micro-watershed scale (average size about 500 hectares), aiming to ensure the sustainability of the surface- and groundwater resources and to improve the livelihoods of farmers. This program has largely been motivated by rural poverty resulting in suicide, seasonal starvation, or migration away from villages to cities, thus creating undesirable social impacts. From Wani’s national WSD evaluation (Wani, Sreedevi, & Marimuthu, 2007), it has become apparent that the effects of water retention (e.g., surface water diversion, groundwater pumping) in micro-watersheds could negatively affect downstream access to water and have an impact on water-resource sustainability and farmer livelihoods. Because the program also has social goals, such as equal representation of males and females on watershed committees, there are social and institutional benefits that are not shared between those that have WSD and those that do not. Thus the issue of scale has become paramount for the effective evaluation of the WSD program both in India and elsewhere. It is clear that the complexities of hydrology, economy, and society become impossible to deliver coherently at a Basin level. The major question then becomes: If the microlevel delivery of the WSD is delivering “unjust” outcomes in terms of access to water and its consequent effects on the well-being of adjacent villages, at what level should it be administered to improve outcomes for the regional community? From a justice perspective, though, it is already evident that there is an urgent need for an understanding of culturally based macro-justice principles as well as the more micro-justice considerations, as both affect village acceptance of local watershed policy. For example, macro-justice principles that are not publicly discussed in Western communities may be influential in accepting the values inherent in micro-WSD. That is, elements of the watershed policy that may seem unjust (such as incentives for efficient water technology, which can result in reduced seasonal employment for landless people) might be accepted because macro-views of justice relate to the caste system whereby there is a collective view of justice based on interpersonal positioning (Miller, 1997). In this case, there is widespread acceptance that advantage to those with access to more resources (generally higher caste) is appropriate. This derives also from a macro-perspective of time and generations founded in the principle of karma. Karma is a cycle of rebirth that guarantees status mobility for the individual in the next life on the basis of his or her performance of duty in this life. It may also be noted that there are many forms of spirituality associated with human connection to the environment (Egri, 1997) and these are likely to be reflected in justice preferences at both the macro- and microlevels. An understanding of these connections would assist in widening our concepts of how justice considerations are applied at the smaller and larger environmental scales.
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions
Figure 6.2 Schematic diagram of the management cycle and sources of error or variation that can inhibit the successful execution of fisheries management.
Thus policy development for water resources in different cultures and beliefs needs to balance micro- and macrojustice judgments with appropriately scaled institutional structures. These institutions need to be capable of delivering just outcomes. In the case of WSD, just outcomes are to promote equality in terms of opportunity, and less division in social and economic outcomes for different groups (p. 102) within the community. This example also indicates that the social psychological justice literature needs to be aware of the wide range of philosophies that must be considered in addition to the foundation concepts upon which social justice research has so far been based.
Managing Systems Given that watershed development represents typical issues for the problems of environmental decision-making that require the integration of environmental, economic, and social considerations within any justice analysis, there is clearly a need for justice researchers to engage in multi- and trans-disciplinary research (Newell et al., 2005). In this approach to research, investigators frame the problems together, and through different methodological insights combine to achieve this integration. In this process, from the justice perspective, there can be many useful contributions from philosophers, sociologists, political economists, and those involved with institutional analysis. Many of these approaches will not necessarily use conventional social and environmental psychological methods. They will, perhaps, have more usage of national and regional statistics and dynamic systems modeling that are disaggregated, where appropriate, to more localized analyses. Aggregate social psychological data can be put into such models whereby environmental modeling can be combined in a management cycle. One example for fisheries is provided by Fulton, Smith, Smith, and van Putten (2010). It can be seen in Figure 6.2 that there are resource and human components. It is likely that justice research would fit neatly into the “unexpected behavior” and “decision uncertainty” segments. Van den Bos and Lind (2002) have suggested, for example, that fairness judgments are made as a part of managing uncertainty in decision-making. Undoubtedly, the vehement recent protests against a water allocation plan in a significant agricultural river basin in Australia were not expected and revolve, to a significant extent, around whether the environmental benefits promised by the plan will actually be delivered, and the unknown extent to which water will be taken away from farmers. Largely because of a perceived lack of procedural justice, a sense of fairness was not there to counteract these uncertainties. Carefully constructed justice research in conjunction with the hydrologists and economists working in the basin could have provided much improved procedural justice and probably a better distributive outcome for both irrigators and the environment. While this is a major issue for Australia, the same insights could be offered for many regions of the world. (p. 103) The need to understand how to manage such dynamic social systems within a global justice context is becoming ever more pressing with the demands of climate change (Vanderheiden, 2008). Perceptions of justice at
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions a psychological level among both decision makers and the community at large become highly significant. Not understanding issues, such as how we manage sharing of the effects of carbon emissions between rich and poor nations or how and why countries may be prepared to sign on to global agreements that may create justice problems within their own nations, has been at the core of national and international politics for some time. The lack of resolution of these justice or ethical issues may prevent the knowledge that has been gained by scientists and others being applied as the basis of decision-making. While it may be said by some that this is a political rather than a psychological issue, the fact remains that outcomes of justice negotiations depend on individual judgments of key individuals, and in many cases, the behavior of small groups. These are contexts in which psychologists can offer considerable insight (e.g., Abdel-Monem, Bingham, Marincic, & Tomkins, 2010). Perhaps the most fundamental issue is that, psychologically, individuals have great difficulty in understanding the nature of dynamic ecological systems (Green, 1997; White, 2008) and there is some contention as to whether such insights can be readily “taught.” This “systems thinking” research could have significance to the justice literature. If people find difficulty in understanding dynamic social systems, are they capable of making societywide macro-justice judgments? But there are three other areas of research that have great relevance and need to be systematically addressed if the questions in the environmental justice area are to be adequately framed by social justice researchers. These relate to concepts of environmental responsibility, social inclusion, and the psychology of time. Understanding these three concepts will be highly influential in determining whether humans, as a species, are capable of achieving environmental sustainability. All of these issues are components of identity, which has been shown to be a key determinant of the formulation of our justice considerations (Clayton & Opotow, 2003). We make judgments on the basis of our individual and collective identities, which are socially and environmentally embedded. And perhaps more tacitly, but still powerfully, we are defined by our location in the time dimension.
Space, Time, and Society Application of social justice research requires the systematic consideration of what occurs in the context of psychological distance in three key dimensions of space, time, and society. There are local problems with relatively few people and a short time frame when justice issues are considered. For example, should construction of a jetty be allowed in the upper reaches of a river but not in the estuary? There are also global problems with many nations to be considered over generations. Should virtual water be proactively used as a way to assist developing countries’ economies and assist in income equity between developed and developing nations? There is a need to understand how our perceptions along these three key dimensions affect our fairness judgments and how these perceptions could be incorporated in understanding justice issues.
Space and Justice Clayton and Opotow (2003) have emphasized the importance of self-identity in the formulation of justice judgments. One component of identity is one’s attachment to the environment in which one lives. Moral geographers have pointed out that the feeling of responsibility for other regions of the world has boundaries. Put simply, the farther away from one’s location, the less one is likely to be personally concerned morally about what happens there (Smith, 2000). In the case of psychology there are many indications that site attachment does occur for environments. Zajonc’s (1968) mere exposure theory suggests that positive affect tends to occur through ongoing exposure to stimuli. Thus this would tend to explain the loyalty that many feel toward their places of residence in some sort of hierarchical fashion. Loyalty may occur first to one’s city, then to one’s state or province, then to one’s nation, and then to a wider international context. This assertion obviously requires empirical verification. Nevertheless, some Australian data has shown that while the Western Australian community approved locally derived climate change policies, they were much more equivocal in their belief that the state should follow an international agenda in terms of obligations to address climate change (Syme & Nancarrow, 2009). Something like Opotow’s (1993, 1994) theory of moral exclusion could be hypothesized, which, in simple terms, would reinforce the moral geographer’s stances. Those outside the space of moral inclusion may be treated with less empathy and concern from a justice perspective. This is a challenge (p. 104) for those dealing with global
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions issues such as climate change. However, Fujita, Henderson, Eng, Trope, & Liberman (2006) use construal theory (Trope & Liberman, 2003) to address the issue of space. They suggest that increasing the reported spatial distance of people or events should have effects on mental representation of events. These effects are similar to those of increasing remoteness on other dimensions of psychology, such as temporal or social distance. As construal theory would suggest, Fujita et al. (2006) found that spatially distant events can be seen also as a dimension of psychological distance. That is, the farther away an event, the more abstract or generalized the language used to describe that event. It is tempting to think, therefore, that such language would be analogous to the universal or macro-justice principles described by both Syme et al. (1999) and Clayton (1996, 1998, 2000). These are general statements describing the overarching principles that should be reflected in decision-making from an overall public-interest perspective and may not represent exclusion. Spatially close events can be expressed in more detailed terms, and because of this more situational options can be described and expressed because of increased knowledge. It is here that situational justice or fairness judgments come into play simply because there is more local knowledge and less uncertainty in decision-making. In practical terms, this may be why people are more likely to engage in localized public involvement programs than regional ones (Forester, 1981; Guidotti & Abercrombie, 2008). There is more attachment and more feelings of responsibility as well as more knowledge and possibly more emotion. In justice terms, spatial distance may indicate the generality suggested by construal theory rather than moral exclusion. Simply put, universal fairness or macrojustice statements may be used for faraway places, while both universal and situational judgments are used by individuals for nearby locations. This hypothesis has yet to be systematically tested. It also does not necessarily mean that the universal fairness or macro-justice principles are any less significant than micro-justice or situational fairness principles, which may incorporate attendant emotions. It must also be taken into account that there is not necessarily a direct correlation between physical distance and perceived moral responsibility. Tversky (2003) has pointed out that that people’s representation of space differs from space as conceived by “physicists, geometers and cartographers.” Space is constructed according to one’s role, experience, and personal activities (see also Droseltis & Vignoles, 2010; Vanclay, Higgins, & Blackshaw, 2008). Therefore, it is important not only to establish the feelings of personal attachment to “close” geographical areas, but also to explore “more distanced” areas where people feel morally obliged to act or support, perhaps because of their icon value. In a study examining urban storm-water watershed management (Syme, Nancarrow, & Jorgensen, 2002), householders’ willingness to act to protect the quality of storm-water runoff into the nearby river was assessed. Respondents were asked which areas in the metropolitan area they had a feeling of responsibility for. To show this, they were invited to circle on a map the area that they felt personally responsible for. The map was not confined to their streets near the river, but also included adjacent urban areas. They were also invited to nominate other options, up to the entire metropolitan area. There was a large range of responses to this question. Some felt responsible for the whole of the metropolitan area, while others felt they were responsible for only their dwelling and the land area upon which it was situated. The results showed there were significant individual differences. From the viewpoint of this discussion, these feelings of responsibility lead to the prediction of individual proenvironmental intentions. It is admitted that these intentions do not necessarily correlate with justice judgments and this is a topic with little empirical research specifically in relation to justice and allocation decisions. Nevertheless, it would seem that the question of perceived responsibility needs to be addressed before questions about the justice of basic resource allocation issues are asked. That is, sharing or allocation preferences need to be understood in terms of a specific understanding of people’s levels of responsibility. It is likely that these levels of responsibility (or accountability) will affect both cognitive and emotive judgments about environmental management and allocation justice. Labeling fairness judgments as universal or situational may be ill informed if they do not correspond to the cognitive and moral representation of space of an individual. For example, opposition to restricting park irrigation in a particular suburb may be viewed as a situational judgment by a local that his or her favorite recreation area has been impaired. However, it could also reflect a universal judgment that all people are entitled to green space if the restrictions were limited to one part of the metropolitan area or to lower socioeconomic suburbs. (p. 105) Thus the often-quoted self-interest motivation for justice judgments needs to be interpreted within understanding the
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions geographical context in which people are actually engaging.
Time and Justice The Future The basic justice premise of sustainability is represented in the World Commission on Environment and Development report (1987) as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This indicates that time is a relevant dimension when considering justice, at least in an intergenerational sense. The equality principle between humans seems to be invoked in a temporal sense. Time as it relates to justice or equity is implicitly recognized within economics by the choice of discount rates, whereby the effects of an investment today are devalued exponentially into the future (see Zeckhauser & Viscusi, 2008). Eventually the investment is decreed to be almost worthless. Thus the discount rate tends to be an intuitive judgment about the value of investment now compared with what remains in the future. The normal practice of setting discount rates would seem to encourage a more short-term perspective than that required by the World Commission on Environment and Development, which should encourage value being maintained or even increased in the future. In intergenerational terms, it is apparent that actions taken now could have an expanding positive effect on the life of future generations, for example, by investing in appropriate technologies now. The difficulty is therefore in choosing a discount rate that reflects intergenerational equity or fairness. While this can be estimated by economic analysis, Dasgupta (2008) has pointed out that the appropriate discount rate should be chosen by both economic analyses and the elicitation of the community’s principles of distributive justice over time. Eliciting the appropriate precision of justice principles is not easy and there are a number of issues that need to be addressed. The resolution of these issues may not correlate with current economic practice. For example, the definition of what is just is hard to imagine for the next generation, let alone fifteen generations hence (see Page, 1988 for a discussion). It is also unlikely that we can be specific about which benefits are to be distributed. For example, while in a general sense there may be goodwill toward future generations, such as trying to protect water resources for the population as a whole, it is harder to imagine the specifics of future policies that may help to lower the gap between rich and poor. Finally, in the case of long time frames and intergenerational equity, the future may be discounted because of the uncertainty about what one is buying. As suggested by Trope and Liberman (2003), as temporal distance grows there are more generalized representations of issues that lead, as suggested above, to universal or macro-justice being the level at which justice issues are verbalized. This does not necessarily mean that strong policies for future generations are only vaguely supported or that these attitudes are ephemeral, it’s just that the means of delivering them may be hard to imagine in the medium- to long-term future. People may have strong views about intergenerational equity in terms of preserving water bodies for the benefits of future generations in metropolitan regions but be uncertain about what specific benefits will be derived from current preservation policies in the light of population increases and technological changes. There may also be uncertainty about how the benefits bestowed by current preservation will be realized. Syme et al. (2006) derived a cross-cultural model of perceptions of fairness and judgment in ecological risk policy in Germany and Australia. Endorsement of both intergenerational equity and environmental rights were determinants of justice perceptions. As may be expected, group and individual self-interests had nearly no effect on global issues, but situational principles, presumably including group interest, did have an effect on more localized issues. The trouble in applying the discount rate of time is that the studies tend to use money amounts, which doesn’t account for the possibility that different ethical judgments may be made if environmental or intergenerational choices are offered. Nevertheless, the temporal construal literature would suggest that longer term issues are mentally represented vaguely, with less detail than near events, which may result in more focus on what is closer in time and easy to understand in terms of the need to invest in action. This is often reflected in the tendency for humans to act on a day-to-day basis in a hyperbolic manner when they think about the future (e.g. Azfar, 1999; Settle & Shogren, 2004). That is, more emphasis is placed on immediate certain reward than on a possible greater
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions reward at some uncertain time in the future. It may be said that such discounting is equally likely to occur in policymaking settings as for individuals. Nevertheless, there is room for considerable research on the relationship between the (p. 106) nature of the discount problem presented to people and how it is framed in temporal terms. Chapman (2001) found in an experimental situation that varying the length of time being considered for the discount problem resulted in very long periods (up to 900 years) being discounted less than for shorter time periods. Attitudinal studies have also demonstrated that many may not want to apply a discount rate for the future (Dietz, Dan, & Shwom, 2007; Milfont & Gouveia, 2006). Studies have tended to support this in that future orientation has been shown to predict support for long-term climate change policies. Nevertheless, there is a need for more detailed justice research unpacking what is meant by intergenerational equity and how justice concerns are expressed, and at what level. This research needs to be undertaken at both community and policy-maker levels. Hyperbolic discounting, as Loewenstein (1996) has noted, is particularly the case in addiction where immediate visceral rewards are available. Loewenstein pointed out, among other things, that “we tend to be less altruistic to others than we would like to be when visceral factors intensify” (p. 275) and “people underestimate the impact of visceral factors on other people’s behaviours” (p. 276). Both of these statements are relevant to achieving longterm intergenerational and environmental justice. Clayton and Opotow (2003) have noted that there are many visceral components associated with justice and particularly lack of justice issues. These are likely to occur in the context of proximate allocation decisions and particularly when water resources are to be taken from an individual or group. Visceral responses can occur at two levels, firstly in terms of the threat to personal and group identity and secondly in terms of the emotion resulting from lack of courtesy associated with poor interactive justice. Prime examples of this occur when project proponents or government personnel conduct public meetings and interject when citizens are trying to give their views, or publicly discount the local knowledge. In these cases there will be, as Loewenstein (1996) suggested, a tendency to think more of one’s immediate needs than those of an undifferentiated future generation or an environment that might be altered anyway because of climate change. Interaction-based short-term visceral justice issues may limit tolerance between decision makers and the community as each underestimates the stress placed on others by unpleasant encounters. This process tends to heighten conflict and reinforces the dominance of short-term issues. In summary, there are many factors that might influence the discounting of the future in the heat of a short-term allocation issue, and this will have the tendency to provide unjust decisions for future generations. This psychological problem is exacerbated by the multiple time frames of human decision-making and ecological and biophysical cycles (Wood, 2008), which leads us back to the issues faced in fisheries by Fulton et al. (2010) as depicted in Figure 6.2. To alleviate this problem, we need to provide a balance and consistency that allows long-term justice principles to be activated within short-term decision-making cycles, as several authors have demonstrated that psychological engagement with the long-term future is considerably less than with the short term. To achieve this, perhaps justice researchers should be looking at the adaptive environmental management literature in which long-term environmental goals are set, but feedback loops from monitoring systems are engaged to alter short-term behaviors when outcomes are unexpected (Allen & Stankey, 2009). This, of course, is not simple to do in complex organizational systems that often occur for multi-objective planning (Edelenbos & Klijn, 2007). Nevertheless, it is possible, as in the Syme et al. (1999) study, to relate the justice criteria in specific solutions to more universal or macro-justice judgments. If such a technique were developed on a longitudinal basis and incorporated within the adaptive learning framework for environmental management, it could have a powerful effect on improving justice outcomes, particularly those associated with intergenerational equity and the rights of the environment to exist.
The Past As already noted, environmental allocation decisions do not occur on a one-off basis. For example, the solution to one water problem is likely to raise awareness of several others. For this reason, the past has an equally important role in justice considerations as the future. As van den Bos et al. (1997b) have noted, “What is fair depends more on what comes first than on what comes next”(p. 95). This is pertinent to both the individual and wider community decision-making spheres. This is perhaps why procedural and interactive justice evaluations of ongoing decision-
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions making are so vital. If the last interaction with a decision-making agency was perceived to be unjust or disrespectful, the level of (p. 107) perceived justice and trust is likely to be less generous. Certainly van den Bos et al. (1998) found that those who had no knowledge of an agency tended to be more attentive to procedural justice issues than those who had experienced procedurally just processes in the past. Presumably this was because trust had started to develop among the latter group. Long-term dysfunctional interactions between agencies and community interest groups have greatly marred debates of justice and injustice in many water issues in many countries. There is a need, therefore, for research that evaluates the impact of past interactions and perceived injustices to find ways of creating procedurally just decision-making processes that explicitly deal with past issues in the context of the new sharing problem. That is, the allocation issues are presented deliberately in past, present, and future contexts and the justice issues explored in that light. There has been very little research on this issue in the natural resources area. Conceptually, it would seem that past experiences in relation to justice are likely to affect future acceptance of allocative decisions. There are several issues that may be considered. For example, do people discount past injustices backward in time, and if so, what does it mean? Are there thresholds of injustice that will motivate justiceand fairness-related conflicts in the future? Is there a “forgiveness” that will pardon earlier injustices by taking the visceral component of injustice out of decision-making after a period of time? While there has been some research in the workplace on the effects of past perceived injustices (Lilly, Virick, & Hadani, 2010), these important questions do not seem to have captured the interests of psychologists researching and evaluating justice in the wider real-world decision-making context. The discussion of time and the potential significance of procedural justice have highlighted the dearth of longitudinal studies of justice in environmental issues. There are many long-running water disputes in the local, regional, and international contexts, so that the opportunity to develop justice theory and practice while assisting in attaining fair resolutions of these problems is high.
Society and Justice The most well-known of the theories in this area is Opotow’s (1993) scope of justice. Opotow saw the scope of justice as the psychological boundary for justice and fairness. This author found that moral or justice considerations were not typically applied to nonhuman entities but the boundaries varied among individuals: some people would include animals, and many excluded certain categories of people. Those outside the scope, including animals, are vulnerable to harm at worst or lack of consideration at best. Those factors that influenced inclusion included perceived similarity, closeness of the relationship, the extent to which the “target” was seen as beneficial or harmful, and whether the person’s or group’s goals or needs were compatible with the “target.” Failure to be within the scope also had widespread ramifications, such as lower support for social policies to help the target group, denial of legal assistance, and apathy toward mistreatment (see Hafer & Olson, 2003, for review). Opotow’s scope of justice (1993, 1994, 1995) provided a very useful framework for those involved in environmental justice, as it reminded environmental managers that there were social distances that needed to be considered, as well as the geographical distances. Hafer and Olson (2003) suggested that there should be more attention to understanding the mediators of these scopes of justice responses. They also suggested that an alternative explanation is in deservingness, which is a justice consideration itself—that is, whether the target person or environment deserved positive or negative outcomes. As discussed earlier, this in turn may be mediated in part by accountability. As with Tversky’s (2003) comments on space, this dimension is likely to vary from individual to individual and also from problem to problem. As Skitka (2009) pointed out, the activation of people’s perceptions of justice depends on their material, social, and moral needs. What is within scope (or is deserving) may alter from macro- to microjustice issues. The activation suggested by Skitka is likely to occur in the micro-setting if the personal effects of water allocation will be felt. The systematic measurement of both scope of justice and deservingness over variations of space and time would be of interest theoretically if all dimensions were to be considered in environmental justice. A mapping of both would also be a good point from which to start when planning procedurally just public programs to ensure voice for all parties (including the environment). The importance of explicitly incorporating the environment in planning for procedural justice reasons is often seen in the development
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions of regional or “whole of river” plans that deal with the major allocation issues. In these cases often the hydrological scale is forgotten as well as the differential effects of water allocation on hydrologically discrete reaches of a river. By including spatially based hydrological (p. 108) variability and their environmental sustainability requirements, environmental justice interests can be more cogently addressed for regional planners and within their processes.
Social Discounting Rachlin and Jones (Jones & Rachlin, 2006; Rachlin & Jones, 2008) have approached the issue of social discounting in a slightly different way from others by providing monetary choices for forgoing personal benefit and sharing between imaginary people who were either very close or relatively far away in terms of their acquaintance. This research uses a methodology very similar to experimental economics approaches to establishing the discount rate over time. As with many time/reward trade-off findings, there appears to be a hyperbolic relationship between perceived social distance and willingness to share. Thus as you get further away from someone in terms of their psychological perceptions, you are more likely to be discounted in terms of sharing. For example, it can be reasonably hypothesized that people are less likely to “discount” the interests of family than would an anonymous bureaucrat from another city when it comes to willingly sharing resources. This relates to more utilitarian theories of altruism (e.g., Osinski, 2009; Rachlin & Jones, 2010). As with the scope of justice work, the mechanisms for this social discounting have yet to be explicated and the findings have yet to be related directly to the justice literature. Nevertheless, Skitka (2003) suggested through her accessible identity model that justice reasoning occurs when issues are close to one’s identity, whether social or individual. It is reasonable to hypothesize a relationship between social discounting and justice salience. Further, is there a relationship between this discounting and the scope of justice and justice perceptions? Do people include the environment as an entity in social discounting and if so, where and how? Jones & Rachlin (2006) in their experiment asked people to make choices about allocation on a hypothetical scale from 1 to 100, with 100 being those people furthest away, in order to demonstrate social discounting. There is no reason that this methodology could not be expanded to include the local and wider environment by modifying the instructions about closeness. For example, consider the people and things including the environment that are important to you and rate them on a degree of closeness from 1 to 100. If necessary, prompts could be given. The same experiments could then be conducted. If social distances can be assessed for real actors in water allocation debates, does social discounting occur in the same way as for imagined people of different closeness? It would also be challenging to include a time dimension (e.g., intergenerational) in the description of the actors, first to establish the social and temporal interaction distance, and second to see how these dimensions affect both macro- and micro-justice perceptions. In summary, justice judgments occur in spatial, temporal, and social contexts. To better integrate with environmental management systems within which these contexts occur, there is a need for us to take greater pains to understand how the well-established theories of justice can operate more dynamically within these systems.
Conclusions and Future Directions This chapter has used the vehicle of water allocation to demonstrate current understanding and future challenges for justice research in the environmental and conservation psychology areas. Throughout the chapter it is acknowledged that justice judgments have both rational and visceral components that will have different but important effects on specific justice judgments. The visceral feelings of injustice can often drive action. It is important to understand justice and ethical judgments at a universal as well as situational level and that as far as possible these should be integrated to attend to longer term issues such as environmental conservation and intergenerational equity. The chapter outlines why justice is so important for our adequate management of the environment and allocation of natural resources. Through the benefits framework it is clear that nations need to move well beyond utilitarian economic analyses and that water acts simultaneously to uphold our well-being in areas from health to spirituality. In this way, there is no reason to believe that water is any different from other aspects of environmental management and allocation. For example, much has been written about the value of green space to mental health and well-being of people (e.g., Burls, 2007; Heynen, Perkins, & Roy, 2006). The benefits approach can be
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions combined with the traditional justice concepts of procedural justice, distributive justice, equity, and fairness to provide a much better understanding for decision makers on how to arrive at sustainable solutions. The watershed development example demonstrates that justice research has to be closely entwined with the scales conventionally adopted by (p. 109) hydrologist and economists. Fulton’s management cycle provides clear indications of where social justice research can provide a significant impact on environmental decisionmaking. The role of the fairness concept, in particular, has the potential to make significant contributions in reducing uncertainty in public decision-making processes. It must be remembered, though, that justice judgments also have their own psychological contexts when they are applied to micro- and macro-environments, and these may need to be matched to regional, national, and international matters. A range of possible determinants of judgments of fairness and justice varying in dimension and scale have been identified in this section. It must be understood that justice judgments occur in a dynamic and interactive envelope of time, space, and society. These have yet to be considered as a system in the environmental social justice literature. For example, the social discounting literature does not include the environment as an entity and deals specifically with money. The time discounting literature is poorly related to the social discounting literature. Perrings and Hannon (2001) introduced the concept of spatial discounting, which they see as analogous to time discounting. Many of these gaps require attention if psychology is to make a holistic contribution to justice research in real-life decision-making. In this regard many research questions spring to mind. Do people who discount time hyperbolically or parabolically similarly discount people, and how is that related to issues of intergenerational equity? Are either forms of discounting related to the temporal construal effect? If the construal effect relates to environmental issues and the time, space, and society dimensions, how do we keep long-term justice issues relevant as we struggle with short-term environmental conflicts and sharing arguments? How can we integrate justice research into adaptive environmental management? The time discounting literature is also not dynamic when it comes to discounting. If people feel that relevant past environmental decisions have been unjust either procedurally or in terms of distribution, they may formulate their current justice priorities quite differently. Obviously no one study can include all these variables to compare and contrast the determinants of justice and their interactions cross-sectionally, and for enough variety of environmental allocation decisions. Longitudinal studies to understand the dynamics of such decisions would be even more difficult to perform. Nevertheless, studies that attempt to piece together at least some of the strands of psychological investigation in these areas are essential if we are to gain a more coherent understanding of how justice concerns can be included to a greater degree in environmental allocation decision-making. This is important, as governments, when faced with potentially painful reallocation decisions, have a tendency to look to market and economic efficiency mechanisms to provide a “hands-off” decision and thus avoid complex justice arguments. In Australia and elsewhere, the social dimension has been left as third priority. When decision makers in government or industry consider social issues in relation to policies or development projects, they tend to concentrate on social impact assessment. Often how social impacts are interpreted for final decisions is not explained. The justice dimension is coming in a poor fourth, partly because we lack the variety of messages and tools to offer the decision maker, and partly because we lack coherence in explaining justice issues. Perhaps one way to gain commitment and interest by decision makers is to use the water benefits framework to clarify what is being allocated in terms of well-being, what can be potentially achieved with revised management or allocations, and what are the key water management criteria to achieve maximum beneficial returns. This directly relates the natural resource to benefits and then a clear understanding of who wins and who loses in any particular allocation decision. The community’s pro-environmental allocation expectations can then automatically be considered as supporting the environment as a benefit. By understanding the basis upon which justice decisions are made and how they are expressed as benefits, major conflict over decisions that ignore the interests of the environment and its dependent communities can be avoided.
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions group discussions by race and ethnicity. Small Group Research, 41(6), 746–776. Ackerman, F., & Heinzerling, L. (2004). Priceless: On knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. New York: New Press. Ajzen, I., Rosenthal, L. H., & Brown, T. C. (2000). Effects of perceived fairness on willingness to pay. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 30, 2439–2450. (p. 110) Allen, C., & Stankey, G. H. (Eds.). (2009). Adaptive environmental management: A practitioner’s guide. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer; Collingwood, Victoria: CSIRO. Azfar, O. (1999). Rationalizing hyperbolic discounting. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 38, 245– 252. Bamberg, S., & Moser, G. (2007). Twenty years after Hines, Hungerford, and Tamera: A new meta-analysis of psycho-social determinants of pro-environmental behaviour. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 27, 14–25. Batten, D. F. (2007). Can economists value water’s multiple benefits? Water Policy, 9, 345–362. Bies, R. J. (2005). Are procedural justice and interactional justice conceptually distinct? In J. Greenberg and R. Cropanzo (Eds.), Handbook of organizational justice (pp. 89–118). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Brooks, D., & Trottier, J. (2010). Confronting water in an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Journal of Hydrology, 382, 103–114. Bryson, K. A. (2008). Negotiating environmental rights. Ethics, Place, and Environment, 11(3), 351–366. Burls, A. (2007). People and green spaces: Promoting public health and mental well-being through ecotherapy. Journal of Public Health, 6(3), 24–39. Chapman, G. D. (2001). Time preferences for the very long term. Acta Psychologica, 108, 95–116. Clayton, S. (1994). Appeals to justice in the environmental debate. Journal of Social Issues, 50(3), 13–27. Clayton, S. (1996). What is fair in the environmental debate? In L. Montada and M. J. Lerner (Eds.), Current social concerns about justice (pp. 191–211). New York: Plenum. Clayton, S. (1998). Preference for macrojustice versus microjustice in environmental decisions. Environment and Behavior, 30, 162–183. Clayton, S. (2000). Models of justice in the environmental debate. Journal of Social Issues, 56(3), 459–474. Clayton, S., & Opotow, S. (2003). Justice and identity: Changing perspectives on what is fair. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 7, 298–310. Cortner, H. J., & Shannon, M. A. (1993). Embedding public participation in its political context. Journal of Forestry, 91(7), 14–16. D’Ambrosio, C., & Frick, J. R. (2007). Income satisfaction and relative deprivation: An empirical ink. Social Indicators Research, 81, 497–519. Dasgupta, P. (2008). Discounting climate change. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 37(4), 141–169. Dietz, T., Dan, A., & Shwom, R. (2007). Support for climate change policy: Social psychological and social structural differences. Rural Sociology, 72(2) 185–214. Droseltis, O., & Vignoles, V. L. (2010). Towards an integrative model of place identification: Dimensionality and predictors of intra-personal-level place preferences. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30, 23–34. Edelenbos, J., & Klijn, E-H. (2007). Trust in complex decision-making systems: A theoretical and empirical exploration. Administration and Society, 39, 25–50.
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions Eek, D., & Bies, A. (2003). The interplay between greed, efficiency, and fairness in public-goods dilemmas. Social Justice Research, 16(3), 195–215. Egri, C. P. (1997). Spiritual connections with natural environment. Organization and Environment, 10, 407–431. Epstein, S. (1994). The integration of the cognitive and psychodynamic unconscious. American Psychologist, 49, 709–724. Forester, J. (1981). Questioning and organizing attention: Towards a theory of planning and administrative practice. Administration and Society, 13, 161–205. Fujita, K., Henderson, M. D., Eng, J., Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2006). Spatial and mental construal of social events. Psychological Science, 17, 278–282. Fulton, E. A., Smith., A. D. M., Smith, D. C., & van Putten, E. (2010). Human behaviour: The key source of uncertainty in fisheries management. Fish and Fisheries, 11, 1–16. Green, D. W. (1997). Explaining and envisaging an ecological phenomenon. British Journal of Psychology, 88, 199–217. Guidotti, T. L., & Abercrombie, S. (2008). Aurum: A case study in the politics of NIMBY. Waste Management and Research, 26, 582–588. Guillet, D. (2006). Rethinking irrigations efficiency: Chain irrigation in northwestern Spain. Human Ecology, 34(3), 305–329. Hafer, C. L., & Olson, J. M. (2003). An analysis of empirical research on the scope of justice. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 7, 311–323. Harstone, M., Failing, L., & Gregory, R. (2007). Integrating science and local knowledge in environmental risk management. Ecological Economics, 64, 47–60. Head, B. W. (2008). Wicked problems in public policy. Public Policy, 3(2), 1001–1008. Heynen, N., Perkins, H. A., & Roy, P. (2006). The political ecology of uneven urban green space: The impact of political economy on race and ethnicity in producing environmental inequality in Milwaukee. Urban Affairs Review, 42(1), 3-.25. Hoekstra, A. Y., Saveneji, H. H. G., & Chapagain, A. K. (2001). An integrated approach towards assessing the value of water: A case study of the Zambezi basin. Integrated Assessment, 2, 199–208. Johansson-Stenman, O., & Konow, J. (2010). Fair air: Distributive justice and environmental economics. Environmental and Resource Economics, 46, 147–168. Jones, B., & Rachlin, H. (2006). Social discounting. Psychological Science, 17, 283–286. Lange, A., Loschel, A., Vogt, C., & Zeigler, A. (2010). On the self-serving use of equity in international climate negotiations. European Economic Review, 54, 359–375. Lauber, T. B., & Knuth, B. A. (1999). Measuring fairness in citizen participation: A case study of moose management. Society and Natural Resources, 11, 19–37. Lawrence, R. L., Daniels, S. E., & Stankey, G. H. (1997). Procedural justice and public involvement in natural resources decision making. Society and Natural Resources, 10, 577–589. Lilly, J. D., Virick, M., & Hadani, M. (2010). The dynamic nature of justice: Influential effects of time and work outcomes on long-term perceptions of justice. Social Justice Research, 23, 37–59. Lind, E. A., & Tyler, T. (1988). The social psychology of procedural justice. New York: Plenum. Loewenstein, G. (1996). Out of control: Visceral influences on behavior. Organizational Behaviour and Human
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions Decision Processes, 65, 272–292. Major, B. (1994). From social inequity to personal entitlement: The role of social comparisons, legitimacy appraisals, and group membership. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 26, 293–355. McIntyre, W., Tucker, D., Green, M., Syme, G., Bates, L., Porter, N., & Nancarrow, B. (2006). Water benefits accounting and assessment: Lake Mulwala case study. Perth, Australia: CSIRO (p. 111) Water for a Healthy Country National Research Flagship, Land and Water. Messick, D. M. (1993). Equality as a decision heuristic. In B. A. Mellers and J. Baron (Eds.), Psychological perspectives on justice theory and applications (pp. 11–31). New York: Academic Press. Milfont, T. L., & Gouveia, V. V. (2006). Time perspective and values: An exploratory study of their relations to environmental attitudes. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 26, 72–82. Miller, D. (1999) The norm of self-interest. American Psychologist, 54, 1053–1060. Miller, D. T. (2001). Disrespect and the experience of injustice. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 527–553. Miller, J. G. (1997). Culture and the self: Uncovering the cultural value of psychological theory. In J. G. Snodgrass and R. L. Thompson (Eds.), The self across psychology (pp. 217–231). New York: New York Academy of Sciences. Montada, L. (1998). Justice: Just a rational choice? Social Justice Research, 12, 81–101. Nancarrow, B. E., & Syme, G. J. (2001). Challenges in implementing justice research in the allocation of natural resources. Social Justice Research, 14(4), 441–452. Newell, B., Crumley, C. L., Haasan, N., Lambin, E. F., Pahl-Wostl, C., Underdal, A., & Wasson, R. (2005). A conceptual template for integrative human-environment research. Global Environmental Change, 15, 299–307. Nilsson, A., von Borgstede, C., & Biel, A. (2004). Willingness to accept climate change strategies: The effect of values and norms. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 24, 267–277. Oberholzer-Gee, F., Bohnet, I., & Frey, B. (1997). Fairness and competence in democratic decisions. Public Choice, 91(1), 89–105. Oda, H., & Toyama, M. (2002). The third world water forum: To translate vision into actions and commitments. Hydrological Processes, 16, 2067–2077. Opotow, S. (1993). Animals and the scope of justice. Journal of Social Issues, 49(1), 71–85. Opotow, S. (1994). Predicting protection: Scope of justice and the natural world. Journal of Social Issues, 50(3), 49– 63. Opotow, S. (1995). Drawing the line: Social categorization, moral exclusions, and the scope of justice. In B. B. Bunker & J. Z. Rubin (Eds.), Conflict cooperation & justice (pp. 347–369). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Osinski, J. (2009). Kin altruism, reciprocal altruism, and social discounting. Personality and Individual Differences, 47, 374–378. Paavola, J. (2008). Science and social justice in the governance of adaptation to climate change. Environmental Politics, 17(4), 644–659. Page, T. (1988). The discount rate and intergenerational equity. In G. Kirsch, P. Nijkamp, & K. Zimmerman (Eds.), The formulation of time preferences in a multi-disciplinary perspective (pp. 151–165). Aldershot, UK: Avebury. Perrings, C., & Hannon, B. (2001). An introduction to spatial discounting. Journal of Regional Sciences, 41, 22–38. Peterson, R. S. (1994). The role of values in predicting fairness judgments and the support of affirmative action. Journal of Social Issues, 50, 95–115.
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Justice and the Allocation of Natural Resources: Current Concepts and Future Directions Rachlin, H., & Jones, B. (2008). Social discounting and delay discounting. Behavioral Decision Making, 21, 29–43. Rachlin, H., & Jones, B. A. (2010). The extended self. In G. J. Madden & W. K. Bickel (Eds.), Impulsivity: The behavioral and neurological science of discounting (pp. 411–432). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Books. Rasinski, K. A. (1987). What’s fair is fair—Or is it? Values differences underlying public views about social justice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 201–211. Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sen, A. (2010). The idea of justice. London: Allen Lane. Settle, C., & Shogren, J. F. (2004). Hyperbolic discounting and time inconsistency in a native-exotic species conflict. Resource and Energy Economics, 26, 255–274. Skitka, L. (2003). Of different minds: An accessible identity model of justice reasoning. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 7, 286–296. Skitka, L. (2009). Exploring the “lost and found” of justice theory and research. Social Justice Research, 22, 98– 116. Smith, D. M. (2000). Moral geographies: Ethics in a world of difference. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press. Syme, G. J., & Nancarrow, B. E. (1996). Planning attitudes, lay philosophies, and water allocation: A preliminary analysis and research agenda. Water Resources Research, 32(6), 1843–1850. Syme, G. J., & Nancarrow, B. E. (1997). The determinants of the perception of fairness in the allocation of water to multiple uses. Water Resources Research, 32(11), 2143–2152. Syme, G. J., & Nancarrow, B. E. (2002). Evaluation of public involvement programs: Measuring justice and process criteria. Water, 29(4), 18–24. Syme, G. J., & Nancarrow, B. E. (2008). Justice and the allocation of benefits from water. Social Alternatives, 27(3), 21–25. Syme, G. J., & Nancarrow, B. E. (2009). Report to the Western Australian Office of Climate Change: Climate change in WA. Longitudinal study of community attitudes and preferences for mitigation and adaptation policies: The baseline measure. Joondalup, Western Australia: Edith Cowan University. Syme, G. J., Kals, E., Nancarrow, B. E., & Montada, L. (2006). Ecological risks and community perceptions of fairness and justice: A cross cultural model. Human and Ecological Risk Assessment: An International Journal, 12, 102–119. Syme, G. J., Nancarrow, B. E., & Jorgensen, B. S. (2002.) The limits of environmental responsibility: A stormwater case study. Environment and Behavior, 34, 836–847. Syme, G. J., Nancarrow, B. E., & McCreddin, J. A. (1999). Defining components of fairness in the allocation of water to environmental and human uses. Journal of Environmental Management, 57, 51–70. Syme, G. J., Porter, N. B., Goeft, U., & Kington, E. A. (2008). Integrating social wellbeing into assessments of water policy: Meeting the challenge for decision makers. Urban Policy, 1(4), 323–343. Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2003). Temporal Construal. Psychological Review, 110, 403–421. Tversky, B. (2003). Structures of mental spaces: How people think about space. Environment and Behavior, 35, 66–80. Tyler, T., & Blader, S. L. (2000). Cooperation in groups: The group engagement model: Procedural justice, social identity, and behavioral engagement. Philadelphia: Psychology Press.
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Notes: (1.) Virtual water is the water used by the exporting country in producing food and manufactured goods. Geoffrey J. Syme Geoffrey J. Syme Centre for Planning Edith Cowan University Perth, Australia
Blair E. Nancarrow Blair E. Nancarrow The Fenner School of Environment and Society The Australian National University Ellery Crescent, Acton, Australia
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Children and Nature
Oxford Handbooks Online Children and Nature Olin Eugene Myers Jr. The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology, Developmental Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0007
Abstract and Keywords This chapter summarizes current knowledge about children’s relationships to nature. While nature has always been part of childhood, concern about whether it will retain its traditional roles has risen apace with reduced exposure to it in the West. The chapter first examines Western cultural associations between children and nature, then presents contemporary psychological theories and methods used in this field. Key themes from research include that children are losing access to nature and inhabiting it less; that play in nature is varied and shows developmental patterns; that nature provides both powerful positive and negative emotional experiences; and that children are cognitively equipped to understand the living world. Technological simulations of nature may not provide all that real nature provides. This may include a wide range of physical and psychological benefits that are increasingly recognized. Keywords: children, nature, use of environments, ecological knowledge, psychological benefits
Introduction The study of children’s relationships to nature entails considerations particular to the early part of the human life span intersecting with the features of the natural environment. Both childhood and nature show marked variability (across cultures, individuals, and natural settings) as well as potential commonalities. Given this complexity, together with the comparatively limited attention given this relationship within psychology, our knowledge is expectably modest. Nonetheless, the subject has garnered sustained attention by researchers and the public, and interest in it is enjoying a renaissance. What is “nature”? Although humans themselves are of nature, here we consider nature to be the nonhuman environment—encompassing (potentially) all biomes, landscapes, the waters, atmosphere, and heavens surrounding the earth, as well as all the orders of its nonhuman living occupants. Increasingly there is a fuzzy line between what is human-modified and what is not, at all levels of nature as we experience it. In this chapter we accept in principle this full gamut of modification: the child-nature relation includes everything from wild landscapes and animals to restored areas, manicured zoos, domestic and companion animals, and tended plants. For any given person, these settings vary in closeness and accessibility; degree of familiarity versus novelty; control by human versus nonhuman forces; and scale. The common denominator is the presence of some degree of natural process, but which natural process, how this occurs, is framed, and experienced, seems to fall roughly along a domestic-managed-wild continuum. Nature also includes symbolic and technological mediation and simulation of natural entities and settings. Although such a broad scope is impossible to fully treat, it allows realism as well as comparisons that may inform us about what the dimensions of “natural” phenomena singularly afford children. In general the scope of (p. 114) this entry reflects the predominant literatures that focus on typical natural or naturalized spaces that children inhabit.
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Children and Nature “Children” is likewise a challenging term to define. Here it means roughly from early childhood (about age 4) through adolescence (up to age 18), with an emphasis around the middle years (6 or 7 to early-adolescence years). Childhood may be radically different across cultures. Yet biologically based commonalities are also suggested, such as aspects of how children classify and think about living things, quickly learned fears of snakes and spiders, and possibly which features of landscapes are attractive, relieve stress, or help restore directed attention. Person and social context interact pervasively in development, but their nuances in the case of our topic (as with others) are incompletely mapped empirically and are parsed differently depending on theoretical assumptions. Nonetheless, the full range is in principle on the table. Many aspects of children and nature are not treated here. Child development intersects with all basic areas of psychology. Some important intersections that are only mentioned here include sensation and perception; children’s spatial cognition; “vicarious” nature in traditional media; and psychopathology related to nature (e.g., animal phobias). For a review of risks to children caused by pollution and conditions of the built environment, see Evans (2006). The pathways to caring, concern, and action for nature, including the contributions of experience in nature to these, are discussed in this volume by Louise Chawla and Victoria Derr. This chapter will summarize the history of child-nature associations, the study of children and nature and psychological lenses for that task, children’s time and activities in natural settings, their affective and cognitive experiences of it and simulations of it, as well as the benefits nature may provide. More broadly, the chapter touches on but does not definitively answer some driving and deep questions that are pressed on psychology by human modification of nature that has become so pervasive as to threaten human values, and by technologies that structure more of children’s time and interactions. What does nature uniquely contribute psychologically to childhood? What would be—or is being—missed without it? And what forms of social mediation are important in children’s experience of nature?
Children and Nature in History and Culture Interest in nature is no doubt perennial across the human story (see below on evolutionary perspectives), as evidenced by the documented immersion of hunter-gatherers in nature and by the practice of pet-keeping among many groups—for example, among Warao and Comanche (Serpell, 1988). Children and nature have been explicitly associated, however, since the origins of Western thought. In one association, “the child” figures as a “natural” counterpoint to the fully rational “civilized man” in Greek, Christian, and early modern speculative anthropologies. Romantic-age thinkers inverted this association. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) posited a natural inner essence in the child, whose development was encouraged by direct sensory contact with nature. English Romantic poets such as Wordsworth (1770–1850) conceptualized child development as a movement away from an original integration of self and world, followed by a progressive reconciliation and recovery of memories of unity with nature (see Chawla, 1994). Educators such as Pestalozzi (1746–1827) implemented Romantic ideas of child-nature relation, including having students investigate local natural features. Pestalozzi’s student Friedrich Froebel (1782– 1852, also the inventor of kindergarten) added a spiritual element, which was reconciled via evolutionary thought as the creative and unifying force behind both nature and man. Froebel (1826/1912) wrote that in middle childhood the child should early view and recognize the objects of nature in their true relations and original connections; he should learn by his longer walks to know his own neighborhood from beginning to end; he should roam the adjoining country; he should accompany his brook or little river along its course from it source to its mouth… [So that] by direct view of nature itself, not by explanation in words and ideas for which the boy has no intuition, there shall dawn upon him early… the great thought of the inner, continual, vivid connection of all things and phenomena in nature. (pp. 234–235, cited in Hutchison, 1998, p. 86) But Froebel felt this outcome was not assured: adult guidance was essential, too. The idea of nature playing an integral role in child development is expressed in the holistic theories of educators Maria Montessori (1870–1952) and Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), whose philosophies still underlie schooling practices they initiated (see Hutchison, 1998). American Romantic philosophers, the transcendentalists, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) and Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), formed (p. 115) similar ideas. Like that of their counterparts across the Atlantic, their
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Children and Nature orientation to children and nature was part of a broader rejection of emerging industrial society: materialism, objective science and its products, and commercial or bureaucratic institutions. These, they felt, threatened authentic individual experiences that could reveal higher truths. Nature, however, could provide such experiences. Thoreau’s school, the Concord Academy, rejected narrow pedagogies and embraced a broader moral vision. He provided direct experience, including time outside using the senses and immersion in the landscape to learn natural history and related subjects. By the turn of the 20th century, Romantic thought funded a deep and often spiritual interest in “Nature Study” in the United States (see Armitage, 2009). Nature study was seen to appeal to the heart, to lead a natural progression toward observational learning and scientific concepts. But its particulars were also controversial. Some advocated a strong mythical dimension, others strictly the scientific. Others felt the science side needed to be bounded by ethical duty toward nature. The tensions reflected social ill-ease about scientific resource management and conservation, and wide-scale demographic upheavals. Nonetheless, nature study was vastly popular, and not only throughout the schooling system. Millions pursued amateur interests in nature (botany, entomology, etc.) as pleasurable (Armitage, 2009, p. 26). New literatures helped unfold the powerful spiritual potentials of nature experience, and the writings of John Muir (1838–1914) and other preservationists extolled the healthy effects of time in nature for the masses (or in practice for the middle and upper classes). Evolutionary notions played an especially strong role in tying the child to nature in turn-of-the-century thought, particularly psychological thought. G. Stanley Hall (1844–1924) adapted the widespread notion of recapitulation— that child development retraces the development of the species. In his view the period of childhood before adolescence (itself a new period he denoted and conceptualized as the movement from animal existence to selfconsciousness) should take place in nature, just as change in primitive societies took place there, too. Combining Romantic and evolutionist thought into America’s earliest homegrown popular developmental theory, he prescribed exploration of “field, forest, hill, shore, the water, flowers, animals, the true homes of childhood in this wild, undomesticated state from which modern conditions have kidnapped and transported him” (Hall, 1904/1969, quoted in Armitage, 2009, p. 75). Although social evolutionist and recapitulationist ideas were later discredited, the popularity of nature study itself continued. As one indicator, Anna Botsford Comstock’s (1854–1930) voluminous how-to guide, Handbook of Nature Study, was published in 1911 and translated into eight languages. Its 24th edition went through reprintings up to 1957, and it has been back in print continuously since 1986. In 2005 journalist Richard Louv published Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, highlighting recent decreases in the amount and quality of American children’s time outdoors, the causes, and the possible consequences (admittedly perhaps overstated by the title). Coming on the heels of 50 years of increasingly widespread environmental concern, the book hit a nerve with adults old enough to have experienced nature on somewhat less restricted terms. But it was not couched in terms appealing only to environmentalists. Without doubt it generated the widest public interest in children and nature since the nature study movement. In response many groups have initiated (or recast) programs to get children outside, and in addition to existing academic centers at several universities and the journal Children, Youth, and Environments, the Children and Nature Network (www.childrenandnature.org) has emerged as a central “movement” clearinghouse. As the movement a century earlier may have been partly a response to the shift from farms to cities as contexts of childhood, the new movement blames a shift to childhood spent in structured, indoor, and electronic contexts. The older mind-set was inspired by vaguer, more suggestive Romantic ideas, whereas the recent one frames concerns in more psychological or “common sense” terms. Both denote fairly widespread anxieties and potentials. The history of the child-nature association highlights how it reflects the material, social, and ideological constructions within which childhood takes place. In both periods above, psychological study of children, not isolated from broader social trends, has both generated and responded to child-nature concerns. The history is therefore important for the double caveat it raises. On the one hand, while being responsive to society’s needs, psychology must approach this area of study with its rigorous and skeptical scientific lens. But on the other hand, given that childhood is indeed a response to social-cultural conditions, expanded potentials of human experience in nature cannot be dismissed due to historical associations such as those reviewed above, (p. 116) or because they do not fit predominant theoretical-methodological frameworks or modal social experience (Evernden, 1993; Chawla, 2002). As Chawla (2002) pointed out, theory needs to make space for the possibly divergent forms of consciousness and experience that children as distinct from adults may have in nature. The psychological study of
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Children and Nature children and nature partakes of the complex and multifaceted nature of knowing in the social sciences.
Psychological Methods and Theoretical Traditions of Study Children’s relations with nature have been studied using a wide range of psychological theories and techniques. Early environmental psychologists used observational methods to study children’s “naturalistic” (i.e., typically occurring) environmental behavior patterns, emphasizing the ecological validity of these methods so that results can be generalized to more lifelike contexts than in lab studies. Pioneers in child-nature studies Hart (1979) and Moore (1986) described children’s use of familiar natural spaces, and added participant-observation methods, roaming with children and asking them to map, show, and converse about the areas with which they were familiar. This tradition has revealed patterns in how children perceive and use natural (and built) spaces across development and in contrast to adults, and gave rise to a moving interview method called the “neighborhood walk.” Such work includes child-participatory methods to empower children in the study, design, evaluation, and/or amelioration of conditions in their environments (Hart, 1997). An associated theoretical perspective is that of ecological psychology (Gibson, 1982; Reed, 1996), which holds that environments contain “affordances,” or features that enable or encourage certain activities (see Heft, this volume). More formal behavior tracking methods using a variety of time, place, or individual sampling schemes and technologies including video, pedometers, and accelerometers have been widely employed in more recent years to examine how children use features of a variety of environments, and physical characteristics of their activities. These methods are prominent in environmental design approaches that combine such objective data with interviews or other more qualitative measures, with the purpose of including nature more optimally into built spaces, such as in the notion of biophilic design (Moore & Cooper Marcus, 2008). Observational methods can yield “hard” behavioral data, or data that are so well interwoven with contextual description that their validity can be cross-checked. But many psychological questions require access to the subjective experiences, feelings, or thoughts of subjects. One approach is retrospective: asking adults or older children to reflectively reconstruct their experience and its meanings (or the researcher doing so secondhand via biographical accounts or other documents). Dependent on memory, this has obvious fallibilities, but the broad strokes of memory may nonetheless be reliable (Chawla, 1998). Further, meaning in human life inherently may not be knowable until subsequent experiences put earlier events in context. A body of literature relating to the “significant life experiences” of committed environmentalists has developed based on these methods (see Chawla & Derr, this volume), suggesting unstructured time in nature plays a unique role. Such findings have been triangulated across countries, and attempts have been made to determine developmental changes across time in individual children, by longitudinal study designs. Cognitive developmental psychology inquires into the changing content and processes of children’s thinking. Piaget’s early inquiries touched on children’s conceptions of natural objects and processes, and he used openended questioning and interactions to explore their thoughts. The basic method here is cross-sectional, where developmental patterns are inferred by sampling individuals of different ages. Piaget’s successors in structuraldevelopmental theory or more broadly cognitive perspectives use structured or semi-structured interviews, often with a target object, to probe children’s conceptions of plants, animals, ecosystems, technological simulations, and of human interactions with these. These methods have been used to some extent cross-culturally, including some of Kahn’s (1999) research into children’s moral reasoning about nature, or Atran and Medin (2008) and colleagues’ research on concepts of living things. These two particular research corpuses illustrate the use of developmental methods to formulate and test various positions on the (ill-phrased) “nature versus nurture” question. Particularly, how much (and in what ways) is the child’s mind “prepared” to conceptualize natural phenomena (or our obligations regarding them) in certain ways, and how do socialization and/or individual mental processing explain their ideas? Other lines of inquiry are more concerned with exploring constructs of affective or motivational relations to nature (not that these are separate from cognition, or from nature-nurture questions). (p. 117) Qualitative tools include drawing/interview protocols, giving children cameras and asking for their interpretation of photos of “nature,” and interviews. Some researchers have described the nature relations of specific small contextualized groups of children, an example of the “ethnography of childhood.” Other studies use stimuli such as videos or pictures and/or tests or psychometric instruments tapping constructs such as ecological knowledge or relatedness to
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Children and Nature nature. As with other topics, these may be explored in descriptive, experimental, or quasi-experimental ways. Clearly reports of children by others (parents, teachers) or the use of existing data sets (for example, on park use) may be of use.
Extent of Children’s Activity in Outdoors and Nature A primary basis for concerns raised by Louv (2008) is that children are spending less time in natural settings than in previous generations. Unfortunately, few data were collected in past decades for comparison. But several studies have supported this conclusion. Studies of parents’ and/or children’s reported exposure to nature show less time outdoors. Clements (2004) surveyed 830 mothers online in the United States, 87% of whom were ages 25 to 44, about their childhood outdoor play as compared with their children’s. Seventy percent reported they played outdoors every day as children but that only 31% of their 3- to 12-year-old children did so. When the mothers were outside, 56% reported being out three hours at a time or longer, whereas only 22% of their children did so. Analogous changes were found in an English study: 40% of a sample of 1,150 adults reported playing in natural areas when young, whereas only 10% of 502 seven- to eleven-year-old children did so (England Marketing, 2009). Interestingly, Clements found (as had other researchers in England) that there was little difference between rural and urban portions of the sample (balanced to allow this comparison), suggesting that farmlands and other rural features do not counterbalance other factors. The mothers in Clements’s (2004) study identified TV and computer use (85%) as the main reason for their children’s play patterns, 82% cited crime or safety concerns, and 77% felt they lacked enough time to spend outside with their children. Children’s time has been measured directly by diaries of children’s time use. Hofferth and Sandberg (2001) used researcher-administered time diaries and found declines in time spent outside from 1981 to 1997 in a representative US sample. In 2003 Hofferth resampled participants focusing on children ages 6 to 12 (a total of 2,791 diaries). She found a further decline from 16% in 1997 to 10% in 2003 in numbers taking part in outdoor activities, reflecting a broader decrease in children’s discretionary time, including sports (Hofferth, 2009). The decline in time outdoors was greater among the older ages (from 16% to 8%). Hofferth also estimated average weekly time budgets and found an overall decrease from 36 minutes to 25 minutes. Younger children had increased slightly, while ages 9 to 12 decreased most, from 39 minutes to 18 outdoors. Across all ages the change was not distributed evenly by gender, with boys showing a significantly greater decrease (boys: 30 minutes to 15; girls: 41 minutes to 34) (Hofferth, 2009). In the years since Louv’s book, surveys have been launched to track outdoor use, though their baseline is very recent. Findings vary. The National Kids Survey found that between 2007–2008 and 2008–2009, modest amounts of time were spent outdoors (two hours a day for 60% to 70% of samples). Younger children (age six to teens) spent more time outside, and there was a slight decrease in children spending no time outdoors (Cordell, Betz, & Green, 2009). The Outdoor Foundation (2011) has conducted online interviews on large systematic US samples since 2006, and while overall outdoor use has held steady at about 49% of the population undertaking one of 35 activities, youth participation (ages 6 to 17 years) has dropped from about 78%, though at about 62% in 2010 it is still higher than the population overall. This represents an overestimate of “nature,” however, as it includes activities such as running and bicycling. Another strategy has been to compile existing data on visits to specific outdoor destinations. In general, the same pattern emerges. After 50 years of growth in US per capita use of public parklands (state parks, national parks and forests), a decline began in 1987 (Pergams & Zaradic, 2008). The researchers showed that just five variables were able to explain 97.5% of the most recent 16-year trends in national park attendance: hours spent at home watching movies, playing video games, or using the Internet; time spent in movie theaters; and oil prices (Zaradic & Pergams, 2007). They dubbed the trend “videophilia,” or “the new human tendency to focus on sedentary activities involving electronic media” (p. 130). As Clements (2004) also found, new media are keeping people inside at home. Other studies directly demonstrate this extends to children. In a survey of 1,000 parents of children (p. 118) ages six months to six years, 83% of children used some screen media each day. Fifty percent of children ages four to six played video games, averaging a little over an hour a day (Rideout, Vandewater, & Wartella, 2003). With older children and more recent data reflecting yet more pervasive computer, social networking, and handheld technologies, it seems very likely this trend is strengthening (see technologically mediated nature, below).
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Children and Nature Whether children spend time in nature depends partly on access to nature. Open-space losses may have exacerbated declining access, as have land use patterns. Moore and Cooper Marcus (2008) suggested clustered housing, cul-de-sacs and greenways, alleys, and home zones as neighborhood layout strategies that increase children’s access. Socioeconomic inequalities also affect access. Lower SES (socioeconomic status) 8- to 12-yearold children had to travel twice as far or more as mid- or high-SES children to get to their most used park (on the other hand, their allowed independent travel distance was greater) (Veitch, Salmon, & Ball, 2008). Perception of economic and racial unequal access to nature has been acute in the United Kingdom, where one study found that neighborhoods with over 40% black or ethnic minority residents have 11 times less green space than areas with nearly all white residents, in part reflecting correlation of demography and urban density (CABE, 2010).
Children’s Activities in Nature
Click to view larger Figure 7.1 Sources of developing place attachments in early and middle childhood and adolescence (Chawla, 1992, reproduced with permission of Springer Science and Business Media).
Children’s use of space shows a pattern of increase over development as children gain mobility and independence from their home base. This pattern extends to nature, as childhood ethnographies have shown. Hart (1979) in the United States and Moore (1986) in the United Kingdom developed rapport with existing mixed-age groups of middlechildhood subjects and learned directly from them that they preferred interstitial spaces, vacant land, neglected, and semi-wild spaces over more manicured ones. Their landscapes were imbued with meanings that derived from the children’s own activities and interactions with both nature and other people. They felt strong identification and special meanings with certain spaces and found or made hideouts in vegetation or other locations. Similar patterns, including the spatial increase of “home range” over development, are documented in children’s maps of their “neighborhood” (Sobel, 1993). Chawla (1992) synthesized factors affecting this tendency, as shown in Figure 7.1: motivations pulling one outward or toward home base, social factors, and identity development. Interestingly, adolescents show a drop in (p. 119) interest in nature, at least nature experiences that are not undertaken by their preferred environment: peers (Kaplan & Kaplan, 2002). Studies have shown that children prefer natural areas for play (Maxey, 1999; Chawla, 2002; Korpela, 2002). Play is a universal way children learn about their environment and gain skills in a nonthreatening context. Play is a varied concept, but children’s play in nature has been categorized by Frost (1992) as functional play (running, tumbling, climbing, sliding, etc.), constructive play (building huts, playing with “loose parts,” etc.), and symbolic play (roleplay, dramatic play). Alternately, several dimensions have been delineated: stationary or exploratory; socially facilitated; distance from home; interspersed with chores or other activities; and type (fantasy, creative, gaming, or searching and trapping) (Vadala, Bixler, & James, 2007). In agreement with affordance theory, environmental variables have been shown to affect the quality and type of children’s play. As compared with playgrounds without vegetation and trees, children engage in more physical, constructive, and symbolic play when plants are present (Fjørtoft, 2004). On more naturalized (higher biodiversity) play spaces as compared with more simple playgrounds, children tend to engage in more varied, functional, constructive, and symbolic play and are more oriented to nature (Samborski, 2010). Children in very different cultures and climates create or find their own private spaces, for example, constructing shelters in nature, a desire that peaks between ages 8 and 11. Boys tend to range farther and build actual dwellings, and girls tend more to make playhouses and small worlds. Both genders enjoy searching and gathering or making collections of objects found in nature (Sobel, 1993, 2008). Children observed in naturalistic free-ranging contexts (such as by Hart or Moore) tended to take risks and
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Children and Nature perhaps had more accidents than is typical now. But they balanced risk-taking with self-generated precautions about hazards they perceived. Natural settings afford more active physical play than indoor ones do, and children naturally challenge themselves to become competent at a wide range of locomotor skills through play. Sensory abilities develop in tandem with physical movement, as do feelings of competence and confidence. These gains, however, presume risk-taking opportunities, through which the child learns his or her limitations and gains a sense of accomplishment (Henniger, 1994). The benefits of risk-taking extend to traits of relevance to all areas of life: resilience, persistence, problem-solving, and independence. Increasingly restrictive regulation of children’s play, including nature play, may threaten these broad benefits as well as the development of risk evaluation skills (Little & Wyver, 2008). Environmental features that increase children’s outdoor play and parental perceptions of safety include cul-de-sac streets, larger front yards, lower crime, and more interaction among neighbors (Handy, Cao, & Mokhtarian, 2008). On a wider scale, however, cul-de-sac development limits children’s safe range of movement and decreases walking to school because walking routes are indirect and funnel into higher volume streets, whereas urban grids let children choose safer and more pleasant routes (Gallimore, Brown, & Werner, 2011). Other factors influencing parents to restrict what children may do outdoors include fear of children being injured or victimized, community covenants restricting play, and fear of liability lawsuits (Clements, 2004; Louv, 2008). Children’s activity in nature is only sometimes solitary. The natural environment interacts with social development, and children’s activity patterns reflect this interaction. In traditional “hardscaped” play settings, social groupings tend to be structured according to hierarchies based on physical competence, but Herrington & Studtmann (1998) found that more natural landscapes encouraged fantasy play and social hierarchies based on command of language, creativity, and imagination. Plantings that create differentiated spaces or “green rooms” offer important social play opportunities. Fjørtoft (2004) reported that a prickly juniper bush was highly favored because it offered several enclosed spaces as well as a view to the outside, accommodating a group of 12 children in games of pirates, house, cowboys, and so on.
Affective Experience of Nature Nature can evoke vivid emotions that leave lasting impressions on children. The positive emotional and creative potential of nature for children was influentially conveyed by Edith Cobb, an independent scholar who studied childhood memories in about 300 autobiographies of notable Europeans and North Americans (Cobb, 1959/1977). She believed that these autobiographies demonstrated that nature in part funded their authors’ creative power. Chawla (1990) put these ideas to a more methodologically rigorous test, examining a broader sample. She found that only authors who were involved in the arts or humanities (15 of the 38 in her sample) described vivid senses in nature as children, (p. 120) and she characterized these as “ecstatic” and “exciting all five senses and inspiring exuberance, calm or awe” (Chawla, 1992, p. 74). She also concluded these authors associated nature with a sense of inner strength more than creativity. Similar retrospective accounts of powerful, nearly mystical moments in nature were gathered by Hoffman (1992). On the other end of the emotional-evaluative dimension would be experiences of nature as threatening, uncomfortable, or repulsive (Bixler & Floyd, 1997). Phobias of certain dangerous animals, such as snakes and spiders, are learned readily and persist, in contrast to culturally identified dangerous objects, such as guns (Öhman, Dimberg, and Öst, 1985). Such reactions depend on the aspect of nature encountered, and with what assistance from more experienced others. In between the very positive and very negative must lie a vast range of degrees and qualities of emotion, however incompletely mapped for children. Aesthetic feelings and judgments play a role in children’s relation to nature. Billmann-Mahecha and Gebhard (2009) found reflections of several major theories linking nature and aesthetics in the qualitative responses of 57 children between 7 and 18 years of age. Children as young as 8 years, unprompted, express the emotion of beauty in response to nature. This emotional and core aesthetic sense may underlie their judgments about environmental ethical dilemmas, becoming explicit in adolescence. The linking of nature aesthetics to moralization was anticipated by Kant. Billmann-Mahecha and Gebhard (2009) also found that children experience nature as also lifeenriching and as providing unique and sensuously rich senses of “atmosphere.” Retracing broader ideas in aesthetics, they conclude overall that across development, nature acts as a “reservoir of symbols” for the self. Children’s drawings also provide a window to their sense of aesthetics. In a study asking children who were attending a zoo to pick a favorite animal and draw (with open prompts if necessary) all that the animal “needs,”
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Children and Nature some children spontaneously conceptualized their animal’s needs in terms that were categorized in classically aesthetic terms: completeness, harmony, and wholeness (Myers, Saunders, & Garrett, 2003). These children tended to be younger (out of a range of 4 to 14 years) and significantly more were girls. Dominant themes in other children’s drawings were physiological, ecological, and conservation needs, with a minority expressing psychosocial conceptions. A theme in the drawings of 7- to 16-year-old Swedish children depicting “what you think about when you hear the word ‘environment’” was beautiful, unspoiled, idyllic, clean landscapes such as forests, meadows, and mountains. The opposite, a polluted world, was depicted by some children evenly across ages (Alerby, 2000). Attention Restoration Theory (Hartig, Mang, & Evans, 1991; Kaplan, 1995), widely used to interpret adults’ responses to landscapes, appears to apply to children’s experiences also. A restorative environment allows one’s directed attention to rest by capturing involuntary attention and allowing the person to become absorbed. Many natural environments offer such features. Particularly, the dimensions of “fascination,” “being away” (physically and psychologically), “compatibility” (with the person’s intentions), and “extent” register distinctly with children (Bagot, 2004; Bagot, Kuo, & Allen, 2007). This theory may offer a key perspective on the psychological function of school recess, and may have important implications for the design of playground environments. Another theory with fundamental implications for emotional experience in nature is evolutionary psychology. It can be used to predict emotions related to safety (threatening humans or other species, natural hazards and topography, shelter), foraging and feeding, and finding a place to live (Heerwagen & Orians, 2002). Interestingly, early relevant (but not direct) studies did not support predictions about children’s responses to landscape features typical of savannahs, with teenagers giving lower preference scores to landscapes than did third graders. Also in more recent work, while children ages 8 to 15 reliably recognized degrees of prospect, refuge, and hazard in landscape paintings, and while preference was related to perceptions of prospect and refuge, age was not a factor in the relationship. Gender did matter, with boys (but not girls) preferring pictures of scenes they perceived to be more hazardous than others (Fischer & Shrout, 2006). Thus, prospect-refuge theory and related ideas may show unexpected developmental patterns, a matter of rather little investigation. Attachment theory suggests one more important route by which children’s emotions and identity may become entwined with nature (Chawla, 2007). Analogously to a parent who provides a secure base, a solid relation to a place allows freedom to explore with confidence. Korpela (2002) identified themes of privacy, control, and security in memories of childhood nature. On the other hand, an unstable environment may foreclose a (p. 121) secure place attachment or incorporation of place into one’s identity. Not only natural places but animals may also figure in children’s developing identities (Myers, 2007). Interestingly, across ages 4–5 to 17–18, children showed a decreasing tendency to identify with animals symbolically associated with food, weakness, or femininity (Myers, 2002). Bruni and Schultz (2009) piloted a children’s version of an Implicit Association Test (IAT) computer game to measure how strongly the self is associated with the natural versus the built environment and found that 96% of the 30 children (ages 10 to 12) showed a preference for natural associations with the self. Girls had significantly higher nature-association scores than boys, consistent with adult gender differences using this instrument. Although a number of variables showed no correlations, several relationships were found in the direction expected based on other work discussed here: nature-self implicit association correlated negatively with hours reported watching television or playing video games, and time spent indoors.
Concepts of and Knowledge About Nature The past two decades of research have established that children—and humans more generally—are cognitively prepared to attend to, categorize, and conceptualize the living natural world. Whether the mind is prepared “architecturally” or in a more specific representational sense, along with other questions, is debated (see Astuti, Solomon, & Carey, 2004; Atran & Medin, 2008). The ability to recognize and categorize living things is served by specific brain areas in adults (Kurbat, 1997; Mendez, Kremen, Tsai, & Shapira, 2010). Contrary to Piaget’s early ideas, children do not typically confuse living and nonliving. Specific features of “naive biology” (also common to many ethnobiologies) are concepts of biological inheritance, health/illness, growth, and death. The type of category children use for plants and animals is also particular. Specifically, they believe that superficial changes could not alter a plant’s or animal’s underlying essence, and this is used to make some predictions about relatedness (despite external differences) and internal anatomy (Coley, Solomon, & Shafto, 2002).
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Children and Nature It is also clear that beliefs about living nature are sensitive to both cultural construction and individual experience in nature—contrary to either strict nativist positions or ones that hold that children necessarily use human social behavior as the model for thinking about animals (Ross, Medin, Coley, & Atran, 2003). The latter position (e.g., Carey, 1985) may be an artifact of studying urban children with limited experience in nature: Native American (Menominee) and rural white children do not use a human model but think in more biological terms (Ross et al., 2003). Naive biological concepts change to scientific ones (for example, evolution replacing essentialism) only when specific experiences destabilize the early structures, often as a result of instruction. Research has not, however, suggested a similarly robust early developing set of ecological concepts. Compared to correct scientific concepts, children (and most adults) hold incomplete or incorrect ideas about food web relations, energy in ecosystems, carrying capacity, niche specificity, and population dynamics. Further, connections of ecological concepts to everyday experience are weak (Brody & Koch, 1989; Furuness, 1992; Munson, 1994). Limited, non-system-like models of ecological relations were retained even among 11-year-olds who completed a monthlong unit that involved constructing and manipulating mini-ecosystems (Hogan, 2000). Children tend to think in anthropomorphic or teleological terms about systems, rather than in interdependent terms (Leach, Driver, Scott, & Wood-Robinson, 1996a, 1996b). But ecology, integrating physical and biological basic sciences, sets a high bar. Palmer and Suggate (2004) reported that four-year-olds can understand the effects of environmental changes on habitats and living things, and that by age 10 children are able to explain some relationships among living things and their habitats, as well as some of the effects of change on the global environment. Instruction, parents and media are the clearest sources of simpler understandings (Palmer, Suggate, & Matthews, 1996). A more immediate form of knowledge is natural history, or more broadly local ecological knowledge (LEK)—varying widely by place and culture. Natural history builds on the capacity for biological knowledge, can be learned from direct experience, and coheres around organisms and phenomena that are directly available. Natural history is also conveyed in many cultural forms, including narrative and art as well as science. Most notably, children learn from their own observation of natural phenomena. The status of natural history knowledge, however, has been a subject of concern among scientists and others who recall the earlier era where nature study ensured a common base of knowledge. Nabhan and Trimble (1994) noted a distinct gap between generations of Tohono O’odham people (in southern Arizona) in knowledge of plant names. More (p. 122) recently, Wyndham (2009), investigating a similar setting, found Rarámuri (in Chihuahua Mexican) children had overall low knowledge of plant names (though most did know a common core of about 10) but higher knowledge of plant uses. Moreover, the distribution of knowledge within the community—with some individuals specializing and showing great proficiency in each cohort—suggests a possibly more stable structure of nature knowledge. Nonetheless, there are strong indications that in general firsthand knowledge of local nature is decreasing. A negative correlation between botanical knowledge and income was found within local communities in India, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom, but even more across the three countries, which vary dramatically in per capita GDP (Pilgrim, Cullen, Smith, & Pretty, 2007). Resource dependency and frequency of interaction with nature were dictated by community monetary wealth: “Where a community has become industrialized and largely independent of local environmental goods and services, knowledge of species names and functions on the whole is low, difference in knowledge level between old and young are large, and variance between experts and nonexperts is great” (p. 1007). High-school-age youth in the United Kingdom showed very low levels of ability to identify common wildflowers (Bebbington, 2005). Not surprisingly, as children’s exposure to nature is decreasing, their knowledge of it—whether firsthand or from education increasingly devoted to narrow academic targets—is as well. A telling finding is that British children’s ability to identify Pokémon characters increased more across ages 4 to 11 years than did their knowledge of common wildlife (Balmford, Clegg, Coulson, & Taylor, 2002). A constructivist perspective is essential in understanding the children’s relations to nature. Constructivism holds that the individual makes sense of his or her interactions with the world, creating conceptual schemas that organize ideas and experience. The structure of these schemas is suggested partly by innate predispositions, but is also influenced by the environment—both social and natural. The sociocultural environment offers ways to construe experience, but the individual’s position within it may determine what knowledge and perspectives are available. Experience with nature will of course vary with what activities the child undertakes in what locations. In any case, the individual processes incoming information firsthand, taking it initially at least, as the taken-forgranted condition of the world. As elaborated by Kahn (2002, 2011), this poses a dilemma peculiar to environmental change: “We all take the natural environment we encounter during childhood as the norm against
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Children and Nature which we measure environmental degradation later in our lives. With each ensuing generation, the amount of environmental degradation increases, but each generation in its youth takes that degraded condition as the nondegraded condition—as the normal experience” (Kahn, 2002, p. 106). Kahn calls this “environmental generational amnesia.” It is related to the “slipping baseline syndrome” noted by ecologists and as analytically distinguished from memory illusion, personal amnesia, and change blindness (Papworth, Rist, Coad, & MilnerGulland, 2009). Although some examples above are suggestive, the methodologies of most studies are as yet inadequate to distinguish these forms. Still, the notion is intuitively compelling. It also interacts with another major change in society, technology (Kahn, 2011).
Technologically Mediated Nature At the same time that screen technologies may be capturing children’s time, nature experience may be mediated by symbolic media and technology. Kellert’s (2002) category of “vicarious nature,” indicating non-firsthand experience, includes contexts like zoos and aquariums and a wide range of media from print to film, television, electronic, and all manner of ways we accessorize our lives with nature objects, symbols, and imagery. In general such media allow their creators great informational and narrative creativity in representing nature. Kellert (1996) believed that vicarious nature “may constitute an anesthetized experience of nature fundamentally compromised by its occurrence within the comforts and artificial confines of human habitation” (p. 90). Many such venues focus on entertainment, adventure, and action, and lack the multisensory immersion of the complex and uncontrolled natural world. This view may, however, underestimate the ways that nature experience is socially mediated. Moreover, vicarious experiences may constitute the majority of some children’s nature exposure, can develop interest in learning or doing more, and have played important roles in conservation campaigns. Studies of zoos and aquariums in particular suggest they contribute in various ways to development, including concern for animals, and children’s moral development (Clayton, Fraser, & Saunders, 2009; Fraser 2009). New technologies allow access to nature, or information about it, more flexibly and portably than some nonelectronic media. Nature can also (p. 123) be simulated, where a technology does not display or symbolize but mimics a natural phenomenon. Traditional simulations might be theatrical presentations or inanimate objects. Today, apparently autonomous or highly convincing simulations of nature are available, allowing limited but unprecedented inquiry into which specific attributes of nature have which effects. The technological environment of childhood is changing at a rapid pace, and enabling compelling, dynamic, interactive experiences. As Freier and Kahn (2009) pointed out, significant challenges are to determine appropriate baselines from which changes can be evaluated, and to design technologies within a full conception of child development. Newer technologies augmenting interaction with nature include portable devices with information such as bird identification information, guide-like information for investigating a specific site, and activities such as geocaching (finding a hidden object using a global positioning system, or GPS, unit). Also electronic media allow enthusiasts to take and share photographs or other natural history data (now with GPS information incorporated if taken with smart phones) through social network media. Examples include iNaturalist.org and many citizen science projects available via the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology (www.birds.cornell.edu/citscitoolkit). Chavez (2009) asked youth participants (ages 6 to 17) about geocaching and photo safari as well as a range of traditional nature activities and found higher enthusiasm for the former. Harmon and Gleason (2009) found 10- to 15-year-olds responded positively to using a remote-controlled underwater vehicle to explore an otherwise inaccessible marine offshore environment. Open-ended questions suggested a general factor that may influence such positive assessments: the novelty of any new technology. Real natural areas afford multiple sensory experiences, dimensions, signals, modes, and facets, and can support individual initiative in exploratory and other learning. How does a field trip to such an area compare to a simulation? A cutting-edge video game version of a field trip to a specific natural area allowed a counterbalanced design study that made a comparison to an actual trip with a guide who facilitated child-initiated inquiry (Harrington, 2009). The game allowed child-initiated exploration and navigation by mouse or keyboard; it simulated events in sound and two dimensions, allowed multiscale movement and viewing, and offered facts about plants. Comparison of tests and interview responses showed that both offered students initiative, but the real trip was multisensory and allowed the naturalist to incorporate unexpected findings into the curriculum in a responsive fashion. The ability of the virtual trip to conform to varied wishes seems to underlie many things the children liked most about it: they could fly
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Children and Nature around or pretend to be another creature; all the flowers were in bloom; they could see things from different points of view. There were no complaints about not being allowed to go off trail, getting tired, or bugs, as a few children expressed about the real field trip. The majority found the virtual trip more exciting than the real one, but overall more positive emotions were reported from the real trip. Further, the real field trip supported inquiry learning: children felt they learned more, including particularly more unplanned and off-curriculum experiences that proved to be exceptionally memorable. Technological mediation or simulation of nature raises intriguing questions from a constructivist developmental standpoint. Kahn (2011) has pointedly raised the conjunction of declining nature access and experience with increasing computationally simulated nature. In a series of studies he compared the experience of a natural entity affording psychological benefits (e.g., a view of nature from a window; a pet dog; tending a garden) with its absence, and with a technological simulation of it (a plasma screen projecting a view; an advanced robotic dog; a computer-interface/mechanically tended “telegarden”). Although only the dog studies included children, the general pattern held: “Technological nature is better than no nature, but not as good as actual nature” (Kahn, 2011, p. xvi). In the case of the dogs, children clearly differentiated the real from the robotic, treating the latter as they might an unfamiliar toy, and the former with more socially positive actions. Nonetheless, large majorities of children attributed mentality, sociality, and moral standing to the robot. In response, and in subsequent studies, Kahn has speculated that perhaps children identify personified computational objects as an entirely new kind of thing, and one with ambiguous moral entailments. It is practically impossible to keep pace with technological change and determine the effects on child development. Instead, Kahn proposes a “value-sensitive design” approach. It would be concerned with larger questions, such as whether people come to accept simulated nature as adequate substitutes for the benefits and enriching experiences possible only with real nature, and whether simulated nature can provide (p. 124) the deep patterns of interaction with nature that, by dint of our evolutionary heritage, make us fully human (Kahn, 2011).
Benefits of Nature to Children The health and psychological benefits of time and activities involving nature have received considerable research, and that research has been reviewed extensively, and to a lesser extent critiqued (Moore & Cooper Marcus, 2008; Bell et al., 2008; Muñoz, 2009; Charles & Senauer, 2010). Numerous studies have shown that across age groups, time outside has numerous physical health benefits, such as lowered rates of obesity, deriving from greater levels of physical activity (e.g., Cleland et al., 2008). Studies suggest that green environments lead to lower rates of asthma and myopia, better recovery from hospital stays, and enhanced immunological responses. For ages five to seven years, the physical affordances of a complex natural play setting (including trees, rocks, uneven ground, shrubbery, etc.) result in greater physical motor development, including agility and balance, in comparison to a less-varied, manicured play setting (Fjørtoft, 2004). Conversely, children in environments heavy with auto traffic and lacking in green spaces that adults can oversee showed less physical development gains (and their parents were more strained), in comparison to children in environments that offered outside play (Huttenmoser & Meierhofer, 1995). Numerous psychological benefits of nature have also been identified. Green views from homes are associated with better attentional capacity and increased concentration, self-discipline, and impulse control (Wells, 2000; Faber Taylor, Kuo, & Sullivan, 2002). Natural areas help adolescents calm down and gain perspective after stressful events (Korpela, 1992). Although not from research with adults, this finding is similar to Herzog, Black, Fountaine, & Knotts’s (1997) finding that nature, as distinct from other restorative environments, affords reflection. Even differences in natural environment among rural homes (controlling for demographics) were associated with ability to cope with stress (Wells & Evans, 2003). Creative play is greater among preschoolers with green play spaces (Faber Taylor, Wiley, Kuo, & Sullivan, 1998). The opportunity to explore a relatively unstructured physical environment is important in developing a sense of direction as well as problem-solving abilities (Wohlwill & Heft, 1987). Among children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms, Kuo and Faber Taylor (2004) found that parents reported that their children showed reduced symptoms after activities in natural settings as compared with indoor and built outdoor settings. The positive effect of a green setting was found even after controlling for the social setting and the activity itself (e.g., reading). Not surprisingly given the findings of cognitive benefit mentioned above, some academic benefits have been
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Children and Nature associated with nature exposure. For example, comparing landscape features of 101 high schools and controlling for SES and school characteristics, larger classroom windows, more views of nature and views of close vegetation were associated with higher test scores, graduation rates, and college attendance (Matsuoka, 2008). Numerous other academic gains occur when natural settings are incorporated in schooling, using environment as an integrating context for learning (Bartch, 2003).
Conclusion Natural surroundings are no doubt an essential part of humanity’s common patrimony, which, according to Locke, should be handed down in “as good” condition to succeeding generations, affording basic needs as well as options. From what we understand at this point, to this set of physical conditions should be added the many psychological experiences, challenges, and benefits children derive from natural settings. Lacking these (and considering their possible technological substitutes), it is an urgent question what the pathways of human development can produce. At this point, it is fair to say the answer is that impoverished exposure to nature will result in deficits of which we may not be aware. While this lack of awareness can be rectified through further research, and through attention to children’s own voices, it also calls for a critical rethinking of major institutions structuring childhood and its environments, as well as management of natural spaces.
Future Directions Many avenues of research need further attention in this field. A clear and conceptual mapping of the affordances of the range of natural settings, including what children actually do in such settings, is still not possible from the literature. This would be necessary to get beyond the tantalizing suggestions of the developmental sequelae of various nature experiences we have. More rigorous designs are needed, particularly if there is the hope that claims of health and psychological benefits will gain traction in major institutions. Of course, however, wellcontrolled (p. 125) experiments may deliver narrow-scope results, and longitudinal or cross-sequential designs are practically difficult and funding is scarce. Not only that, the target is hardly sitting still. So rather than aiming for comprehensive knowledge, it may be more important to pursue research that tests both theory and practical intervention strategies. Researchers and practitioner allies could use the best hints from what we know, and seek, for example, through educational or design-oriented work, to create positive outcomes for children. The children should be prime stakeholders in such participatory processes as they grow in real communities. They should be partners, empowered to describe their experiences and be part of their communities’ efforts to enhance both nature and human flourishing.
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Emotions and Environment
Oxford Handbooks Online Emotions and Environment Elisabeth Kals and Markus M. Müller The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0008
Abstract and Keywords This chapter illuminates the role of various categories of emotions in the context of the natural environment and their influence on pro-environmental and environmentally risky decisions. First, some examples of emotional reactions toward environmental problems are given. After discussing the question “what are environmentally relevant emotions?,” a classification of these emotions is proposed, followed by a close look at the relations of emotions and environmentally relevant activities and the special behavioral impact of the emotions not only on proenvironmental but also on environmentally risky behaviors. The chapter closes with a discussion of how knowledge about emotional factors can be used in the environmental debate and shows ways to reach a deeper understanding of the dynamics and impact of these emotions. This knowledge can enrich models of environmentally relevant behaviors as well as action models in psychology in general. Keywords: emotions, environmentally relevant decisions, natural environment, emotion work, conflict resolution
Introduction The natural (synonymously “ecological”) environment—defined as our environment with its multiple components, such as air, soil, and water—is the fundamental base for human life, but without doubt it is set at a serious risk by exploitation and modern behavior patterns (IPCC, 2007; WCED, 1990). Worldwide pollution of air, water, and soil, the greenhouse effect, damage to the ozone layer, and the extinction of species are some examples of the ecological problems (Pawlik, 1991) caused by modern societies with an energy-intensive lifestyle. Therefore, Maloney and Ward (1973) called the energy crisis of the 1970s a “crisis of maladapted behavior”; nearly a decade later, Devall (1982) spoke of a “crisis of culture.” Today, despite numerous attempts to reduce environmental threats, most of the global ecological problems and their long-term effects still are not under control (IPCC, 2007). The solution of these environmental problems is a technical challenge to the natural and engineering sciences, but even more to psychology as the science dealing with human behavior and experience (Gifford, 2008). Above all, environmental problems are caused by human behavior and decisions, and therefore should be addressed by analyzing the underlying motives of the relevant behaviors. Based on this understanding of the underlying motives of pro-environmental behaviors as well as behaviors that harm the environment,1 efficient intervention strategies can be derived. In environmental psychology there are research traditions on both tasks; however, the special role of emotions is not always taken sufficiently into account: although at the very beginning of environmental psychology, emotions were taken into account (cf. Amelang, Tepe, Vagt, & Wendt, 1977), a phase of strong cognitive bias, mainly omitting (p. 129) emotions, followed. This goes hand in hand with the development of models aiming to explain environmentally relevant behaviors without integrating emotions. In line with the explanation of human behavior in other action fields, the significant role of emotions was, consequently, for a long time mainly overlooked. Instead,
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Emotions and Environment behavioral decisions were often construed as rational processes, based, for example, on judgments of expectation-values (cf. Kruse & Schwarz, 1988). As a consequence, it is especially the environment-specific behavior models that include emotions. These are mainly responsibility-related emotions, as pollution control can be regarded as a moral, social task, as most environmental problems are not limited to a local area but are global problems: the pollution of air caused by individual car driving, for example, is not limited to one’s own living space but contributes to global environmental problems in the long run. As a consequence, there are worldwide changes in the geosphere and biosphere, such as the increase in earth surface temperature. Pawlik (1991) spoke of timelinked demographic and social changes. The emission of greenhouse gases, for example, does not have direct consequences for the current generation but will probably become a main problem for future generations. Moreover, there are geographic changes. Problems will, for example, arise for populations in different areas or even continents (such as the “third world”) that never contributed to this situation or took advantage of the positive effects of polluting activities, such as a high living standard. These spatial and temporal distances are causing a great social distance between actors and victims of global environmental change (Pawlik, 1991). Under these high distance conditions, social learning is very difficult. Low subjective cost-effectiveness of proenvironmental behavior makes personal sacrifices for the natural environment even more difficult. This mechanism is described as a “social trap.” It is difficult to overcome this social trap and to bridge the spatial and temporal distances. Gaps between ecological knowledge and attitudes on the one hand and actual behavior on the other (Schahn & Matthies, 2008) demonstrate these difficulties. This is partly due to interest conflicts between individuals and society. Overcoming these conflicts can be regarded as a moral task. A successful fulfillment of the task is signaled by taking over personal ecological responsibility and experiencing corresponding emotions, such as guilt with regard to the formation of ecological problems, or indignation about insufficient pollution control. Besides these “moral” emotions, many other emotions can help to overcome the gap and to promote pro-environmental behavior, for example, affective connection to nature. These different emotion clusters will, therefore, be regarded in depth in this text. The interest conflicts between individual self-interest and social responsibility, which are at the foundation of the socio-ecological dilemma (cf. Hardin, 1968), already point to the tension within the field of environmental protection. This is reflected in the change of paradigms from environmental protection to sustainability. The research of environmental psychology picks up this complexity by analyzing both types of behavior (pro- and risky environmental behavior), by looking for positive motivators as well as boundaries of both behavioral categories, and by analyzing interpersonal conflicts that derive, for example, when the question of the site of a new incinerator is discussed controversially (Linnerooth-Bayer & Fitzgerald, 1996), leading to the formation of citizens’ initiatives (Rohrmann, 1990). Emotions play a significant role in all these research questions. The analysis of ecological conflicts is, however, the silver bullet to analyze environmentally relevant emotions and to get direct practical profit from this analysis for resolving the conflict. This is well recognized and used within the field of psychological mediation of conflicts (Jones, 2006). Another important research field concerns the conceptualization, realization, and evaluation of environmental education within various fields (schools, companies, mass media, etc.). Here, knowledge about the motivational base of pro-environmental behavior is an efficient tool for avoiding bad investments and demotivation of the participants of the programs as well as the initiators. In this field, responsibility-related emotions are not the central issues. Instead, there is a wide field of environmental education that offers practical experiences with nature (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989), although without referring to the scientific research on affective connection to nature. The present chapter picks up these research questions by focusing on environmentally relevant emotions and their special role in research. Much of this research has been done in environmental psychology, but some of the relevant research has been done within applied social psychology or even within the more general field of emotion psychology. Our aim is to bring together the various disciplinary approaches and traditions within psychology as well as within neighboring disciplines, showing the big impact emotions might have for model building, (p. 130) for the explanation and control of ecologically relevant behavior, for promoting pro-environmental behavior, and also for resolving ecological conflicts.
Environmentally Relevant Emotions
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Emotions and Environment In recent years, there is a growing interest in emotional processes in psychology in general and in conservation psychology in particular, mainly because empirical studies show that emotions explain distinct parts in the variance of environmentally related behavior (Carrus, Passafaro, & Bonnes, 2008; Kals, 2000). Before this is discussed in depth, a definition of environmentally relevant emotions is necessary.
What Are Environmentally Relevant Emotions? We will start the closer look at the role of emotions in conservation behavior with some examples that match the categorization of emotions that will be introduced later: • A couple is flying to South Africa to enjoy the breathtaking landscape and the wildlife, mainly ignoring the social and the rising ecological problems of the continent. Their first significant impression is, however, the dust, dirt, and blighted environment of Johannesburg and its townships. They feel threatened about this unexpected state of at least parts of the “African environment.” • A student who has grown up using the car as main means of transportation decides to take part in a project that bans car use for one month. He enjoys walking or riding a bicycle to his college, and is proud about his success. • A family takes a winter walk in the woods, and while playing in the snow with the children, the parents feel relieved from their day-to-day worries and enjoy being in nature. • In an apartment building, one family puts its waste into the paper recycling bin when the other bins are full. The other residents become more and more upset about this and start complaining. This list of examples could easily be extended. The examples have in common that the emotions directly refer to the natural environment or to entities (subjects, people, own and other behavior, etc.) that are linked to this environment. Both forms, the direct and indirect link to the natural environment, are subsumed under the construct of “environmentally relevant emotions.” Emotion is a very diverse concept, embracing many facets.. While many definitions of emotions exist, there is relative convergence to consider emotions as complex processes that involve a variety of components (Moors, 2009; Scherer, 2000, 2005). The number and content of the various components vary, but the key components are cognitive appraisals of stimuli and situational conditions, a physiological activation or arousal component, a motor and motivational aspect, which includes intentional control processes, and subjective feelings. This component idea shows how tightly the terms “emotion” and “feeling” are related. In this text, we will use the term “feeling” when subjective experiences are central (for example, the fear of the consequences of nuclear power). We will use the term “emotion,” instead, when the subjective feeling is one of many other components (for example, the complex processes involved in emotions of anger).
Cognitive Emotion Models Given the complexity of emotional processes and of the components involved in emotional episodes, there is also a great variety of theories about what causes emotions and how the different components interact. A special merit of psychological research and theorizing in the field is to create an awareness of the role of cognitions and appraisals in these processes, while lay theories of emotions tend to focus on the somatic and feeling components, thus underestimating the impact of the mind on how we feel about stimuli and situations in the environment. The present article will put special emphasis on these cognitive models of emotions. Cognitive or appraisal theories understand emotions as consequences of cognitive processes (e.g., Arnold, 1960; Frijda, 1986, 1993; Lazarus, 1991; Montada, 1993; Roseman, 1984; Scherer, 1984; Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). The core idea of these theories indicates that it is not an event itself or bodily reactions that directly elicit emotions, but their individual interpretations, which means that the same stimulus can lead to different emotions. As an example, moral outrage about behavior that harms the environment is based on the following set of appraisals (Kals, 2000):
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Emotions and Environment
• Environmental protection is regarded as a moral norm. • The person is convinced that behavior that puts environmental protection at risk is a norm violation. • The acting person is considered as having control over his or her behavior and having alternative possibilities for action. • The acting person is made responsible for the behavior and its outcome. (p. 131) • Possible explanations and apologies (such as lack of time or knowledge) are not accepted. By testing these components, a considerable amount of the individual variance in moral outrage can be explained in multiple regression analyses (Kals & Montada, 1994). The same is valid for the prediction of feelings of environmental guilt. These feelings can be explained by the following set of appraisals: • A general awareness of ecological problems. • High internal locus of control, which means that the person feels that he or she has efficient strategies to reduce ecological problems. • The person feels moral responsibility to act pro-environmentally. • Arguments against conservation (such as the lack of adequate knowledge about behavior strategies, or the acceptance of competing norms) are denied. • The person behaves in contradiction to pro-environmental norms. In line with this finding, self-blame, indignation, and anger within the context of nature protection can all be explained by cognitive models of emotions. There is a long-lasting discussion about the question of whether emotions are pre- or post-cognitive (Zajonc, 1980). This question, however, is relevant only when cognitions are understood in a very narrow sense. In line with current research on emotions (cf. Herzberg, 2009), we argue that cognitions do not necessarily need to be conscious, reflected, and formulated thoughts, but can also embrace automatic and pre-conscious processes. A cognitive model of emotions has specific advantages for the theoretical understanding and practical use of environmentally relevant emotions: • A cognitive model of emotions can explain that different people react differently toward the same event and— as a more complex explanation—that there is an intrapersonal variance in the emotional reaction toward the same event at different times, based on different appraisals of an event. • The model is of high conceptual value, as it implies the necessity to analyze cognitive components of specific emotions on a deeper level. • This leads to practical implications, because interventions can be based on specific cognitive components of emotions. For example, moral outrage is often based on an unproved belief that the other person acted deliberately. Research has shown that changing such beliefs into hypotheses that have to be tested empirically can be a successful way of reducing resentment (Bernhardt, 2000). • Cognitive models offer prognoses for the development of emotions. • Finally, cognitive models imply an idea of humans as acting individuals who can gain control over their emotions by reflecting and reframing cognitive schemas and automatic appraisals.
Measuring Emotions It is comparatively difficult to measure emotions (Scherer, 2005). Taking component models of emotions as a theoretical base, one has to consider different aspects of emotions that cannot be measured by the same methods but require a wide range of instruments, such as standardized questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, physiological measures, behavioral observation, and so on. A special challenge is measuring the subjective component of feeling. It is unclear how well people can give an answer when asked about their feelings: Can they differentiate between emotions? Are they willing to answer such a personal question? In many cultural contexts, the
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Emotions and Environment expression of certain emotions is sanctioned and considered inappropriate, and it is especially difficult to express emotions that do not correspond to one’s self-image. All these problems and discussions are also obvious when it comes to the measurement of environmentally relevant emotions (Kals, 2000). As a result of this discussion it became consensus to use self-disclosure measures with varying degree of directness of the measurement. The crucial question is how the items or stimulus requirements should be presented. The range goes from open questions (“Do you have any emotions or feelings with regard to this environmental topic?”) to specific questionnaire items (“When I am in nature, I have feelings of oneness with it”). The advantages and disadvantages of the various methods have been discussed at length. Some of the arguments are as follows: the standardization of measurement should be decided in accordance to theory building, research requests, and resources. Standardized methods are very efficient and result in quantitative data that can easily be analyzed but require, on the other hand, a precise model building and concrete hypotheses. Less standardized methods (such as the semi-structured interview) measure emotions and feelings more spontaneously and less reactively and are more appropriate for gathering hypotheses, as the results (p. 132) of single interviews can’t easily be brought together or compared. In the field of environmental psychology the great majority of studies measuring emotions refer to standardized methods in the form of questionnaires, even though results are critically questioned (Scherer, 2005). Nevertheless, the big advantage of gathering quantitative, comparable data outweighs the discussed disadvantages—provided reliability and validity of the scales are thoroughly ascertained controlled, which is mostly the case. One of the first standardized questionnaires within environmental psychology already embraced a scale of environmental awareness that includes the measurement of emotions (see Amelang et al., 1977). Today, the list of scales measuring environmentally relevant emotions has become quite long, although they are used mainly in the context of research and are seldom widely available or systematically published in a compilation.
Classification of Emotions There is a broad discussion concerning the taxonomy of emotions. The easiest taxonomy distinguishes between emotions experienced as positive or negative, but such a classification is unclear because although it seems plausible at first sight, so-called positive emotions can also have negative consequences and vice versa. There are more complex, often linguistic classification systems (e.g., Frijda, 1986; Lazarus, 1991; Scherer, 1984), which are primarily of heuristic value as they offer a structure to bring order to the diversity of emotions. However, they are not very helpful to distinguish emotional categories (for example, resentment, moral outrage, and indignation) or to get a deeper understanding of their underlying structure. Therefore, we propose a general framework of emotion clusters that closely belong together with regard to theoretical model building and their specific impact on environmental behavior. This leads to four categories or clusters, some with subgroups: (1) emotional burdens and worries; (2) emotions associated with environmentally relevant behavior; (3) affective connection to nature; and (4) moral emotions.
Emotional Burdens and Worries Emotional burdens and worries are caused by environmental threats. According to lay theories, fear caused by threats to the environment is highly relevant for pro-environmental motivation and action. Psychological theorizing and research, however, show that fear is not directly linked to behavior that protects the environment (Hazard, 1998). Rather, these emotions motivate reactions to cope with this threat (Homburg, Stolberg, & Wagner, 2007; van Zomeren, Spears, & Leach, 2010), and the literature on coping has shown that there are several cognitive and behavioral strategies that can help reduce fear without taking action against the source of the perceived threat.
Emotions Associated with Environmentally Relevant Behavior A second class of emotions comprises those associated with environmentally relevant behavior. Any kind of behavior can be motivated not only by goals and emotions related to these goals, but also by feelings accompanying the action: behavior itself can be of affective valence. For example, Ajzen’s (1991) concept of attitudes is based on the idea that behaviors can be attractive or unattractive and therefore have a positive or
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Emotions and Environment negative emotional valence. Littering, for example, can be unpleasant and accompanied by negative feelings of disgust, or evoke positive feelings of satisfaction. However, the consumption of certified organic food is accompanied by many emotions experienced as positive, such as pleasure, positive taste, feeling good toward nature, and animal welfare (Kals & Odenthal, 1996). Marketing has discovered the pleasure associated with buying and consuming organic products, and many alternative supermarkets that sell biological food base their marketing strategies on hedonistic arguments, such as the pleasure of shopping and consuming tasty biological food (Hartmann & Apaolaza-Ibáñez, 2008). The literature on the choice of means of travel is a good example for these kinds of affects. Several authors (Becker, 1998; Carrus et al., 2008; Hunecke, 2000) have argued that cars, bicycles, trains, or buses are more than mere means of transportation, and the choice of how to get from one point to another is not based merely on rational choices for the most efficient or most environmentally friendly vehicle. Rather, the act of traveling as well as the vehicles themselves have an emotional valence that has a strong impact on individual decisions. In this way, pro-environmental behavior, such as choosing public transport instead of driving one’s car, can elicit either positive emotions, such as pride due to one’s contribution to pollution control, or negative emotions, due to giving up privacy or even social status. As a consequence, all categories of emotions can be related to environmentally relevant behavior. (p. 133)
Affective Connection to Nature
Affective connection to nature can be considered a distinct class of emotions related to the environment. It is closely related to the development of an environmental identity (Clayton, 2003; Eigner & Schmuck, 1998; Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989). The relationship of humans to nature can be understood in two ways: first, there are psychological correlates of time spent in nature that could be classified as emotions accompanying actions. Such a perspective is taken by Kaplan (1995). In his attention restoration theory, he argues that being in nature can have restorative impacts, and he makes a distinction among four components. The first is the feeling of “being away,” of being freed from mental activity. This does not necessarily presuppose that one takes a long way to get to a natural site; even a short walk in a park or a look out of the window can have a restorative impact (Kaplan, 2001). The second component is the fascination for nature, which has the effect of binding attention without effort. Third, feelings of greatness often accompany experiences in nature, most evidently in wilderness, but possibly also in parks or gardens. And fourth, Kaplan (1995) argued that there is a compatibility between human inclinations, such as locomotion or dominance, and nature, that can also lead to a positive valence of nature for human beings. A growing body of research shows that being in nature or merely in contact with nature can have a large number of positive effects, such as the restoration of attention (Kaplan, 1995), vitality (Ryan et al., 2010), but also on other aspects of well-being or on the reduction of aggressive motivations (Kuo & Sullivan, 2001). Although the findings from this research are quite robust and have been validated by many studies, it should also be noted that contact with nature can also lead to more negative feelings, for example, of disgust or fear (e.g., Bixler & Floyd, 1997). These results are also picked up in the chapter of Joanne Vining and Melinda Merrick on environmental epiphanies in the current book. One of the possible positive consequences of contact with nature especially in childhood and youth is that it can contribute to a relatively stable emotional attachment to nature (Kals, Schumacher, & Montada, 1999; Müller, Kals, & Pansa, 2009). Writers in environmental ethics have argued that humans can be considered a part of nature, an argumentation that has led to the “new environmental paradigm” (Van Liere & Dunlap, 1980). From a psychological point of view, however, the connectedness of humans to nature goes beyond this rational-cognitive perspective because it is also based on affective experiences in nature. The biophilia hypothesis (Kellert, 1997), drawing on Fromm’s psychoanalytic tradition, assumes that humans have an innate need to be part of nature, making contact with nature an important source of well-being and restoration (Eckardt, 1992). In their differential approach, Kals et al. (1999) argued that the attachment to nature is not a constant that is valid for all persons, but rather can be considered a trait that varies among individuals. Data from questionnaire surveys have showed that the time spent in nature in childhood as well as positive experiences in nature with significant others are strong predictors of this emotional attachment to nature (Kals et al., 1999; Müller et al., 2009). In recent years, several similar conceptions of human relationship to nature have been proposed (e.g., Clayton, 2003; Dutcher, Finley, Luloff, & Johnson, 2007; Hinds & Sparks, 2008; Mayer & Frantz, 2004; Nisbet, Zelenski, & Murphy, 2009; Schultz, 2000), but despite some
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Emotions and Environment conceptual differences, they all argue that relatedness to nature varies among individuals and can be considered a relatively stable trait, and most of the authors argue that this relatedness is based on affective experiences rather than merely cognitive appraisals.
Moral Emotions Moral emotions concerning behavior affecting the environment are a fourth class of emotions related to the environment that have been studied in more detail recently (e.g., Berenguer, 2010; Ferguson & Branscombe, 2010). This interest in moral emotions is due to the social, temporal, and geographical distance between actors and victims of global environmental change (Pawlik, 1991). Self-interest alone cannot explain why people make renunciations for the sake of the natural environment. The increasing interest in norms, values, justice, and other moral issues in conservation psychology reflects the fact that behavior to protect the environment is not merely based on social incentives or the fulfillment of self-interest, but is also driven by social responsibility and moral convictions. If morality plays a role in pro-environmental behavior, then moral emotions can be considered a direct reaction to behavior or rules or laws that are either compliant with these moral standards or deviant from them.
Understanding Moral Emotions in the Light of the Social Trap The fourth category of emotions, moral emotions, is of special importance for motivating nature-protective (p. 134) behavior. This makes sense in the light of the so-called social trap or, as it is also called, the “commons” or “socioecological dilemma” (Hardin, 1968; Platt, 1973), which is, therefore, described in more detail.
The Socio-Ecological Dilemma The socio-ecological dilemma describes interest conflicts between short-term individual and long-time societal interests. Personal renunciations for the benefit of the natural environment (such as using public transportation systems instead of one’s own car, donating money for ecological programs, installing expensive energy consumption systems in one’s own household that will not amortize) produce various costs, such as financial shortages, reduced comfort, and the efforts due to necessary changes in behavior patterns and daily routines. On the one hand, these costs are individualized, as they directly and exclusively fall back on the acting individual, whereas ecological benefits resulting from the behavior are externalized to the society as a whole. On the other hand, environment-endangering decisions have direct and personal benefits for the individual. A high living standard due to intensive energy consumption in one’s own household leads, for example, to increased comfort. Ecological risks and burdens that derive from these decisions, such as the effects of greenhouse warming due to intensive energy consumption, are external to the individual. In the long run, the immediate profit for the individuals making sacrifices is lower than for the exploiting individuals. One cannot, for example, expect a significant and stable improvement of the air quality in one’s own living space by using, as a lone individual, public transportation systems instead of one’s own car. These positive effects on air quality can be expected only as a long-term consequence of many individuals abstaining from using their own cars and when many other agents and mega-actors (such as decision makers in industry) reduce other air-polluting activities and processes. The socio-ecological dilemma serves as an explanatory construct to explain why pro-ecological behavior is avoided whereas ecologically risky behavior is shown. Besides correlational studies there is a long experimental research tradition on the dilemma that analyzes various conditional effects of the dilemma (cf. Biel, 2000; Ernst & Spada, 1993; Spada, Opwis, Donnen, Schwiersch, & Ernst, 1990). Without overlooking the theoretical and high methodological impact of this tradition, there is a broad discussion questioning the ecological validity of the laboratory experiments (cf. Biel, 2000). This discussion also affects the role emotions play in the experimental research on socio-ecological dilemmas: Cognitions (e.g., in the form of expectancy-value judgments) are in the center of interest; emotions are reported only in their function of validating the experimental findings (Bonacich, 1976; Dawes, McTavish, & Shaklee, 1977). The motivational function of emotions is mostly ignored (Müller, Kals, & Maes, 2008). This is especially the case for moral emotions, such as anger, indignation, and resentment, which are independent behavioral predictors in studies on real-life ecological conflicts (c.f. Montada & Kals, 2000).
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Emotions and Environment These moral emotions already signal that the ecological dilemma is a moral conflict that can be overcome by taking over internal ecological responsibility and by accepting corresponding moral norms. In line with these arguments, the moral emotions should have a special impact on the behavioral decisions to protect but also to exploit nature. Feelings of moral guilt toward the ecological crisis and its underlying causes should, for example, be a positive motivator to avoid littering; the absence of guilt should, on the other hand, facilitate environmentally risky behavior.
From Environmental Protection to Sustainable Development This already points to the fact that environmental protection is not a competitive free value but rather stands in tension with other norms and values that also have moral implications, such as individual freedom, economic growth, job security, and so on. Originally, small segments of the population have brought the subject of environmental protection into general discussion. Currently the topic is in the center of interest and public awareness; nearly all political parties have the topic in their programs. However, the construct is increasingly replaced by the key concept of “sustainability” (Kals & Maes, 2002). Sustainability takes into account the complexity of competing moral norms, aiming to balance them. Together with its related term “sustainable development”, it replaced the older concepts of “pollution control” or “environmental protection” (De Haan & Kuckartz, 1996). The latter focus primarily on pro-environmental aims and efforts, whereas “sustainable development” takes three different dimensions into account (cf. Jüdes, 1997; Kastenholz, Erdmann, & Wolff, 1996; Kreibich, 1996): environmental sustainability (e.g., protection of natural resources and ecosystems, (p. 135) reduction of pollution), economic sustainability (e.g., economic welfare, protection of job security, economic freedom), and social sustainability (satisfaction of basic human needs, in such a way as to avoid future conflicts over the distribution of resources are avoided). In sum, sustainability represents the normative demand to realize intergenerational justice, so the next generation can enjoy the same opportunities for economic and social development as the current one. There is a complex trans-disciplinary discussion about the “right” balance of these three dimensions to reach justice (Jüdes, 1997; Kastenholz et al., 1996; Kreibich, 1996): Should all dimensions be equally weighted or should, if necessary, one dimension be given priority? What dimension should this be and what reasons can justify this decision? To what extent can economic welfare be achieved without putting the ecological aim and dimension at risk? How can intergenerational justice be achieved without risking economic welfare? These questions reflect the competing character of the three dimensions (Hodge, 1997), which leads to the interpretation of sustainability as a “fuzzy set” (Linneweber, 1998). Its open space for interpretation is often filled by actors in a self-serving way and paves the way for social conflicts and hot emotions, when interpretation and realization of the dimensions differ between people or institutions. Therefore, in this text it is spoken of proenvironmental behavior when the behavior intends to give priority to the ecological dimension and of sustainable behavior when multiple interactions between the dimensions are regarded. In the same way, as described for the social trap, the competitive ways of interactions should provoke morally relevant emotions (e.g., anger due to perceived injustices).
Emotions in Models of Sustainable Behavior Since the beginnings of environmental psychology, researchers have been looking for the motivational base that can explain individual differences in sustainable behavior (cf. Krampen, Martini, & Ronco, 1996; Kruse & Arlt, 1984). Although the first studies on the oil crisis encompassed the emotional base of the behavior (it was especially fear with regard to the crisis that was analyzed), the role of emotions was long neglected within this area of research. Model building and research questions put their focus on cognitions (Steg & Vlek, 2009). It is only since the past decade that emotions have been rediscovered and analyzed again. In a way it is a comeback of the emotion as a research topic within environmental psychology. The described models are structured into four clusters: (1) rational choice models, (2) general social psychological models of action and behavior, (3) environment-specific behavior models, which are differentiated into complex action models, and (4) empirically grounded structure models. All models are described and discussed with regard to the role emotions play within them.
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Emotions and Environment Rational Choice Models Rational choice models increasingly find their way into environmental psychology through economic behavior analysis. A growing number of environmental psychological publications have been based on the underlying assumption of a rational choice theory, reflected in the formula of RREEMM (restricted, resourceful, expecting, evaluating, maximizing man) (cf. Abell, 1992; Coleman & Fararo, 1992). Following this formula, people struggle for their own advantages. They try to maximize their own profit and not that of others or the social community. This struggle is based on a rational calculus that is transformed into expectation-times-values formulas, which are applied to nearly all forms of human behavior, although the empirical base for such generalization is insufficient. Miller and Ratner (1996) therefore brought up the concept of “the myth of self-interest,” which is promoted by rational choice theory. Rational choice models can easily explain why people behave in a way that puts ecological protection at risk: as described within the concept of the social trap, for many polluters it is a “rational choice” to continue the polluting activities that add to their personal benefits at little immediate personal costs, as long as they do not expect social sanctions for their abusing behavior (Montada, 1998). However, it is difficult to explain by this theory why people take into account renunciations for the sake of the natural environment, without anticipating personal benefits from it. One popular assumption, based on this dilemma, is the low-cost hypothesis, predicting that renunciations for the natural environment are taken into account only in areas that imply low costs for the acting individual (cf. Diekmann & Preisendörfer, 1992; Schahn & Möllers, 2005). Obviously, some groups of people also act pro-environmentally despite high personal costs (in the form of money, time, limitations of mobility, etc.). One way to explain high-cost behavior is to look for masked self-interest. If people engage, for (p. 136) example, in protecting their personal environmental surrounding (such as in a local initiative engaging in the protection of local environmental goals), direct environmental benefits in the form of higher ecological quality might be expected. Engaging, however, in more global ecological aims makes it difficult to rationally expect measurable personal ecological benefits. In these cases, the assumption of masked self-interest is formulated, trying to keep up the scope of validity of rational choice theories. Such masked self-interests can be to demonstrate power and control, to experience self-efficacy, to aspire to social power, to raise self-esteem, and so on. Empirical proof for these assumptions, however, is scarce. Data show instead that the model of rational choice is not appropriate for political decisions, or cases of interpersonal solidarity (Maes, 2001). This statement is also supported by data from Sheldon and Schmuck (2001), showing that people are happier when striving for selftranscending goals. Similarly, and in contrast to rational choice theory, data show that a considerable amount of people are willing to act and actually act in a way to protect the global environment, without receiving or expecting any direct personal gain from it. Furthermore, the impact of social responsibility and justice show that there is a stable moral impact on pro-environmental behavior. What about the role of emotions? As already signaled by the key term “rational,” the role of emotions is explicitly ignored in traditional rational choice models. With a growing empirical foundation for the emotional impact on human actions, some authors integrated emotions as by-correlates of the key cognitive constructs. However, justice is not done to emotions when they are downgraded to by-products. They are independent motives by themselves and can contribute to the prediction of environmentally relevant behavioral decisions beyond the cognitions, as it is still to be shown.
General Action Theories The second group of models refers to general action theories, like the theory of reasoned action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) or its further elaboration to the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991). These theories assume that behavioral intentions are direct predictors of actual behavior. Attitudes toward the behavior, the subjective (social) norm with regard to the behavior, as well as the perceived behavioral control determine—mediated by the behavioral intention—the actions. These models are among the most often quoted and applied action theories in social psychology, which is also due to their economy, as the number of their model variables is very low. The disadvantages of this economy became highly relevant when the models were applied to the field of (pro)environmental action, such as recycling behavior or individual mobility decisions (cf. Bamberg & Schmidt, 1993; Hamid & Cheng, 1995; Lynne & Rola, 1988). In most cases, these applications are successful only when the
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Emotions and Environment models are adapted to the specific features of the analyzed behavior and are expanded by specific variables (for example, Haustein & Hunecke, 2007). Often it is the supplementary constructs that are especially powerful in predicting the behavior. These specific variables also embrace emotions, as the theories of Fishbein and Ajzen do not make explicit reference to emotions. It might be argued that affect or feelings are dimensions of attitudes, but the concept of attitudes used in the theory of reasoned action or the theory of planned behavior is a cognitive one, and merely using the concept of attitudes to conceptualize emotions fails to take into account the complexity of emotions and their underlying appraisals. Therefore, it is a special challenge for environmental psychology to include specific emotions in models of pro-environmental behavior and to study the predictive power of these emotions in relation to more established variables. The norm-activation model by Schwartz (Schwartz, 1977; Schwartz & Howard, 1980) is another general action model that is often applied to environmentally relevant behavior. It explains behavior from the perspective of moral obligation that is rooted in an awareness of the problem and activated personal norms. The model is in accordance with the specifics of environmental behavior because, in the final analysis, individual behavioral commitments for environmental protection reflect social responsibility. Insofar it is a moral behavior task that belongs to the prosocial behavior category (Bierhoff, 2002). Correspondingly, the model was applied to various environmentally relevant action fields (for example, Fuhrer & Wölfing, 1997; Hopper & Nielsen, 1991; Stern, Dietz, & Kalof, 1993; Van Liere & Dunlap, 1980). In most cases, however, the model is applied dogmatically, but the two constructs of attribution of responsibility and awareness of behavioral consequences are brought into focus and are analyzed empirically. In the same way as the models of Fishbein and Ajzen, the norm-activation model does not explicitly include emotions, but in the pertinent research the attribution (p. 137) of ecological responsibility is often covered not only as cognition but also as an emotional variable. In sum, applying general action theories to the field of environmental psychology ensures research continuity and enables us to link the research within environmental psychology with neighbor disciplines. Moreover, some of the models are very economical with regard to the low number of model variables. However, the central disadvantage might not be compensated by these key benefits: the models cannot be applied mechanically to environmentally relevant behavior. This also refers to the necessary allowance of emotions, as most general action theories mainly have a cognitive-rational base. Moreover, the economy of the general action models implies the negative side that their predictive power is often lower than that of more complex models, and they do not offer many intervention strategies for concrete behavioral changes. The theoretical limitations and practical restrictions for deriving interventional approaches for behavior modeling led to the development of environment-specific behavior models.
Specific Models of Pro-Environmental Behavior To fill the gap of knowledge, environment-specific behavior models were developed (for an overview, cf. Clayton & Myers, 2009; Steg & Vlek, 2009). Most of these models avoid the discussed disadvantages because they take into account the specifics and the underlying interest conflicts of environmentally relevant behavior. This leads to the models’ becoming comparably complex, which can be regarded as either a gain or a loss. A clear disadvantage of these models is their small validity and lack of generalizability to other fields with moral impact. As a consequence, it seems to be a helpful strategy to develop specific models with regard to existing general action theory. This has been done for a great number of models, such as the model to explain ecological behavior (Fuhrer & Wölfing, 1997) and the value-belief-norm theory by Stern and colleagues (Stern, 2000; Stern et al., 1993). Originally, the Stern model was a norm expectancy theory serving to explain the support of social movements, including the ecological movement. These models are complex action models that are, in significant parts, empirically proven. This is also true for the model of responsible ecological behavior, which has been tested by more than 20 studies (Kals, Becker, & Ittner, 2006). The model is theoretically related to the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991). However, the center of the models is willingness for continued ecological commitments or commitments that set ecological aims at risk (Montada, Kals, & Becker, 2007) instead of behavioral intentions. In longitudinal studies it could be shown that willingness is a valid predictor of the actual behaviors manifested later. The transfer from willingness to actual behavior is moderated in accordance with the model assumption by situational and social circumstances (Montada et al., 2007). In line with the other specific models, emotions play the same central role as cognitions. In detail the cognitive model variables for predicting willingness and actual behavior are:
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Emotions and Environment
• Appraisals of general risks from pollution and exploitation of the environment. • Appraisals of personal risks and personal harm from pollution, noise, etc. • Attributions of responsibility for ecological damages to oneself, the citizens, the population(s), industry and business, the state(s). • Acceptance of arguments against nature-protective measures and commitments. • Appraisals of justice/injustice of the distribution of profits from pollutive activities and the exploitation of nature, and the distributions of harm and risk caused by pollution. Concerning emotions, the following variables are included: • Emotional affinity respectively affective connection to nature (with interest in nature and various experiences with nature). • Indignation and anger about insufficient nature protection by others. • Indignation with regard to various ecological injustices. • Guilt due to one’s own polluting behavior. • Fear and experienced local burdens (only for some of the behavioral criteria). These predictor variables are able to explain a considerable amount of the criterion variance of pro-environmental commitments and activities and of environmentally risky decisions. Besides these complex action models, empirically grounded structure models do exist. They form the majority of corresponding research studies. These structure models subsume different constructs from a varying theoretical background. The predictive power of the heterogeneous constructs is empirically tested, mostly by regression analyses. (p. 138)
The Impact of Emotions on Environmentally Relevant Behavior
Based on the described models and theories, empirical research on the impact of various motives and variables on environmentally relevant behavior was conducted, questionnaire studies being the main research methodology. From this bulky research the following statements on the impact of the four emotion categories introduced above can be regarded as validated:
Emotional Burdens and Worries These emotions are primarily part of environment-specific behavior models. At first glance, fear about being personally affected by ecological risks and damages, together with the experience of emotional burdens in one’s own living space, seem to represent a convincing motivation for acting in a sustainable way for reducing these risks. Research on models of pro-environmental action that incorporated feelings of fear and threat, however, shows consistently that these emotions do not play an important role in explaining pro-environmental commitment and behavior (for an overview, see Hazard, 1998). The processes that are invoked by feelings of threat are complex, and some research begins to look more closely at how people react to threat and how these reactions are related to their attitudes and behavior toward the environment. There seems to be an inverted U-shaped association between anxiety and pro-environmental behavior (Hazard, 1998): low anxiety might signal that ecological problems are denied; very high anxiety might provoke psychological mechanisms of rejection and denial of the problems to avoid panic. Thus, fear caused by threats to nature or by environmental hazards is not directly linked to pro-environmental behavior. Rather, it causes a multitude of coping reactions, and the mechanisms of these reactions are still poorly understood. This is in line with recent studies that could show that strong forms of threat, such as existential threat caused by mortality salience, can even reduce pro-environmental motivation (Fritsche & Häfner, in press). The authors argued that existential threat will lead to a stronger focus on the self and the in-group, thus reducing biocentric motivation that is one of the core motivators of pro-environmental behavior (Stern, 2000). However, research has also shown that if valued in-groups strongly hold norms of environmental protection, then threat can lead to proenvironmental motivation not out of biocentric concern, but rather because it motivates people to identify with
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Emotions and Environment norms and values of the in-group to transcend the individual’s mortality (Fritsche, Jonas, Kayser, & Koranyi, 2010). Experienced local burdens, on the other hand, have an emotional impact, such as fear of being personally affected by environmental threats. These emotions based on local burdens have differentiated effects on various behavioral criteria: they qualify only for activities that are directed toward the protection of one’s own living space, for example, political involvement in an activist group, trying to avoid environment-endangering projects on a local level (Rohrmann, 1990). This makes sense, as only these kinds of activities should have a measurable positive impact on burdens experienced in one’s own backyard. In correspondence with this finding, experienced local burdens do not qualify for the prediction of pro-environmental activities for global commons and long-term protection, which the great majority of studies focus upon (Kals et al., 2006; Montada & Kals, 2000). This finding is in accordance with the prediction of rational choice theory and can be explained by the socio-ecological dilemma.
Emotions Associated with Environmentally Relevant Behavior Emotions associated with environmentally relevant behavior have been overlooked for a long time, although they seem to have a big impact on the actual manifestation of environmentally relevant behavior. This has especially been proven for behaviors setting environmental protection at risk, such as car driving or alpine skiing (Flade, 1994; Giese, 1997). This makes sense, as these activities normally have a strong motivational base in the form of their positive emotional valence. Car driving, for example, is based on many motives (Becker, 1998; Giese, 1997): it provides enjoyment and the feeling of self-control; it can be a source and indicator of social status. Car advertisements often argue that car driving provides life quality, freedom, safety, adventures, and so on. All these motives are not linked directly to the endangering of the natural environment, which is more or less consciously taken into account. This is in accordance with the rational choice theory, although it makes no prediction about behavioral decisions on the base of these emotions. The emotional valence of pro-environmental behavior, instead, varies a lot: supporting and consuming certified organic food can be experienced as joyful (Kals & Odenthal, 1996), but for many behavioral categories, especially renunciations for (p. 139) the sake of the natural environment (e.g., taking the bus instead of one’s own car, taking a short shower instead of a bath, etc.), a positive valence while conducting the behavior has neither been shown nor is it part of most of the environment-specific behavior models.
Affective Connection to Nature Affective connection to nature is one of the emotional categories that most strongly stress experienced and intimate feelings. In this way it is most distinct from the rational choice theory. The most powerful emotion with regard to behavior prediction within this emotion category is emotional affinity respectively affective connection to nature (cf. Kals et al., 1999). Data support the hypothesis that this connection becomes stronger the more concretely nature is experienced in the field or in experimental settings (Calließ & Lob, 1987; Seel, Sichler, & Fischerlehner, 1993). Although this concept had already been used for a long time in the field of environmental education (cf. Calließ & Lob, 1987; Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989), it has been only in recent years that this category of feelings has gained attention in the empirical literature (Eigner & Schmuck, 1998). It could be shown that emotional affinity can be traced back to present and past experiences in nature (Müller et al., 2009) and is as powerful in the prediction of pro-environmental behavior as are, for example, indignation and interest in nature. Together these three variables explain up to 47% of the criterion variance (Kals et al., 1999). This is in accordance with other empirical results, which found that love of nature is instigated by experiences in nature, such as observing the change of seasons (Lyons & Breakwell, 1994).
Moral Emotions This last category of emotions is the one that has been analyzed the best in empirical research of environmental psychology, although it cannot touch upon the overwhelming literature dealing with the cognitive aspect of moral ecological responsibility and justice appraisals. Nevertheless, moral emotions are part of many newer environmentspecific behavior models. Especially emotions that are related to the violation of norms, such as guilt, shame, indignation, or moral outrage, have been shown to be impactful variables that can explain distinct parts in the variation of behavior (Ferguson & Branscombe, 2010; Kals, 2000). They all imply the acceptance or refusal of ecological norms and responsibilities.
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Emotions and Environment In the studies on the model of responsible ecological behavior (Montada & Kals, 2000), indignation qualifies in almost all varying regression analyses over many different studies and action fields. Indignation has been defined in two ways: indignation about insufficient pollution control, as well as about insufficient support of competing moral aims (such as economic growth, personal rights of freedom, etc.). Regression analyses show that the form of indignation that corresponds with the aims of the behavior has the biggest influence: indignation about insufficient pollution control is, for example, the most powerful predictor of pro-environmental willingness and behavior, whereas indignation about insufficient support of other socially accepted values and aims is the first predictor for environmentally risky behavioral decisions. However, additional criterion variance is explained by the denial of the reversed form of indignation, for example, the explanation of pro-environmental behavior by the denial of indignation about insufficient support of economic growth. This points to the fact that people engaging in pollution control or in competing aims do not simply ignore the arguments “of the other side” but deal with them to consciously refute them. This is in line with the descriptive analysis of the data set (Montada & Kals, 2000). These findings correspond with new developments in moral psychology that argue that emotions play an important role in human decisions about what is right or wrong (Haidt & Kezebir, 2010; Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007).
Environmental Education and Emotions There is no doubt that behavior changes are necessary to overcome the ecological crisis and to promote sustainable development, and that these behavioral changes can have a strong impact on the emission of greenhouse gases (Dietz, Gardner, Gilligan, Stern, & Vandenbergh, 2009). Relevant decision-making includes behaviors at a private as well as a political level that serve to protect the natural environment by taking into account the economic and social consequences of these behaviors. In this chapter it was shown why people are committed to sustainable development and behaviors, and why they act in ways that put environmental protection and pollution control at risk. Both questions were answered from an emotional perspective and are equally relevant: for the long-term establishment of sustainable development, not only does pro-environmental behavior need to be promoted and stabilized, but at the same time environmentally (p. 140) endangering behavior should be diminished and substituted by more adaptive ones. What is the use of knowledge about emotional factors in environmental behavior for reaching these aims? How can it be used in environmental education programs? In this text environmental education is defined in a broad sense, including all systematic strategies to influence people to change their attitudes and behaviors in a pro-environmental direction. Environmental education is not limited to the school setting but is part of a general social movement, taking place in general discussion, at adult education centers, in mass media, and so on. There is a long-lasting tradition in environmental school education, initiated by the UNESCO conferences in the 1970s: they gave impetus to make environmental education a part of general education programs and to integrate them in curricula (Bolscho, Eulefeld, Rost, & Seybold, 1990; Gigliotti, 1990). However, the school context is only one of many to systematically influence people’s attitudes and behavior. In these practical contexts, the power of environmentally relevant emotions seems to have been recognized earlier than in theoretical model development or empirical research. Already from the beginning, efforts can be recognized to use emotions as target aims for promoting pro-environmental interests and behavior (Bolscho et al., 1990). However, as sufficient empirical knowledge was not or still is not provided, many of the practical approaches are not sufficiently founded on theoretically grounded models or empirical findings. Therefore, efforts should take place to bring together the lines of environmental psychology and environmental education. One efficient way is to base practical interventions on empirical findings in the form of a systematic theoretical and empirical development of the action field. Recommendations should be derived from the empirical findings. In the context of the current paper, the crucial question is: How can findings on the behavioral impact of emotions be used to efficiently change environmentally relevant emotions? Although participation in intervention programs is always voluntary, broader intervention programs aiming to promote pro-environmental behavior in a community, such as a city, that directly intend to change emotions are confronted with more ethical problems than are programs exclusively aiming at cognitions. Nevertheless, emotions should not be ignored but rather handled with care. This can mean that targeting and intervention strategies for dealing with emotions should be fixed on an individual base and justified for the individual case. Taking this into account, there are some conclusions that can be drawn from the reported findings.
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Emotions and Environment Emotional burdens and worries should not be evoked—especially as they are relevant for only a small sample of behavioral categories concerning local environmental interests. They should be addressed only when concrete threats of local living space are of relevance or when fear or threats are actively mentioned by members of the intervention programs. Feelings associated with environmentally relevant behavior could, however, be used much more systematically when target behaviors are to be achieved. Many environmentally risky behaviors are associated with joy and pleasure: positive feelings in the context of car driving, for example, show major changes during the life span and also vary between different population groups with different social norms. Driving a car has an especially positive connotation for young adults and during the period of getting the driving license (Flade, 1994; Giese, 1997). Later in life or in different social groups, driving a big car might not be honored by social acceptance or lead to carefree driving enjoyment, but rather lead to feelings of moral guilt. Reflection and change of corresponding norms might, therefore, change the feelings associated with the behavior so that, for example, also going by bike might be associated with joy, such as the direct enjoyment of nature or feeling good and healthy (Becker, 1998). Another important approach is to intend to change emotional attitudes by starting with behavioral change, thus providing positive experiences with the new, intended behavior. The provision of nature experiences is a well-established approach in environmental education programs to promote pro-environmental behavior. The psychological data can give the empirical foundation and explanation for this approach, as by experiencing nature, affective connection to nature can be established. This is especially the case when nature experiences are shared with significant others (Kals et al., 1999). These joint experiences seem to facilitate the integration of this experience into one’s own self-concept and identity (Clayton, 2003). Who can be such a “significant other” depends on the age and the living circumstances of the person. Moreover, they change over one’s life span in the way that family members are more and more substituted by the ascending role of peers. This is in line with the findings of Eigner and Schmuck (1998), showing that (p. 141) environmental identity is evoked and stabilized by the interaction with other members (in-group) and by dissociating oneself from nonenvironmentalists (out-group). Therefore, the fostering of positive experiences with nature, preferably shared with significant others, is, even in environmental education programs for adults, a possibility to provoke interest and affective connection to nature and to overcome the interest conflicts between short-term self-interest and longterm ecological interest of the society as a whole. Finally, the findings on morally relevant emotions can be used directly by addressing the emotions (for example, in the form of theoretical discourses) or indirectly by addressing their underlying cognitions. Pride about personal renunciations for nature, for example, can be induced by promoting a general ecological awareness, accepting ecological aims as important concerns, stabilizing internal control by teaching knowledge on concrete actions that are efficient to reach ecological aims, and promoting internal ecological responsibility. For reaching these subgoals, the whole portfolio of psychological intervention strategies can be used (teaching, informing, confronting, group discussions, contrasting techniques, public statements of social models, etc.), which need to be adapted to the specific target group (cf. Calließ & Lob, 1987). All of the mentioned moral emotions imply the acceptance or denial of varying social and moral norms and responsibilities. In intervention strategies it is important to avoid partisanship for one group of norms or for one dimension of sustainability with the consequence of reactance. Instead, the complexity of the three dimensions of sustainability should be emphasized by ensuring that many contra-arguments of pollution control also represent moral and thus socially accepted norms. In this way the multifaceted dimensions of sustainability are accepted by avoiding a moral index finger. For all interventions that include environmentally relevant emotions, it is important that they take place in an atmosphere that is free of fear. The theoretical foundation is offered by Rogers’s (1972) construct of genuineness, based on the theories of humanistic psychology. Rogers identified three key conditions: genuineness (the researcher is truly himself or herself and effortlessly incorporates some self-disclosure), the researcher’s unconditional positive regard for the participants, and empathic understanding. Applying these key constructs to the interaction implies that rules of fair communication are intended and realized, such as: hearing a person out without interrupting, trying to understand the other person by listening attentively, avoiding the application of upper-hand strategies, and so on. This promotes interactive justice (Bies & Moag, 1986) and facilitates the successful and sensible modeling of emotions and feelings.
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Emotions and Environment Emotions in the Context of Environmental Conflicts There is another practical implication of the presented findings. As pro-environmental behavior often requires personal restrictions or limitations and as pollution control and sustainability is potentially in competition with other goals that are also morally accepted, social conflicts are likely to occur. The analysis of the involved emotions is the silver bullet for the sustainable settlement of the conflict (Jones & Bodtker, 2001): if norms of justice are transgressed, feelings of outrage or indignation will arise (cf. Montada, 1998). Emotions also play a significant role for the course of the conflict, especially in the course of an escalation of the conflict, since they lead to a restrictive and narrow view of reality. The person’s own perspective on the conflict is seen as the only valid one without thinking of alternatives. Furthermore, emotions motivate behavior. In a siting conflict, for example, various citizens’ initiatives are involved, often fighting for diverging interests (cf. Linnerooth-Bayer & Fitzgerald, 1996). If group members feel outraged about the members of concurrent groups, they will be likely to react aggressively without paying attention to the arguments of the other group. If the other party reacts in an aggressive way (or in a way that is interpreted as aggression), an escalation will likely occur. In this perspective, the analysis of emotions is a good indicator for the virulence of the conflict (Jones, 2006). For conflict resolution, emotions are to be questioned by analyzing the underlying cognitions, interests, values, and motives. The basic concerns come to the surface and the deep structure of the conflict becomes obvious. In this way, emotions no longer stay taboo but are handled constructively, even in the political arena of decision-making, where most fights about ecological interest conflicts are fought. However, the basic attitudes toward emotions, as described in the context of educational interventions, need to be shown and special attentiveness should be paid to psychological mechanisms, such as the use of masked emotions or upper-hand techniques, as well as reactance toward attempts to clarify the deep structure of the conflicts through the analysis of emotions (cf. Montada & Kals, 2007). (p. 142)
Conclusion
In this text environmentally relevant emotions were analyzed theoretically and with regard to their power to predict pro-environmental and environmentally risky behavior. At the end of this text the state of the art is summarized and discussed in the form of questions that remain to be addressed in future research:
What implications does the theoretical discussion of environmentally relevant emotions have for future theory and model building? On a theoretical level, a further validation and development of the classification system is necessary. This should be supplemented by further elaboration of theories that focus on emotion models of environmentally relevant behavior. These models should include pro-environmental as well as environmentally risky behavior, as most parts of research in environmental psychology still refer only to the explanation of pro-environmental behavior. The analysis of environmentally risky behavior is still rare. However, it can be shown that there is a significant overlap between the relevant emotional predictor variables of both behavior categories. The corresponding regression weights of those predictors are reversed (e.g., high affective connection to nature leads to pro-environmental behavior, whereas environmentally risky behavior is based on low emotional affinity), but there are some differences in the relative power of the emotions as was shown by the various forms of indignation. This reflects that for environmentally risky behavior, the acceptance of moral arguments against pollution control or sustainability is especially powerful. People behaving in an environmentally risky way often justify their decisions by pointing to corresponding moral arguments, such as economic welfare or personal rights of freedom, or by endangering the behavior of others who might profit from their own renunciations, provoking “free-riding” (Clayton, 2000; Montada & Kals, 2000). In future theories these varying moral norms and arguments, which are implicitly part of sustainability, should be covered on a cognitive and emotional level. Moreover, theories that focus on environmentally relevant emotions are still missing but would help to analyze the multiple interactions between cognitions and emotions as well as between various forms of emotions in depth: How are moral emotions influenced by nature experiences or affective connection to nature ? Can understanding and empathy for the position of the other parties in ecological conflicts be promoted when interactional justice in the process is experienced? What happens on an emotional level when people empathize with the emotional experiences of the conflict partners (in role-plays, through practical experiences, etc.)? What happens when the
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Emotions and Environment cognitive level is completely left and when emotional work takes place in a situation of environmental conflicts, as in psychological mediation? More elaborate models of the role of emotions in environmentally relevant behavior can also enrich general action models in psychology. Sustainable behavior, with its complex motivations and conditions, is a very interesting and important field that can serve as a blueprint for research in many other fields of human behavior, such as health protection or pro-social behavior. All these fields of applied psychology are confronted with the same question of whether more general or more specific models of behavior should be developed. Using the concept of emotions can help bridge this gap by developing general emotional categories that can be defined and specified according to the necessities of the field. For example, moral emotions, such as indignation about the violation of norms, have been shown to be highly influential predictors of (pro-environmental) behavior, but the norms themselves have to be specified for the relevant context.
Future directions
What future tasks derive from the implications of the findings for practical intervention programs? In the preceding paragraph detailed implications for practical purposes were discussed. Many of them have already been realized. However, up to now only a few approaches have combined responsibility-related approaches with providing experiences with nature (cf. Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989; Lyons & Breakwell, 1994). The majority of educational programs either promote discussions on ecological ethics and norms, or exclusively provides experiences with nature (cf. Kruse & Schwarz, 1988). As a future task, the development and evaluation of integrated intervention programs for children and adults should be explored. Moreover, theoretical analyses and practical interventions should be more strongly related to one another: from theoretical analyses knowledge should be derived and communicated that can be applied directly to practical purposes. People working in the field should in turn use the knowledge and evaluate the effects of their (p. 143) interventions to further validate the underlying theoretical models and their working mechanisms. In this way there might be a mutual fruitful interactive collaboration.
How can different samples and target groups be addressed? What different forms of research approach should be used? The presented data are based mainly on questionnaire studies with representatives of the general population as well as with members of criterion groups for pro-environmental behavior (for example, members of Greenpeace) and for environmentally risky behavior (for example, members of motorsport clubs). Data on decision makers in politics and economics are very rare, and existing research confirms the theoretical and practical difficulties of gathering the data (Niegot, 2003). On a theoretical level, the models need to be adapted to the specific level of decision-making behavior of these target groups; on an empirical level, it is especially difficult to gain the commitment of these mega-actors to fill in questionnaires for scientific purposes, which is also due to their full schedule. These problems get even bigger when the research is focused on emotions. These problems can be diminished by various strategies: the request to participate in the scientific study should be combined with a concrete occasion of environmental issues or conflicts currently debated. This would pave the way for this issue, as personal interests of the target people could be taken into account. If, for example, data are gathered in the context of the psychological mediation of an ecological conflict, data are not of pure scientific interest but can be directly used for resolving the conflict. The fact that decision makers are also willing to talk about their attitudes and emotions might strengthen their public acceptance. Moreover, scientists might think of different forms to measure emotions. Instead of standardized questionnaires, half-structured interviews might be more appropriate. If these interviews are conducted by “high potentials” who have already gained trust in advance, the readiness for the interviews and for open-minded answers will be improved.
How could knowledge from neighboring disciplines be integrated? An important task on the level of political science is to strengthen emotions as a research topic within environmental sciences. Still today there is a dualism between the social and behavioral sciences on the one side and natural-technical sciences on the other. The analysis of emotions is a core issue to demonstrate how important the so-called soft sciences are to understand, and to solve ecological problems and crises by changing human
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Emotions and Environment behavior. Ideally, this should be done in an interdisciplinary research context, including various social sciences as well as technical and economical sciences, commonly directing the target of behavior changes efficiently to the right direction. The neuropsychology of emotions (e.g., LeDoux, 1997) should also contribute to this interdisciplinary research. For example, recent research has confirmed the importance of “mirror neurons,” as nerve cells in the brain activate the same potentials during the passive observation of a process that would also take place when the process would take place actively. In recent years the role of the mirror neuron system was analyzed in a number of experiments in the context of empathy (e.g., Gallesse, 2001; Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2005). It would be interesting to analyze these kinds of processes, for example, in the context of emotional experiences with nature (many parallel neuropsychological processes are evoked, just as during empathetic reactions). In a further step, the role of the mirror neuron system could be analyzed in the process of psychological mediation: What neuropsychological processes take place during what stage of conflict? What specific reactions do role-plays or other instruments evoking empathetic reactions provoke? What is happening on a neuropsychological level, when modeling behavior is observed? It is a long way to go to bring the various approaches to understand emotion development altogether, but it would be a promising future task.
What implications do the findings have on a more general level? In many social contexts, emotions are still taboo or are devaluated as “irrational.” Cognitive emotion models and their empirical confirmation strongly speak against this valuation. However, this valuation is in line with the still dominant rational-choice tradition, whose basic assumption is at the core of the economical sciences and also influences political debates. Discussions on the existence and influence of environmentally relevant emotions could promote the necessary debate on the varying models and the underlying ideas of man. Conversely, this discussion could inspire environmental sciences, embracing social as well as natural-technical sciences, to (p. 144) deepen their knowledge on emotions and to boost corresponding interdisciplinary research.
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Notes: (1.) In this text the opposite of pro-environmental behavior is not called contra-environmental behavior, but this form of behavior is circumscribed (e.g., “behavior that sets the protection of nature at risk”). These behavioral decisions do not intend to set ecological aims at risk, but these risks are more or less consciously accepted as negative side effects of enjoyable or profitable activities. This is the case for private behavior (e.g., car driving) but also for political decision-making or industrial production. Elisabeth Kals Elisabeth Kals Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology The Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt Eichstätt, Germany
Markus M. Müller Markus M. Müller The Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt Eichstätt, Germany
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Place Attachment
Oxford Handbooks Online Place Attachment Kalevi M. Korpela The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0009
Abstract and Keywords The review is focused mostly on the dynamics of place attachment on the individual level and is structured according to the antecedents, development, and consequences of place attachment. It is concluded that dimensional frameworks and models of place attachment provide researchers adequate taxonomies with which they can locate their studies. More studies to verify causal sequences, underlying needs, and processes/dynamics of place attachment are needed. The interplay between automatic affective reactions, self, personality, learning, and culture in place attachment is described but remains a largely open question for future studies. Theories for understanding the development of place attachment include attachment theory, the mere-exposure hypothesis, the theories of self-regulation, privacy and friendship regulation, theories of coping (with developmental tasks and stress), theories of identity development, and self-theories. Evidence for the positive connection between place attachment and conservation behavior is still mixed. Future research to deepen and integrate the theoretical work on place attachment is called for. Keywords: automatic affective reactions, conservation behavior, development of place attachment, dimensional models, self-regulation
Introduction Research on place attachment has been rapidly expanding during the 2000s (Lewicka, 2010). A search in ScienceDirect on October 29, 2010, with “place attachment” in the “title, abstract, or key words” in “journals or books” within psychology, social sciences, arts and humanities, nursing and health professions, environmental science, and decision sciences found 143 articles. These articles were published between 2000 and 2010 and the figure counts 72% of all place attachment articles published between 1993 or earlier and 2010. However, as some mismatches were obviously included in the results, a correct figure from 2000–2010 is approximately 112 articles. As at least 15 review articles published between 1992 and 2010 are within this field (Lewicka, 2010), the current review is not an all-inclusive one but focuses mostly on the dynamics of place attachment (including consequences for conservation behavior) on the individual level. The chapter is structured according to the antecedents, development, and consequences of place attachment, but with a limited amount of accumulated causal knowledge it is difficult to rigorously argue whether different processes or variables are consequences/outcomes, antecedents, or mediating/moderating processes. Measurement methodology is left largely aside in this review (for review, see Lewicka, 2010; see Clayton, this volume, for a review of environmental identity measures).
How Is Place Attachment Defined? The beginning of the study of affective bonds between humans and places has been dated to the (p. 149) 1960s (Giuliani, 2003; Hammitt, Kyle, & Oh, 2009) and in particular to the article by Fried (1963). In 1992, a whole book in
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Place Attachment the series Human Behavior and Environment was dedicated to place attachment (Altman & Low, 1992). It was noted that the scale or scope of environments to which people are attached may vary from microenvironments, such as personal objects, to homes, settings of care, local environments, and larger-scale environments, such as towns or cities. Place attachment has been defined as an integrating concept incorporating several interrelated and inseparable aspects of people-place bonding (Altman & Low, 1992). Affects, emotions, and feelings—both positive and negative—are central to the concept, although often accompanied by cognition and action (or behavioral intention; see Jorgensen & Stedman, 2001). Thus, more specific definitions of place attachment include “a positive affective bond between an individual and a specific place, the main characteristic of which is the tendency of the individual to maintain closeness to such a place” (Hidalgo & Hernández, 2001, p. 274), “affective relationship between people and the landscape that goes beyond cognition, preference or judgment” (Riley, 1992, p. 13), or “a state of psychological well-being experienced by a person as a result of the mere presence, vicinity, or accessibility of the place” (Churchman & Mitrani, 1997; Sharpe & Evert, 2000). The place aspect of attachment includes not only tangible places of different scale but also symbolic or imagined places or objects. Objects may be temporally different: past, present, or future that may appear cyclically as well. In addition to individual attachments, collective, shared group, and cultural place attachments may exist. On the other hand, the object of attachment may not be only the physical environment but also the social relations that a place signifies. Place attachment is also a developing, temporal phenomenon (Altman & Low, 1992). In analogy to place identity literature including place identity and settlement identity (identification with types of settings; Feldman, 1990; Lalli, 1992), a distinction between a place-specific and a conceptual attachment (attachment to a type of landscape rather than to a particular place) has been made (Ryan, 2005). A fact is that a variety of operationalizations of place bonding/attachment have been used, with many concepts used interchangeably (Giuliani, 2003; Hidalgo & Hernández, 2001). To increase integration, however, several dimensional models of place attachment have been presented. For example, the theme of place attachment in the recreation resource management literature is around 20 years old and has been focused on the psychometric scales (for a discussion about several scales, see Giuliani, 2003; Lewicka, 2010) and models for measuring place attachment and the relationship of attachment to recreation behaviors (Hammitt et al., 2009). The first place attachment model used in recreation resource management literature was a two-dimensional model including place identity and place dependence (a functional reliance on a place) (Hammitt et al., 2009). Another two-dimensional model from recent environmental psychological literature suggests place attachment (emotional) and identification with a locally defined group as correlated but distinct dimensions (Rollero & De Piccoli, 2010). Recreation researchers have added dimensions to the model to introduce three-dimensional (place attachment, identity, and dependence), four-dimensional (social bonding, place attachment, identity, and dependence), and fivedimensional (familiarity, belongingness, rootedness, place identity, and dependence) models (Hammitt, Backlund, & Bixler, 2006; Hammitt et al., 2009). Recently, a three-dimensional synthesizing framework of the various definitions of the place attachment concept has been introduced (Scannell & Gifford, 2010a). The framework includes person, psychological process, and place dimensions. The person dimension acknowledges that place attachment occurs at both the individual and the group level. Psychological processes where place attachment occurs involve affect, cognition, and behavior. Place dimension is divided into not only a physical but also a social level, the former including various geographic scales. Moreover, the psychological functions of place attachment (conscious or unconscious motivations to form enduring bonds with places) are listed and include offering survival and security, supporting goal attainment and self-regulation, providing self-continuity, sense of belongingness, sense of identity, and self-esteem. To summarize, it seems that a considerable amount of taxonomical work of the place attachment concept/phenomenon and its relevant dimensions/co-processes has already been carried out (Scannell & Gifford, 2010a; Altman & Low, 1992). It remains to be seen whether such diversity of models means lack of clarity or inadequate theoretical development. For example, on the level of “place research” as a whole, several conceptual origins (social psychology, tourism and recreation studies, consumer research, environmental psychology, (p. 150) phenomenology) and research programs reflecting differing paradigms and worldviews can be discerned, and some regard this situation as a valuable diversity of thought (Patterson & Williams, 2005; Morgan, 2010).
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Place Attachment In the present author’s opinion, dimensional and tripartite frameworks provide researchers taxonomies where they can situate their specific operationalizations and studies. Such a situation warrants effort to deepen the theoretical and empirical work related to the functions and processes/dynamics of place attachment in the future. This may include both quantitative and qualitative approaches. For example, in recreation research, emotional attachments to place have been studied as an antithesis to the commodity or consumer metaphor wherein settings are represented as collections of features, related to psychological experiences, from which an optimal combination for a given clientele could be selected (Brooks, Wallace, & Williams, 2006; Williams, Patterson, Roggenbuck, & Watson, 1992). In contrast, the place attachment or relationship metaphor emphasizes that places may be whole entities and valued in their entirety (Brooks et al., 2006; Williams et al., 1992). Moreover, qualitative researchers argue that the focus on measuring the strength of attachment with scales excludes meanings that people attribute to places and the dynamic processes of developing place relationships (Brooks et al., 2006; Davenport & Anderson, 2004). Thus, in addition to having a structural aspect, psychological processes, such as place attachment, are dynamic. An example of the dynamic nature of place attachments is a potential interplay between experiences of different places: places outside residence may influence the experience of residence (Manzo, 2003). The question of unconscious and conscious identity work through attachments to and relationships with places is a second example of important dynamics (Manzo, 2003). An overwhelmingly important question of why people develop psychological bonds with places has been answered by reflecting on the functions that place attachments serve (Scannell & Gifford, 2010a). The term “functions” of place attachment is somewhat technical because these functions actually represent basic motives, needs, or the guiding principles of human behavior and self-regulation. We now turn to the dynamics of place attachment in the subsequent paragraphs of the antecedent, developmental, and outcome processes of place attachment on the individual level.
Dynamics of Place Attachment An important notion to start with is that physical and social attachments may develop at a different pace (Lewicka, 2010). Concerning physical attachments, it has been theorized that certain environmental features may have a capacity to elicit extremely rapid and automatic emotional responses from a strong preference to the feelings of dislike and fear. Furthermore, these responses may affect the subsequent cognitive appraisal of the environment, physiological responses, and behavior (Parsons, 1991; Ulrich, 1983; Ulrich et al., 1991). Environments indeed do elicit presumably automatic, affective reactions rapidly, in approximately 200 milliseconds. Priming experiments have provided evidence that the perception of physical environments may initiate rapid affective responses that cast their influence upon social perceptions, particularly on the recognition of facial or vocal emotional expressions (Hietanen, Klemettilä, Kettunen, & Korpela, 2007; Hietanen & Korpela, 2004; Korpela, Klemettilä, & Hietanen, 2002). For example, the recognition times of happy faces decreased as the amount of natural elements present in the environmental scenes preceding the picture of the face increased, whereas the recognition times of disgusted faces decreased as the amount of built material present in the environmental scenes increased (Hietanen et al., 2007). Studies on extraordinarily brief glances at novel scenes have shown that participants can classify a scene’s global properties (naturalness, mean depth, temperature, concealment, navigability, transience, or openness) more quickly—at 34 ms on average—than its basic-level category (forest, mountain, desert, lake, ocean, field, or river)—50 ms on average (Greene & Oliva, 2009). More interestingly, the image exposure thresholds (the shortest image exposures required for participants to achieve 75% correct classification of naturalistic scenes) among global properties were the shortest (19 ms) for classifying images according to whether they were natural. Thus, particularly natural and urban environments but also preferred environments within the natural-setting category induce different immediate emotional and physiological reactions in humans. In Dimberg’s (1990) study, subjects spontaneously reacted with increased activity of the facial zygomatic muscle (related to positive affect and smiling) to the 8-second presentations of preferred natural landscape scenes. On average, presentations of much preferred natural landscape scenes evoked more zygomatic activity than activity of the corrugator muscle (related to (p. 151) negative affect and frowning). Moreover, more preferred (spatially open) natural scenes evoked more zygomatic activity than less preferred (spatially enclosed) natural scenes. Noteworthy in the studies of rapid affective responses to environments is that such automatic evaluation of one’s
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Place Attachment own environment may be a pervasive and continuous process in our lives. Arguments exist that this may hold even to such a degree that features of the environment may trigger processes that operate outside of conscious awareness and guidance and may determine a significant portion of our daily emotions, motivations, judgments, and actions (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999). Thus, perception may have automatic effects on action, goal pursuit, and evaluations of one’s experience. Some of the automaticities seem to require no experience, whereas other forms of automatic self-regulation develop out of repeated and consistent experience (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999). Note that this automaticity resembles the suggestion that nature attachment, that is, implicit connections to or identification with nature (measured with a modification of Implicit Association Test) operates outside conscious awareness (Schultz, Shriver, Tabanico, & Khazian, 2004). Similar ideas are seemingly included in the phenomenological descriptions where “body ballets,” that is, continual and continuous movements in space, are thought to produce the sense of existential insideness (a situation involving a spontaneous feeling of attachment, belonging, and at-homeness), which is one of the expressions used in describing place attachment (Buttimer & Seamon, 1980; Lewicka, 2010). Moreover, affective responses to environments are not limited to the first milliseconds or seconds of the encounter. Entering or moving through a place may induce changes in a person’s mood (Staats, Gatersleben, & Hartig, 1997; Kerr & Tacon, 1999) and metamotivational state (serious-playful, planning-spontaneous) (Kerr & Tacon, 1999). After stress manipulation, viewing or visiting natural environments promotes physiological recovery and relaxation evident within 3 to 40 minutes of the start of the exposure (Hartig, Evans, Jamner, Davis, & Gärling, 2003; Ulrich, 1981; Ulrich et al., 1991). This is indexed, for example, by lowered blood pressure, muscle tension, and skin conductance, and increased brain activity in the alpha frequency band (an index of wakeful relaxation); change to positively toned self-reported emotions and recovery of attention-demanding cognitive performances (Parsons, Tassinary, Ulrich, Hebl, & Grossman-Alexander, 1998; Ulrich, 1981; Ulrich et al., 1991). These types of positive psychophysiological changes are called restoration and the environments inducing these changes are called restorative environments (Hartig, Mang, & Evans, 1991; Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989; Ulrich et al., 1991). Perceptions of restorative potential are known to be associated with environmental preference judgments (Nordh, Hartig, Hägerhäll, & Fry, 2009; Pals, Steg, Siero, & van der Zee, 2009; Herzog, Maguire, & Nebel, 2003). Furthermore, recent studies suggest that being outdoors has also vitalizing (a positively toned, energized state) effects (Ryan et al., 2010) as well as positive effects on feelings of personal autonomy and intrinsic aspirations (inherently rewarding psychological needs, such as personal growth or intimacy) (Weinstein, Przybylski, & Ryan, 2009). How do we combine these studies and results to the development of place attachment and place identity? This work remains to be done in future studies in this field. However, we may note that the studies indicating rapid, automatic affective reactions and self-regulation give support to such definitions of place identity that argue that an affective process, that is, place attachment, is implicit or even fundamental in place identity, the development of which requires also conscious, more time-consuming, cognitive identity work (Korpela, 1989). In this interpretation, it is argued that place identity is fundamentally formed by the experiences and cognitions in places that have a role in a person’s emotion and self-regulation. This postulation has a predecessor in Zajonc’s (1980) argument that the initial level of response to environment is affective and that environmental stimuli are evaluated as “positive” or “negative” for the self at a preattentive level. This notion further opens up a connection to self-theories that acknowledge affective processes and preconscious conceptual systems, such as cognitive-experiential selftheory (CEST) (Epstein, 1985, 1991). These theories are described further in the subsequent paragraphs.
What Are the Antecedent Processes of Place Attachment? Aside from socio-demographic (e.g., age, education, home ownership), social (e.g., community ties), and physical (e.g., building density, type of housing, presence of green areas) predictors—extensively described in Lewicka (2010)—at least two major antecedent processes become evident from empirical place attachment studies. The first reflects “the mere-exposure hypothesis” (by exposing (p. 152) an individual to a stimulus/place, a preference for that stimulus will emerge), emphasizing the relationship between the visitation frequency or length of residence and social and physical aspects of place attachment. The second describes the relationship between unconscious, preconscious, or conscious motivations (related to, for example, spiritual and aesthetic values, self, and well-being) and social and physical aspects of place attachment. Regarding the mere-exposure hypothesis, a meta-analysis of 10 recreation studies of the relationship between
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Place Attachment retrospective accounts of past experiences (use history; years of visiting, times of visiting during the past year) of public lands and place attachment, including the dimensions of place identity (affective) and place dependence (functional), showed that the associations were weak to moderate (Backlund & Williams, 2003). The strongest overall association was between place identity and visitation in the past year, r = .25. The study showed that the mere-exposure effect accounts for some variation in the degree of reported affective connection with a place. The associations were very variable; the larger studies with more variation in the variables produced weaker associations (Backlund & Williams, 2003). The direction of causality is not altogether clear, as place attachment might lead people to evaluate their past use history incorrectly. However, evaluations of length of residence (the date of the change of residence is known or easily checked) might not be so prone to such a memory bias (cf. Conway, 1990, pp. 53–60), and these studies also provide some support for the mere-exposure effect. For example, in an Italian study with a two-dimensional model of place attachment, attachment to the residential area was associated with social relationships in the area and participation in local groups, whereas identification with local inhabitants was positively associated with length of residence and negatively with educational level (Rollero & De Piccoli, 2010). Length of residence was also correlated to social relationships in the area, which, in turn, was associated with residential attachment (Rollero & De Piccoli, 2010). An association between the length of residence and identification with the neighborhood was also reported in a French study (Fleury-Bahi, Félonneau, & Marchand, 2008). Length of residence seems to be the strongest predictor of place attachment; however, the increment is not linear but the highest increments of attachment occur in the first years of residence (Lewicka, 2010). Regarding motivations and values, a study on the relationship between landscape values and place attachment showed that the landscape perceptions of spiritual importance, wilderness and attractive scenery, sights, sounds, or smells (aesthetic values) were associated with the place attachment scales of place identity and place dependence (Brown & Raymond, 2007). Moreover, it was observed that aesthetic, recreation, economic, spiritual, and therapeutic landscape values spatially co-located with the respondents’ special places in the region measured by a map-based index. A map-based measure allowed the respondents to identify up to six special places in the region of the study (Brown & Raymond, 2007). In a study with a four-dimensional model of place attachment, motivation to visit a large urban park (to learn, to feel autonomy, to be active, to socialize, to enjoy nature, and to enhance health) was associated with the strength of attachment (Kyle, Mowen, & Tarrant, 2004). More specifically, motivations to enhance health and to feel autonomy were positively associated with place dependence and affective attachment. The motivation to enjoy nature was associated with affective attachment and social bonding. Lastly, the motivation to learn was associated with place identity dimension. In conclusion, length of time or exposure is associated with place attachment only partly (not all dimensions) and not very strongly. Moreover, length of time and related variables do not reveal psychological or other processes taking place during a certain time (cf. Lewicka, 2010). However, the mere-exposure hypothesis may include or subsume automatic processes that were discussed in this chapter earlier. Automatic processes may relate to evolutionary-based inclinations in place perception or place preferences. Evolutionary models of environmental perception postulate that the rapid and automatic processing of environmental features has developed during human evolution in savannah-like natural environments (Ulrich, 1983; Ulrich et al., 1991). More specifically, it is assumed that physical environments include preferenda, that is, gross features of a stimulus array (such as gross structural aspects, depth properties, and classes of content), which are analyzed very rapidly on the basis of crude sensory information in the subcortical structures of the brain (Parsons, 1991; Ulrich, 1983). Whether there are specific structures in the human brain for place preferences remains an interesting, open question (Kim et al., 2010; Epstein, Harris, Stanley, & Kanwisher, 1999). However, motivational processes relating place to self-regulation and identity processes (and thus to personality, learning, and cultural processes) (p. 153) are equally interesting in this respect and they are further discussed in the subsequent paragraphs. The combination of these two lines of research awaits further studies.
How Does Place Attachment Develop? The issue of the development of place identity also seems to be at an early phase of inquiry, subsuming several different conceptualizations and awaiting an organizing theory or framework.
Interplay Between Social and Physical Attachments
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Place Attachment First, Morgan (2010) provides a review of attachment theory in developmental psychology to understand the emergence of (physical) place attachment in childhood. He proposes a model where place attachment arises from an interactional sequence of attachment and affiliation to a human attachment figure, which enables a child to explore and be fascinated by the physical environment and place. When place interactions stop producing the sense of mastery, adventure, and pleasure and produce pain or anxiety, the child seeks proximity to and comfort from the attachment figure. After emotional arousal is safely regulated and the sense of connectedness regained, the child is again drawn by environmental cues to explore the outer world. However, the model actually does not specify how attachment to place is generated. For example, is the sense of attachment to a human figure somehow transferred, generalized to a physical place (as in learning), or do the experiences of mastery and pleasure in the place suffice to create attachment toward a certain place? The results of an interview study with seven adults suggest that the latter might hold: the repeated enactments of arousal, interaction, and pleasure within the place seem to generate an internal working model of the child’s relationship with the environment. Furthermore, it is suggested that the soothing and restorative environmental qualities are analogous to the soothing effect of human caregiving (Morgan, 2010). The model seems to be in agreement with the mere-exposure hypothesis (by exposing an individual to a stimulus [place], a preference for that stimulus will emerge), which accounts for some variation in the degree of reported affective connection with a place (Backlund & Williams, 2003). Second, the role of social development and the interplay between physical and social attachments is an underinvestigated issue. A longitudinal study by Elder, King, and Conger (1996) on pupils in the 8th and 11th grades in rural Iowa is interesting with respect to this interplay of social ties and place attachments (in the form of migration plans). Adolescents who were not doing well in school and saw little prospect for college were inclined to favor a future adult residence near to parents, kin, and local community. Strong educational prospects, lack of socioeconomic opportunity, and relatively weak and declining ties to parents, kin, and religion were sources of a declining preference for living near family and in the local community. The study demonstrates that place attachment and place disruptions depend on life stage and require life course studies. Among adults, it seems that the physical setting and landscape features are also an important source of place meaning and attachment in the first encounters of a place, at least for vacation destinations of scenic beauty. This meaning does not disappear or become less important over time but other meanings, especially social and emotional, become added to the experience “transforming attraction to attachment” (Smaldone, Harris, & Sanyal, 2008). It is also possible that the basis of place attachment changes from physical to social over time or the meanings are simply added to an ever-richer conceptual structure but the salience of meanings may change. During old age, when remembering and organizing one’s life course becomes an increasingly important developmental task, place memories and attachments may foster the identity work and sense of continuity; attachments to a current place may also be a way of retaining positive self-image (Rubinstein & Parmelee, 1992). Third, from the perspective of children’s place preferences it has been theorized that the development of these preferences is tied to the development of self-identity, needs of privacy, and social affiliations (Chawla, 1992; Korpela, 2002). For example, middle childhood, ages 6 to 11, is characterized by expansive local exploration, cooperation with others in exploring and in games, self-identity determined by one’s physical strength and dexterity, and the creation of playhouses and forts in the nearby environment. After this expansive engagement with the local landscape in the company of same-sex friends, there comes a period of forming new mixed-sex groups and turning to the privacy of home or to more distant commercial or downtown settings in adolescence, ages 12 to 17. Place preferences during childhood and adolescence are assumed to provide support for the developing self-identity, the need for security, social attachments to caregivers and to the peer group, and the practice of (p. 154) social roles. Regarding social attachments, the concept of children’s friendship with place and its development has been introduced (Chatterjee, 2005). Children’s conceptions of friendship are assumed to develop from momentary physical interaction (ages 3 to 7) to autonomous interdependence (12 years to adult). It is proposed that child-friendly places could be evaluated with the essential elements (including mutual affection, shared activities, commitment, loyalty, self-disclosure, and horizontality) within these phases of friendship development, but whether children themselves select or evaluate places—consciously or preconsciously— according to such developmental criteria and phases remains an open question for further study.
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Place Attachment Interplay Between Self-Regulation and Place Attachment Studies by Silbereisen, Noack, and Eyferth (1986); Noack and Silbereisen (1988); and Silbereisen and Noack (1988), in Berlin, Germany, were probably the first to adopt a self-regulative view of place selection. They consider individual development as action in context and suggest that adolescents regulate their own development by selecting and shaping appropriate outer contexts. For example, leisure time place preferences can be seen as one strategy of coping with developmental tasks such as forming a personal identity or peer-group relations. Self-regulation in the “environmental self-regulation hypothesis” implies that the psychological influences of any external factor, such as sensory stimuli, visceral processes, or social norms, are processed according to an individual’s conscious or unconscious mental activity that follows certain basic principles of motivation (Korpela, 1989). Cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST; Epstein, 1985, 1991) describes the principles of self-regulation that have been applied to place identity and place attachment (Korpela, 1989). The principles are basically similar in many theories of identity and self (see Breakwell, 1986; Clayton, this volume; S. Taylor, 1991; Tesser, 1986), and these other theories have also been used in relating place and identity processes (Twigger-Ross & Uzzell, 1996). The principles of CEST correspond to psychoanalytic, learning, and phenomenological theories and integrate them (Epstein, 1983, 1985). The first principle is the “need to maximize the pleasure/pain balance,” which corresponds to the pleasure principle in Freudian theory and to the principle of reinforcement in learning theory. The second principle is the “need to assimilate the data of reality into a coherent conceptual system and to maintain this system,” that is, the unity principle, put forward by phenomenological personality theorists. The third principle is the “need to maintain a favorable level of self-esteem,” which is derived from the pleasure principle, and becomes important once a self-theory has been formulated. Thus, the pleasure principle in the form of regulating sensory pleasure and pain is dominant first and foremost in early childhood. The fourth principle is the “need to maintain relatedness,” that is, favorable relationships with significant others (Epstein, 1991). The principles are assumed to overlap and interact with one another. Thus, the four functions are all of central importance, and any one of them may have a dominant effect in a person’s self-theory, that is, self-experience, depending on the individual and circumstances. Thus, behavior is always viewed as a compromise among the four basic functions (Epstein, 1985). These principles can be related to place attachment when assuming that self-regulation proceeds with the application of mental, physical, social, and environmental strategies (Korpela, 1989, 1992). Environmental strategies of self- and emotion-regulation imply interaction with the environment, and involve the unconscious, preconscious, or sometimes conscious use of places and place cognitions and affects in the service of regulation. Self- and emotion-regulation enable an individual to function adaptively in situations that are, for example, emotionally arousing (Dodge & Garber, 1991). The concepts of self- and emotion-regulation are neutral and not synonyms for the concept of control, suppression, or elimination but can refer to remediation, enhancement. or maintenance as well (Izard & Kobak, 1991). CEST also postulates that human beings construct a personal theory of themselves and of the world that exists at a preconscious level of awareness and directs behavior. There are three conceptual systems: rational, experiential, and associationistic (Epstein, 1991). A personal theory of self and reality is governed by the experiential system at the preconscious level of awareness. The experiential conceptual system is closely related to emotional experience and could also be called the affective conceptual system (Epstein, 1983). Whereas the rational system operates primarily according to the conventional rules of logic, analysis, and external evidence, the experiential system is concerned primarily with feelings and personal welfare. The associationistic conceptual system operates according to associationistic thinking, wishful thinking, concrete (p. 155) visual imagery or metaphors, displacement, condensation, and lack of consideration of the constraints of time and place. Note the similarity of CEST’s conceptual systems at varying levels of awareness with the automatic, affective processes and Zajonc’s position on immediate responding to environments. In the self-regulation view, place identity is fundamentally formed by the experiences and cognitions in places that have a role in a person’s emotion and self-regulation. Thus, place attachment is implicit in place identity (Korpela, 1989, 1992). Attachments are formed to places that fulfill people’s emotional needs and enable them to maintain and develop their identities. The principles of self-regulation suggest that in this effort humans strive for cognitive integration and consistency, anxiety reduction, and self-esteem maintenance, and they use places to achieve these goals (cf. Proshansky, Fabian, & Kaminoff, 1983; Korpela, 2002). To begin with, cross-sectional self-report studies do indicate that favorite nearby places provide restorative, stress-alleviating experiences, such as relaxation, decrease in negative
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Place Attachment feelings and increase in positive ones, and forgetting worries, and that people visit these places for the regulation of their self-experience and feelings (see Evans, Owens, & Marsh, 2005; Gross & Lane, 2007; Gulwadi, 2006; Jorgensen, Hitchmough & Dunnett, 2007; Knez, 2006; Korpela, 1992; Korpela & Hartig, 1996; Korpela, Hartig, Kaiser, & Fuhrer, 2001; Mason et al., 2010; Mason & Korpela, 2009; Newell, 1997; Regan & Horn, 2005; Smaldone et al., 2005). In line with this argument is also the finding that among 162 relatively distinct affect-regulation strategies, “going to a favorite place” is included (Parkinson & Totterdell, 1999). More specifically and regarding the early development of attachment and self-regulation within places, adults and children provide converging self-report evidence that emotion-regulation and self-regulation do occur in the favorite places of childhood. Studies of adults’ memories of childhood favorite places (Cooper Marcus, 1978; Hester, 1979; Sobel, 1990) indicate that they provided feelings of security, privacy, and control. The need to be alone, the importance of hiding places, and the need to escape from social demands are commonly reported in these studies. Findings from studies with children and adolescents corroborate the significance of both solitary places and social places (Abbott-Chapman & Robertson, 2001, 2009; Owens, 1988, 1994; Sobel, 1990). Moreover, an observational study with children ages 2 months to 11 years showed that nearly half of the children used (often solitary) informal retreat places in family care homes (Weinberger, 2006). Retreats were places where a child spontaneously chose to go to pull away from the activity of the group. Children observed to be in a negative mood were likely to be involved in passive behaviors (watching others, crying, cuddling comfort objects) during their retreat. Thurber and Malinowski’s (1999) study showed how emotional experiences and individual differences related to emotion may be responsible for differences in children’s place selections and use. They found that 8- to 16-year-old boys with higher levels of negative emotion were more likely to favor places where they could be alone in a residential summer camp, whereas happier boys favored places where they could socialize. Boys with higher levels of negative emotion also were more likely to visit new places at camp than their less distressed peers. As a particular aspect of self-regulation, restorative experience commonly appears in studies based on children’s accounts. For example, 9- and 12-year-old children described their favorite places as providing opportunities not only to enjoy many activities and play but also to clear their minds, relax, and pour out troubles (Korpela, 1989; Spencer & Woolley, 2000). For the 11- to 17-year-olds studied by Sommer (1990), favorite places provided relief from daily hassles and evoked feelings of well-being and peace. The 14- to 18-year-olds studied by Owens (1988) regarded natural settings as one of the best types of place to go for feeling better and getting things in perspective. A study on 13- to 20-year-olds again showed that natural environments provide important settings for recreation, restoration, and socializing (Owens & McKinnon, 2009). In a study of Finnish children aged 8–9 or 12–13, over half (55%) of the children appeared to use their favorite places for cognitive restoration, reporting a desire to pour out troubles, reflect on personal matters, clear one’s mind, and feel free and relaxed in the favorite place (Korpela, Kyttä, & Hartig, 2002). One-third of the children reported using their favorite places for emotion-regulation, reporting visiting the favorite place after setbacks, disappointments, and feeling down and lonely. Cross-sectional studies have shown mixed results concerning the relationship between childhood experiences and later experiences and use of woodlands. Childhood experiences may include therapeutic and restorative experiences but also scary experiences leading to the avoidance of woodland spaces (Milligan & Bingley, 2007). On the other hand, childhood involvement (p. 156) with the natural environment is related to pro-environmental attitudes (Wells & Lekies, 2006) and to frequent use and comfortable feelings in woodlands (Bixler, Floyd, & Hammitt, 2002; Ward Thompson, Aspinall, & Montarzino, 2008). Among adults’ favorite places, everyday natural settings, such as parks, beaches, or forests, have constituted the largest category (50%–63%) in the studies from Finland, Ireland, Senegal, the United States, and the United Kingdom (Evans et al., 2005; Gross & Lane, 2007; Gulwadi, 2006; Jorgensen et al., 2007; Korpela, 1992; Korpela & Hartig, 1996; Korpela et al., 2001; Newell, 1997; Regan & Horn, 2005; Smaldone et al., 2005). Providing evidence for environmental self-regulation hypothesis, attachment toward favorite places (measured by a two-item scale) was very strong, and favorite place preferences were not momentary choices but showed stability over a 10month period in a Finnish follow-up study with adults (Korpela, Ylén, Tyrväinen, & Silvennoinen, 2008). Restorative outcomes, that is, being relaxed, forgetting worries, and contemplation, have characterized visits to natural favorite places in particular (Korpela et al., 2001). Adults with high negative moods are more likely than low negative mood scorers to choose natural favorite places than other favorite places, such as sports, commercial, or community service settings (Korpela, 2003). Moreover, adults with a certain number of health complaints are more likely than few-complaint scorers to choose natural favorite places in the vicinity than to choose other favorite
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Place Attachment places, such as sports, commercial, or community service settings (Korpela & Ylén, 2007). More important and indicating self-regulation is the fact that they also benefited more in emotional terms from their visits than did those with few complaints. Furthermore, a controlled, prospective field experiment showed that there is a kind of doseresponse relation between the frequency of visiting a favorite place and restorative experiences (Korpela & Ylén, 2009). Thus, the increase in the frequency of favorite place visits during five days increased the strength of restorative, stress-alleviating experiences.
What Are the Consequences of Place Attachment? Consequences to Ecological and Conservation Behavior Place identity and place dependence, while moderately and positively correlated, had different psychological properties and different effects on evaluations of social and environmental conditions (e.g., trail development, use impact, depreciative behavior, perceived crowding, use conflict, and development encroachment) encountered along a nature trail (Kyle, Graefe, Manning, & Bacon, 2004). The results showed that as respondents’ scores on the place identity dimension increased, they were more inclined to perceive the condition encountered as problematic (e.g., “trail too developed,” “too many other hikers,” “conflict between different types of visitors”). The opposite pattern of relations was observed for place dependence. Studies on place attachment’s association with environmentally responsible attitudes and behavior have reported mixed results. For example, place identity as an emotional affinity to a locale was positively associated with the environmental attitudes of accepting the fragility of the balance between humans and nature in a study with Indian 16- to 60-year-old respondents (Budruk, Thomas, & Tyrrell, 2009). Place identity was also associated with weaker support for the notion of the dominant role of humans in nature. In turn, place dependence as a functional need for a specific place to recreate was not associated with these attitudes. Such results raise questions for future studies about the relationship between personality characteristics and attachments. For example, might the relationship between emotional sensibility to places and environmental attitudes be associated with a third variable—a more open and sensitive attitude toward everything? To date, it is not known, for example, whether both measures tap the personality trait called openness in the Big Five factor model of personality (Heine & Buchtel, 2009; McCrae & Costa, 1987). In a study with 14- to 17-year-old adolescents, it was noted that individuals with a high functional dependence on the local natural resource area (where they participated in a natural-resource-based work program) were more likely to identify emotionally with the setting (place identity) and as place identity increased, general (e.g., talking with others about environmental issues) and specific (e.g., joined in community cleanup efforts) pro-environmental behavior increased (Vaske & Kobrin, 2001). Thus, affective place identity fully mediated the relationship between place dependence and pro-environment behaviors. In a study of property owners in the United States, place identity was positively associated with intention and willingness to engage in behaviors that maintain or enhance the valued attributes of the local setting (Stedman, 2002). (p. 157) In contrast, some studies have found both positive and negative or no associations between place attachment and ecological attitudes. A study of two British neighborhoods found out that in one, both place identification and social cohesion contributed positively to place-related social identity, which, in turn, was positively related to attitudes and behaviors in respect of environmental sustainability, such as ecological considerations in the purchase of products. However, in the other neighborhood, place-related social identity was weakly and negatively associated with environmental sustainability, suggesting different kinds of collective social processes underlying environmental attitudes and behaviors than in the first neighborhood (Uzzell, Pol, & Badenas, 2002). In a similar fashion, a study of residents in two Welsh coastal towns indicated that public responses to offshore wind farms were different in these two towns (Devine-Wright & Howes, 2010). Particularly, trust in the key actors (developer and the opposition group) moderated the relationship between place attachment and project acceptance. For those individuals with a high level of trust in the opposition group, place attachment was negatively related to support for the wind farm (on attitudinal, emotional, and behavioral levels), whereas for those with a low level of trust, there was no relationship. In addition to mixed results concerning the direction of the relationship, studies on the relationship between proenvironmental behavior and emotional attachments have brought up an interesting difference between the
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Place Attachment level/scale of the attachment object: a difference between attachment to a particular place and attachment or connectedness to nature (Gosling & Williams, 2010). Results of a survey among Australian farmers showed that on-farm vegetation protection behaviors (e.g., planting of native trees to improve degraded areas) were positively correlated to connectedness to nature but not to place attachment (to a person’s own farm). The relationship between connectedness to nature and protection behaviors was mediated by the importance given to the environmental benefits of vegetation management, such as the protection of native birds or contributing to the health of the landscape (Gosling & Williams, 2010). Measures of “environmental identity,” which also refer to the level of nature in general (incorporating emotional association and identity with nature, importance of nature, the extent of interactions with nature), not specific places, have had significant positive correlation to environmentally protective behavior (e.g., donating to environmental organizations, turning off lights) and to support for providing rights to animals and to the environment in general (Clayton & Myers, 2009; Clayton, this volume). Similarly, Schultz’s (2001) Inclusion of Nature in Self (INS) scale was quite highly (r = .43) correlated with the frequency of self-reported pro-environmental behavior, such as recycling newspaper or purchasing products in a reusable or recyclable container, among US undergraduates. In a similar sample population, a moderate positive relationship between biospheric concerns and implicit connections with nature, and a negative relationship between implicit connections with nature and egoistic concerns was found (Schultz et al., 2004). An on-site survey study with 20- to 71-year-old Canadian residents from two towns showed that attachment to the natural aspects of the local area was a significant unique predictor of pro-environmental behavior when controlling for the town of study, length of residence, gender, education, and age. In contrast, attachment to the socialsymbolic (civic) elements of the place was not a significant predictor of pro-environmental behavior once the other variables were taken into account (Scannell & Gifford, 2010b). Echoing the nature versus civic distinction, DevineWright and Howes (2010) found that natural places interpreted as psychologically restorative were most likely to be defended by the strongly attached local residents. The above-mentioned inconsistencies in the results may also partly reflect the current methodological problems in measuring emotional attachments to place with questionnaires. Namely, Perrin and Benassi (2009) reported on the basis of a series of studies that rather than measuring emotional connections, the connectedness to nature scale (Mayer & Frantz, 2004) measures cognitive beliefs about a person’s connection to nature.
Consequences of Place Attachment in the Disruptions in Place Relationships When discussing the behavioral consequences of disruptions in place relationships, it is again difficult to argue whether we address consequences/outcomes, antecedents, or mediating/moderating processes. In the context of migration it has been proposed that the mediating processes that impact place attachment and place identity in the transition from home to university during the first year might include place significance, the occurrence and extent of social relationships, the sense of dislocation (e.g., place alienation), a person’s experience of continuity across time and situation, and proximity to home (p. 158) (Chow & Healey, 2008; cf. Schultz, Scopelliti, & Tiberio, 2010). Anecdotal evidence of refugees to Cyprus who have faced an involuntary relocation shows that place attachment may be a long-lasting memory (e.g., an image of an ideal home) that is continually kept or “cherished” even in a new settlement (Boğaç, 2009). Providing adequate housing may not alleviate the feelings of loss and alienation. This result of a “cherished image” is interestingly related to Korpela’s (1992) study of 17- to 18-year-old Finnish adolescents and Wölfing’s (1996) study of adult immigrants to Germany, which indicated that humanization (the act of ascribing humanlike attributes to a place, such as “an understanding listener”) and control of a place are important aspects of the experience of a favorite place. The feeling of control and the humanization of the place can be interpreted as functional temporary illusions, the maintenance of which guarantees that recovery from personal setbacks can happen in a favorite place. This interpretation is based on Taylor’s (1983) theory of cognitive adaptation to threatening events. It holds that when individuals experience personal setbacks, they search for meaning in the experience, try to regain mastery over the event, and try to restore self-esteem. Succeeding in this depends on the ability to form and maintain a set of illusions, that is, overly positive selfevaluations, exaggerated perceptions of control or mastery, and unrealistic optimism. Illusions have functional significance in contributing to maintaining the self as a highly organized system, producing behavioral persistence, and promoting psychological well-being (Greenwald, 1981; Taylor & Brown, 1994; for a discussion about the role of positive illusions in mental health, see also Block & Colvin, 1994; Colvin & Block, 1994). Thus, place attachment may also include illusory aspects (cf. Epstein’s [1991] associationistic conceptual system) that help to create or
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Place Attachment maintain self and well-being in the disruptions of place relationships and attachment. Somewhat in contrast to the above mentioned study by Boğaç (2009) (refugees having difficulty in giving up a cherished memory, resulting in alienation in the new settlement), a study of young (11- to 19-year-old) refugees to Australia found that an individual’s active efforts toward place-making may provide therapeutic benefits and enhance becoming at home in a new country (Sampson & Gifford, 2010). Understanding such mixed results (the feelings of alienation, not giving up cherished memories vs. active place-making providing therapeutic benefits) requires further theoretical thinking in this area and may involve understanding the regularities in emotional reactions to negative and positive events. For example, there is evidence for the mobilization-minimization hypothesis assuming that adverse or threatening events evoke strong and rapid physiological, cognitive, emotional, and social responses (Taylor, 1991). Negative events elicit more causal attributional activity than positive events (Bohner, Bless, Schwarz, & Strack, 1988). People are also inclined to assume responsibility for positive outcomes but avoid it for failure, although sex, self-esteem, and achievement motivation affect this tendency (Zuckerman, 1979). The mobilization of the organism is followed by physiological, cognitive, and behavioral responses that minimize and even erase the impact of that event (Taylor, 1991). For example, the opponent-process theory of Solomon and Corbit (1974) holds that emotional states are automatically opposed by offsetting responses that reduce the intensity of the original emotional experience. Taylor (1991) assumed that the pattern of mobilization and minimization is greater for negative events than for neutral or positive events. The question of how such regularities of emotional and cognitive (attributional) processes affect place attachment and place identity cognitions poses an interesting challenge for future studies.
Conclusion In brief, dimensional frameworks and models of place attachment provide researchers adequate taxonomies with which they can locate their specific operationalizations and studies. We need more studies to verify causal sequences, underlying needs, and processes/dynamics of place attachment, and we need more evidence to be able to differentiate between consequences/outcomes, antecedents, and mediating/moderating processes. Noteworthy in the studies of rapid affective responses to environments is that such automatic evaluation of one’s own environment may be a pervasive and continuous process in our lives. Such processes in future theories of place attachment have to be acknowledged. Automatic inclinations may be the first phase in our reactions to places but how self, personality, learning, and culture play upon these inclinations is a largely open question. The development of place attachment includes a complex interplay of automatic processes, social influence, individual and collective values and meanings, needs, and personality characteristics. To capture these developmental issues, several theoretical starting points are already available including (p. 159) general attachment theory; the mere-exposure hypothesis; theories of self-, privacy, and friendship regulation; theories of coping (with developmental tasks and stress); theories of identity development; and self-theories. Evidence for the positive connection between place attachment and conservation behavior is still mixed and we cannot be sure whether place attachment affects pro-environmental behavior or vice versa. Moreover, the scale of the object of attachment may be crucial, and from a psychological perspective there is little research on attachment to the globe or biosphere level. In this regard, studies on environmental attitudes (and their biases) might prove a fruitful direction of study (see Gifford et al., 2009). Disruptions of place bonds and relationships may be one window to further studies on coping with threatening events and the use of places and place attachment in the service of this coping.
Future Directions The current situation warrants efforts to deepen the theoretical and empirical work in at least three directions. First, integrative work—even speculative to start with—bringing together theories and results from several areas of psychology, such as emotion, developmental, and personality psychology, with place research would be fruitful. For example, how do we connect place attachment to theories of affect and emotion (including automatic responses to the environment) and how do rational, experiential, and associationistic conceptual systems (described by CEST) operate in place attachment? How do attachments to different places influence one another? What views of personality functioning are included in the lists of the functions of place attachment? Why does the
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Place Attachment human psyche develop attachments in the first place? Second, questions concerning the role of pleasure and human attachment figures wait for further study. For example, what is it that provides pleasure in the place? Why do experiences of pleasure create attachment and not just the sense of security or familiarity? What creates arousal and motivates a child to seek pleasure in places and what is the role of human attachment figures in this? Is place attachment a substitute for the lack of human attachment? Third, the development of place attachment in different types of places deserves further study. For example, does place attachment grow and develop on the basis of restorative, vitalizing, or autonomy-enhancing experiences in personally important places? Do natural settings provide a different basis for place attachment than built environments (cf. Scopelliti & Giuliani, 2004)? Does the basis of place attachment change from physical to social over time or vice versa? What is the interplay between aesthetic, cognitive, emotional, and social needs in the development of place preferences and place attachment? Questions abound but the door to a deeper understanding about place attachment is invitingly open.
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Place Attachment pleasure on a simulated forest hike. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 17, 283–300. Stedman, R. C. (2002). Toward a social psychology of place: Predicting behavior from place-based cognitions, attitude, and identity. Environment and Behavior, 34, 561–581. Taylor, S. E. (1983). Adjustment to threatening events: A theory of cognitive adaptation. American Psychologist, 38, 1161–1173. Taylor, S. E. (1991). Asymmetrical effects of positive and negative events: The mobilization-minimization hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 67–85. Taylor, S. E. & Brown, J. D. (1994). Positive illusions and well-being revisited: Separating fact from fiction. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 21–27. Tesser, A. (1986). Some effects of self-evaluation maintenance on cognition and action. In R. M. Sorrentino & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behaviour (pp. 435–464). Chicester, UK: John Wiley & Sons. Thurber, C. A., & Malinowski, J. C. (1999). Environmental correlates of negative emotions in children. Environment and Behavior, 31, 487–513. Twigger-Ross, C., & Uzzell, D. L. (1996). Place and identity processes. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 16, 139–169. Ulrich, R. S. (1981). Natural versus urban scenes: Some psychophysiological effects. Environment and Behavior, 13, 523–556. Ulrich, R. S. (1983). Aesthetic and affective response to natural environment. In I. Altman & J. F. Wohlwill (Eds.), Human behavior and environment: Advances in theory and research, Vol. 6: Behavior and the natural environment (pp. 85–125). New York: Plenum Press. Ulrich, R. S., Simons, R. F., Losito, B. D., Fiorito, E., Miles, M. A., & Zelson, M. (1991). Stress recovery during exposure to natural and urban environments. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 11, 201–230. Uzzell, D., Pol, E., & Badenas, D. (2002). Place identification, social cohesion, and environmental sustainability. Environment and Behavior, 34, 26–53. Vaske, J. J., & Kobrin, K. C. (2001). Place attachment and environmentally responsible behavior. The Journal of Environmental Education, 32, 16–21. Ward Thompson, C., Aspinall, P., & Montarzino, A. (2008). The childhood factor: Adult visits to green places and the significance of childhood experience. Environment and Behavior, 40, 111–143. Weinberger, N. (2006). Children’s use of retreats in family child care homes. Early Education and Development, 17, 571–591. (p. 163) Weinstein, N., Przybylski, A. K., & Ryan, R. M. (2009). Can nature make us more caring? Effects of immersion in nature on intrinsic aspirations and generosity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 1315– 1329. Wells, N. M., & Lekies, K. S. (2006). Nature and the life course: Pathways from childhood nature experiences to adult environmentalism. Children, Youth, and Environments, 16, 1–24. Williams, D. R., Patterson, M. E., Roggenbuck, J. W., & Watson, A. E. (1992). Beyond the commodity metaphor: Examining emotional and symbolic attachment to place. Leisure Sciences, 14, 29–46. Wölfing, S. (1996). The use of identity-relevant functions of things and places in the context of migration. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 55, 241–248. Zajonc, R. B. (1980). Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences. American Psychologist, 35, 151–175.
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Place Attachment Zuckerman, M. (1979). Attribution of success and failure revisited, or: The motivational bias is alive and well in attribution theory. Journal of Personality, 47, 245–287. Kalevi M. Korpela Kalevi M. Korpela School of Social Sciences and Humanities University of Tampere Tampere, Finland
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Environment and Identity
Oxford Handbooks Online Environment and Identity Susan D. Clayton The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0010
Abstract and Keywords Identity is a core psychological construct: a way of describing an individual that locates him or her within a social and political context. It has become an increasingly prominent topic in psychology, and one with clear relevance to environmental attitudes and behaviors. But definitions of identity and of the role of the natural environment in identity remain imprecise, just as attempts to include measures of identity in environmental research have proliferated. This chapter will discuss the psychological construct of identity and describe how it is relevant to the natural environment. I review research that has directly or indirectly addressed environmental identity, and that has shown the importance of identity in predicting behavior. I conclude with a call for further research that is clearly grounded in theory about identity, as well as research on the ways in which societies and environments can facilitate a strong environmental identity. Keywords: identity, self, environmental attitudes, ideology, behavior, measurement, values
Environment and Identity Identity is a prominent and growing topic in psychology. Key developments since 2000 include the Handbook of Self and Identity (Leary & Tangney, 2005), the Handbook of Identity Theory and Research (Schwartz, Luyckx, & Vignoles 2011), and the journal Self and Identity, which was first published in 2002. The concept of identity has been utilized in psychological research to inform topics from race and gender, morality, development, and social groups, to less obvious areas such as leadership, organizations, economics, and foreign policy; this doesn’t even take into account much related work in sociology, philosophy, and political theory. Within a focus on the natural environment, we see reference to “environmental identity” (Clayton & Opotow, 2003; Weigert, 1997); “ecological identity” (Thomashow, 1995); “environmental self” (Cantrill, 1998); “environment identity” (Stets & Biga, 2003); and “ecological self” (Bragg, 1996; Naess, 1989). At this writing, a keyword search for “identity”—though by no means exhaustive—turned up 44 articles in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, all since 1996. The journal Environment and Behavior has a longer but less comprehensive history, with 34 articles that reference identity, of which only 5 were published before 1990. (The earliest, notably, was by Harold Proshansky, one of the first people to study place identity.) Clearly, identity is both an important psychological construct and one that is increasingly recognized as relevant to environmental issues. This chapter will not try to impose uniformity on such a diverse and evolving topic, nor attempt a comprehensive review of all relevant literature. Rather, by reviewing the literature and focusing primarily on work within psychology, it will address several intertwined questions: What is identity, particularly as it pertains to the environment, and how can environmental identity be measured? Why does it merit our attention—how does it impact (p. 165) experience as well as behavior directed at environmental protection and conservation? Throughout, how does an environmental identity fit into a social context? I begin by discussing the construct of
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Environment and Identity identity in general, the sources of identity, and its psychological significance. I then describe the role of natural environments in identity and examine some ways of measuring this environmental component to identity. Finally, I review some of the research suggesting the relevance of identity for understanding environmental behavior. I close with a suggestion for future research directions.
Identity Some of the earliest work in psychology focused on the self, including work by William James, early social psychology by George Herbert Mead and Charles Horton Cooley, and more psychodynamically oriented explorations of the topic by writers such as Albert Adler and Erik Erikson. Although the behaviorist revolution eschewed a focus on such abstract and ill-defined topics as the self, the limitations of the behavioral approach quickly became clear and psychologists turned their attention again to cognition, emotion, and finally identity. That identity emerged as an important topic reflects its central role in the way humans process and respond to external stimuli. Fundamentally, a discussion of identity is required by the recognition of the importance of the individual: people are not passive recipients of experience, but active constructors of that experience. When we start to think about what it is that selects and interprets information and constructs a narrative about experience, in ways that result in different narratives for different individuals, we open the door for discussions of identity. Identity is fundamentally a way of defining, describing, and locating oneself. There are many possible definitions that can be generated, and most theorists would agree that people have multiple identities, which can vary in salience and significance over a lifetime and across different social contexts. McGuire (1984), for example, found evidence that the salience of one’s own gender was greater when it was a distinguishing characteristic. An identity can be generated from within, when people choose their own labels, but it can also be imposed by others. An internal or self-generated identity, one that represents the way in which one represents oneself, to oneself, is a self-concept or sense of self. An identity is not just a self-concept, however, but also a label that locates a person within a broader social context. Societies have certain semi-fixed categories and emphases that serve to highlight particular identities for their members. One’s position in regard to the natural environment and environmental issues, for example, is more relevant to society than it was a few decades ago. The dividing line between an internal and an external source of identity is not firm. Internal identities that are selfconsciously adopted by a person are likely to have an effect on the way in which he or she is perceived by the rest of society, and external labels that are imposed by society, even when they are not freely chosen by the individual, will probably affect that person’s self-perception. Attributes that are considered to be important by a society, such as gender and some ethnicities, are more likely to form the basis for an enduring identity than ones that are not particularly relevant to a culture, such as eye color and handedness. The impact of societal stereotypes on people’s sense of themselves has been demonstrated by a wide body of work on self-fulfilling prophecies (Snyder & Swann, 1978) and stereotype threat (Steele, 1997). People who are stereotyped as “flaky environmentalists” may develop attitudes and behaviors that are consistent with that identity. Alternatively, people whose identities are thought to be anti-environmental, such as industrialists and members of the Republican Party, may begin to act in more environmentally unsustainable ways to uphold the norms they associate with those identities. Identities are acquired over time (Ryan & Deci, 2003) and within particular sociopolitical contexts, as people develop a sense of how they fit into a particular place and time. Social contexts affect identities in several ways. One is by making certain attributes more salient and giving them specific significance. Cultures vary in the way they highlight specific attributes; for example, the importance of religious affiliation is far greater in some societies than in others, and although gender is important in every society, its specific implications vary widely across time and culture. A second impact of social context is the extent to which identities are fixed or fluid. In Western society today, people have far more choice in identities than they used to, with greater flexibility in geographical location, religious affiliation, political ideology, occupational identity, and even gender identity than was typical a century ago. This flexibility makes identities more responsive to political events, and more reflective of personal preferences, blurring the line between personal and social. Although some identities, such as ethnicity and gender, are (p. 166) still imposed, people are strongly defined by identities they choose, such as those based in political
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Environment and Identity affiliation and occupation. Even the ways in which people define ethnic and gender identity, and the importance of those identities, are subject to individual preferences, which has opened the door to a wide body of research on individual differences (e.g., Bem, 1981; Helms, 1990). Identities describe not only personal attributes, but also connections and groupings: who we are like and unlike, and who we are tied to. A third impact of context is found in cultural differences in the extent to which one thinks of oneself as separate from, or connected to, others. Theorists have argued that some cultures are more collectivistic, stressing an interdependent conception of the self that emphasizes connections between individuals, with associated role demands and responsibilities; other cultures are more individualistic, stressing a more independent self that is defined in terms of individual attributes and goals (Triandis, 1995). The influence of social norms, and of connections to others, is likely to be greater in collectivist as compared to individualist cultures. Finally, identity also has instrumental aspects that give it a role within a given societal infrastructure. Thus, sociologists discuss movement identity and organizational identity (cf. Dunlap & McCright, 2008). Dono, Webb, and Richardson (2010) reviewed some of the distinctions between a focus on an environmental identity and an identity with environmentalism as a social movement. This chapter will focus primarily on psychological rather than sociological aspects of identity, but their relevance to political ideology and to collective behavior will be discussed below.
Content Identity is a rich and complex topic in part because it can be viewed either as an object, whose content and organization demand elucidation, or as a process, whose impacts should be investigated. William James (1890) described this as the “me” and the “I”; more recently, McAdams, Jossellson, and Lieblich (2006) have referred to the self-as-tale-told and the self-as-teller. In describing the “objective” (i.e., self-as-object) self, one of James’s important contributions to our understanding of identity was to define three aspects: the personal or spiritual, social, and material. The personal self referred to inner states, felt experiences, and psychological dispositions; the social self to the recognition from, and relationships with, others; and the material to physical things associated with the self, including body, clothes, family, and property. James did not go beyond this to consider the wider environment, but in describing the material aspects of the self, he acknowledged that identity existed not just inside a person’s head, but also extended into the physical environment. He thus made room for a consideration of the relevance of natural entities to one’s self-definition. Within psychology, an important (but imperfect) distinction has been made between personal and social identities. Personal identities are generally considered to be those based on one’s individual traits, values, and abilities. Social identities are those that reflect one’s position in a social network: social roles and group memberships. Group identities (a subset of social identities) are based on shared attributes, including external features, such as skin color; internal features, such as values or attitudes; experiences; and heritage. They may be based on direct interaction with like-minded others, such as a political action group, a soccer team, or a book group, or merely on a perceptual grouping of oneself with similar others who may rarely or never meet in person, such as other New Englanders, socialists, or people with diabetes. The distinction between personal and social is inexact, because personal identities can become social when people with similar personal identities find each other and then a social meaning is attributed to that identity. Rather than consider personal and social identities as discrete categories, Clayton and Opotow (2003) argued that identities can be described according to the degree to which social forces have been influential. When social influence is minimal, the focus is on individual experience. As social influence becomes stronger, social connotations of identities and interactions with others become more important. Finally, the societal groupings and political implications of identities become salient when social influence is powerful. To the extent that identities have a social component, they are likely to acquire associated social stereotypes. According to Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2003), identities are adopted in the service of basic needs: the desire for relatedness or belonging, competence or esteem, and autonomy or independence. Identities can also serve a defensive function, as a way to resist influence or threats from others. Thus identities that are more effective in filling these needs are likely to become stronger and more salient. Both cultural context and personal experience will affect identity development (p. 167) through their influence here. People who experience
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Environment and Identity belonging and esteem on the soccer field are more likely to develop strong identities as athletes than those who routinely fail to achieve their objectives. People who have positive social experiences in natural settings may associate such settings with a sense of belonging. Some cultures may stress social interactions as the primary source of esteem, while others emphasize individual achievement. Specific events may generate a need to develop a particular identity; for example, a strong ethnic identity may be developed as a way to resist assimilation into the mainstream.
Process or Function Identity demands our consideration because of its function. Identities can affect attention, evaluation, memory, and motivation. Decades of research have shown, for example, that information that is self-relevant attracts more attention (Kihlstrom et al., 1988). The so-called cocktail-party effect references the fact that one’s own name will emerge and be recognized in a background hum of noise that is otherwise ignored. Identities tend to generate cognitive schemas that affect the way people organize and process information (Bem, 1981). Self-relevant information is also better remembered, as reflected in classroom study techniques that encourage students to apply information to situations in their own lives, and is likely to have more emotional significance because of its implications for one’s self-image and social standing. More insidiously, identities are responsible for information-processing biases. Best known is the tendency to evaluate oneself and one’s own groups as better, more worthy, and more moral than others on average. Selfserving attributional processes ensure that we tend to explain events in ways that enhance our own self-image. Ingroup biases show that we rate work by people with whom we share an identity as better than work by others. Beneffectance refers to the tendency to preferentially remember information that casts us in a positive light compared to information that portrays us more negatively. Identities even determine ethical standards; people who share an identity with us are evaluated according to a different standard than those who do not (Lerner & Clayton, 2011), and some people may fall completely outside the realm of moral relevance (Opotow, 1996). Relatedly, identities can both prescribe and motivate action. Role-based identities describe the social expectations for associated behavior. Across multiple different roles, we are motivated to behave in ways that are socially valued to maintain identities that present us positively to others as well as to ourselves. Even more important, perhaps, is the motivation to behave in ways that are consistent with our desired self-image. Research suggests that the desire for consistency can be stronger than the desire for a positively evaluated self. A greater degree of consistency across different life roles is even associated with greater well-being (Ryan & Deci, 2003). In a more abstract and indirect way, identities serve an important psychological function in allowing people to make meaning of their lives. Cary (1993) described symbolic beliefs, those connected with identity and values, as allowing people to “transform transient experiences into internal models” (p. 556); in other words, to construct an internal sense of self out of external experiences. Identity theorists (e.g., McAdams et al., 2006) have described identity as the “stories people construct and tell about themselves to define who they are for themselves and for others” (p. 4). These stories serve an important function in addressing developmental challenges (Erikson, 1963) and allowing people to maintain a sense of themselves as consistent and continuous over time. The success with which people construct an integrated identity for themselves will have implications for their psychological wellbeing (Hinds & Sparks, 2009), and the content of these identities will have a major impact on how people relate to the world.
Environment and Identity Clayton (2003) has argued that people can develop a specific environmental identity: “a sense of connection to some part of the nonhuman natural environment that affects the way we perceive and act toward the world; a belief that the environment is important to us and an important part of who we are” (pp. 45–46). As earlier theorists noted, identity can stem from many sources, including personal values, social affiliations, and material possessions. What would make the natural environment particularly important to identity? That is, why would the natural environment provide relevant content for identity? For three reasons, described below: First, it is a particularly rich source of psychological significance. Second, it fulfills core self-relevant motives. Third, it has sociopolitical significance—partly because of its function in generating attention, evaluation, and action—and thus
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Environment and Identity may be imposed or reinforced from the outside (Clayton, 2003; Clayton & Myers, 2009). (p. 168) The natural environment is associated with strong emotional (cf. Kals & Müller, and Vining & Merrick, this volume) and social experiences; for this reason, time in natural settings is likely to be well remembered and to help satisfy the need to belong. The natural world can help people to conceptualize their identities cognitively: anthropomorphizing interactions with animals (Myers, 1998/2007; Myers & Russell, 2003) and even plants (Gebhard, Nevers, & Billmann-Mahecha, 2003) provides opportunities for people to think about what it means to be human. Research showing that time in natural settings restores attentional capacity (e.g., Kaplan, 1995) and promotes cognitive functioning suggests that it may provide an appropriate context for reflecting on one’s own identity, goals, and values, and thus contribute to self-understanding. Indeed, people report that natural settings are desirable places for self-reflection (Korpela, Hartig, Kaiser, & Fuhrer, 2001). Experiences in nature also present an opportunity to fulfill other self-relevant motives. According to SelfDetermination Theory, these include desires for autonomy and esteem (Ryan & Deci, 2003). Autonomy could be enhanced by the opportunities for self-reflection, and the reduction in social imperatives, that are typically characteristic of natural settings compared to built environments. A recent experimental study, for example, found that “immersing” people in nature via slides or the presence of plants enhanced their perceived autonomy (Weinstein, Przybylski, & Ryan, 2009). Although I do not know of research addressing this directly, nature could contribute to esteem simply because it is not dominated by critical judgments from other people. Relatedly, people often report, as a positive attribute of relationships with pets, that they feel their pets accept them for who they are without judging them (e.g., Serpell, 1986). Certainly to the extent that an environmental identity reflects socially valued attitudes and behaviors, or that positive connotations are associated with environmentalism, an environmental identity can contribute to self-esteem (Fraser, Clayton, Sickler, & Taylor, 2009). Esteem can also be enhanced to the extent that the natural environment allows for a feeling of efficacy and competence. Barton and Pretty (2010) described evidence that as little as five minutes of exercise within a natural setting enhances self-esteem, particularly when that setting includes water. Fraijo, Corral-Verdugo, Tapia, and González (2010) discussed the ways in which perceived competence may function with regard to conservation behaviors. A more poetic description is found in an essay by nature writer Sharman Russell: When I open to the world, the boundaries of self, my worries and fears…all of it diminishes against the lift of land, colors, and cliffs. I’m as big as this view, five miles wide. I’m as powerful as the gathering storm….I feel special….I’m so cool to live in this place. (2011 , p. 52) Another list of identity principles, described by Breakwell (e.g., 1992), includes efficacy (which could be related to autonomy), esteem, continuity, and distinctiveness. The contrast between Breakwell’s “distinctiveness” and Ryan and Deci’s “connectedness” may be resolved by referring to Brewer’s (1991) optimal distinctiveness theory: what people really want is a sense of themselves as belonging to a group, and yet not wholly contained in or defined by that group. People in natural settings often report feelings of belonging and connectedness, but also the freedom to be themselves (Clayton, 2003).
Social Identities Identity can be considered in many subtle and complex ways, but the more obvious components of identity should not be overlooked. Socially ascribed identities, based on characteristics such as gender, nationality, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, have important implications for one’s relationship with nature. Identities affect access to nature and ability to benefit from natural environments, as well as vulnerability to environmental hazards (e.g., Bullard, 2000). The term “environmental injustice,” as used in the sociological or political sense, refers to the unequal distribution of environmental harms across social categories. These objective social realities, because of which the natural environment affords different experiences for different social groups, in turn become refracted into social identities that describe different relationships with nature. Many writers have examined and debated the extent to which national, cultural, gender, and ethnic identities are associated with differences in environmental attitudes. There has been much written by anthropologists and others about cultural differences in the ways people conceptualize their relationship with nature (see Milfont, this volume). Some Native American cultures, for example,
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Environment and Identity are said to think of the natural world as interdependent with the human world, at times even sending animals as ambassadors to (p. 169) have a role in human society. As a result, nature demands respectful and fair treatment (e.g., Berkes, 1999; James, Hall, Redsteer, & Doppelt, 2008). Within psychology, there is little work that explicitly examines environmental identity in different cultures. In one example, Chang and Opotow (2009) interviewed a small sample of Americans resident in Namibia, and Namibians, concerning their thoughts about environmental identity, environmental values, and moral standing. Chang and Opotow found a sense of environmental identity among all respondents but noted that the Americans were more likely to root their descriptions in narratives based on childhood experiences, for example, with friends or family, that taught them to value nature. The Namibians, on the other hand, were more cognizant of generational changes in the valuing of nature such that younger people accorded more rights to nonhuman entities. Namibians were also more likely to note the sociopolitical connotations of different orientations with regard to nature. This small study illustrates the extent to which environmental identities depend on cultural context as well as specific experiences. Culture may have a direct impact on the perceived relationship between self and nature, or an indirect relationship mediated by social groups. In collectivist cultures, for example, people’s attitudes toward the environment may be affected by a general tendency to be mindful of social responsibilities, or by perceived social norms that encourage environmental concern. Ando, Ohnuma, and Chang (2007) found that subjective norms were a stronger predictor of environmental behavior in Japan than in the United States (though people in the United States were somewhat more affected by a more descriptive social norm). Clayton and Pape (2010), similarly, found that perceived social norms were a stronger predictor of environmental behavior intentions in China than in the United States. Specific sociopolitical contexts will also affect a sense of environmental identity. Environmental identities have a significance in the 21st century that differs from what they might have had in earlier years. Such identities may emerge in response to perceived threats to natural environments; in fact, environmentalists often report being motivated by an experience of environmental destruction (Kempton & Holland, 2003). They also may be associated with political realities that make environmental attitudes socially significant. Defensive attempts to protect one’s social identity can be responsible for some of the unsustainable ways in which people behave or how they react to information about environmental threats. Environmental messages are often perceived as threats to a lifestyle, for example, one associated with a particular social identity, and may be rejected on that basis (Clayton, 2011; Opotow & Brook, 2003). This is one reason for some of the politically associated differences in attitudes toward climate change, discussed further below.
Creating Environmental Identity Several chapters in this volume (e.g., Chawla; Korpela; Steg & Abrahamse) describe some of the ways in which people construct an identity that incorporates environmental attitudes and values, or that describes oneself in relation to the natural environment. Most of this research has focused on the person and his/her repeated experiences over time. It is also possible to look at specific contexts that can be used to foster environmental identity. Zoos are an environment whose impacts on both visitors and volunteers have been examined. Research by Clayton, Fraser, and Saunders (2009) examined the ways in which zoo visitors might create a sense of shared identity with animals. In observations of almost 1,900 visitor comments, small but significant proportions of people were heard to make comments in which they imitated the animal, compared the animal to a human being, or took the perspective of the animal (i.e., spoke as if they were the animal). Almost 25% of visitors made a comment that reflected some inference about what the animal might be thinking. These responses all suggested ways in which the zoo visitors were creating some cognitive connection between themselves and the animal. Emotional connections were reflected in the high proportion of positive comments (about 22% of visitors). In follow-up research, Clayton, Fraser, and Burgess (2011) observed interactions within social groups that indicated ways in which people used the stimulus of an animal exhibit to create a sense of socially shared value and appreciation for nature. In research looking at a more explicit sense of identity, Fraser, Clayton, Sickler, and Taylor (2009) found evidence that zoo volunteers created strong social identities through their experience working at the zoo. These identities were positively valued and important to the volunteers, as measured by scores on a collective self-esteem scale (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992). In interviews, the volunteers described the identities as satisfying personal needs and
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Environment and Identity values, including the importance of animals (p. 170) and nature, affiliations to a specific place, and connecting to others who shared their values. Environmental identity can also be nurtured, and socially expressed, through gardening. An extremely popular leisure pursuit, gardening provides people with the opportunity to spend time in, and to appreciate, nature. It also serves as a form of public self-expression, through the planting choices and competence in caretaking, and as a way of affirming a social identity by contributing to the community (Clayton, 2007). Gross and Lane (2007) conducted in-depth interviews with 18 gardeners and found that identity was a strong emergent focus, primarily evident in themes of ownership and self-expression. Recently, Kiesling and Manning (2010) further investigated the expression of identity through gardening and its relationship to a more general environmental identity. In a sample of 466 urban gardeners, they found that people who rated the opportunity to connect with nature as a strong motivation for gardening tended to be higher in environmental identity as measured by the Environmental Identity (EID) scale. A few studies have looked at the effects of specific manipulations on sense of environmental identity. Bragg (1996) used the Twenty Statements Test, a standard measure of self-concept, to evaluate the impact of participation in a “Council of All Beings” workshop, which asks people to play the part of a nonhuman component of the natural world. Immediately after the workshop, participants described a greater ecological component in their selfdefinitions; however, this was not retained at a six-week follow-up. Schultz and Tabanico (2007) reported that a visit to the zoo appeared to increase participants’ level of implicit connection with nature (discussed further below), such that people had higher ratings of connection as they left the zoo than they had when they entered. However, there was no long-term follow-up.
Environmental and Place Identity There is a well-established literature on the emotional attachments people form to specific environments and on the connections between identity and the physical environment (see Korpela, this volume, for an extensive discussion of place identity). Research on place attachment (e.g., Altman & Low, 1992) has examined people’s sense of connection to specific physical environments, including built as well as natural environments. It has primarily focused on connections based on residential experiences (but see Manzo, 2005, for an expanded discussion of place meaning). These identities, like an environmental identity, are based on experience and form the basis for both self-chosen and ascribed social labels. Although an identity rooted in a specific place may be related to general concern for the natural environment (Kyle, Graefe, Manning, & Bacon, 2004), it is conceptually distinct from a more general sense of connection to the natural world. One important distinction between a place identity and an environmental identity is that the latter should have implications for entities associated with nature and yet not affiliated with a particular place, such as animals. Research on environmental identity has, in fact, consistently shown that a strong environmental identity is associated with feelings of similarity to animals and with support for animal rights (Clayton, 2008). Twigger-Ross and Uzzell (1996) presented a thoughtful and thorough discussion of how identity principles may be satisfied by an identity linked to place, by distinguishing a person from others; by highlighting a characteristic one shares with others; or by serving as a source of pride. Much of what they say can also apply to a more general environmental identity. It is possible, though, that place is better suited to satisfy people’s desire for distinctiveness —for example, as Knez (2005) described, “I’m a Londoner, not a New Yorker”—whereas environment may be better at satisfying the need for connectedness, by encouraging people to recognize their interdependence with a larger system. Future research could examine this question.
Measuring Environmental Identity Clearly, not everyone feels a high level of environmental identity; thus it is useful to find some way of assessing its strength. As with other identities, such as gender or ethnic identities, the strength of an environmental identity can be assessed as an individual difference variable. Many studies of environmental behavior measure identity by asking participants to respond to a few simple statements such as “I think of myself as someone actively committed to the environmental cause” (Castro, Garrido, Reis, & Menezes, 2009) or “I think of myself as an environmentalist” (Fielding, McDonald, & Louis, 2008). Others, however, have attempted to explore the psychological aspects of
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Environment and Identity identity in more detail. In a sign that the topic is timely, a number of similar measures have been developed, many within a few years of each other, to assess this or related constructs. (p. 171)
Environmental Identity Scale
The 24-item EID scale was developed to assess the extent to which the natural environment plays an important part in a person’s self-definition. More recently a shorter form of only 11 items has been developed. It includes items relating to a sense of connection to the natural world as well as to its importance to the individual. The EID Scale also includes items related to competence, autonomy, and belongingness, and to engaging in outdoor activities. Reliabilities for the EID Scale are high, with alphas of about 0.90 in samples from the United States, Turkey, Spain, and Finland, both student and nonstudent, and it has shown the expected pattern of correlations with attitudes, values, and worldview: it is positively correlated with ecocentric attitudes, universal values, and horizontal collectivism, and negatively correlated with environmental apathy and vertical individualism (Clayton, 2003). Importantly, it also seems to reflect the internal cognitive structure of information related to environmental issues: in one study, people high in EID found it slightly easier to make decisions about environmental dilemmas and were more confident in their decisions. In research in a zoo setting, EID was related to a reported sense of connection to the animals and a perception of the animals as similar to humans. Zoo members also scored higher than nonmembers on a measure of environmental identity (Clayton et al., 2011). Although Clayton (2003), in a factor analysis of the scale among college students, found only a single dominant factor, Olivos and Aragones (2011) found evidence for five factors in a Spanish sample. The first factor, accounting for by far the largest proportion of variance (32.8%, with the second factor accounting for only 7.2%), was described as “environmental identity”; additional factors (after eliminating one that was represented by a single item) were identified as assessing time in nature, appreciation for nature, and environmentalism. Each subscale was correlated with pro-environmental behavior, but only the “environmentalism” and “environmental identity” subscales contributed unique variance in a regression analysis.
Environment Identity Scale The Environment Identity Scale was also published in 2003 by sociologists Stets and Biga. They defined “environment identity” as “self-meanings in relation to the environment” (p. 401). This scale consists of 11 bipolar items that assess involvement with and emotional response to nature. Respondents are asked to select a point along the scale that best indicates their own position regarding the two endpoints: for example, detached versus connected to nature, concerned versus indifferent, advocate versus disinterested. Stets and Biga found a reliability of 0.91 for this scale, and it has been used in other research. However, one of their items asks respondents to indicate the extent to which they are “superior” or “inferior” to nature. Neither end of this scale indicates a true sense of identity with nature, so it is problematic to include this item as part of the overall identity score.
Inclusion of Nature in the Self The Inclusion of Nature in the Self (INS) scale, developed by Schultz (2001, 2002), represents a very different structural approach. Based on Aron, Aron, and Smollan’s (1992) Inclusion of Other in Self scale, the INS measures the extent to which people perceive themselves as distinct from, related to, or commensurate with the natural environment by asking them to select from a series of seven pictures. Each picture depicts two circles, one labeled “self” and one labeled “nature,” which range from completely separate to completely overlapping. Schultz has found fairly high correlations between the EID and the INS (in one study, r = .65, p < .001). The INS is also a good predictor of behavior: Schultz (2001) reports an r = .41 between the INS and a measure of environmental behavior.
Connectivity to Nature Dutcher et al. (2007) developed a measure of connectivity, which they defined as assessing “a fundamental sameness between [oneself] and the natural world” (p. 478). Their measure included some survey items, similar to those on the EID, and the overlapping-circles measure included on the INS, and was a stronger predictor of environmental concern than demographic characteristics such as age, education, gender, income, and political orientation. However, with an internal reliability of only 0.72 for the combined scale, it does not seem to represent
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Environment and Identity an advance over previous measures.
Implicit Connections to Nature Schultz (Schultz, Shriver, Tabanico, & Khazian, 2004; Bruni & Schultz, 2010) developed a form of the Implicit Associations Test that uses a reaction-time paradigm to assess the extent to which people have strong cognitive connections between themselves and nature. The advantage of such an approach is that it does not rely on selfreport; people may not (p. 172) have conscious access to their own sense of interconnectedness with nature, or their report may be biased by social desirability. Schultz found that a high degree of implicit connectedness to nature was associated with more biospheric, and fewer egoistic, concerns. This measure, however, does not always correlate with explicit measures related to identity or environmental concern (Bruni & Schultz, 2010). Further research is needed to assess the difference between implicit and explicit measures.
Connectedness to Nature Scale Mayer and Frantz (2004) developed a Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS), which they defined as a measure of emotional connectedness to the natural world. Similar to the EID in some ways, it is shorter and primarily focused on an affective response to the natural world. Like attitude measures, CNS is likely to be more responsive to situational manipulations than identity measures would be, and thus useful as a measure of contextual variability in perceived nature-relatedness (Frantz, Mayer, Norton, & Rock, 2005). However, there is some ambiguity over whether the CNS is primarily a measure of affective or cognitive response to nature (Perrin & Benassi, 2009). Kals, Schumacher, & Montada’s (1999) Emotional Affinity Toward Nature scale, or Perkins’s (2010) Love and Care for Nature scale may be more explicitly concerned with affective attachment.
Related Constructs New Environmental Paradigm The New Environmental Paradigm (NEP; Dunlap & Van Liere, 1978; Dunlap, Van Liere, Mertig, & Jones, 2000) is a widely used and well-validated measure of what might be called an ideology or belief system concerning nature and the relationship between humans (as a species) and the natural world. The NEP has been shown to predict self-reported environmental behavior. Although it includes items regarding belief in the balance of nature, limits to growth, and human domination over nature, it is generally considered a unidimensional scale. Compared to identity, the NEP is a set of relatively cold cognitions about what nature is, while measures of environmental identity are more emotionally tinged assessments of the personal significance of nature. Nevertheless, endorsement of the NEP should be associated with a strong environmental identity. Data collected by Schultz (2002, personal communication) from 75 college students show a correlation of r = .44 (p < .001) between the EID and the NEP.
Environmental Attitudes Scale The Environmental Attitudes Scale (EAS), developed by Thompson and Barton (1994), is designed to measure three different attitudinal stances toward the natural environment: ecocentrism, or a valuing of nature for its own intrinsic worth; anthropocentrism, or a valuing of nature for its utility to humans; and apathy toward the environment and environmental issues. The EAS correlates in expected ways with the subscales of the EID (see Clayton, 2003). However, the EAS is a measure of attitudes rather than a (part of a) self-definition. As such, it should be less predictive of self-relevant phenomena, and it has in fact been found to be a weaker predictor of behavior than the EID (Clayton, 2003). Stets and Biga (2003), using different measures, also found that attitudes did not predict behavior when controlling for identity. There is a potential for conceptual fuzziness here. Many writers have focused on emotional experiences in response to nature (Kals & Müller, and Vining & Merrick, this volume); indeed, the biophilia hypothesis suggests that we have an innate tendency to experience such emotions (Kellert & Wilson, 1993; Wilson, 1984). Others have described a relationship with nature, similar to a relationship that might exist between humans (Davis, Green, & Reed, 2009). Both emotions and relationships are useful constructs through which to consider the ways in which people relate to nature, and they are certainly related to the construct of identity, but they are not the same thing. Because identity refers to a self-concept or definitional label, a consideration of environment and identity concerns
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Environment and Identity the extent to which the natural environment affects or is implicated in or overlaps one’s self-concept. An environmental identity, in particular, refers to a sense of self as conceptually interdependent with or connected to the natural world. This interdependence should imply an increased perception of similarity with, and moral standing accorded to, nonhuman natural entities, and a sense that threats to the natural world are personally relevant. Because of the multiplicity of similar, but not identical, measures, Devine-Wright and Clayton (2010) suggested several ways of distinguishing identities from related constructs. They proposed that identities should have implications for cognitive processing, for example, that people high in an environmental identity would pay more attention to environmental information, have a tendency to organize information on the basis of environmental implications, and respond more quickly (p. 173) to environmentally relevant decisions. They also suggested that identities be considered with reference to their social significance: that environmental identities, for example, should be able to characterize a group of people with something in common. One implication of this is that social stereotypes should be associated with these identities; another is that they should give rise to motivational ingroup biases on behalf of those who share an environmental identity. Similarly, Bragg (1996) noted that what she describes as an “ecological self” should lead to greater sensitivity to information about the environment as well as to greater feelings of sympathy or empathy with environmental entities. Although some research has been done along these lines, more is needed, especially on the implications of identity for cognitive processing.
The Impact of Environmental Identity
Emotional Significance Like other identities, environmental identities have strong emotional consequences. In a small study of British undergraduate students, Hinds and Sparks (2009) found a positive correlation between environmental identity and affective well-being. Emotional consequences of identity can be linked to specific environments, or to changes in environments. To the extent that people feel personally reflected in the natural environment, a beautiful environment can be a source of self-esteem. On the other hand, a contaminated environment can be a source of stigma. Those who reside in environments that are known to be toxic experience a range of effects including threats to their social identity, as they recognize not only the negative perceptions others have of their communities but also the limits to their own sense of self-control and personal security (Edelstein, 2002). Some authors have argued that a general tendency toward decreased psychological well-being stems from our attempts to construct a sense of self within degraded and industrialized environments (Jordan, 2009; Kidner, 2007). Frightening messages about environmental degradation or dangers may be personally threatening by evoking a fear of death. Terror management theory suggests that people respond to a fear of death by emphasizing and promoting personal values; that is, they respond by affirming their identities (Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991). Research has shown that mortality salience may encourage increased consumption, but that people who are self-defined as environmentalists, instead, are likely to affirm their identities by acting on their environmental values (Vess & Arndt, 2008). An environmental identity may provide a buffer that helps people cope with these frightening messages. On the other hand, it may increase the anxiety that is associated with environmental problems by making them more salient and self-relevant. Bearing in mind the core self-motivations of autonomy, connectedness, and esteem and the more basic need for security, as well as the possible ability of the natural environment to satisfy these needs, Kasser (2009) has argued for more research into ways to promote psychological well-being through environmental opportunities.
Ethical Implications Identity matters in considering environmental problems because it is contested: Who counts? Who is considered? Standards of justice vary according to the status of those involved (Lerner & Clayton, 2011; Skitka, 2003); even the tendency to consider justice may depend on the extent to which personal identity is salient (Opotow, 1996; Skitka, 2003). Do animals have rights? Do trees have legal or moral standing (cf. Stone, 1974)? There is wide variability in the extent to which people believe that the environment, and nonhuman entities, are entitled to justice. Those who are defined as having an identity within a particular moral universe (Opotow, 1996) are entitled to just treatment; otherwise, their treatment is guided by purely instrumental considerations. Thus it is telling that an
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Environment and Identity environmental identity, as measured by Clayton’s EID scale, predicts willingness to consider the rights of nature and the rights of future generations in resolving environmental dilemmas (Clayton, 2003). It is also associated with support for animal rights (Clayton, 2008). Similarly, many environmental problems have been characterized as commons dilemmas (cf. Hardin, 1968): situations in which a shared resource, available to all and regulated by no one, is depleted by being used at a rate faster than it can be replenished. The commons dilemma occurs because individuals make the rational decision to use as much as they can; benefits accrue to the individual and costs are shared across the group. Research shows that one of the best predictors of cooperation in a commons dilemma is a sense of group, or collective, identity (Brewer, 2000; Parks, Sanna, & Berel, 2001; Van Vugt, 2001). A recognition that all those who use the common resource share an identity means that they are more likely to care about each other’s welfare, trust each other’s (p. 174) intentions, and come together to formulate a shared plan for regulating the use of the resource (Dovidio, Gaertner, & Esses, 2007). James et al. (2008) described the joint US-Canadian management of the Great Lakes as an example of environmental regulations that are based on a collective identity (shared proximity to the Great Lakes) rather than on more individually focused identities. A specific test of this was presented by Bonaiuto et al. (2008), who found in a field study that those who had the highest level of identification with the local community were the most likely to voluntarily cooperate with appeals to conserve water. Similarly, Carrus, Bonaiuto, and Bonnes (2005) found that regional pride, suggesting a sense of self-esteem based on place of residence, was associated with support for a local protected area. In general, one might expect a sense of collective identity to be associated with increased concern for the environment and willingness to protect it. Research that has measured or manipulated such a tendency does tend to find such an association. For example, Arnocky, Stroink, and DeCicco (2007) defined a “metapersonal” selfconstrual as a tendency to think of oneself as having a deep interconnection with all forms of life; they found that this was associated not only with environmental concern but also with the tendency to cooperate in a commons dilemma. Buchan et al. (2011) found that a sense of national or global identity predicted concern about global issues, and cooperation in a social dilemma, across six countries. (One of the issues was global warming, but the authors grouped five issues together.) As described above, Clayton’s EID has been found to be associated with Triandis’s collectivism scale (Clayton, 2003); it is also negatively correlated with Social Dominance Orientation, which reflects a preference for hierarchical, non-egalitarian distributions of power and resources (Clayton, 2008). Winter and Chavez (2008), in surveys of visitors to California wilderness areas, found that higher scores on the EID were associated with greater support of managing natural resources for environmental protection. Experimental research by Clayton (1998, 2000) has also demonstrated that environmental appeals are more successful when they emphasize collective rather than individual well-being, and the reverse is true for antienvironmental arguments. Relatedly, a national study of American attitudes found that people who are concerned about climate change are more egalitarian—suggesting a moral focus centered on the collective—than those who dismiss it, while the reverse is true for individualism (Leiserowitz, 2005). In a country-level comparison, Gouveia (2002) found that collectivist values were related to an index of sustainable development.
Behavioral Implications Identities make the link between abstract issues and personal relevance. One reason so few people take action to address environmental problems, such as climate change, is probably that it seems remote, and people do not feel personally responsible (Broder & Connelly, 2007). However, a strong place-based identity can motivate action to protect a particular location, and a strong environmental identity can motivate action to protect the environment. Schultz argued that environmental concern was a function of the extent to which “people include nature in their cognitive representation of self” (2000 , p. 403), and in a manipulation of perspective-taking he found that students who took the perspective of an animal harmed by environmental degradation showed greater concern about environmental problems. Berenguer (2007), in a similar manipulation, succeeded in getting participants to adopt the perspective of a tree, with a corresponding increase in environmental concern. In a sense, an environmental identity can serve to transform the motive for environmental behavior; when one shares an identity with another, promoting their welfare is selfish rather than altruistic. Some evidence for this
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Environment and Identity transformational effect is suggested by a recent study (Fritsche & Häfner, 2011). The researchers found, consistent with previous research, that mortality salience decreased biospheric concerns but not egoistic ones; however, this was not true for people high in environmental identity. In other words, fear of death apparently leads one to focus more on self-relevant than on universal values, but for people high in environmental identity, environmental concerns are self-relevant. Using the EID measure, Clayton (2003) has found a strong relationship between environmental identity and selfreported tendency to engage in environmental behavior, as well as level of environmental concern. Kiesling and Manning (2010) found a strong correlation between EID and more environmentally friendly gardening practices. Though not measuring environmental identity directly, Bruyere and Rappe (2007) found evidence that deep-seated personal values were strong motivators for environmental behavior. They surveyed 401 volunteers for natural resource agencies about their motivations for volunteering. In response to both closed-ended (p. 175) questions and an open-ended question asking for “the most important motivation,” factors related to personal values (e.g., “the opportunity to express my values through my work”) were the second–most important motivations listed. The most important was the opportunity to help the environment, which may suggest, again, that the environment itself had become self-relevant. Many other researchers have found that considerations of environmental identity contribute to the ability to predict pro-environmental behavior, above and beyond the traditional variables of attitudes and social norms (Castro et al., 2009; Fielding et al., 2008; Mannetti, Pierro, & Livi, 2004; Terry, Hogg, & White, 1999; Whitmarsh & O’Neill, 2010)
Values and Behavior Verplanken and Holland (2002) presented a useful discussion of the relationship between environmental identities, values, and behavior. They stated that values, defined as cognitions that help to interpret situations, elicit goals, and motivate behavior, “may form important ingredients of a person’s self-concept and thus contribute to a sense of identity” (p. 434). They distinguished among the range of values that individuals might endorse, noting that shared values may constitute the basis for group or collective identities, and particularly emphasized that values are hierarchically organized and vary in centrality. It is the more central values, they argued, that “make up part of one’s self-definition and, thus, contribute to one’s sense of identity” (p. 435). In other words, most people value pleasure, honesty, success, and so on, but only values that are central to identity are likely to affect behavior. Skitka (e.g., 2003) made a similar point when she proposed that certain moral values, central to one’s sense of identity, lead to the development of “moral mandates” that are experienced as compulsions toward action that is consistent with those values. Bolderdijk et al. (2012) hypothesized that people would consider protecting the environment to be a moral act, one that was consistent with moral values. As expected, they found that people anticipated more positive affect from responding to an appeal based on biospheric values than one based on economic values. In a field study, participants were more likely to engage in an environmental action (checking whether their tires were properly inflated) when that action was tied to biospheric values rather than economic values, but only when the relevance to the self and personal values was made explicit. In a series of studies, Verplanken and Holland (2002) demonstrated that environmental values will affect behavior (giving more weight to environmental factors in consumer decisions), but only if those values are (a) central, that is, rated as self-descriptive, and (b) activated by being primed or by an increase in self-focus. Interestingly, in line with the idea that identities serve to guide attention, one of their studies found that the impact of values on behavior was mediated by attention to valuerelevant information.
Self-Presentation Perhaps the most overt way in which identities impact behavior is by setting up the presentational pressures that were described above. So, to the extent that behaving pro-environmentally is positively valued, people should want to present themselves as supporting the environment; to the extent that people think of themselves as supporting the environment, they should be motivated to act in a way that is consistent with that self-image. Crompton and Kasser (2009; Ecopsychology Roundtable, 2009) have argued for the importance of “identity campaigning” in attempts to promote pro-environmental behavior, campaigns that “understand how people think of
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Environment and Identity themselves and understand…the dynamics around how people’s identities influence their behavior and influence their attitudes towards environmental outcomes” (Ecopsychology Roundtable, p. 169). Although pro-environmental behaviors are not always socially valued, perhaps because they connote costconsciousness and thus lower socioeconomic status (Sadalla & Krull, 1995), they can in some circumstances reflect a willingness to sacrifice personal comfort in the service of higher principles, such as the collective wellbeing. Griskevicius, Tybur, and Van den Bergh (2010) demonstrated that self-presentational concerns, when made salient by the presence of an audience and by the activation of status motives, led people to make product choices demonstrating “green” values—choices that they did not make when self-presentation was not salient and their behavior was unobserved.
The Politics of Identity The shared values that form the basis for group identities have a fundamental link to social and political position. Social identities provide the foundation for the activation of group-based social norms that include not only behavioral expectations but also, potentially, ideology. McAdams et al. (2006) have said that identity is built upon ideology, in the (p. 176) sense that one’s identity reflects one’s values. An ideology is a coordinated set of beliefs, opinions, and values (cf. Freeden, 2003) that may or may not be held by a group of like-minded people, but that is often associated with motivational tendencies. The impact of ideology is particularly evident in the political sphere, referring to ideologies that are associated with political parties and the associated sets of policy preferences. Political ideologies are not themselves environmental identities; they are not founded around experiences with or understandings of the natural environment, nor do they typically have environmental issues as a central focus. They can, however, have significant implications for reactions to environmental issues. In the United States, environmentalism is associated with left-wing rather than right-wing tendencies. Surveys consistently find that Democrats are more supportive of environmental protection than are Republicans (e.g., McCright & Dunlap, 2008). A recent national survey of more than 2,000 Americans found that party affiliation was the strongest predictor of belief in climate change, with a greater impact than gender, race, educational level, or age (Borick & Rabe, 2010). In the United Kingdom, Whitmarsh (2011) similarly found that political orientation and endorsement of the NEP, taken together, were stronger predictors of skepticism about climate change than lifestyle or socioeconomic status; knowledge and education did not contribute predictive power at all. What could be the reason for this association? Several possibilities have been proposed. McCright and Dunlap (2008), for example, suggested that progressive ideologies share a focus on the extension and protection of rights. Similarly, environmental support has been found to be associated with egalitarianism (Clayton, 1998; Sabbagh, 2005), and environmental identity is negatively associated with social dominance orientation (Clayton, 2008). Thus, although environmentalism is not restricted to those on the Left, there may be an intrinsic compatibility between the collective, egalitarian orientation that is associated with a left-wing ideology and the emphasis on interdependence that is required by an understanding of ecology (Clayton, 2008). Kahan, Jenkins-Smith, and Braman (2011) described a kind of “cultural cognition”: cultural values shape individual information processing, partly through the creation of “identity-protective motivations,” to fit into a given culture or group. Jost (2009) has suggested that these ideological differences may even be hardwired, in the sense that they are tied to fundamental differences in personality that are heritable and lead to observable physiological responses. Others have noted the connection between resistance to environmentalism and system justification (Feygina, Jost, & Goldsmith, 2010), suggesting that the ideological stance may be associated with “acceptance of change” versus “support of the status quo.” System justification is the motivation to reduce anxiety and satisfy the need for certainty by endorsing the status quo. Because of the explicit or implicit critique of society represented by environmentalism, those high in system justification tendencies tend to reject environmental attitudes and beliefs. Notably, Feygina et al. (2010) were able to overcome the negative effect of system justification on environmental behavior when they rephrased their environmental message to make it consistent with respect for the system, as follows: “Being pro-environmental allows us to protect and preserve the American way of life. It is patriotic to conserve the country’s natural resources” (p. 333). This highlights the relevance of targeting environmental messages to specific audiences who can be described as having discrete identities.
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Environment and Identity Conclusion The research reviewed illustrates that identity and environment have a bidirectional relationship. The natural environment, and one’s relationship with it, help to construct and activate an identity; this identity, in turn, influences the way people behave toward the environment. As the field of environmental psychology reminds us, all of these relationships exist within a social and physical context. The impact of environment on identity will be limited by the extent to which people are able to have a range of experiences with the natural environment. If only minimal experiences are available, environmental identities are likely to be weak. City planning decisions, as well as the influence of family, peers, and teachers, will determine whether individuals are likely to spend time in a natural environment. The impact of identity on environment is indirect. It is mediated by pro-environmental behavior, which is also powerfully affected by forces in the immediate social and physical context. In the long run, behavior toward the natural world—sustainable or unsustainable—is most strongly affected by the affordances of one’s physical environment and by one’s social context. Some living situations mandate a high-consumption lifestyle, others allow only (p. 177) a fairly low level of consumption, while still others provide possibilities for individual decisions about how to regulate their consumption. Some social groups provide norms that facilitate sustainability, while others discourage it. Thus, we should think about the role of identity in determining the contexts that people (choose to) occupy, and the specific ways in which contexts make identities salient. Schultz and Tabanico (2007), for example, found evidence that natural settings increased people’s sense of connectedness to nature. Some have argued that shifts in perspective are necessary to adequately address the environmental challenges we face: for example, James et al. (2008) called for “major reorientations in culturally based values and identities vis-à-vis nature” (p. 284). Research on identity and environment has thus far been primarily descriptive in the sense that it examines whether and how identity predicts behavior, and there is much scope for more research on this topic. However, it is time for more applied research on ways in which to create and nurture environmental identity.
Future Directions Three foci for future research seem particularly promising to advance the practical relevance, and conceptual understanding, of environmental identity. First, as described above, given the evidence that environmental identity can contribute to personal and societal well-being, there is a need for applied environmental psychologists to consider how to design environments that nurture environmental identity. In addition, research is needed to further explore what it means to talk about environment as an aspect of identity, as distinct from an attitude or value. Conceptual confusion and lack of precision can be reduced by clarifying what it means to refer to an identity: how and why it becomes part of a self-concept, and how it affects psychological functioning. Two directions for such research can be described. The first would address the extent to which, and ways in which, an environmental identity helps to satisfy different core self-relevant needs, such as esteem, autonomy, and connectedness. The second would examine the effects of environmental identity on cognitive processes as well as on affective responses to others who share the identity. Finally, environmental identities clearly exist within a social context. Further research is needed to examine ways in which people create a socially shared sense of identity that links them to the natural environment. Given the social meanings that currently adhere to environmental attitudes and values, intra- and intergroup processes are implicated in the development of an environmental identity.
Acknowledgements Many thanks to Kalevi Korpela and Wes Schultz for their comments on an earlier version of this chapter.
References Altman, I., & Low, S. (Eds.). (1992). Place attachment. New York: Springer.
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Environment and Identity Cary, J. (1993). The nature of symbolic beliefs and environmental behavior in a rural setting. Environment and Behavior, 25, 555–576. Castro, P., Garrido, M., Reis, E., & Menezes, J. (2009). Ambivalence and conservation behaviour: An exploratory study on the recycling of metal cans. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 29(1), 24–33. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2008.11.003 Chang, V., & Opotow, S. (2009). Conservation values, environmental identity, and moral inclusion in the Kunene region, Namibia: A comparative study. Beliefs and Values, 1, 79–89. Clayton, S. (1998). Preference for macrojustice versus microjustice in environmental decisions. Environment and Behavior, 30,162–183. Clayton, S. (2000). Models of justice in the environmental debate. Journal of Social Issues, 56(3), 459–474. Clayton, S. (2003). Environmental identity: A conceptual and an operational definition. In S. Clayton & S. Opotow (Eds.), Identity and the natural environment (pp. 45–65). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Clayton, S. (2007). Domesticated nature: Motivations for gardening and perceptions of environmental impact. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 27, 215–224. Clayton, S. (2008). Attending to identity: Ideology, group membership, and perceptions of justice. In K. Hegtvedt & J. Clay-Warner (Eds.), Advances in group processes: Justice (pp. 241–266). Bingley, UK: Emerald. Clayton, S. (2011). The social context for climate change education. Retrieved from www7.nationalacademies.org/bose/Climate_Change_Education_Workshop1_Agenda.html. Clayton, S., Fraser, J., & Burgess, C. (2011). The role of zoos in fostering environmental identity. Ecopsychology, 3, 87–96. Clayton, S., Fraser, J., & Saunders, C. (2009). Zoo experiences: Conversations, connections, and concern for animals. Zoo Biology, 28, 377–397. Clayton, S., & Myers, G. (2009). Conservation psychology: Understanding and promoting human care for nature. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Clayton, S., & Opotow, S. (2003). Introduction. In S. Clayton & S. Opotow (Eds.), Identity and the natural environment (pp. 1–24). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Clayton, S., & Pape, J. (2010). The effects of personality, cultural context, and situation on environmental concern: Comparing zoos and universities in the U.S. and China. Paper presented at the International Conference for Applied Psychology, Melbourne, Australia. Crompton, T., & Kasser, T. (2009). Meeting environmental challenges: The role of human identity. Surrey, UK: World Wildlife Foundation. Davis, J. L., Green, J. D., & Reed, A. (2009). Interdependence with the environment: Commitment, interconnectedness, and environmental behavior. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 29(2), 173–180. Devine-Wright, P., & Clayton, S. (Eds.). (2010). Introduction to special issue on “identity, place, and environmental behaviour.” Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30(3), 267–270. Dono, J., Webb, J., & Richardson, B. (2010). The relationship between environmental activism, pro-environmental behaviour, and social identity. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30(2), 178–186. Dovidio, J., Gaertner, S., & Esses, V. (2007). Cooperation, common identity, and intergroup contact. In B. Sullivan, M. Snyder, & J. Sullivan (Eds.), Cooperation: The political psychology of effective human interaction (pp. 143– 159). New York: Wiley-Blackwell. Dunlap, R. E., & McCright, A. M. (2008). Social movement identity: Validating a measure of identification with the
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Environment and Identity Schultz, P. W. (2002). Inclusion with nature: Understanding the psychology of human-nature interactions. In P. Schmuck, & P. W. Schultz (Eds.), The psychology of sustainable development (pp. 61–78). New York: Kluwer. Schultz, P. W., Shriver, C., Tabanico, J., & Khazian, A. (2004). Implicit connections with nature. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 24, 31–42. Schultz, P. W., & Tabanico, J. (2007). Self, identity, and the natural environment: Exploring implicit connections with nature. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 37(6), 1219–1247. Schwartz, S., Luyckx, K., & Vignoles, V. (Eds.). (2011). Handbook of identity theory and research. New York: Springer-Verlag. Serpell, J. A. (1986). In the company of animals. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Skitka, L. J. (2003). Of different minds: An accessible identity model of justice reasoning. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 7(4), 286–297. Snyder, M., & Swann, W. (1978). Behavioral confirmation in social interaction: From social perception to social reality. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 14, 148–162. Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (1991). A terror management theory of social behavior: The psychological functions of self-esteem and cultural worldviews. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 21, pp. 261–302). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Steele, C. M. (1997). A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape the intellectual identities and performance of women and African-Americans. American Psychologist, 52, 613–629. Stets, J. E., & Biga, C. F. (2003). Bringing identity theory into environmental sociology. Sociological Theory, 21(4), 398–423. Stone, C. (1974). Should trees have standing? Los Altos, CA: Kaufmann. Terry, D., Hogg, M., & White, K. (1999).The theory of planned behavior: Self-identity, social identity, and group norms. British Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 225–244. Thomashow, M. (1995). Ecological identity: Becoming a reflective environmentalist. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Thompson, S, & Barton, M. (1994). Ecocentric and anthropocentric attitudes toward the environment. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 14, 149–157. Triandis, H. (1995). Individualism and collectivism. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Twigger-Ross, C. L., & Uzzell, D. L. (1996). Place and identity processes. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 16(3), 205–220. Van Vugt, M. (2001). Community identification moderating impact of financial incentives in a natural social dilemma: Water conservation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 1440–1449. Verplanken, B., & Holland, R. W. (2002). Motivated decision making. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(3), 434–447. Vess, M., & Arndt, J. (2008). The nature of death and the death of nature: The impact of mortality salience on environmental concern. Journal of Research in Personality, 42(5), 1376–1380. Weigert, A. J. (1997). Self, interaction, and natural environment. Albany: State University of New York Press. Weinstein, N., Przybylski, A. K., & Ryan, R. M. (2009). Can nature make us more caring? Effects of immersion in nature on intrinsic aspirations and generosity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35(10), 1315–1329.
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Environment and Identity Whitmarsh, L. (2011). Scepticism and uncertainty about climate change: Dimensions, determinants, and change over time. Global Environmental Change, 21, 690–700. Whitmarsh, L., & O’Neill, S. (2010). Green identity, green living? The role of pro-environmental self-identity in determining consistency across diverse pro-environmental behaviours. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30, 305–314. Wilson, E. O. (1984). Biophilia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Winter, P. L., & Chavez, D. J. (2008). Wildland recreationists’ natural resource management priorities and preferences: A connection to environmental identity. In D. J. Chavez, P. L. Winter, & J. D. Absher (Eds.), Recreation visitor research: Studies of diversity. Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-XXX. Albany, CA: US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, Wildland Recreation and Urban Cultures. Susan D. Clayton Susan D. Clayton is Whitmore-Williams Professor of Psychology at the College of Wooster in Ohio. With a PhD in social psychology from Yale, she is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and a past president of the Society for Environmental, Population, and Conservation Psychology. Her research addresses the social context surrounding people’s relationship with the natural environment.
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Cultural Differences in Environmental Engagement
Oxford Handbooks Online Cultural Differences in Environmental Engagement Taciano L. Milfont The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0011
Abstract and Keywords Cultural influences on environmental attitudes and behaviors have been examined in an increasing number of studies. This chapter provides an introductory review of cultural explanations concerning environmental engagement. Besides discussing theoretical models that explain cultural differences in human-environment interactions, the chapter summarizes recent research examining environmental attitudes and behaviors across cultures. The majority of studies have examined cultural differences at the individual level of analysis, but the past few years have seen the emergence of country-level studies as well as studies employing multilevel strategies to examine the effect of individual-level and country-level variables simultaneously. The review suggests that affluence and value orientations are the main determinants of the development of and differences in environmental engagement across cultures. The chapter also discusses important methodological issues for designing and evaluating cross-cultural studies and future directions for this developing field of research. Keywords: cultural difference, environmental engagement, environmental attitudes, environmental behavior, environmental issues, cross-cultural research
Introduction Our individual lifetime represents only a fraction of the history of humanity, which in turn represents merely a fragment of the history of planet Earth. Yet, the impact of our individual actions upon the environment can last many lifetimes, and the cumulative impact of humanity on the planet is far greater than that caused by any other species. Human societies have always had to adapt to their surroundings, learn seasonal and ecological patterns, and change the environment to survive. However, in the relatively short time since the Industrial Revolution, humans have made unprecedented environmental transformations (Gardner & Stern, 2002; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). The history of human-environment interactions can be broadly classified into five stages (Simmons, 1993): huntinggathering economy and early agriculture (fully established around 7500 BC in Asian regions), riverine civilizations (from about 4000 BC until about the first century AD), agricultural empires (from about 500 BC to AD 1800), the Atlantic-industrial era (from AD 1800 to about the 1960s), and the Pacific-global era (from about 1960 to the present day). The hunter-gatherer stage covered at least 99% of human history (Wilson, 1993) and its permanent impact upon the environment is well documented, including reduction or extinction of animal species and the clearance of land by fire. But recent environmental transformations are unequaled in their scale and impact. These transformations include the accumulation of materials in large concentrations and the creation of new materials unknown in nature, such as pesticides; the expansion of cultivated areas and unsustainable agricultural practices, leading to erosion, deforestation, and the extinction of many species; and the development (p. 182) of large conglomerates of humans in urban cities, resulting in resource shortages and increases in waste production. It is estimated that from 1800 to 1985 the world human population increased fivefold, and the proportion living in urban
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Cultural Differences in Environmental Engagement areas rose from 2% to nearly 50%. These recent changes in the history of human-environment interactions have also led to the rise of global environmentalism, which is arguably the most significant social revolution in contemporary history (Brechin, 1999). These changes, coupled with the contemporary increase in globalization and migration, have resulted in a growing need to understand human-environment interactions across national cultures. Tackling environmental problems requires a cooperative effort from decision makers worldwide (cf. Brett & Kopelman, 2004), but their decisions to cooperate with or defect from any such wider effort will be made according to the values and behavioral patterns dominant in each national culture. This chapter aims to provide an introduction to the influence of culture on the way we deal with the environment. In particular, it reviews past research and current trends, and highlights new advances in the study of cultural differences in attitudes and behaviors toward the environment (see Gifford & Sussman and Schultz & Kaiser, this volume, for more on these topics). The chapter is divided into three main sections. The first section discusses selected theories and models describing cultural differences in humanenvironment interactions. The second section summarizes cross-cultural studies that assess environmental engagement. The third section considers some of the methodological concepts and issues that are important in the development of cross-cultural studies in this field. The chapter concludes by considering directions for future studies.
Understanding Human-Environment Interactions Across Cultures Do cultural variables influence whether individuals are concerned with the environment? As it will be evident from the discussion in this chapter, the answer seems to be yes. It appears that the way members of a society relate to the environment is culturally patterned, which means that human-environment interactions differ from one society to another, and also between individuals within a given society. This section will summarize useful theoretical models for understanding human-environment interactions across national cultures. The models posit universal categories of culture, whereby countries or nations can be positioned on the scale expressed by each category. Culture is a contestable concept with hundreds of definitions proposed (Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952). To avoid getting into definitional issues, culture is broadly defined here as the human-made part of the environment that encompasses both material culture (dress, food, houses, tools) and subjective culture (the distinctive way a society perceives its social environment). Subjective culture forms cultural syndromes and behavioral patterns that can be identified among those who speak a particular language, in a defined geographic location, during a specific historic period (Triandis, 1996, 2002). The theoretical models discussed below all address subjective culture (see Atran, Medin, & Ross, 2005, for a different cross-cultural perspective). The list of models below is not comprehensive; many other models of cultural syndromes and behavioral patterns have been proposed in the past few decades (see, e.g., House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004; Leung & Bond, 2004; Smith et al., 2002; Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner, 1998). However, the models discussed are perhaps the most widely used to investigate cultural differences. Most of the models originated within other disciplines but have been extensively used in psychology. Commonalities between the models will be highlighted later.
Kluckhohn The American anthropologist Florence Kluckhohn (1951, 1953) proposed a conceptual scheme distinguishing five basic human problems that all peoples across history must find some solution for. She argued that “specific patterns of behavior insofar as they are influenced by cultural factors (and few are not so influenced) are the concrete expressions reflecting generalized meanings or values” (Kluckhohn, 1953, p. 345). Table 11.1 presents Kluckhohn’s five problems and their possible responses. Another value dimension of space (here, there, or far away) was also later proposed but not fully developed (Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck, 1961). The five problems and their answers lead to cultural value orientations that are distinct from each other in terms of their main solutions to the universal problems, but are at the same time related. The second problem regarding the way humans relate to nature is the most relevant in the context of this chapter. In her seminal text, Kluckhohn (1953) illustrated possible cultural answers to this problem by arguing that Spanish-American cultures have a (p. 183)
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Cultural Differences in Environmental Engagement
Table 11.1 Five Universal Basic Questions and the Value Orientations Reflected in Their Answers (adapted from Kluckhohn, 1953; Hills, 2002) Human problems
Type of solution/value orientation
Human nature: What are the innate predispositions (basic nature) of humans?
Evil (mutable or immutable). Born evil and capable/incapable of being changed.
Neither good nor bad or mixed (mutable or immutable). Born neither good nor bad, and can learn (or not) good or bad traits; or born with both good and bad traits, and can learn (or not) to be either better or worse.
Good (mutable or immutable). Born good and capable/incapable of being changed
Humannature relationship: What is the relation of humans to nature?
Humans subjugated to nature (submissive). Emphasis on lack of control over nature, and submission to the higher power of natural forces.
Humans in nature (harmonious). Emphasis on partial control over nature and living in a balance with the natural forces.
Human over nature. Emphasis on total control over nature and the supernatural.
Time orientation: What is the significant time orientation?
Past. Emphasis on the past (the time before now), and on preserving and maintaining traditional teachings and beliefs.
Present. Emphasis on the present (what is now), and on accommodating changes in beliefs and traditions.
Future. Emphasis on the future (the time to come), planning ahead, and seeking new ways to replace the old.
Mode of Activity: What is the valued personality type?
Being. Emphasis on “being,” on internal motivations, and activities valued by oneself, which are not necessarily valued by others in the group.
Being-in-becoming. Emphasis on developing and growing abilities related to activities valued by oneself, which are not necessarily valued by others in the group.
Doing. Our motivation is external to us, emphasizing activity that is both valued by ourselves and is approved by others in our group.
Mode of social relations: What is the nature of the relationships of humans to other humans?
Lineal (hierarchical). Emphasis on hierarchical principles and deferring to higher authority or authorities within the group.
Collateral (equal). Emphasis on consensus within the extended group of equals.
Individualistic. Emphasis on the individual or individual families within the group who make decisions independently from others.
fate orientation toward nature, in which humans are subjugated to and victims of natural forces, while Chinese culture places humans in nature and sees humans and nature as equal parties in a harmonious whole, and American culture is oriented toward dominance over nature, in which the environment is to be put to the use of human beings. These cultural value orientations are thus theoretically useful for between-group comparisons (e.g., Werner, Brown, & Altman, 1997) and have been empirically applied for this aim (for a review, see Hills, 2002).
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Cultural Differences in Environmental Engagement Hofstede The Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofstede (1980) proposed four dimensions of cultural variability based on impressive empirical data. He surveyed more than 88,000 employees of IBM from 72 countries (reduced to 40 countries with more than 50 responses each) and 20 languages, and later included 10 additional countries and 3 regions (i.e., Arab countries and East and West Africa). His work is arguably the most studied cultural values model currently used and has led to a great deal of further research due to its heuristic value. Hofstede used an ecological factor analysis, in which analysis is performed at the country level rather than at the level of individual responses, to initially propose four basic value dimensions: individualism/collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity/femininity. Table 11.2 provides a description (p. 184) Table 11.2 Cultural Value Dimensions Proposed by Hofstede Hofstede’s dimensions
Description
Individualism versus collectivism
Integration of individuals into primary groups. In an individualistic society, people are only supposed to take care of themselves and of their immediate families (e.g., Australia, United States, Netherlands). In a collectivistic society, there is a clearer distinction between in-groups and out-groups, and people expect their in-group to look after them in exchange of absolute loyalty to the in-group (e.g., Ecuador, Guatemala, Pakistan).
Power distance
Different solutions to the basic problem of human inequality. In a society with high power distance, people accept the fact that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally, and the level of inequality is endorsed by the followers as much as by the leaders (e.g., India, Malaysia, Panama). A society with lower power distance has less tolerance to inequality (e.g., Austria, Denmark, New Zealand).
Uncertainty avoidance
The level of stress in a society in the face of an unknown future. People in a society with high uncertainty avoidance feel threatened by uncertain and ambiguous situations and try to avoid these situations by creating societal mechanisms to foster stability, such as formal rules, intolerance to deviant ideas and behaviors, and support to absolute truths (e.g., Greece, Portugal, Belgium). People experience less stress to uncertain and ambiguous situations in a society with low uncertainty avoidance (e.g., Singapore, Jamaica, Hong Kong).
Masculinity versus femininity
Division of emotional roles between men and women. In a masculine society, there is a higher degree of sex differentiation of roles and the dominant values are related to assertiveness, the acquisition of money and things (e.g., Japan, Switzerland, Italy). In a feminine society, the dominant values are related to caring for others and the quality of life or people (e.g., Sweden, Norway, Costa Rica).
Long-term versus short-term orientation
Choice of focus for people’s efforts, on the future or the present. In a society with long-term orientation, people focus on future-oriented values such as persistence and thrift (e.g., China, Japan, Brazil), whereas in a society with short-term orientation people focus on past- and present-oriented values such as respect for tradition and fulfilling social obligations (e.g., Philippines, United Kingdom, Canada)
of each dimension. Drawing from the findings of the Chinese Culture Connection (1987), he later introduced a fifth dimension related to temporal orientation: short-term/long-term orientation (Hofstede, 2001; Hofstede & Bond, 1988). None of Hofstede’s dimensions are conceptually linked to environmental issues. However, his dimensions have been empirically related to environmental engagement. For example, Hofstede (2001) correlated his dimensions to
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Cultural Differences in Environmental Engagement two questions from the Health of the Planet Survey (Dunlap, Gallup, & Gallup, 1993). One question asked whether priority should be given to protecting the environment or to economic growth, and the second question asked whether respondents would be willing to pay higher prices to protect the environment. The first question was negatively correlated with power distance (r = -.42), indicating that respondents in countries with lower power distance were more in favor of giving priority to the environment. The second question was negatively correlated with both power distance (r = -.60) and masculinity (r = -.48). Hofstede also found similar results for public acceptance of biotechnology in 12 European countries, with respondents from masculine, large power distance cultures perceiving less threat from biotechnology. These findings suggest that the stronger the cultural emphasis on masculinity and power distance, the less people will be concerned about environmental issues choosing to instead rely on the judgment of the authorities to deal with such issues. Despite these findings, researchers have tended to focus on the individualism-collectivism dimension. Schultz (2002) used this dimension to explain the cross-cultural differences he found on emphasis attributed to egoistic or biospheric environmental attitudes. As a result of the focus placed on an autonomous self in individualistic cultures, individuals in those cultures could be expected to also place greater (p. 185) focus on egoistic attitudes. In contrast, individuals in collectivist cultures would place greater focus on biospheric attitudes because of the focus their culture places on relationships with others (which may also include the natural environment). Supporting this argument, research has shown that individuals holding collectivist orientations tend to express higher environmental concern than those holding individualist orientations (Arnocky, Stroink, & DeCicco, 2007; Clayton, 2003; Milfont, 2010; Olofsson & Ohman, 2006; Park, Levine, & Sharkey, 1998).
Schwartz The American social psychologist Shalom Schwartz (1992, 1994a; Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987) expanded on Rokeach’s (1973) work to develop a broad model for classifying the dimensions of human values. Drawing from large cross-cultural data, he proposed 10 value dimensions that manifest universally in individuals and 7 dimensions that appear at the cultural level of analysis. A number of cross-cultural studies have demonstrated the usefulness of his model (e.g., Fontaine, Poortinga, Delbeke, & Schwartz, 2008; Spini, 2003). Schwartz defines values as trans-situational goals ordered by importance that serve as guiding principles in life. Examining the grouping of 56 value-items across 97 samples in 44 countries, Schwartz (1994a) observed the emergence of 10 motivationally distinct types of values: achievement, hedonism, stimulation, self-direction, universalism, benevolence, tradition, conformity, and security. These 10 motivational value types could, in turn, be located in a two-dimensional value space, grouped into four higher order value clusters: openness to change (values favoring change and independent thought and behavior), conservation (preservation of traditional practices and stability), self-transcendence (concern for the welfare of others), and self-enhancement (pursuit of one’s own relative success and dominance over others). Schwartz’s is the most widely used model of human values and has been used to explain environmental engagement. Cross-cultural studies have shown that environmental attitudes and behaviors are associated with greater levels of self-transcendence values and lower levels of self-enhancement values (Milfont, Sibley, & Duckitt, 2010; Schultz et al., 2005; Schultz & Zelezny, 1998, 1999; Schwartz, Sagiv, & Boehnke, 2000). Later, Schwartz (1994b, 1999; Smith & Schwartz, 1997) established equivalence for 45 of the 56 value-items and proposed a theory of cultural values, defining these as “the implicitly or explicitly shared abstract ideas about what is good, right, and desirable in a society” (Schwartz, 1999, p. 25). Using the same organizing principle used by Kluckhohn, Schwartz argued that there are issues that all societies must confront, but instead of Kluckhohn’s five “problems,” he proposed three basic issues with their resolutions leading to specific cultural dimensions. Table 11.3 provides a description of the resulting cultural dimensions. The first issue refers to the nature of the relations between the individual and the group, which yields a cultural emphasis on conservatism (person viewed as an entity embedded in the collective) on one pole of the dimension, and autonomy (person viewed as an autonomous entity) at the other pole. The second issue refers to ensuring responsible behavior that preserves the social fabric, which yields a cultural emphasis on hierarchy (socially responsible behavior ensured via power differences and hierarchical systems) versus egalitarianism (socially responsible behavior ensured via voluntary cooperation and recognition of others as moral equals). The third issue, which is most related to the context of this chapter, refers to the relation of humans to the natural and social environment. This basic issue leaves societies with two possible
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Cultural Differences in Environmental Engagement approaches: either to fit harmoniously into the world and try to preserve it (harmony) or to exploit and change the world (mastery). Further to this conceptual link with environmental issues, the harmony dimension is measured by three value-items (unity with nature, protecting the environment, world of beauty) that overlap with environmental engagement and could be posited to express a cultural emphasis on “environmental values” (see Steg & de Groot, this volume, for more on this topic).
Cultural Theory Cultural theory was originally proposed by the British anthropologist Mary Douglas, and further developed by other scholars including American political scientist Aaron Wildavsky and British anthropologist Michael Thompson. According to the theory, group and grid are the two dimensions of sociality that reflect ways of looking at the world (Douglas, Thompson, & Verweij, 2003; Douglas & Wildavsky, 1982; Thompson, Grendstad, & Selle, 1999). The group dimension refers to inclusion, or the claim of groups over members. High group indicates the extent to which the life of an individual is absorbed and sustained by group membership, whereas low group indicates the extent to which an individual avoids all group involvement. The grid dimension refers to classification, or the (p. 186) Table 11.3 Cultural Value Dimensions Proposed by Schwartz Schwartz’s dimensions Conservatism
Cultural emphasis on maintenance of the status quo, and restraint of actions or inclinations that might disrupt the status quo or the traditional order (social order, respect for tradition, family security) (e.g., Nepal, Malaysia, Georgia).
Autonomy
Cultural emphasis on individuals’ uniqueness and encouragement of expressing of their own internal attributes, with two types. Intellectual autonomy refers to a cultural emphasis on encouraging individuals’ pursuit of their own ideas and intellectual directions (curiosity, broadmindedness, creativity) (e.g., Netherlands, French Canada, France). Affective autonomy refers to a cultural emphasis on encouraging individuals’ pursuit of affective positive experiences (pleasure, exciting life, varied life) (e.g., Greece, New Zealand, East Germany).
Hierarchy
Cultural emphasis on the legitimacy of inequality in the distribution of power, roles, and resources (social power, authority, wealth) (e.g., China, Zimbabwe, India).
Egalitarianism
Cultural emphasis on transcending selfish interests in favor of commitment to promoting the welfare of others (equality, social justice, responsibility) (e.g., Finland, Italy, Netherlands).
Mastery
Cultural emphasis on succeeding through active self-assertion (ambition, success, daring) (e.g., English Canada, United States, Japan).
Harmony
Cultural emphasis on fitting harmoniously into the environment rather than on changing or exploiting it (unity with nature, protecting the environment, world of beauty) (e.g., Slovenia, Estonia, Czech Republic).
degree to which social interaction is subject to rules. High grid indicates the extent to which there is an emphasis on institutionalized classifications (based on class, social roles, ethnicity) in a society to regulate the interactions of its members and keep individuals apart, whereas low grid indicates the extent to which there is less emphasis on institutionalized regulations making individuals to negotiate their own relationships with other members in society. The interplay of the group-grid dimensions produces a fourfold typology of social solidarities: individualism, hierarchy, fatalism, and egalitarianism. Each of these four forms of social solidarities represent primary ways of organizing, perceiving, and justifying social relations (see Table 11.4). The social solidarities also correspond to particular myths of nature that are symbolized by the balance between the vulnerability of nature and
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Cultural Differences in Environmental Engagement environment-risky behavior (Steg & Sievers, 2000; Thompson, 2003). Figure 11.1 depicts the four forms of social solidarities and their corresponding myths of nature and human nature. In this figure, the horizontal axis (competition) refers to the social dimension, while the vertical axis (transactions) refers to the grid dimension. For each myth of nature, the line or landscape symbolizes the vulnerability of nature, while the ball symbolizes the environment-risky behavior (Table 11.4 provides more detail). Since its inception, cultural theory has been applied to environmental risk assessment and management, and empirical studies have examined the associations between the myths of nature and environmental engagement. Research has shown that the four forms of social solidarity and myths of nature correspond to systematic individual differences and that, in line with this theory, egalitarians show stronger environmental concerns compared to individualists. These include higher awareness of the problems of car use and higher sense of responsibility for these problems and their solutions (Steg & Sievers, 2000), preferences for environmental risk management strategies related to energy use (Poortinga, Steg, & Vlek, 2002), environmental pollution concerns (Dake, 1991), and self-reported environmental behavior (Grendstad & Selle, 1999). These four forms of social solidarity are also related to other theoretical models used to understand cultural differences. For example, Fiske (1992) proposed four patterns of social relationship associated with the universal need to distribute resources in a society: communal sharing, authority ranking, equality matching, and market pricing. The social solidarities are also related to the typology of vertical and horizontal individualism and collectivism, in which Hofstede’s dimensions of power distance and individualism-collectivism are combined to create four constructs (Singelis, Triandis, Bhawuk, & Gelfand, 1995; Triandis & Gelfand, 1998). Hierarchy is related to authority ranking and vertical collectivism; individualism is related to (p. 187)
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Cultural Differences in Environmental Engagement
Table 11.4 Cultural Value Dimensions Proposed by Cultural Theory Cultural Theory’s dimensions Hierarchy
Strong group involvement (high group) coupled with maximum regulation (high grid) produces social relations that are hierarchical. In this form of social solidarity, there are strong group boundaries and binding prescriptions. Individuals in this type of social environment are subject to the control/influence of other individuals and the demand of socially imposed roles. Inequality and autonomy are justified because imposing different roles to different people allows them to live together harmoniously. The world is controllable and nature is stable until pushed beyond discoverable limits set by certified experts and authorities (hence the perverse/tolerant myth of nature in which the ball is stable until pushed beyond certain limits). Hierarchists want to regulate the natural environment from the top down. Hierarchy items measure support for authority and respect for the past (“One of the problems with people today is that they challenge authority too often”; “The best way to provide for future generations is to preserve our customs and heritage”).
Individualism
Weak group involvement (low group) coupled with minimal regulation (low grid) produces social relations that are individualistic. In this form of social solidarity, individuals are not bound by group assimilation or prescribed roles. In this form of social solidarity, nature is a resilient system able to recover from any exploitation (hence the benign myth of nature in which the ball will always return to stability at the bottom of the landscape). Individualists oppose collective control and view the market system with its self-regulated networks as the best way to regulate the natural environment. Individualism items measure support for equal opportunity and the accumulation of property (“Everyone should have an equal chance to succeed and fail without government interference”; “If people have the vision and ability to acquire property, they ought to be allowed to enjoy it”).
Egalitarianism
Strong group involvement (high group) coupled with minimal regulation (low grid) produces social relations that are egalitarian. In this form of social solidarity, the natural environment is seen as an intricately interconnected system with a delicate balance that may easily collapse (hence the ephemeral myth of nature in which the ball has a fragile equilibrium). As a result, egalitarians are concerned with environmental problems and favor a concerted grassroots effort to solve these problems. Egalitarianism items measure commitment to make things equal (“What this world needs is a fairness revolution to make the distribution of goods more equal”; “I support a tax shift so that the burden falls more heavily on corporations and people with large incomes”).
Fatalism
Weak group involvement (low group) coupled with maximum regulation (high grid) produces social relations that are fatalistic. In this form of social solidarity, individuals are non-actors and excluded from group membership but experience strong binding prescriptions responsible for regulating their lives. Nature is seen as unpredictable and unmanageable and having no clear principles (hence the capricious myth of nature in which there is no obvious indication of the direction the ball will roll and the resulting consequences). Fatalism items measure individual inefficacy and the futility of cooperation (“Cooperation with others rarely works”; “It seems that whomever you vote for, things go on pretty much the same”).
equality matching and horizontal individualism; egalitarianism is related to communal sharing and horizontal collectivism; and fatalism is related to market pricing and vertical individualism.
Inglehart
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Cultural Differences in Environmental Engagement
Click to view larger Figure 11.1 Four Forms of Social Solidarity and Their Associated Myths of Nature (adapted from Thompson, 2003).
The American political scientist Ronald Inglehart has developed a model to explain the development of modern societies that also addresses mass attitudes toward environmental problems. Based on data from the World Values Survey, which comprises representative national surveys from many countries, Inglehart (1977) argued that the increasing affluence and security achieved by industrial societies, especially after World War II, resulted in a shift from materialist values (personal and national security, economic well-being) to post-materialist values (quality of life, self-expression). He argued that this shift in values, led by economic prosperity and political security, resulted in societies’ becoming more environmentally concerned. Although some variations were found across countries, the overall finding from cross-cultural studies support this view by showing that the links between post-materialist (p. 188) values and environmental protection are stronger than those between materialist values and environmental protection (e.g., Grob, 1995; Inglehart, 1995; Olofsson & Ohman, 2006; Pierce, Lovrich, Tsurutani, & Abe, 1987). Several scholars have challenged Inglehart’s post-materialist values thesis because of its underlying assumption that concern for the environment can be found only among Western industrialized countries, and because of empirical evidence showing that participants from poorer nations also express high levels of environmental concern (for a discussion of this issue, see Social Science Quarterly, 78[1], March 1997). Indeed, Inglehart himself recognized that a shift to post-materialist values is not the only factor that could explain environmental concern; he later proposed a “challenge-response model” to explain public support for environmental protection not accounted by his post-materialist values thesis (Inglehart, 1995). Environmental concern, he argued, is also derived from direct experience of pollution and other environmental degradation. People who experience objective environmental problems in their own country will be more willing to support environmental protection than those who are not exposed to severe environmental problems. Environmental concern can thus be a response to environmental challenges experienced in one’s country. It worth noting that this view of greater environmental concern linked to greater exposure to pollution and environmental degradation has long been proposed by the environmental deprivation theory (Tremblay & Dunlap, 1978). When combined, Inglehart’s challenge-response model and the post-materialist values thesis are often referred to as the “objective problems, subjective values” hypothesis, and both are important for understanding and explaining global environmentalism (Brechin, 1999; Inglehart, 1995). According to this hypothesis, environmental concern stems from a negative effect of experienced environmental degradation and/or from a positive effect of post-materialist values. The materialist–post-materialist value dimension is still used extensively to compare countries, even though Inglehart went on to propose two different dimensions: one reflecting cross-cultural differences between survival versus self-expression values (similar to materialist–post-materialist values) and another reflecting differences between traditional versus secular-rational orientations toward authority (Inglehart, 1997). Analyses have (p. 189) been conducted to locate societies based on these two dimensions (Inglehart, 1997; Inglehart & Baker, 2000). Traditional societies (e.g., Nigeria, Pakistan, India) tend to have low levels of tolerance for abortion, divorce, and homosexuality, and tend to emphasize religion, deference to parental authority, and the importance of family life, while secular-rational societies (e.g., Germany, Japan, Norway) tend to have the opposite characteristics.
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Cultural Differences in Environmental Engagement Analyzing cross-cultural data from 65 societies surveyed by the World Values Survey, Inglehart and Baker (2000) found that traditional values were positively correlated to an item expressing the view that environmental problems can be solved without international agreements, and that survival values were positively correlated with items measuring lack of environmental activism (has not recycled things and has not attended meetings or signed petitions to protect the environment). These findings support the view that environmental concern is higher in societies holding secular-rational and self-expression values.
Linking the Models There are many commonalities among the theoretical models discussed above. First, the models either include a specific cultural dimension related to human-environment interactions or incorporate environmental issues in their premises. Second, the models focus (explicitly or implicitly) on value orientations from which national cultures can be compared. Finally, studies have found empirical links between the constructs proposed by the models most related to environmental engagement. For example, in comparing cultural theory with Inglehart’s theory in a large Norwegian sample, Grendstad and Selle (1999) found that egalitarianism correlated positively with post-materialist values. They also found that egalitarianism was positively related to environmental concern, while post-materialism values were not. Hofstede (2001) also reported correlations between his dimensions and the dimensions proposed by Schwartz and Inglehart. For example, Schwartz’s harmony was related to Hofstede’s uncertainty avoidance (r = .45) and mastery was related to masculinity (r = .53), while none of Hofstede’s other dimensions correlated with harmony and mastery. Besides these commonalities, the main contribution of these theoretical models is the empirical identification of meaningful dimensions of cultural variability, which allows researchers to place national cultures on these dimensions. To the extent that these dimensions can be used to explain cultural variability, many studies have incorporated them to understand cross-national differences on environmental engagement. Some of these studies are reviewed below along with other recent studies examining culture influence on environmental engagement.
Cross-Cultural Studies on Environmental Engagement There is an increasing interest in understanding and measuring environmental engagement across countries (e.g., Kaiser & Wilson, 2000; Milfont & Duckitt, 2010). Many large international surveys have also incorporated environmentally related questions, including a 16-country survey (Louis Harris & Associates, 1989), the 24-country Health of the Planet Survey (Dunlap et al., 1993), the World Values Survey discussed above, and the International Social Survey Programme, which included environmentally focused surveys in 1993, 2000 and 2010. An increasing number of publications also covers the area, including books and book chapters (e.g., Brett & Kopelman, 2004; Ehlers & Gethmann, 2003; Garcia Mira, Cameselle, & Martinez, 2003; Gouveia, 2002; Werner et al., 1997). A recent review of three large databases (PsycInfo, Web of Science and Scopus) identified more than 100 crosscultural studies published over the last 35 years related to environmental engagement, including the topics of environmental concern, attitudes, beliefs, values or behavior (Milfont, Pérez-López, & Tabor, 2010). This section provides a brief review of several kinds of cross-cultural studies, distinguishing those conducted at the individual level of analysis and those conducted at the national culture level. Studies using individual-level analysis focus on cross-cultural comparisons of individual average scores on particular measures, with individual responses as the unit of analysis. Studies using culture-level analysis have national culture as the unit of analysis and focus on country-level aggregate scores for cross-cultural comparisons (Leung, 1989). Studies using multilevel analysis that incorporate both individual-level and country-level variables are reviewed in a separate section. Variables examined at the country level are not always culture variables strictly speaking (e.g., cultural values), but also incorporate macrolevel variables that might influence environmental engagement, such as the country’s affluence and environmental quality. (p. 190)
Individual-Level Studies
An increasing number of studies examine the influence of culture on environmental engagement and environmental risk perception (Ando, Ohnuma, & Chang, 2007; Chan & Lau, 2001; Lévy-Leboyer, Bonnes, Chase, & Ferreira-Marques, 1996; Lorenzoni, Leiserowitz, Doria, Poortinga, & Pidgeon, 2006). Additionally, research
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Cultural Differences in Environmental Engagement examining the relationship between individual values and environmental engagement comprise most of the crosscultural studies available (e.g., De Groot & Steg, 2007; Leiserowitz, Kates, & Parris, 2006; Milfont, Duckitt, & Wagner, 2010; Milfont et al., 2010; Schultz et al., 2005; Schultz & Zelezny, 1998, 1999). This seems to follow a trend in cross-cultural studies to use values as a way to “unpack” cultural differences in psychological phenomena. These studies show that individuals holding altruistic, pro-social, post-materialist value orientations tend to be more environmentally concerned. Other studies have examined cross-cultural differences in the environmental attitudes of teachers and/or students (e.g., Bogner & Wiseman, 1999; Muñoz, Bogner, Clement, & Carvalho, 2009; Palmer et al., 1998; Uzzell et al., 1994; Van Petegem & Blieck, 2006). For example, the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) evaluates the academic performance of 15-year-old students across OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries and other participating countries. With 400,000 students from 57 countries, the PISA 2006 focus was on science and included questions on sense of responsibility toward resources and the environment (OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, 2007). Although awareness of environmental issues varied by country and was stronger for students performing better in science (see discussion of Pauw & Van Petegem’s study below), within OECD countries 73% of the students said they were aware of the consequences of clearing forests for other land use, 58% said they were aware of the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and 35% said they were aware of the use of genetically modified organisms. The questionnaire also asked students to indicate whether selected environmental issues will improve or get worse over the next 20 years. Some degree of pessimism was observed, with only 21% of students across OECD countries indicating a belief that problems associated with energy shortages would improve over the next 20 years and lesser percentages believing that other environmental issues would improve. The students most pessimistic about the future of the environment were those with higher performance in science and who reported greater awareness of environmental issues. This area of research is important because fostering care for the environment at schools will undoubtedly lead to pro-environmental actions in the future (see Myers, this volume, for more on this topic). Cross-cultural temporal pessimism in environmental assessment is not limited to young people (Dunlap et al., 1993; Dunlap & Mertig, 1995; Gifford et al., 2009). For example, Gifford et al. (2009) conducted a cross-cultural study in 18 nations to specifically investigate spatial optimism and temporal pessimism. Spatial optimism refers to the view that environmental conditions are better here than there, while temporal pessimism refers to the view that environmental conditions will get worse. They included the assessment of 20 environmental conditions, including the availability of fresh drinking water, quality of air, environmental impact of vehicle traffic, and the effects of greenhouse gases. Gifford et al. observed a cross-cultural trend for both spatial optimism and temporal pessimism. Positive assessments of environmental conditions decreased as spatial distance increased (i.e., “environmental conditions are better in my local area than in my country, which are better than the situation globally”) and assessments about the future of the environment were negative (i.e., “environmental conditions will get worse in 25 years compared to now”). Spatial optimism was also observed in a number of other studies (Dunlap et al., 1993; Milfont, Abrahamse, & McCarthy, 2011; Uzzell, 2000). Gifford et al. (2009) also performed country-level analysis by correlating assessments of current national conditions and spatial optimism scores with the 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index. They found that countries with higher sustainability scores were those in which respondents had more spatial optimism and had a more positive assessment of their country’s current environmental conditions.
Culture-Level Studies Gouveia (2002) examined the associations between Schwartz’s cultural values and economic, environmental, institutional, and social indicators of sustainable development across 30 countries. By combining cultural values into self-centered (egalitarianism, intellectual autonomy) and social-centered (harmony, conservatism) values, he created individualist and collectivist scores. Individualist (p. 191) cultural values were negatively (albeit nonsignificantly) related to a general index of sustainable development, while collectivist cultural values were strongly and positively related to the sustainable development index. His findings support the individual-level studies linking collectivistic orientations and concern for the environment as discussed above. Oreg and Katz-Gerro (2006) analyzed data from the 2000 International Social Survey Programme across 27 countries and used structural equation modeling to test a mediating model of the influence of values on ecological
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Cultural Differences in Environmental Engagement behavior. Their model posited that values precede environmental concern, which precedes intention (i.e., willingness to sacrifice for the environment), which in turn precedes ecological behavior. The full model can be depicted as: values → environmental concern/perceived threat → willingness to sacrifice for the environment → ecological behavior and perceived behavioral control → willingness to sacrifice → behavior. Overall, the mediating model was supported. More important, they found that Inglehart’s post-materialist values were positively related to environmental attitudes but that Schwartz’s harmony values were unexpectedly weakly and negatively related. The authors discussed this unexpected finding in terms of methodological limitations of the data. Nevertheless, the findings suggest that harmony values are negatively associated with environmental engagement, which contradicts the view postulated above. However, other studies provide support for the view that Schwartz’s harmony values are equivalent to environmental values. First, Hofstede (2001) critiqued the theoretical argument that harmony and mastery are two opposite poles on a single dimension dealing with the environment. Second, Milfont and Sibley (2012, Study 3) empirically examined the associations between harmony values and three other indices of country-level environmental indicators across 36 countries: (1) country-level scores on the New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) Scale (Hawcroft & Milfont, 2010); (2) the 2010 Environmental Performance Index (EPI, retrieved from http://epi.yale.edu), which ranks countries based on their scores on 25 performance indicators; and (3) an environmental concern score derived from 9 items from the 2000 International Social Survey Programme data (ISSP 2000, Franzen & Meyer, 2010). Correlations showed that harmony values were associated with the EPI 2010 (r = 0.49, p < .01, N = 29), but not significantly associated with country-level NEP score (r = 0.41, p > .05, N = 15) or the ISSP 2000 (r = -0.01, p > .10, N = 14), which might be due to small sample size. Similar results were reported by Gouveia (2002), who found a strong correlation (0.66) between harmony values and his environmental development index. These associations support the view of harmony as measuring environmental values and provide a reliability test for these values as country-level indicators of environmental engagement. Another large country-level study used publicly available data to investigate the relationships between the Environmental Performance Index and socioeconomic and sociopolitical variables across 168 countries (Mukherjee & Chakraborty, 2010). The researchers observed a linear relationship between environmental quality and both political freedom and level of corruption, with environmental quality being higher in countries with greater political freedom and a greater ability to control corruption. In contrast, they observed an S-shaped curve for the relationships between environmental performance and both per capita gross domestic product and Human Development Index. This index is a country-level measure of human development comprising three components: health (life expectancy at birth), education (adult literacy rate and educational attainment), and living standards (gross national income per capita). The nonlinear relationship indicates that environmental quality increases with income and human development, decreases with further rise of both, and then starts to increase again. That is, environmental quality initially increases as a result of wealth and living standards until reaching a peak from which it starts to decrease due to intensified economic activities, but with further rises in wealth and living standards, environmental quality starts to increase again. These findings suggest that environmental quality increases with income and human development up to a point, but it is still not clear what that point is or the basis for saying what stage of development is represented. A more recent study has examined the association between environmental quality and time perspective by integrating country-level data on time orientation dimensions from 73 countries (Milfont & Gapski, 2010). Factor analysis yielded two time orientation factors: Factor 1 grouped data measuring how cultures assign different meanings to past, present, and future temporal frames, with an emphasis on future orientation (fast pace of life, planning, and investing in the future), while Factor (p. 192) 2 grouped data measuring how cultures assign different meanings to time horizons, with an emphasis on long-term orientation (enduring goals, long-standing plans). Factor scores were computed and correlated with other country-level variables, including per capita gross national product, the 2007 Human Development Index, and the 2010 Environmental Performance Index. Factor 1 was negatively related to a country’s environmental quality, while positively related to national wealth and level of human development. Correlations for Factor 2 were nonsignificant. The negative association between country-level time orientation and environmental engagement contrasts with the positive associations found at the individual level (e.g., Corral-Verdugo, Fraijo-Sing, & Pinheiro, 2006; Milfont & Gouveia, 2006), and highlights the fact that individual-level correlations are not necessarily aligned with country-level correlations (this is discussed under “Ecological Fallacy” below). Inconclusive findings on the association between time perspective and environmental
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Cultural Differences in Environmental Engagement engagement at the country-level were also reported in a recent article by Hofstede and Minkov (2012). Although arguing that long-term orientation should affect how societies handle its natural environment, they observe that China is a large polluter despite having a high long-term orientation.
Multilevel Studies Some recent studies have used multilevel models to assess the combined effect of individual-level and countrylevel variables in explaining environmental attitudes. Cross-cultural studies often work with multilevel data. These data sets have a hierarchical structure in which observations at the individual level of analysis are nested within observations at the culture level of analyses (see Nezlek, 2011; Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). In multilevel analyses, the effects of variables in each level of analysis on the outcome variable are estimated while controlling for the other variables, and cross-level interaction can also be estimated. Although not strictly using multilevel modeling techniques, Kemmelmeier, Krol, and Young (2002) examined individual-level and country-level variables in explaining environmental attitudes across 22 countries that took part in the 1993 International Social Survey Programme. At the individual level they observed no consistent effects of age and sex on willingness to protect the environment (measured by three economy-vs.-environment trade-off items), but environmental protection was higher for those holding post-materialist values and with higher levels of education and income. At the country level, they found a linear relationship between a country’s wealth (measured by the gross national product per capita) and both post-materialist values and environmental protection, so that greater affluence is related to higher post-materialism and greater willingness to protect the environment. The authors also tested the mediating role of post-materialist values on the associations between affluence and environmental protection at both levels of analysis. This mediating model is derived from Inglehart’s theory and posits that post-materialist values can explain the impact of economic prosperity on environmental engagement. However, this position was not supported; the effect of personal income and the country’s wealth on environmental protection was not mediated by post-materialist values. Instead, they observed a cross-level interaction: the correlation between personal income and environmental protection was greater in countries that had experienced recent economic growth (for another study using the same data set, see Ignatow, 2006). Using data from the World Values Survey and European Values Study, Gelissen (2007) examined how support for environmental protection (measured by two economy-vs.-environment trade-off items) could be explained by a number of variables at the individual level (age, sex, household income, post-materialist values, environmental involvement, and educational attainment) and country level (national wealth, growth in national wealth, societallevel post-materialist values, and objective environmental problems—including population density, and air and water quality). Examining variables at the individual level first, Gelissen observed that older individuals with higher income who held post-materialist values, who were actively committed to environmental organizations either by membership or volunteer work, and with higher levels of educational attainment were those with greater willingness to make financial sacrifices to protect the environment. Unexpectedly, male and female participants did not differ on their support for environmental protection in this analysis. (Female participants often hold higher environmental concern and pro-environmental behavior than their male counterparts [see, e.g., Milfont & Duckitt, 2010; Zelezny, Chua, & Aldrich, 2000].) Examining country-level variables, Gelissen found that (surprisingly) national wealth was negatively related to public support for environmental protection, (p. 193) while higher levels of post-materialist values and growth in national wealth were related to greater public willingness to make financial sacrifices for the environment. None of the measures of objective environmental problems was significantly related to support for environmental protection. Taken as a whole, these findings support Inglehart’s post-materialist values thesis while rejecting his objective problems thesis. Liu and Sibley (2010) examined in 34 countries the association between perceived importance of global warming and participants’ willingness to make sacrifices in their standard of living to protect the environment; they also examined whether human development in the country would moderate that association. First, they observed that older and female participants were more willing to make sacrifices to protect the environment, and that greater importance placed on global warming was predictive of intention to make sacrifices. More important, they examined cross-level interaction effects in which observations at the individual level interact with observations at the country level. As they predicted, Human Development Index moderated the effect of perceived importance of global warming on willingness to make sacrifices to one’s living standard to protect the environment. That is, the influence
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Cultural Differences in Environmental Engagement of perceived importance of global warming on intention to make sacrifices for the environment was higher in countries with higher standard of living than in those with lower standard of living. Another recent study used data from both the 1993 and 2000 International Social Survey Programmes to examine cross-cultural differences in environmental concern (Franzen & Meyer, 2010). They examined whether environmental concern could be explained by individual-level variables (age, sex, years of education, relative income within country, post-materialist values, knowledge about environment, and perceived environmental quality) and country-level variables (affluence, income inequality, educational participation, proportion of postmaterialists, environmental quality, proportion of urban population, and population density). All individual-level variables had an effect on environmental concern independently of the others. Environmental concern was highest for younger and female participants, for those with higher income and education level, and for those holding postmaterialist values, those having environmental knowledge, and those with a negative perception of environmental quality. At the country level, only wealth was significantly related to environmental concern, with concern higher in wealthier countries. Another consistent result across the 1993 and 2000 ISSP data sets was the effect of individual income on environmental concern. This relationship was nonlinear, showing that concern increases to a marginally declining degree with income. Overall, these findings support others (e.g., Diekmann & Franzen, 1999) suggesting that affluence is a stronger predictor of environmental engagement than post-materialist values. Finally, another recent study used the 2006 PISA data to examine the influence of individual-level variables (sex, science performance, family socioeconomic background) and country-level variables (Human Development Index, indices of environmental quality of the countries) on environmental attitudes (Pauw & Van Petegem, 2010). The results indicated that environmental attitudes were greater for 15-year-old students who were female, with a higher performance in science and coming from a more advantaged family background. Surprisingly Human Development Index had no significant effect on students’ environmental attitudes, whereas the environmental quality of their country of origin was a significant predictor. Environmental attitudes were higher for students in countries with more polluted environments, which is in line with the environmental deprivation theory (Tremblay & Dunlap, 1978) and Inglehart’s (1995) challenge-response model.
Linking the Findings Taken as a whole, results from the studies reviewed above and others enable us to summarize pan-cultural effects. At the individual level of analysis, consistent cross-cultural findings show that environmental engagement is positively related to being female, post-materialist values, higher income, educational level, environmental knowledge, and negative assessment of environmental quality. At the country level of analysis, there is strong evidence that affluence and certain value orientations, such as self-expression/post-materialist values, lead to higher environmental engagement. But despite these convergences, it is still unclear what are the main country-level determinants of environmental engagement. Two important hypotheses arising from Inglehart’s models still need further testing. First, there is the hypothesis related to objective problem and subjective values, in which environmental engagement is a (p. 194) result of either a shift from survival/materialist to self-expression/post-materialist values or the experience of concrete environmental degradation. Second, there is the hypothesis related to modernization and affluence, in which environmental engagement is a result of an increase in income and human development. A number of studies have made a start on testing these hypotheses but no consensus has so far been reached (e.g., Diekmann & Franzen, 1999; Franzen & Meyer, 2010; Kemmelmeier et al., 2002).
Methodological Considerations for Evaluating and Designing Cross-Cultural Studies Large international surveys are often well financed and follow strict methodological procedures in questionnaire translation and data collection. However, even such studies are not immune to methodological difficulties (see, e.g., Dunlap et al., 1993), and researchers aiming to gather cross-cultural data should consider the design of their studies very carefully. This section outlines practical methodological concepts for evaluating and designing crosscultural studies. These concepts have been extensively discussed in publications in the area of cross-cultural psychology, and their detailed discussion is beyond the scope of this chapter, but given the increasing number of cross-cultural studies in environmental psychology, even a brief discussion of the issues outlined below seems
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Cultural Differences in Environmental Engagement warranted for this developing field (for a fuller discussion of methodological issues in cross-cultural research see Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 2002; Matsumoto & van de Vijver, 2011; Neumayer, 2002; van de Vijver & Leung, 1997).
Culture as an Independent or Moderating Variable Cross-cultural studies are based mostly on quasi-experimental designs. In contrast to true experiments, such studies compare previously existing, intact groups; subjects cannot be randomly assigned to culture as a treatment or experimental manipulation; and culture is beyond experimental control (van de Vijver & Leung, 1997). Cross-cultural studies can be further classified in terms of the role of culture in the relationships being investigated. In cross-cultural studies using culture as an independent variable, observed differences between cultural groups on environmental attitudes and behavior are attributed to culture. Culture can also be considered as a moderating variable. There are at least three ways to examine moderating effects of culture: (1) one can first test whether people from various countries are significantly different on, say, environmental engagement and then, based on these differences, use country as a moderator; (2) one can test the moderating effects of culture using actual assessments of the cultural variable of interest (e.g., post-materialist values, individualism-collectivism orientations); or (3) one can first test the moderating effects of the cultural variable and then determine whether country explains additional variance (see Kirkman, Lowe, & Gibson, 2006). These approaches are useful when designing a study and are important for the proper “unpacking” of cross-cultural differences.
Ecological Fallacy Ecological fallacy is the incorrect assumption that relationships occurring at the country level of analysis (or another aggregate or higher ecological level) are necessarily the same at the the individual level of analysis (Jargowsky, 2005). This fallacy often arises in cross-cultural studies when culture-level characterization is used ex post facto to explain relationships between variables at the individual level without any empirical justification. For example, it is an ecological fallacy to assume that all members of individualistic cultures hold individualistic values and that all members of collectivistic cultures hold collectivistic values, or to assume that because a strong and positive correlation was found between societal post-materialist values and environmental concern, the correlation between these two variables will have the same direction and strength for individuals. The reverse ecological fallacy occurs when it is assumed that relationships between variables at the individual level correspond to the same relationships at the culture level.
Distinction Between Emic and Etic Approaches Cross-cultural researchers have drawn an interesting distinction between emic and etic approaches to crosscultural research (Berry, 1969). The emic approach is linked to a cultural perspective in psychology in which behavior is approached as culture-specific, and criteria to understand behavior are relative to internal characteristics and are understood in the culture’s own terms. In contrast, the etic approach is linked to a comparative perspective in psychology in which behavior is approached as culture-general and universal, and behavior is examined and compared across many cultures. The emic-etic distinction (p. 195) is useful for categorizing studies but can limit the development of cross-cultural research if an emphasis is placed on the shortcomings and pitfalls of each approach instead of a focus on their interdependency. This is because “local knowledge and interpretations (the emic approach) are essential, but more than one study is required in order to be able to relate variations in cultural context to variations in behaviour (the etic approach)” (Berry, 1999, p. 166). With a focus on the contributions of each approach, there is a clearer recognition of the existence of both culturespecific and culture-general aspects of a given phenomenon. For example, the use of clothing can be argued to be a universal human phenomenon, as it is observed across cultures, but at the same time variations in terms of its use and style are also observed. As a result, scholars in the area now emphasize a three-step process from imposed etics (where a construct from one culture is applied to another), to emics, to finally derived etics (where imposed etics is combined with emics to formulate knowledge that is valid cross-culturally) (Berry, 1999; Berry et al., 2002). First, psychological knowledge and perspectives are transported and tested in other cultures to assess their validity (e.g., use of an environmental attitude measure in another country). Second, new aspects of the given phenomenon are explored and discovered in the local culture (e.g., adapting and/or adding items to the measure).
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Cultural Differences in Environmental Engagement Finally, the knowledge produced from these first two approaches is integrated to achieve a more universal description of the psychological phenomenon (e.g., validation of the measure across cultural groups). Research by Schwartz (1992) and Leung and Bond (2004) are good examples of the use of this three-step process and could guide research in our field.
Issues of Equivalence and Bias Besides the more conceptual topics just reviewed, issues of equivalence and bias are important methodological aspects to consider when designing and analyzing data from multiple groups. Cross-cultural studies often compare groups on psychological variables, and an assumption is made that the scales used measure the same psychological construct in all groups. Despite its appeal, this assumption is often not justified and needs to be tested to see whether the measures are equivalent across the cultural groups investigated. Indeed, the establishment of measurement equivalence is a prerequisite for meaningful comparisons across groups. If the appropriate tests are performed and the measures are shown to be equivalent, then cross-cultural comparisons are valid and differences or similarities between cultural groups can be meaningfully interpreted. However, comparisons and interpretations are not fully meaningful if measurement equivalence has not been established. Four levels of equivalence can be distinguished (Fontaine, 2005): (1) functional equivalence implies that the theoretical variable of interest, say, environmental attitudes, has the same psychological meaning across the cultural groups; (2) structural equivalence implies that observed variables, say, items from an environmental attitudes measure, refer to the same latent variable in each of the groups; (3) metric equivalence implies that the weight parameter (i.e., measurement unit) between observed and latent variables, say, associations between items and the latent construct, has the same value across the cultural groups—thus allowing cross-cultural comparisons of score patterns; and (4) full-score or scalar equivalence implies that both the weight and intercept parameters (i.e., origin of measurement unit) of the relationship between observed and latent variables have the same values across the cultural groups. Lack of equivalence is likely to arise from multiple causes, including cultural specificity of the theoretical variable of interest, domain underrepresentation, and measurement problems such as method and item biases (Fontaine, 2005; van de Vijver & Leung, 1997). Although it is a challenging task to achieve measurement invariance in cross-cultural research, equivalence is a prerequisite to the meaningful evaluation of group differences. A group mean comparison on a scale can be meaningfully conducted and interpreted only if the scale items have the same meaning in each of the comparison groups. If the scale items denote one thing to one group and something different for another group—because of poor translation, cultural specificity of item contents, and so on—no comparison can be made. Suppose we are interested in measuring people’s feelings of guilt for not acting more environmentally. Research has shown that guilt feelings is an important variable in models trying to predict pro-environmental intentions (Bamberg & Möser, 2007; Kaiser, Schultz, Berenguer, Corral-Verdugo, & Tankha, 2008). Research has also shown that guilt can be understood as a communal-oriented emotion related to reactions such as norm violation, damage, repair, and others’ expectations (Fontaine et al., 2006). The importance of interpersonal (p. 196) relationships in guilt means that guilt feelings might vary from one culture to another. In collectivist cultures where the self is deeply connected with family, friends, and the group, guilt feelings regarding environmental inaction could be expected to be higher than in individualistic cultures. Despite this reasonable hypothesis, however, one could meaningfully compare and interpret group mean differences only after establishing that the guilt feelings measure is equivalent across the groups. Many authors have discussed ways of identifying and addressing measurement equivalence (Chen, 2008; Cheung & Rensvold, 1999; Fischer & Fontaine, 2011; Milfont & Fischer, 2010; Steenkamp & Baumgartner, 1998; van de Vijver & Leung, 1997, 2011; Vandenberg & Lance, 2000). In particular, a study by Milfont, Duckitt, and Cameron (2006) provided an application of measurement invariance testing in the area of environmental psychology.
Conclusions and Future Directions This introductory review reveals substantial interest in exploring cultural differences in environmental engagement. The meaningful dimensions of cultural variability now available can help the selection of national cultures or cultural groups aimed at answering questions of theoretical significance, instead of using data collection driven by
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Cultural Differences in Environmental Engagement an easy availability of participants from two or more cultural groups. Researchers have progressed beyond simply pointing out similarities and differences between groups on indicators of environmental engagement, to focus on the development and empirical testing of theoretical models that can explain those similarities and differences. The majority of studies have examined cultural differences at the individual level of analysis, but the past few years have seen the emergence of country-level studies. More significantly, many recent studies have employed multilevel strategies to simultaneously examine the effect of both individual-level and country-level variables in explaining environmental engagement. Theoretical development in dimensions of cultural variability and the availability of socioeconomic indicators mean that researchers can better examine the effect of country-level indicators on environmental engagement. Some aspects not discussed in this chapter should be noted, including indigenous perspectives in humanenvironment interactions (e.g., Göbel, 2001; James, 1993). This chapter can be regarded as taking a Westernized and colonizer’s perspective, and viewpoints of indigenous peoples are essential for a complete understanding of human interaction with their surrounding environment. The chapter has also taken a causal approach in which culture influences views of the environment, but the reverse influence of the environment on culture also needs to be considered. A dialectic perspective on the mutual influence of culture and environment is important to better understand human-environment interactions (for such a holistic approach, see Werner et al., 1997). For example, there is evidence that climate (combined with affluence) has an important role in the creation of national cultures (Van de Vliert, 2009). How both climate and affluence determine cultural emphasis on environmental protection would be an interesting area to be addressed in future studies. Future directions for the field include the more extensive use of multilevel modeling for analyzing hierarchical, cross-cultural data, and not merely using culture as an independent variable but also designing studies to test the moderating role of cultural variables in explaining environmentally relevant constructs. To create the new generation of research addressing cross-cultural differences in environmental engagement, theoretical and methodological approaches developed and used in other fields could be drawn upon, especially those in crosscultural psychology. The increasing environmental problems we face mean that we will be forced to become more environmentally conscious. And as this chapter has shown, culture plays a major role in the development of environmental engagement.
Acknowledgments I would like to thank the 2010 students from the Environmental Psychology Research Group at the Victoria University of Wellington, P. Wesley Schultz, Ross Galbreath, and Aidan Tabor, for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
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Cities
Oxford Handbooks Online Cities Gabriel Moser The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0012
Abstract and Keywords This chapter considers urban territory as a place where more than half of the world population lives. After an objective description of the perceptions and images associated with a city, the physical and social environmental urban conditions are reviewed and their impact on the behavior and sociability of city dwellers is analyzed. City dwellers have been observed to have specific adaptive behavior patterns and sociability within the constraints imposed by urban stress and the bad conditions of urban life. Current city developments and especially the growing disparity within the population raises the question of the appropriation of the overall urban infrastructure and of a way of living together in cooperative harmony from the standpoint of an urban citizenship, indispensable for the sustained development of the megapoles of today. Keywords: urban environment, urban stressors, living conditions, density, adaptive behaviors, civility, social relationships, interpersonal relationships, appropriation, urban identity, urban dweller, sustainable development of cities
Introduction Since the early 20th century, along with industrialization, populations across the globe have been concentrating in large urban structures. Cities spread out and transformed themselves in vast agglomerations. Today more than half of the world’s population lives in cities, many of them in urban structures of more than 10 million inhabitants, socalled megapoles, which offer particular living conditions. They give shelter to a diverse population from a wide range of backgrounds. This intermingling of cultures is certainly enriching, but it raises the problem of living together in cooperative harmony. Moreover, the built-up area, the physical urban environment (noise, pollution), and the social environment (density) trigger a number of repercussions on behavior patterns and conduct through the conditions of daily life, as well as on the individual’s interpersonal relations. These different aspects of the urban environment and the adjustments that result from them imply that the inhabitants of big cities have to face conditions that certainly make them more flexible, but at the same time expose them to more risks in their physical and mental health. And this is all the more true for those living in mediocre conditions, or in disastrous conditions, as is the case in the ever-present shantytowns in most big agglomerations over the world. The inhabitants of the big metropolises are often identified as such by their behavior. In this chapter, we will focus on objective urban characteristics and the perception of cities and different behavior patterns identified in the literature, as well as on urban sociability and the development of interpersonal relationships. The cornerstone of sustainable development of metropolises is the appropriation not only of the residential neighborhood but also of the city, itself a beneficiary of the individual’s (p. 204) investment in the urban territory and in a certain social cohesion. It is only under these conditions that an urban identity can develop, based on the physical as well as on the social aspects of the city. These different aspects are dealt with from a descriptive and perceptive view of the urban environment, city life, and typical urban behavior patterns. A final paragraph brings together the urban identity through the appropriation of the urban infrastructure and a certain social cohesion, conditions for the
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Cities transition of the city dweller into an urban citizen concerned with sustainability.
The Urban Environment The constant growth of the city population is due to the fact that cities offer a great variety of cultural, social, and material options to their inhabitants. But their attractiveness goes along with a mostly uncontrolled growing and spreading out, which is accompanied by particular conditions that negatively affect daily living of city dwellers.
Cities as Specific Environments The more cities grow, the more they seem to lose their structure. Not only are the transformations into agglomerations noticeable in the structure of the built-up area but they also modify the activities of their inhabitants. According to Lefebvre (1970), the traditional city has three essential functions that distinguish it from loosestructured agglomerations: (1) an information function: the city is a perpetual source of information and the street occupies a central place in it; (2) a symbolic function: the architecture, the monuments, and the urban infrastructure form a social and cultural whole; and (3) an amusement function: enjoyable activities, such as games that bring people together, a variety of planned and chance encounters, the street as spectacle … Nowadays the traditional city, structured with a center of attraction and its own history, has been transformed into diffuse agglomerations composed of heterogeneous zones. Its expansion blurs the distinction between town and country, which is disappearing and being replaced by the notion of agglomeration, bringing together town and periphery (the center and suburbs nearby and farther away). For Proshansky (1978), the city is “a huge collection of people and activities concentrated in a given geographical place and destined to facilitate the dimensions of human life representing an organized society.” Barker (1968 ; Barker and Gump 1964; Barker and Wright, 1995) considered the city as an aggregate of behavioral sites, an organizational framework, with its facilities, behavioral resources, and activities. But as a collection of overcrowded behavioral sites, the city makes it more difficult for its inhabitants to directly involve themselves in collective activities, such as charity organizations, occasional help, and so on. This brings about a lowering in service performance and a lessening of individual responsibility and attention paid to others. The presence of a large number of different people in a restricted area is often considered to be the essential characteristic of a big city (Sadalla & Stea, 1978). The city is likely to modify behavior patterns reflecting the city’s characteristics: (1) The physical aspect: the buildings compartmentalize the space (transport, roads, housing, commercial centers, and factories) and also as a consequence compartmentalize the users of these different spaces. (2) The functional aspect: each built-up area has a specific function. (3) The cognitive aspect: the built-up area provides a framework for and acts as a guide to individual performances. (4) The affective aspect: the whole environment stirs the emotions. It is perceived and evaluated following personal values and cultural norms. In this way it is capable of providing a feeling of security and of being protected or, on the contrary, of giving individuals a feeling of insecurity. (5) The social aspect: the capacity of the environment to match the specific needs of the individual. Zeisel (1975, 2006) pointed to the importance of taking into account people’s needs in relation to their built-up environment. Needs are meant to apply to all sizes of environments, that is to say, just as much at a microlevel (individual housing) as at an intermediate level (neighborhood, residential blocks) and at a macrolevel (cities, agglomerations). Five needs can be identified: a need for security, a need for clarity and readability, a need for privacy, a need for social interaction (the built-up environment must make interaction easier as well as enabling isolation), a need for identity (the environment should favor identity through the relationship the individual creates with it). Do today’s cities meet the needs of their inhabitants? Sustainable cities cannot be achieved without reference to local culture and local needs and therefore also by taking into account the inhabitants and their needs. People do have environmental concerns, and the lack of environmental quality may be seen as an important threat to their well-being and thus impeding sustainability (Moser,2009). (p. 205) Characteristics of the Urban Environment
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Cities Cities can be characterized by the opportunities and facilities they offer their inhabitants: school and educational opportunities, health care resources, leisure pursuits, cultural aspects. They can also be characterized by their principal activity (tourism, industry, commerce, university, or a mix), and they are often the mirror of their inhabitants, for example, industrial cities, touristic places, university cities (Thorndike, 1939). Cities are meant to determine behavior by providing the context in which practices are shaped (Wicker, 1979; Wirth, 1938). Big cities are perceived as culturally diverse, allowing for a free choice of the type or style of life, tolerant but overcrowded, noisy, exacerbating competition, anonymous, producing isolation, impersonal, and encouraging mistrust (Krupat, 1985). Noise and pollution, problems of security, inadequate facilities in the neighborhood, and lack of satisfactory transport are repeatedly mentioned by city dwellers as threatening their quality of life (Rizk, 2003). On the other hand, small towns are perceived as calm, safe, healthy, intimate, and relaxing, but the people are too concerned by what their neighbors are doing and do not like strangers. In a general way, city dwellers seem to be less satisfied and less optimistic about life than country dwellers (Hynson, cited in Krupat, 1985). The research concerning the perception of the city highlights the very personal knowledge of the people. Evaluations are based on four dimensions: an evaluative aspect of the environment (beautiful, rich); the presence of activity (busy, noisy); the spatial configuration of the buildings (horizontal, open); and the descriptive aspect (uniform, dense). Others have looked into the “emblematic” aspects of some cities (Milgram, 1970). In a research by questionnaire built on critical incidents, the author shows that New York is characterized by its physical attributes: its diversity, its size, its rhythm of life, the cultural opportunities it offers, the heterogeneity of its population, and the respective isolation of the different urban communities; London by its tolerance and the courteous relations between its inhabitants. Paris is the subject of evaluations focusing as much on its architectural aspects as on the special nature of its inhabitants: Parisians are perceived as being cold and unfriendly, even hostile; others mention the cafés, parks, and gardens illustrating the city’s charm.
Environmental Stressors and Urban Living Conditions People need stimulation, complexity, novelty, and excitement (Geller, 1980; Geller, Cook, O’Connor, & Low, 1982). The environment is perceived and lived differently according to each person’s necessities and the city is an environment that does not necessary correspond with everyone’s life preferences. For some people the city with its opportunities is the ideal place. For these people the relative “understimulation” of rural life is certainly a less than attractive prospect. The city makes people smart in as far as they are confronted by a whole batch of novel situations of different kinds that they learn to face with flexibility (Proshansky, 1978). Nevertheless, most of the time citizens are exposed to visual and sound stimulations as well as high population density. Urban environments display three specific aspects: the prevailing physical conditions (essentially noise and air pollution), the social conditions (density), and overstimulation (exposure to a high number and variety of stimulations). Furthermore, the multiplication of visual and auditory stimuli to which the city dwellers are exposed is a constant informational overload, which increases fatigue. Generally, people are more likely to perceive environmental problems when they can hear (noise), see (smoke), smell, or feel them (Baum, Singer, & Baum, 1982; Evans & Cohen, 1987). Noise is the most spectacular stress to which city dwellers are exposed on a daily basis. It is the most frequently mentioned form of stress and the one that leads to the highest amount of complaints. One-fourth of urbanites are exposed to at least one loud noise at work, at home, or during transportation on a daily basis (Lévy-Leboyer, 1978). Cities also often accumulate different forms of density due to population concentrations. City dwellers may be exposed to social density outdoors (high number of individuals in the same place) and to spatial density in their habitat (lack of space per person). The image of city life differs according to the size of the agglomeration (Wright, 1967). Franck (1980) showed that students newly arrived in a big city admit to more stress than those who arrive in a medium-sized city. It has been noted that city dwellers complain more about problems they have with their physical environment (pollution, noise, density) than with their social environment (poor people, beggars, alcoholics, dirty individuals, etc.). But one must not forget that city dwellers are almost (p. 206) unanimously ready to sacrifice the environment for their careers, careers that are clearly followed more in big urban centers than in a rural setting (Lévy-Leboyer & Veyssière, 1978).
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Cities Citizens not only are exposed to environmental stress factors, but also face bad living conditions. Urban mobility is more constraining than in small towns: commuting daily from residence to the workplace and facing frequent gridlock or crowded mass transit increases the stress of city dwellers. Their spare time is compressed because of larger commuting duration, and there is less time available for social interactions. Compared to inhabitants of small towns, city dwellers experience overall ever-increasing difficulties of access to various services due to increased competition (subway, taxis, lining up for services, etc.). And bureaucratic formalism is also more frequent in big cities than in small towns. However, despite being generally more exposed to environmental stress factors, the inhabitants of big cities, with the exception of newcomers, do not mention these factors as annoying them more frequently than the inhabitants of small towns or even than people living in rural habitats (Moser & Robin, 2006). Overall, city life seems to be constraining and demanding. All the analyses in terms of environmental overload, environmental stress, and behavioral constraint point out the potentially negative effects of life in big cities compared to life in small towns. Sustainable cities cannot be achieved without reference to local culture and local needs and therefore also by taking into account the inhabitants and their needs. People do have environmental concerns, and the lack of environmental quality may be seen as an important threat to their well-being and thus impeding sustainability (Moser, 2009).
Vandalism, Criminality, and Insecurity Vandalism, criminal activity, and the feeling of fear that they instill are the aspects of life in large agglomerations that contribute to giving a bad reputation to certain urban areas, disturbing urban conviviality and thereby conditioning behavior patterns to a large extent. Vandalism is almost exclusively an urban phenomenon. It does not concern all environments indifferently: some environments are quickly degraded; others, on the contrary, seem to remain unscathed. These gratuitous degradations are an indication of societal dysfunction, of a disturbed relationship with the environment, and provoke a feeling of insecurity. All-pervading criminality is considered one of the most negative aspects of city life. In the United States in 1981, one-third of the inhabitants of big urban centers had been the victim of an offense at least once in the previous 12 months, and criminality is the most often cited reason for people moving house (Fischer, 1976). Certain categories of people, especially old people, will go out from their home only for exceptional reasons (Lavrakas, 1982). Generally speaking, there is more delinquency in city centers than on the periphery, no doubt because the center is denser and, because it is a focus of attraction, it acts as a drain on a sizeable proportion of the population of the agglomerations. Nonetheless, it is clear that there is a lot more to steal in the big city centers and less social control and mutual surveillance capable of dissuading potential thieves. On this point Zimbardo (1969) referred to the phenomenon of “de-individuation” to explain the high crime rate. The presence of an anonymous crowd is likely to protect the potential criminal, reducing the risk of being identified and punished. Finally, it seems evident that the mutual indifference and non-assistance to another person that one observes in big cities (Latané & Darley, 1970) contribute to the protection of the potential aggressor.
The Feeling of Insecurity Insecurity unquestionably represents stress for the individuals who are exposed to it (Fischer, 1976; Moser, 1992). Anxiety about criminality and fear of being a victim in urban environments limit social contact (Newman & Franck, 1982). The feeling of insecurity has been considered for a long time to be the individual and emotional response to prevailing criminality. In this perspective, it would be the prevailing criminality that would generate a reaction of fear. However, the feeling of insecurity is more widespread than criminality, and many research projects have confirmed that fear is not directly related to, nor is it in any way “justified” by, criminality: the feeling of insecurity is not the simple consequence of the perception of real risks (Ackerman, Dulong, & Jeudy, 1983; Lagrange & Roche, 1987). McCann, Sakheim, and Abrahamson (1988) proposed a model according to which the perception of security, self-esteem, and self-confidence, and the feeling of control (the feeling that the situation can be mastered), all tend to reduce the sentiment (p. 207) of insecurity. According to Norris and Kaniasty (1991),
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Cities victimhood makes people who have been victims believe they are vulnerable and incapable of protecting themselves. If the feeling of insecurity and vulnerability can be explained by a perceived loss of control, it can be analyzed in terms of personal control (Fischer, 1986; Moser, 1992). Distress, the feeling of insecurity, the fear of becoming a victim again, and the strong emotion, as well as the helplessness that follows the experience of an aggression, are clearly attributable to the perceived loss of control of the situation, as the victim sees no way of protecting him- or herself. Attributing the potential cause of such an event makes it possible to explain the emergence of a feeling of insecurity. Attribution theory has emphasized the relationship between internal explanations and the accompanying feeling of control (Kelley, 1967; Deschamps, 1990). On the other hand, the victim is likely to be all the more distressed given that he or she attributes what has happened to external causes, which are therefore, by definition, beyond his or her control, increasing the fear of being very probably a victim of the same incident again (Moser, 1988b). How does the feeling of insecurity express itself in environmental terms? The characteristics “dark,” “deserted,” “winding streets,” and “presence of graffiti” generate a feeling of insecurity, and this is even more the case in unknown environments (Moser & Lidvan, 1992). Familiarity with the environment turns out to be a key characteristic in the differentiated representation of the insecurity of a given place. Moreover, Newman and Franck (1982) showed that anxiety about criminality and fear of being a victim in urban environments differ according to the size of the housing estates; they explained this phenomenon by the lack of social contacts in the big estates. The nature of the built-up area would tend to encourage a person to extend the zone for mixing with others outside his or her apartment toward neighboring zones, which would increase or diminish the feeling of security. Likewise, Fischer (1976) and Hunter (1978) attributed the feeling of security to the sharing of the same behavior norms in a given residential environment. This approach is corroborated by other studies that highlight the link between the presence of graffiti and the feeling of insecurity (Skogan & Maxfield, 1981; Lewis & Salem, 1985). On the other hand, when there is no perceived incivility, the inhabitants would support a lower rate of criminality, which led Taylor, Gottfredson, and Brower (1984) to conclude that the feeling of insecurity is positively linked to the loss of territorial control.
Living in Cities
Behavioral Adaptation to Urban Living Conditions In 1903 Georg Simmel was already of the opinion that city dwellers based their relations with others on distance and otherness. The psycho-sociologists of the School of Chicago held that the inhabitants of big cities are able to adopt only an individualist mentality, to strive to be free and to avoid all collective restraints so as to guard against the unremitting stimulation to which they are subjected. Most of the analyses insist on the negative aspects of city life. The simultaneous presence of density, atmospheric pollution, and above all noise would constitute a stressful and essentially aversive environment. What are the effects, then, of urban conditions on the behavior of individuals?
Adaptive Behaviors City dwellers seem to have special strategies for adapting: Franck (1980) noted, for example, that individuals newly arrived in the city are more involved in planning their actions and their movements. This is even more so if they come from a rural area than if they come from another big city. The latter are more relaxed, probably because they feel the stress of the city less, having already lived in one. People accomplish a certain number of activities more rapidly in big cities than in small towns (Lowin, Hottes, Sandler, & Bornstein, 1971). Wirtz and Ries (1992) observed that the speed at which people move around increases with the size of the agglomeration. The authors concluded that life in big cities is less easygoing due to its stress conditions. An extension of this study to cover a greater number of agglomerations confirms that the rhythm of life is faster in cities (Bornstein, 1979). In fact, the speed at which pedestrians move varies in a straight line according to the number of inhabitants. Marked cultural differences exist between reactions to environmental conditions: the Chinese accept conditions of high density; they are reserved at an emotional level and have a highly regulated family life, in all probability because of the high density of their living quarters (Mitchell, 1971). Canter and Canter (1971) pointed out that in Tokyo there is a very low rate of vandalism and delinquency because
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Cities that city is made up of small districts organized as villages, which facilitate social control. Similarly, (p. 208) Rogler (1967) underlined the respect for intimacy and an intense community life in the shantytowns of South America. In the final analysis, there are multiple ways for city dwellers to adapt and adjust their behavior when they are provided with stable social structures.
Urban Civilities Urbanity is rooted in the respect of individuals for a number of “routines” concerning relations with other people that define social order in a normative way (Goffman, 1974). Urbanity is commonly associated with civilization, with control of the self and its impulses (Elias, 1969), with good manners toward each other, and with socially acceptable practices; however, it is also known that the urban environment, by generating specific stressful situations, has a significant effect on interpersonal relations to the extent that they provoke indifferent and selfish behavior (Simmel, 1903). Urbanity functions like “a guide to managing social relations through observing current proprieties” (Bernard, 1997, p. 107). Rules of civility are tacit rules, a set of shared conventions concerned with the normal acts of daily life. Public spaces as places where community values are in evidence reveal the changing rules and codes indispensable to the individual by which he or she keeps his distance from others to protect personal space or, on the contrary, comes closer to them. Urban behavior is paradoxical: individuals must cooperate socially to maintain their anonymity. Indifference has to be controlled; it is the “object of socialized and socializing precautions.” For Hannerz (1980) social density, such as it can be observed in big cities, has the effect that contacts are characterized by physical proximity and social distance. Polite behavior, therefore, seems indispensable to living peacefully together in an urban setting. Moser and Corroyer (2001) showed that polite behavior, like most pro- or antisocial interactional behavior, is both dependent on general environmental conditions—less so in an urban setting than in a small town—and susceptible to occasional environmental overload, depending on the existence or not of a heavy, prevailing density. Big cities are characterized by more indifference and by a lack of regard for others; in the modern world they have ceased to be synonymous with civility, and polite behavior no longer figures in their daily way of life. The city, in principle, encourages the multiplication and diversification of social contacts, but at the same time it creates withdrawal and an indifference to others. City dwellers regularly mix with a number of people without necessarily having any real contact with them. Nearly all travelers recognize at least one person familiar to them in a photo of the crowd waiting for the same suburban train, but would not be able to imagine getting to know them (Milgram, 1977). Thus individuals who have just arrived in a big city reckon that it is more difficult to make friends than in a small town. But after a certain time these differences disappear (Franck, 1980). Newman and McCauley (1977) observed that in a big city, eye contact with strangers is less frequent, and one finds less eye contact in city-center railway stations than in suburban stations. Korte (1978) showed that in big cities pedestrians not only walk more quickly, but also look straight ahead without noticing what is happening around them. Snapshots taken without warning of passers-by in big and small cities and then blind-tested by students show that city dwellers are perceived as being more hostile and less friendly than inhabitants of small towns (Krupat, 1985). At the behavior level, a study by Milgram (1977) showed that when you offer a helping hand to someone in the street, one-third of city dwellers respond, while in small towns two-thirds do so. Likewise, apartment dwellers or inhabitants in high-density districts have less eye contact, a much greater interpersonal distance, and fewer spontaneous conversations (Sundstrom, 1978; Baum & Paulus, 1987). Does this relative indifference toward others in daily routine have any effect on behavior patterns involving interacting with others, such as being helpful?
Social Behavior Reticence to help others, such as answering an inquiry by a passer-by, helping someone to pick up something he or she has dropped, and so on, has been described as one of the characteristics of life in the big urban agglomerations. Indifference to someone’s distress was highlighted in a series of studies undertaken following an event: the case of Catherine Genovèse, a girl murdered in a New York street, in 1964, without any witness intervening. Latané and Darley (1970) showed that when the subjects are alone they intervene in 70% of cases to help someone in distress, while the higher the number of witnesses, the weaker the probability that someone will
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Cities intervene. For the authors, these results are to be explained by the fact that in the city the presence of a high number of witnesses likely to intervene creates a dispersion of responsibility. But these behavior patterns change with the context. (p. 209) Latané and Darley (1970) showed that being helpful to others varies according to the context in the same city (in this case New York). When a person on crutches approaches and collapses, four out of five people help him into the subway, while fewer than half help him in an airport. The authors conclude that it is familiarity with the place: to most people, the subway is more familiar than the airport. Drawing on the field studies by Latané and Darley (1970), Korte (1978, 1980) and Merrens (1973) agreed in pointing out that urban conditions reduce regard for others and decrease the behavior of availability and help. City dwellers are less willing to let a stranger in distress use their telephone, are less likely to correct receiving too much change in a shop, and less frequently denounce a thief than people in rural settings (Korte & Kerr, 1975). The mistrust that city dwellers have for one another can be observed with new householders, who open their door more slowly to a stranger than householders who have lived there for any length of time, and might be better integrated in their neighborhood (Edney, 1975). Similarly, a child alone who asks for help in a New York street or in a small town is more likely to be helped in small towns. What explanations can be given for these phenomena? Kammann, Thompson, and Irwin (1976) considered that one determinant is the number of passers-by on the site. Korte (1980) observed less helpful conduct in cities exclusively toward strangers, a phenomenon that has been shown in a study on the role of the ethnic group to which the protagonists belong. In fact, several research projects show that subjects offer more help to someone needing assistance from the same ethnic group as the one to which they belong. While we are aware of the global effects of the urban environment, we know very little about the respective impact of the single components of this environment (available space, density, number of visual stimulants, noise, traffic noise, etc.) as far as they are interlinked for the most part and constitute what some authors call “urban stress.” Noise is often identified as the most important component of urban life and it is not surprising that most expressions of discomfort crystallize around noise. A study on the effect of noise on behavior and/or verbal responses shows that the subjects in a noisy condition have a tendency on the one hand to avoid verbal interaction and on the other to be less attentive (Moser, 1987, 1988a). Environmental overload, such as the presence of intensive noise, has a negative effect on helpful behavior toward others. It would seem that urban environmental conditions have an impact on aggressiveness and rude behavior (LévyLeboyer, 1980). Phone booths that don’t work are treated more brutally in Paris than in a provincial town (Moser, 1984). In Paris, the introduction of information (the possibility of being reimbursed, and to locate other booths available nearby) gives back to the individual partial control by indicating the possibilities of being able to complete his or her phone call. Brutal behaviors, when this information is provided, are far less prevalent. Overall, physical environmental conditions function as stress factors and are likely to have the following effects (Moser, 1987): (1) an activation effect from which one can observe that some dominant behavior patterns are amplified under stress. Physical conditions can, therefore, increase people’s aggressive behavior through a transfer of excitement effect; (2) an interference effect on the behavior of the individual. The unsuitability of the environment can prevent the latter from reaching certain goals and can bring on a feeling of losing control over the environment. Losing control, as well as the attempt to master the situation, is often accompanied by aggressive behavior (Moser & Lévy-Leboyer, 1985); and (3) an extreme annoyance and discomfort, which the individual will attempt to stop by running away from the situation. If, however, this proves impossible, instrumental aggressive behavior (i.e., intended to put an end to the disagreeable situation) or hostile behavior can appear. Added to this, in complex environments, an overloading of demands to which the subject can respond only inadequately increases the risk of behavior badly suited to the situation and as a consequence increases the risk of aggressive conduct. Finally, it seems that the city for Freedman (1975) has effects that are both positive and negative according to the characteristics of each and every person: urban density would intensify and amplify the typical response of the individual; those who tend to isolate themselves will be even more alone, while sociable people will find numerous
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Cities opportunities for encounters in the city.
Cities and Their Inhabitants Four aspects in particular portray urban social environment and consequently the specificity of social life: the emergence of urban subcultures, the (p. 210) reference to a world of strangers, the compositional approach, and urban life as a choice. The emergence of subcultures: For Fischer (1982) the city is characterized by the superimposition of different groups. Individuals with specific tastes and interests have more opportunity to meet people who are similar to them. What he called urban subculture is formed in this way. Cities become mosaics of little worlds that are defined physically, geographically, and through affinities with one another. A critical mass of the population exists that makes it possible for people with esoteric interests to join together to form a group and to build for themselves specific opportunities, and big cities do indeed make it possible for these groups to be created. A world of strangers: Within a radius of a quarter of an hour on foot or by car, an individual in a small provincial town will pass several dozen people and will know, at least by sight, a good proportion of them, while within the same radius of a big city, a city dweller will pass several hundred people. Cities are in fact full of strangers. The city dweller moves around with ease among all these people who are strangers to him; he tolerates them and expresses surprise when he passes someone he knows. Even most of those the city dweller meets every day on his way to work or in the neighborhood are only familiar strangers. For Lofland (1973), the considerable number of strangers creates a context of anonymity for city dwellers. Anonymity has two aspects: it means first that others are not identified, and second that the subject is anonymous for others. The first aspect results in the city dweller’s developing the skill to perceive others based on certain superficial characteristics (external appearance, dress, and place where the individual in question is to be found). This perception allows the city dweller to act or react according to certain signs to other people. Where his own anonymity is concerned, the individual manages the frequentation of different urban spaces according to whether he wishes to initiate or, on the contrary, prevent certain interactions and thereby keeps control over his own need for privacy. Urban life as a choice: According to Herbert Gans (1962), the differences between urban and rural people are due to particularities of the people who live in urban or rural environments. In other words, differences between the ways of life of urban and rural dwellers are no greater than the differences between ethnic and racial groups, social classes, and age groups. There would thus be self-selection in big cities, certain individuals choosing to live in an urban center, others preferring the small town or the country. In this way it is not the inhabitants who are the reflection of the city, but the cities that are the reflection of their inhabitants. In a similar vein, Ktsanes & Reissmann (1960) pointed out that people who move out from the city center to the suburbs are already different in their values and their tendencies from those who prefer not to leave. The suburbs are not places where you have to adopt yourself to a new style of life; they are simply new places to live for people who live there. It is true that different populations give a structure to some cities and thereby a new identity. For example, Nice and Cannes in France or Florida in the United States are places for old people.
Urbanites’ Relationships Work carried out on sociability and loneliness shows that it is essential for the individual to belong to a social network and to maintain stable links. Numerous research projects have amply shown that interpersonal relations are particularly important when confronting stressful situations (Moser, 1994). A positive relationship exists between the fact of spending time with a number of friends and acquaintances and effectively overcoming stressful periods of life (Arling, 1976), and the intensive interaction with friends correlates with a high level of well-being (Palisi, 1985). Emotional support relies essentially on friendships in an urban setting because of the higher incidence of separation from families (Amato, 1993). Moreover, individuals strike up acquaintances less easily in urban settings (Sundstrom, 1978). The rapid demographic growth of the large agglomerations is accompanied by a diversification and an extension of daily to-ing and fro-ing, which tends to limit opportunities for getting together with other people. Consequently, it is not surprising that many inhabitants of large agglomerations complain that it is impossible to have a satisfactory
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Cities social life. For all that, can one conclude that city dwellers in general are lacking in sociability and interpersonal relations and have poor social ties? A comparison of the world of relationships and the social behavior between provincials, Parisians, and inhabitants of the outskirts of Paris (Moser, Legendre, & Ratiu, 2003) showed that provincials have significantly more long-term interpersonal relationships than those who live in outer Paris (an average of 6.8 in the Paris region, 8.1 in the provinces). At an adult age, the friendship network is essentially centered on work and leisure pursuits (Fischer, 1982; Fischer & Phillips, 1982). In large agglomerations, nearly half of all relationships originate from the world of work, from mixing with people in the neighborhood and in associations. For this population the network is based essentially on the local area and on their relations at work. In small towns, more than two-thirds of all relationships are based on older friendships from childhood and school. Thus city dwellers’ relational networks distinguish themselves from those of medium-size towns, by being composed essentially of recent acquaintances. The city does not damage social relations; it favors a different organization of the world of relationships, at least for internal or external immigrants who have put their roots down more recently. Because of mobility, the inhabitants of big cities lose some of their former relations and thus compensate by establishing relationships dependent on their place of residence. City dwellers’ networks of relations are not based in a single place on account of social and residential mobility and the separation of workplace and residence. City dwellers are thus members of several networks, dispersed in different places (network with work colleagues, for leisure pursuits, etc.), with whom they mix according to their activities and special interests. In big cities, relationships and exchanges are based more on affinity criteria (interests, values, beliefs) than on physical or territorial proximity. In a study on different Italian cities, Prezza and Constantini (1998) showed that the relationship between a community feeling based on territory and life satisfaction is higher in villages than in large agglomerations.
Urban Sociability The fact that daily life in large urban centers is fragmented in place with a relatively limited time span is bound to influence social relations, activities, and the satisfaction of needs, as well as the position of the individual where others are concerned. According to Grafmeyer (1995), three types of urban sociability can be distinguished: an organized or formal sociability, an informal sociability involving a minimum of how often and for how long the exchanges take place, and a sociability of interactions or contacts. Friendlier relations and more life satisfaction have been noted in small towns than in the large agglomerations (Oppong, Ironside, & Kennedy, 1988). There are twice as many inhabitants of residential estates in the Paris agglomeration without any relationship with neighbors as among inhabitants of individual houses in the provinces (Héran, 1987), and it is in cities that one meets most people having a strong feeling of loneliness. Relationships in small towns are composed more often than not of a unique, multifunctional network characterized by shared social norms; by the existence of strong constraints, pressure to conform, and little privacy; and by being a place where people all know each other. More than three-quarters of the inhabitants of small towns see each other at least once a week, while in Paris only two-thirds can meet up regularly with friends and acquaintances. In the city, these encounters are much more planned in advance and are based around specific activities, especially sporting and leisure activities. Ways of expressing sociability in big cities are by no means spontaneous. The time involved in commuting is the important issue facing inhabitants on the periphery, and this not only restricts the time available for visiting with friends and acquaintances but also reduces the possibility of informal encounters by obliging suburban dwellers to plan them with more care (Moser et al., 2003). In a study on Mexico City, Salvador (2000) identified two types of everyday social contacts according to districts: opening outward, or withdrawal into the home. According to the author, this tendency to open out or to withdraw is expressed through the various ways of life in different districts. Inhabitants in working-class areas tend, on a daily basis, to have continuous informal social contacts in outdoor spaces, such as the street, local shops, and meeting places, while in better-off districts, inhabitants tend to keep to private spaces to a great extent. On the periphery, whatever the status of the neighborhood happens to be, privileged or not, the inhabitants refer much less to acquaintances and/or friends living nearby than in the inner-city districts (Félonneau, 2003). Sociability turns out therefore to be geographically more spread out. Asked to characterize their neighborhood, inhabitants of the city center mention more sociable places, such as bars and restaurants, than those living in the outskirts (Félonneau, 2003). Paris, for instance, is rich in places where the inhabitants have the opportunity to meet
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Cities with each other and to cultivate their sociability. In Mexico sociable places vary considerably between Mexico City and provincial cities and according to whether the district is well off (Contreras, Moser, & Savina, 2008). Inhabitants in less well-off districts meet in the street and in public places. In Mexico City meetings take place in bars and variety theaters, as well as in one another’s homes. They are thus, for the most part, formalized, (p. 212) organized, and planned sociability activities, while in the more provincial region of Queretaro these activities seem less formal and meetings also take place in public spaces during the daily promenade.
Appropriation of the City and Urban Identity People identify with the place where they live. Feeling at home is an important aspect of one’s well-being and this is everywhere a human experience. Individuals create privileged relationships with their habitat, which then becomes their “home,” and their home provides their identity. This involves a way of building one’s life within a geographically defined space. The building up of a urban identity can be achieved only through the appropriation of proximal as well as distant places within the urban structure. It is also in the inner-city districts that local inhabitants invest socially and refer spontaneously to neighbors, friends, and relatives in the neighborhood.
Urban Spatial Investments How are the different urban spaces, city center, districts, and local neighborhoods perceived and experienced, and what role do they play in the inhabitants’ appropriation of the city? Urbanity constitutes one of the sources of that feeling of belonging to a community personified by a place, in other words, an identity that is closely linked to the territory and its characteristics/distinctiveness, and becomes a major identity component. Urbanity is the result of an urban culture characteristic of relatively dense and compact cities, with a heavy concentration of population and activities, a heterogeneous built-up area, centers of essential and secondary importance, as well as communication channels on this scale (Führer & Kaiser, 1997).
The Role of Proximity Proximity, such as it is perceived by city dwellers in the practice of their everyday lives, presents a character relative to the urban infrastructure to which it refers. Two contrasting situations stand out according to the size of the city: one with reference to large conurbations and the other to medium-size cities. The extent of a zone perceived as local grows bigger according to the distance from the center of the conurbation. Proximity is to be found in its most restricted sense at the level of the neighborhood in the heart of medium-size cities. On the other hand, in the large conurbations proximity is perceived on a much larger scale. Where Paris is concerned, it can refer to the size of a district or even larger. The suburban inhabitant can perceive an amenity located more than 12 miles away from his place of residence as being nearby (Bourroche, cited in Benoît et al., 1993). Perceptions of proximity are also dependent on the inequalities of access to city spaces, social positions, and environmental constraints. Thus Contreras et al. (2008) identified a dynamic of urban proximities according to the social categories of the inhabitants and the localization of spaces. Other than the strategic capacities, the perceptions and image contribute to a neighborhood’s becoming the place for the projection of identity independently of the real or imagined possibility of accessing other city spaces. Proximity has a particular function for the appropriation of the city. Certain environmental qualities of the immediate housing area seem to encourage a satisfactory relationship between the urban infrastructure and the making of a home (Noschis, 1984). The same applies to the physical attributes of the environment, suitable parkland, for example, as well as to its social dimensions, social relations, for example, perceived as being agreeable, a network of social support (Rivlin, 1982; Sixsmith, 1986, Ratiu, 2003). Moreover, different types of symbolic relations can be distinguished in this local space according to the relationship between the individual and the city: an open place for exploring the city, or a closed place with a protective character, substituting for the city for sedentary populations, particularly those with little economic power (Palmade, 1977). Mobility and proximity are important for understanding how to achieve urbanity. Everyday relationships in urban spaces constitute a fundamental element for reinforcing identity. Being able to access spaces according to the economic, cultural, and physical capacities of different social groups determines, for a large part, the nature and quality of living harmoniously together in the city. Changes in urban conditions lead to modifications in the notion of
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Cities proximity by changing it from something of physical importance to a less spatial notion, more connected with time, and more psychological (Führer & Kaiser, 1997). Proximity, defined first on an exclusively spatial and objective basis, is more and more based on subjective dimensions linked above all to accessibility and to the perceived desirability of each sector by the different populations (Blasco, Lajoie, Marchand, & Ropèle, 1998). The context of large conurbations and neighborhoods resulting from zoning and from a monofunctional specialization of the urban infrastructure (p. 213) has revealed other kinds of relationships with the city, the “catchment area of daily life” (Benoît et al., 1993). In these conditions, proximity is completely relative, growing according to distance from the habitat. This context has brought out two ways of functioning vis-à-vis the urban infrastructure, one local and the other not local, which means for certain categories of people the local and the global (Burgel, 1993). Urban proximity is not only a matter of distance. Large-scale mobility turns proximity into a distance in time that depends on available amenities as well as on their accessibility and on the choice of the individual to make use of them. Today, mobility constitutes one way of managing specific proximities (avoidance/convergence) according to the perceived characteristics of the places. Accessibility becomes multifaceted, proximity multidimensional; consequently, the appropriation of the city is less dependent on local conditions, except for people who feel confined in their place of residence. In this way the city dweller constructs links with the city based on several scales (local/global) that incorporate two distinct dimensions: territory and network (Haegel & Levy, 1998).
The Role of Centrality Urban centrality derives from an archetype of the city. The inhabitants of cities tend to judge their city center according to this archetype. Thus, they expect centrality to fulfill a series of functions (conviviality, social mixing, a concentration of activities and shops) and a configuration (density of buildings, available space, wide choice of routes) that have a direct influence on living harmoniously together (Marchand, 2002). Many city authorities tended in the past years to render city centers attractive. Harlem’s gentrification process is an example of these initiatives. The improvement of local landscapes—public space, housing stock, cultural institutions—leads to the gentrification of the neighborhood and to the neighborhood’s being considered a place to visit and to frequent (Nevarez, 2009). Conviviality appears as a central concept in the assessment of an urban center. Individuals adopt the place where they live and their city all the more as they find satisfying social and historical elements and activities (Marchand, 2002). A satisfying and rewarding environment will constitute the basis for a positive social identification and for putting down roots in an urban setting. The dynamic of the relationship with the city is to be found between the feeling of belonging and dependence on the perceived proximity of where one lives at one extreme and the spatial extension of the appropriation of the city at the other (Gaster, 1995). It happens by defining, and differentiating between, the locations that one has appropriated. The spatial extension, the confinement, the differentiation, and the complexity of this system of locations that one has appropriated in the city correspond to an urban practice controlled by the individual. Strauss (1961) was the first to describe the city as made up of a range of psychosocial locations. Thus, it is not surprising that the different structures of practices, in the different sectors of the city and in the city as a whole, seem to be linked overall to different categories of residents and to their relations with the city (Bonnes, Mannetti, Secchiaroli, & Tanucci, 1990). The social dimension modulates the extent to which the urban infrastructure is appropriated, as can be shown by the case of people in transition or households in a stable situation with young children (Félonneau, 1997; Marchand, 2002). The spatialization of identity would therefore be based on the feeling of psychological proximity by comparison with the city’s perceived environmental characteristics (physical and social), and on its central places and their perceived accessibility. Thus, the spatial identity of the individual would be the result of people permanently and individually regulating their relations to their environment with a view to controlling three dimensions of urban proximities: “avoidance/convergence”; “introversion/expansion”; “involvement/withdrawal” (Krupat, 1985; Korpela, 1989). The transition of the appropriation of the city from the mono-local type to the multi-local model corresponds to the appropriation of several places dispersed around the city, seen as a system of places with multiple connections (Bonnes et al., 1990; Huriot, 1998). Mobility allows those who can practice it to develop complex relations of choice, with an ever-growing and increasingly heterogeneous urban environment and/or—if necessary—to
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Cities compensate elsewhere for certain perceived insufficiencies in the residential environment. City dwellers are ready to cover, under pressure but also by choice, longer and longer distances and to cross more or less distinct environmental units to work, consume, see their family, pursue leisure, or simply meet one another. Breaking with the place or places that have been appropriated leads to the reconstruction of the spatial identity through significant experiences with other places (Stokols & Shumaker, 1981). (p. 214)
Attachment and Place of Identity
Attachment to a specific environment supports place identity. People often develop an emotional bond to their life space, essentially their home and neighborhood, but often also to urban places and spaces on a larger scale. Such anchoring is an ongoing process, dependent on individual time perspectives: the duration of residence is essential for the individual’s appropriation of his or her life space, which in turn is indispensable for well-being. Anchoring reflects the individual’s motivations, social status, family situation, and projects for the future.
Appropriation: From Home to the Neighborhood While identity is essentially linked to the notion of appropriation, the theoretical importance of this notion remains obscured by being observed in a manner that is too specialized through a theoretical prism that is too narrow. Pol (2002) underlined the relevance and heuristic reach of the concept of appropriation by making it the keystone of the relationship between the individual and his environment. Following Canter (1977), he placed the link between appropriation and a sense of place: the process of appropriation transforms a neutral space into a significantly symbolic place. This dynamic process is based on two essential components: a behavior component, acting on space, transformations, traces, and so on, and a symbolic component through the identification of the individual with his environment. Appropriation is thus indissociable from identification. Appropriation not only operates at the level of one’s home, but also extends to urban places such as the street, the district, or even the town. Although the size and comfort of the habitable space are essential for residential satisfaction, other aspects of living conditions, such as social integration, availability of satisfactory services, existence of parks or gardens, aesthetics of the built environment, and easy access to the public transportation network, also modulate its importance. The feeling of being at home in one’s neighborhood is linked to the frequency of encounters, the nature of local relationships, and the satisfaction that they provide. It involves social integration extended to local service providers, such as physicians, shopkeepers, and others, and constitutes the framework for the different individual networks (workplace, leisure, school, etc.). Furthermore, as far as the feelings of attachment are concerned, the social relations provided by a place may be more relevant than the place itself. Taking root corresponds to a desire for stability and permanency in one’s way of relating to a certain place and one’s involvement in the latter in the long run. Steady or transitionally occupied places produce place attachment and are often accompanied by ties to personal objects, such as furniture, pictures, and souvenirs, which indicate the appropriation of the place (Serfaty-Garzon, 2003). Each neighborhood community has its own norms, which help to create a feeling of belonging to the subculture of the district or even of the city, and sharing the same behavioral norms in a given residential environment brings about a feeling of security (Fischer, 1976; Hunter, 1978). Inhabitants in a given neighborhood expect behavior from others that fits the current formal and informal behavior norms. Several studies that analyze reasons for neighborhood satisfaction underline security as an attribute that appears frequently in the overall residential evaluation. Those who express a high degree of satisfaction with their daily residential environment tend to express a low feeling of insecurity (Baba & Austin, 1986; Fleury-Bahi, 2000). Feeling at home goes hand in hand with a clearly more positive appreciation of the neighborhood’s population, more numerous contacts between them, and the establishment of relationships that go beyond a simple relationship based on politeness and the expression of a residential identity (Moser, 2004). On the other hand, the feeling of insecurity damages the image and usefulness of public spaces (Amerio & Roccato, 2003), and of course their use by the public. Finally, one can assume that individuals who appropriate their environment and feel at home where they live may also care more about the environment in general, that is, more frequently exhibit ecologically beneficial behavior, an association that is put forward in the CIS model (Pol, 2002).
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Cities The Spatial Extension of Appropriation: Toward an Urban Identity The spatial extension of identity draws on concepts such as place identity (Proshansky, 1978; Proshansky, Fabian, & Kaminoff, 1983; Sarbin, 1983; Korpela, 1989), urban identity, urban related identity (Lally, 1992), settlement identity (Feldman, 1990), and residential attachment (Fried, 1982). Residential identity is strongly associated with residential history (Fleury-Bahi, 2000). The belonging of individuals in a given urban neighborhood is linked to residential history, to the notions of taking root, of attachment, of identification, and of familiarity, while the belonging of city dwellers to (p. 215) the city is linked to the position they occupy within the variety of urban setting. The city dwellers need to distance themselves from home and neighborhood, and to gradually appropriate the city. In this perspective, one might describe them as construing the city as representation made up of positive areas and areas to avoid (Moser & Uzzell, 2003). Feeling at home leads to a more extended image of the “home range,” a familiarity with more distant places, and often also with the expression of an urban identity. On the other hand, withdrawal into oneself is accompanied by a search for well-being in a more confined world, with fewer social relations in the neighborhood and an identity that reflects nostalgia for a residential past elsewhere (Lévy-Leboyer & Ratiu, 1993). Appropriating one’s residential environment is accompanied by attitudes of familiarity and solidarity based on the neighborhood, a phenomenon that has for some time been highlighted in studies on the dynamic of neighborhood communities: Sanchez, Wiesenfeld, and Cronick (1991) for Venezuela and Reid and Aguilar (1991) for Mexico. We are thus witnessing essentially a search for consistency in the way of life and interpersonal relations by achieving a positive environmental identity based on one’s feeling of being safely at rest in one’s neighborhood. Residential satisfaction is associated with social conditions in the neighborhood, with the social circle, with being in contact with others, and with the social atmosphere, as well as with the security elements found there. According to Pol and Valera (1999), five aspects shape the construction of the urban identity: (1) the territorial dimension, (2) the temporal dimension, (3) the behavioral dimension, (4) the social and psycho-social dimension, and (5) the ideological dimension through cultural values. The spatial identity or topological identity (Félonneau, 2003) is expressed at different levels of the environmental scale from the home to the region (Feldman, 1990), but the social dimension appears to be more important for extended scales of the urban environment (Lally, 1992). For Feldman (1990), the concept of urban identity corresponds to the realities of modern society undergoing major changes, which involve the mobility of its members. She proposes the concept of settlement identity, which allows the categorization of these places at a cognitive level, while at an emotional level it involves preferences and sensitivity for certain categories of places frequented by the individual that the latter can distinguish and for which he is prepared at a cognitive level (scripts, prototypes, and situational, social, and material frameworks). By adapting the definition of Proshansky’s place identity, Feldman makes clear that living identity is characterized by a group of ideas, feelings, expectations, preferences, values, and conscious or unconscious goals, as well as by behavior tendencies and skills that link identity to a type of space organization and then encourage its relations with the same type of environment. These preferences allow people who are mobile to establish coherence and an identity beyond their multiple residences. Mobile individuals, because they maintain relations with the same type of environment, are thus capable of keeping the predictive nature of their environmental experiences. In conclusion, the urban social identity is as much an individual and social construction of meanings concerning space and its division into coherent units and of the identification of associated social groups, as strategies of social differentiation through investment in one’s environment.
Conclusion: From City Dwellers to Citizens The metropolises of today accommodate a heterogeneous population and are characterized by the juxtaposition of cultural, religious, ethnic, economic, and social diversities (Moser, 1998). If the cultural differences are defined through a feeling of belonging to a group, they also find expression in urban territorial identifications: individuals often group themselves together spontaneously or are grouped in the urban infrastructure according to their social, cultural, and economic affinities, creating more or less homogenous neighborhoods that tend to make them conspicuous, distinguishing them from the overall urban community. Faced with the extension of homogenous out-of-town zones to the detriment of urban centers, which overall are
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Cities becoming depopulated, are we not witnessing a tendency to progressively disqualify a cosmopolitan model that has gained value from its potential for encounters, for exchanges, and for the unknown, to satisfy the increasingly acute desire of citizens to be exclusively among their own kind in a socially homogenous space? If this is already a long-standing tendency, it seems to be gathering strength today and spreading to new social categories, especially on the American continent and the Middle East. While in our culture the very idea of the city, a public space, is associated with the idea of democracy, the exchange of goods and ideas, and freedom, certain planners are developing gated communities, socially and culturally homogenous by taking (p. 216) advantage of the feeling of insecurity. In the United States there are some 20,000 “private cities.” These communities have been constituted by and for populations wanting to isolate themselves from an urban environment judged to be increasingly hostile. The motivation for living there is the choice of a certain way of life, based on the principle of exclusion. These projects clearly not only run counter to social diversity strongly recommended in the framework of urban solidarity, but also fly in the face of the final declaration of the World Congress of Cities and Local Authorities (Habitat II, Istanbul, Turkey, May 30–31, 19961). Moreover, well-being, as defined by the World Health Organization (1997), includes the relationship with the place where one lives and is defined in terms of a match between the individual and his environment. Identification with one’s place of residence and social cohesion are closely linked to environmental-friendly behavior (Uzzell, Pol, & Badenas, 2002). For successful integration, it is not sufficient to live next door to each other, but together. Far from encouraging withdrawal into oneself as it is commonly accepted, social and cultural diversity, for a large part of the population, seems to be an essential asset of the city, at least in Europe. And this does not vary because of strategic capacities, geographical position, or neighborhood (Félonneau, Marchand, & Fleury-Bahi, 2005). In response to a questionnaire on “urbanity” developed by the authors, a majority of Parisians say that “a neighborhood composed of very different people can be enriching” and that “respect for different ways of life is indispensable.” This shows that at least in French society, conditions for cohabitation at a neighborhood level seem to be fairly accepted, which constitutes a necessary condition for living together harmoniously through the discovery and acceptance of others. In conclusion, the environmental psychology of the city must not forget that the individual is part of a group or a community through which he perceives and conceives the city in both its physical and social dimensions. If we wish to understand the relationship between the individual and the city, we need to know the individual and the social image the individual constructs for himself of the urban territories and their population. What is more, the appropriation of the city can be achieved only if the physical and social environmental conditions allow the individual to identify himself within the overall urban community. In other words, one has to move from cohabiting at the level of the district and neighborhood to living harmoniously together and appropriating the city as a whole. It is therefore urgent today to emphasize the socio-environmental management of urban diversity. One must not only favor coexistence between cultures and encourage a harmonious development of all minorities, but also ensure a fair and just distribution of services by providing different communities with the infrastructures they need. Only good collaboration between inhabitants and the authorities and participation in decision-making will encourage the feeling of belonging to the same urban community. Two complementary aspects need to be promoted and consolidated: the public expression and recognition of difference on the one hand, and on the other the construction of a common destiny through the feeling of belonging to the urban community. Could the wish to stay there forever, that is, to be buried there, be the ultimate expression of one’s having become an urban citizen (Casal, Aragonés, & Moser, 2010)?
Future Directions Of course, there are a lot of questions open, and therefore to be addressed in the coming years. Further studies should be based on two aspects: first, the fact that cities face an increase of urban populations with specific needs, and second, that cities are not always prepared to furnish an adequate framework and a proper infrastructure for the development of their citizens. Some specific research priorities include the following: – Looking at the health impact of the urban physical and social living conditions linking behavioral studies and fragility of urban dwellers. – Poverty has been identified as having an important impact on the development of children (see Evans &
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Cities Wachs, 2010). Further studies within that framework are needed. – How populations with high economic capacities and frequent intra- and intermobility and sedentary populations with weak economic capacities experience the city, and what their respective needs are. – What is the impact of telecommuting and relocation of activities on mobility and more generally on the urban way of life? – Overall, further studies of environmental quality-of-life criteria according to different urban populations with different cultures and aspirations are needed.
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Cities Proshansky, H. M., Fabian, A. K., & Kaminoff, R. (1983). Place-identity: Physical world socialization of the self. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 3, 57–83. Ratiu, E. (2003). L’évaluation de l’environnement [The evaluation of the environment]. In G. Moser & K. Weiss (Eds.), Espaces de vie: Aspects de la relation homme-environment [Life spaces: Aspects of the peopleenvironment relations] (pp. 85–112). Paris: Armand Colin. Reid, A., & Aguilar, M. A. (1991). Constructing community social psychology in Mexico. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 40(2), 181–199. Rivlin, L. (1982). Group membership and place meaning in an urban neighborhood. Journal of Social Issues, 38(3), 75–93. Rizk, C. (2003). Citadins, votre quartier est-il agréable à vivre? [Citizens, is your neighborhood nice to live in?]. Paris: INSEE-première, 934. Rogler, L. H. (1967). Slum neighborhoods in Latin America. Journal of Inter-American Studies, 9(4), 507–528. Sadalla, K. E., & Stea, D. (1978). Approaches to a psychology of urban life. Environment and Behavior, 10(2), 139–146. Salvador, J., (2000). Las tensiones espacio-temporales de la vida cotidiana [The spatio-temporal tensions of everyday life]. In A. Lindon (Ed.), La vida cotidiana y su espacio temporalidad. Barcelona: Anthropos. Sanchez, E., Wiesenfeld, E., & Cronick, K. (1991). Community social psychology in Venezuela. Applied Psychology, 40(2), 219–236. Sarbin, T. R. (1983). Place identity as a component of self: An addendum. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 3, 337–342. Serfaty-Garzon, P. (2003). Les territoires de l’intimité [The territories of intimacy]. Paris: Armand Colin. Simmel, G. (1903). The metropolis and mental life. In K. Wolff (Ed.), The sociology of Georg Simmel. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Sixsmith, J. A. (1986). The meaning of home: An exploratory study of environmental experience. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 6, 281–298. Skogan, W., & Maxfield, M. (1981). Coping with crime. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Stokols, D., & Shumaker, S. (1981). People in places: A transactional view of settings. In J. H. Harvey (Ed.), Cognition, social behavior, and the environment (pp. 441–488). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Strauss, A. (1961). Images of the American city. New York: Free Press of Glencoe. Sundstrom, E. (1978). Crowding as a sequential process: Review of research on the effects of population density on humans. In A. Baum & Y. Epstein (Eds.), Human response to crowding (pp. 32–116). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Taylor, R., Gottfredson, S. O., & Brower, S. M. (1984). Understanding block crime and fear. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 21, 303–331. Thorndike, E. L. (1939). Your city. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World. (p. 220) Uzzell, D., Pol, E., & Badenas, D. (2002). Place identification, social cohesion, and environmental sustainability. Environment and Behavior, 34(1), 26–53. Wicker, A. W. (1979). An introduction to ecological psychology. Monterey, CA: Brook/Cole. Wirth, L. (1938). Urbanism as a way of life. American Journal of Sociology, 44, 1–24.
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Notes: (1.) The city, as a fundamental place for social interaction, must be recognised as the pivotal human settlement which provides a focal point for growth and sustainable development, for the well-being and social cohesion of the majority of the population, for its capacity to adapt and to innovate technically, socially, culturally and politically, for the creation of our future and a renewed vision of the progress of humanity and for the evolution of our civilisation. Gabriel Moser Gabriel Moser Institute of Psychology University of Paris Descartes LPS, University of Aix-en-Provence Paris, France
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence
Oxford Handbooks Online Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence Marino Bonaiuto and Susana Alves The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0013
Abstract and Keywords The multi-place system of the main residential places, from home to neighborhood to outdoor spaces up to the city, is considered within an ecological, transactional, and systemic theoretical framework. A broad theoretical model is presented, based on the residential affordances and the residential environmental fit coming out from peopleenvironment transactions realized through the residential activities. Four main topics or processes are discussed to highlight the importance of such an approach to residential places: perception, evaluation, and satisfaction for the residential place, with particular attention given to the neighborhood; uses and activities, green areas and health; social segregation and aggregation; and place branding and reputation. Keywords: ecological approach, environmental fit, residential affordances, health and well-being, social integration, place reputation, quality of life
Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of research examining residential environments within the discipline of environmental psychology: Attention is given to different levels of the residential environment, but especially to the residential neighborhood. Residential environments are defined in a broad way both to encompass actual physical properties and to take into account people’s perceptions and use of these spaces by highlighting different theoretical approaches. In the first part of the chapter, a broad conceptual framework based on the notion of environmental fit is presented to integrate research on residential environments and neighborhoods. In the second part of the chapter, a review of four main research topics is given, including traditional ones, such as perception, evaluation, and satisfaction, as well as new developments, such as branding and reputation; all provide empirical evidence of the main theoretical tenets presented in the first part of the chapter. In conclusion, suggestions for future researches in this field are given based on the conceptual framework and the empirical evidence offered. The theoretical framework presented in this chapter is based on our past work and focuses on the notions of environmental fit (Bonaiuto & Bonnes, 2002; Bonnes & Bonaiuto, 2002) and supportive environments (Sugiyama, Ward Thompson, & Alves, 2009). The framework emphasizes not only actual and perceived properties of environments, but also people’s capabilities and how resources are used to promote quality of life in the context of their everyday lives. Central to this framework are the notions of “fit” (e.g., Higgins, 2005; Kaplan, 1983; Lawton, 1980), “everyday life and its time dimension” (e.g., Horelli, 2010; Alves, 2011), and “environmental affordances” (e.g., Heft, 2011; Kyttä, 2002; Gibson, 1979). The theoretical framework requires the use of transactional concepts (e.g., affordances; everyday life) to integrate people’s experiences with perceived and actual properties of their residential and (p. 222) neighborhood environment. It also requires addressing residential environments in a more integrated way as to relate to everyday
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence patterns of activities and their temporal qualities. The frequently cited notion of person-environment (P-E) fit (Lawton, 1980) is proposed as applicable to research addressing residential and neighborhood environments. However, here we emphasize the “cross-setting perspective,” which poses that residential fit depends on both the congruence with the specific residential setting and the perceived quality of other major life domains, such as work and recreational activities that are also part of the current residential period (Stokols & Shumaker, 1982). Lewin’s (1951) early explanation of behavior as a function of the person and the environment is taken as a starting point to try to enlarge the notion of fit in the context of neighborhood and residential environments research. A situated approach (Alves, in press) shows that evaluations, preferences, and choice of activities are bound to a larger ecological system of everyday spaces to which individuals take part (see also Bonaiuto, Bonnes, & Continisio, 2004). In particular, studies are considered for how they endeavor to complement and expand Lewin’s initial work (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1979). For example, Bonnes, Passaro, and Carrus (2010) examined attitudes in relation to urban green areas. The results showed a two-factor structure toward urban green areas—with positive evaluations linked to ecocentric values and biospheric worldviews and negative evaluations related to conservative values and anthropocentric and apathetic worldviews. Ambivalent attitudes toward green areas seem to be associated with environmental values and worldviews and to a lesser extent with everyday experiences in urban green spaces. This finding points to the consideration of motivations and factors other than attitudes (such as habits) as guiding the decision to spend time in neighborhood green areas. Experiences and time spent in urban green areas may be linked to habitual organization of everyday activities with the motivation and decision to spend time in green areas in the neighborhood being based on the organization of everyday activities. As such, this study shows the need to consider moderator variables (such as habits) and sociocultural differences in the examination of attitudes toward residential green areas. The way the residential neighborhood affords the realization of specific activities may explain the decision to spend time in the green areas in the neighborhood. Bonnes et al. (2010) have expanded the concept of “environmental fit” in the sense of considering the motivational basis of people’s attitudes and use of urban green areas. By doing this, the concept of fit is considered within people’s everyday life and environment. Horelli (2010) defined everyday life as referring to “the subjective experience of everyday, in contrast to the structures or systems made of institutions, financial flows, etc. Scientifically everyday life can be approached as a process and practices in which people shape in their homes, at work, or in the living environment the structural conditions into lived life” (p. 11). The notion of everyday life and its affordances may be a path to integrate diverse topics of research in residential environments. Accordingly, enhancing quality of life means creating a supportive infrastructure of everyday life. In this sense, design and management of residential environments and neighborhoods need to be linked to people’s everyday practices. Such a view demands a systemic and transactional approach, that is, an ecological view, and the examination of environmental affordances, place-specific experiences, and their temporal operations, which are reflected in the conceptual framework presented next.
A Place-Specific Approach: Ecological View and Affordances A place-specific approach is the basic theoretical idea guiding this chapter. It is placed within the context of broader ecological theory applied to the study of person-environment interaction (Barker, 1968; Bronfenbrenner, 1979). It aims at an ecological model in relation to research applied to neighborhood and residential contexts (Bonnes & Secchiaroli, 1995; Bonnes & Bonaiuto, 2002; Bonaiuto & Bonnes, 2002). Here the general focus is on the residential environment. This ranges from the home, to the neighborhood, to the local open spaces, up to the city. Within the chapter, reference can be made to each of these settings. However, the neighborhood at the intermediate level of the residential environment is focused on the most. The residential neighborhood can have a special privileged attention because it has been widely researched in the environmental psychological literature. Moreover, the residential neighborhood is at an intermediate geographical scale and it is a mix of private and public properties. As Bonaiuto and Bonnes (1996) observed, “The neighbourhood as an intermediate level of analysis was chosen for the following reasons: (1) it allows (p. 223) considering private and public structures and processes, while the ‘home’ and ‘city’ levels mainly consider the former and latter, respectively; (2) earlier studies showed that it serves as a link between ‘home’ and ‘city’ levels in people’s
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence perceptions and actions regarding the residential environment” (pp. 41–42). People’s daily activities (but also perceptions, evaluations, etc.) are emphasized as part of a broader system of activities and related settings, that is, a so-called multi-place system of activities (e.g., Bonnes, Mannetti, Secchiaroli, & Tanucci, 1990; Bonaiuto & Bonnes, 1996, 2002; Bonaiuto, Bonnes, & Continisio, 2004; Rapoport, 1990). To understand the responses of adjustment or maladjustment (environmental fit or environmental misfit) in terms of health and quality of life, there is a need to understand patterns of activities and their “locatedness” (Dixon, 2001); that is, how they are carried out in urban residential and neighborhood settings considering also corresponding patterns of activities carried out by the same person in other places (e.g., city center and periphery). By addressing these different scales, the sequential and time-related purpose of residential activities is pointed out. Within this framework, time is also a crucial dimension (both linear and cyclic time) as environmental experience can be analyzed according to psychologically meaningful temporal and spatial boundaries. This model is depicted and summarized in Figure 13.1. It focuses on residential features, activities, and their affordances and consequence in terms of quality of life.
Click to view larger Figure 13.1 Conceptual Model to Examine Residential Environments, Affordances, and Related Quality of Life
The issue of residential places necessarily links to quality of life. Quality of life is therefore an overarching construct within which residential place quality plays a role (Lawrence, 2010). Quality of life is a multidimensional concept related to the assessment (affective or cognitive) of the congruence between one’s life expectations and achievements and the objective properties of the physical environment. It includes the objective environment, behavioral competence, perceived quality of life, and psychological well-being (Lawton, 1991). Despite problems with definition and measurement, quality of life has been used as an important outcome measure in socialeconomic policy (Costanza et al., 2008). An ecological understanding of the concept of quality of life (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) proposes the analysis of person-environment relations as referring to a system comprising four embedded levels: the microsystem (e.g., the immediate social setting); the mesosystem (e.g., the relations among different social settings); the exosystem (organizations, communities, and social systems); and the (p. 224) macrosystem (e.g., broader cultural and sociopolitical influences). For example—following what Becker, Bonaiuto, Bilotta, and Bonnes (2011) noted for health care environments and translating it here to the residential environment—the microsystem focuses on the interactions between individuals and the members of their immediate environment; for example, family, friends, local acquaintances. The mesosystem considers the relationships and connections among different microsystems, and the ways in which they operate on each other: for example, one’s local acquaintances and the settings in which one interacts with them influence, and are influenced by, related microsystems, such as friends or family members. Thus, one’s response to and evaluation of the local acquaintances microsystem may be affected by what one’s spouse or other family members think about the nature of the local residential system. The effects also flow in the opposite direction: our experience with local acquaintances affects our family relations. The exosystem includes organizations and social systems with which individuals may or may not have a formal contact, but which are still part of and influence their actions and lives. The legal system, along with its laws and regulations that influence our behavior, is an example of one such exosystem. Finally, the macrosystem includes societal norms, expectations, and beliefs that characterize the larger social environment in which the other systems operate: for example, beliefs about the proper role of the government in the management of residential environments. The central tenant of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory is that the focus of ecological research should be on identifying the properties
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence and relationships among these interdependent, loosely coupled systems. Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) proposal, with its ecological emphasis on the several levels of people-environment transactions, necessarily implies an examination of environmental affordances. The concept of affordances becomes a useful reference to explore the multi-place system of activities and to examine the relations between evaluations and actions. When addressing specific environmental elements—such as existence of urban green spaces, streets, routes, and presence of other people—and their effects on the quality of life, a useful question to ask is how these elements support people’s daily activities and personal projects (Little, 1983). Everyday life and its physical, social, and temporal affordances become necessary issues to address. Affordances are possibilities or preconditions for action expressed as properties of objects and layouts that are available to the perceiver’s perceptual system (Gibson, 1979). They range from interactions with fixed and semifixed elements—an aesthetically pleasing and well-maintained path will offer people possibilities for walking, while a dark and poorly maintained one will perhaps restrict it—to complex relations involving nonfixed elements, such as spatial dimensions of relations between groups. In this regard, Dixon and Reicher (1997) reminded us that social affordances as expressed in positive intergroup contact are unlikely to happen in desegregated spaces where everyday encounters may be viewed as a threat to those perceived as outsiders. Affordances as bound on physical/spatial properties, time, people’s goals and capabilities, and intergroup perceptions are a means to frame “quality of life” in reference to everyday patterns of activities. For instance, different groups can be analyzed in terms of urban qualities and related environmental affordances. If the goal is, for example, to maximize quality of life in residential environments and neighborhoods, then it is important to detect those features in the environment that are significant for ensuing action and well-being for those target people. In this sense, the temporal dimension of activities—the availability of time for different activities; the integration of activities in different time periods, in relation to work, mobility, recreation, private and social activities, and so on— may be seen as a good indicator of fit/unfit and quality of life. In the line of argument proposed by Horelli (2010), when referring to psychological sustainability, it is possible to argue that quality of life needs to be seen in the context of a supportive infrastructure where positive affordances in ordinary settings—where most of ordinary people’s lives takes place—promote everyday behavior in its individual, social, and environmental dimensions. This line of theorizing fits with current European policies, such as urban time policies (Mückenberger, 2011) in support of health (but just for a similar line of reasoning applied to health care environments in the United States, see Becker et al., 2011) and quality of life. The examination of a supportive environmental infrastructure touches directly on the reciprocal relation between people, settings, and activities, their “fit,” and consequent implications for quality of life.
Explaining Environmental Fit The residential environment is a place where people-environment congruity is crucial. Person-environment (p. 225) (P-E) fit models (e.g., Kahana, Lovegreen, Kahana, & Kahana, 2003) show that people’s activities are a result of the match between what is offered by the environment versus what people, based on their capabilities, choose to do in that environment. It involves a combination of environmental (E) and person-related (P) factors and a “good fit” or “compatibility” between these two aspects. A reduced fit or lack of compatibility would lead to decreased well-being (Kaplan, 1983). Originating from this P-E model, the concept of “environmental support” refers to the extent to which the environment facilitates or inhibits one’s own goals. Building on these models, the notion of environmental fit can be expanded to relate it to that of everyday life, affordances, and time (Horelli, 2010; Belloni, 1984; Mareggi, 2002). Everyday activities and their temporal and spatial rhythms then become crucial to detect supportive affordances in the residential environment for different groups of people (e.g., permanent residents, commuters, patients and families using hospital services, immigrants) and their different practices of use. The concept of environmental fit involves diverse patterns of interaction that compose people’s everyday life. It is a matter of seeing environmental features and people’s activities in a holistic and integrated way. It requires an analysis of the place and time where the person is, her or his life stage, gender, and the different social and environment features to which she or he is exposed. The fit or lack of fit involves different spheres of life (e.g., work, residential place, recreation, care activities) and the “flow of information” (Salingaros, 2000) between these
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence different components. Quality of life, as the outcome variable in the model, thus depends on the physical as well as the social and temporal structure offered in a specific residential environment. Supportive residential environments are those with an infrastructure to support everyday patterns of activities and integrate them in its spatial and temporal dimensions. The diagram depicted in Figure 13.1 refers to these processes at any possible level of the residential environment: from home, to residential neighborhood, to outdoor spaces, up to the whole city (for a similar, simpler model referring to health care environments, see Bonnes, Bonaiuto, Fornara, & Bilotta, 2009). It synthesizes how the match between people and environment features is realized through people’s activities according to the affordances available in the transaction of any given person with any given environment. This process originates either a fit or a misfit between certain people and certain environments within a specific time. Since these processes happen within time, time itself is an important component on the process of environmental fit and quality of life. Time budgets in a person’s life, as spent in particular places (e.g., open spaces, airports, waiting rooms, and kitchens), as well as time budgets related to others, such as between men and women, and to those who need care, such as children or older people, are important aspects of one’s quality of life. Thus fit, rather than being evaluated in absolute terms, needs to be referred to particular settings, social roles, and their times. Varying degrees of fit or misfit can be reached and people will regulate their behaviors to manage this issue: their main strategies in managing the fit can be oriented toward the preventive side (i.e., avoiding the negative outcomes) or toward the promotion side (i.e., looking for positive outcomes), as theorized by Higgins (2005). Finally, the either subjectively or objectively evaluated outcome of this process corresponds to the quality of life (QOL) issue: in fact, the quality of the urban environment, especially of the residential one, is one of the main components of people’s overall QOL, although it tends to come, in terms of importance in the overall QOL, after elements such as leisure activities, economic conditions, work, friendships, and marriage/family life (e.g., Bonaiuto, 2004; Lawrence, 2002). But at the same time it is strongly correlated with and facilitates or impedes all those other features of the QOL. This framework, coherent with transactional approaches (e.g., Altman & Rogoff, 1987; Stokols, 1987), tries to convey the point that public policies, design, and governance activity in residential environments should be directed to support everyday life and thus promote quality of life. Reality appears as a result of people and environment transactions. Mead (1934, p. 131) expressed this idea with the simple example of grass starting to be a food only when an ox appears: the grass as food is therefore created by the outcome of the interaction between an organism and an environment. Similarly (Figure 13.1), it can be said that any residential place is the outcome of the transaction between person(s) and environment. Strictly speaking, the term “environment” could be used to refer to physical and social features, while a residential place would necessarily be the outcome of organism(s) experiencing an environment within a residential framework. Although here “organism” is (p. 226) always intended in terms of human beings, such a general framework can of course be applied to animal and particularly to urban domestic animals, which are increasingly considered as residents of the urban ecology, for example, in the case of urban cat colonies (e.g., Benson, 1981). Following this ecological understanding, the chapter can be divided into sections addressing residential settings at different scales in which daily activities are embedded. These sections are used here for illustrative and classification purposes. In this sense, they are not exhaustive, with in-between categories being also possible. Moreover, it is perfectly plausible to have smaller or larger geographical scale environments: for example, one’s own room, on the one side, or one’s own country, on the other side. Any scale can be more or less salient according to the specific moment: for example, being abroad or coming back from a travel abroad, can make one’s own country as the most salient residential level, maybe for nostalgia feelings; another example can be adolescence as a period during which one’s own room is a residential preferred level to experience attachment and satisfaction compared to the whole home, etc. For the sake of the present chapter, the following four main geographical levels, or places can be formalized: 1. Home-related settings, with indoor and outdoor spaces 2. Neighborhoods at a larger level 3. Outdoor spaces: natural and built urban spaces, streets, leisure spaces, and so on 4. City
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence Moreover, there are a number of classical or recent issues and problems that can be addressed across these main residential places, which are listed in Table 13.1. The list proposed in Table 13.1 must be considered as an openended list. This means that a number of other issues and problems can be conceptualized and therefore the list could be enlarged to incorporate other residential relevant issues. Four topics or residential processes are discussed here, starting with some more traditional issues within environmental psychology about residential places discussed in the first section and then progressing with more recent issues in the following three sections. It may be noted that in many cases a research topic addressed at a certain place level brings knowledge relevant for another topic and/or another place level: this is evident in the next paragraph in several passages and it shows how Table 13.1 serves as a conceptual clarifying tool rather than a systematic map of the empirical studies. This is also highlighted by ticks in Table 13.1 to stress main emphasis in relating a topic to the possible residential places.
Four Residential Topics or Processes A traditional research area in environmental psychology refers to residential environments, with a particular focus at the neighborhood level (although home and city have also been researched traditionally). The development of studies focusing on the residential neighborhood allows, however, the highlighting of fundamental issues or processes—related to settings people use on a regular basis—that are relevant to understand people’s experiences in the larger context of the whole residential environment. This can also be due to the crucial link exerted by the neighborhood in connecting a person’s home residence with her or his own city residence, especially in modulating the activities carried out within all the different residential places (e.g., as it can be seen in a multi-place perspective analyses; see Bonaiuto & Bonnes, 2002). The following four subparagraphs can be viewed as enriching the environmental psychological analysis of the residential places by progressing with a transactional and ecological emphasis when looking at a specific residential place: starting from the individual perceptual and Table 13.1 Matrix of Residential Place by Topic (or Process), with Ticks Highlighting Minor or Main Emphasis of Empirical Results Reported in the Present Chapter Home
Neighborhood
Perception, evaluation, satisfaction
x
X
Uses and activities
x
X
X
x
Segregation or aggregation
x
X
X
X
Branding and reputation
X
Outdoor Spaces
City x
X
(p. 227) evaluative level (first topic or process); passing to the individual action level (second topic or process); moving then to the social level of groups and collective action (third topic or process); to finally reapproach the person’s perceptual and evaluative level within a different conceptual view (fourth topic or process). In fact, perception and evaluation of, and satisfaction with, the residential neighborhood have been extensively researched. Here we try to show how people’s perceptions and evaluations can be linked to uses and activities a person carries out within her or his own several residential places. People’s uses and activities in residential places are therefore subsequently considered in the second selected topic, with particular emphasis on implications for health and well-being. This first passage, between the first two topics, adds an enriched transactional and ecological flavor to the residential place that is given by treating people’s activities as the interface between an individual and her or his own everyday environment (as depicted in Figure 13.1). Afterward, the third selected topic shows how, in turn, people’s residential activities can be crucial not only for their own personal QOL but also, at a broader and more social level, for the collective impact they have on other people
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence and groups. This second passage, between topic two and three, highlights a further increased transactional and ecological flavor in the residential place analysis, which is given again by the activity as the interface between the person and her or his environment, but this time within the frame of social and cultural groups, categories, and systems they belong to. Finally, the fourth topic allows us to go back to the first topic with a refreshed conceptual perspective, that is, focusing on recent developments that can be relevant for people’s perceptions and evaluations of residential places. This process is framed in terms of place branding and reputation, which emphasize the impacts on the residential perceptions and evaluations of the individual and collective residential pragmatics resulting from the people-environment transactions happening at all the ecological levels of the residential places system.
Perception, Evaluation, and Satisfaction Home The perception and evaluation of the home environment is basic daily-life experience (van der Klis & Karsten, 2009). The evolution of mobility and its impact on the residential experiences, including that of home and neighborhood settings, have been addressed (Lord, Després,, & Ramadier, 2011). The use of longitudinal studies coupled with analyses of the spatial-temporal dimensions (e.g., trip pattern analysis) and experiential (e.g., biography-related methods) of the residential setting have proved significant to capture the psychological, social, and material tensions involved in people’s experiences of the home environment. When examining the meaning of home for suburban elders in Quebec, Després and Lord (2005) discovered six major dimensions related to the meaning and experience of the home environment related to the desire to age in place: psychological (e.g., personal control and self-related experiences); social (e.g., socialization; access to human resources); economic (e.g., affordable housing; ownership); material (e.g., network of urban places; housing type); temporal (e.g., familiar setting; attachment and memories); space-time (e.g., center of daily life; proximity and accessibility). These categories are related to both house and neighborhood scales and highlight how the retrofitting of postwar suburbs could improve positive experiences of the home environment. An important aspect of this research is its consideration of spatial-temporal variables and the specification of how research results can contribute to the planning and design of home and its related settings and activities. For instance, Lord et al. (2011) have studied the evolution of the relationship to “home” for older adults living in suburban settings. By using longitudinal data and focusing on daily mobility, this study revealed elders’ adaptation strategies (e.g., constructed behaviors) of their daily mobility and the evolving nature of the experiences of the city: the shrinking city, the fragmented city, and the city by proxy. These results show the importance of aging at home, how elders who do so can maintain the social-spatial references that contribute to their sense of identity, and how the evolution of mobility is a major aspect of residential experience. Among others, the focus on home settings and its relation to psychosocial processes have also been addressed by Evans et al. (2010). When comparing the association between crowding and cognitive development in US and UK samples, the authors reported maternal responsiveness as an important mediator variable. Mothers in more crowded homes were less responsive to their children. In some cases, people may live separate lives—a work life and a private life—as is the case with the dualresidence situation of commuters (e.g., van der Klis & Karsten, 2009), and find it difficult to integrate the experience of the home environment. (p. 228) These studies—either focusing on the dwelling setting or in relation to its association with the neighborhood and city levels—show the need to analyze home settings in a “continuum of experiences” related to daily patterns of activities.
Neighborhood The topic of residential neighborhood has been traditionally addressed within environmental psychology since its inception and, therefore, represents a classical one within the discipline’s statutory or established knowledge (e.g., Bonnes & Secchiaroli, 1992; Lawrence, 2002; Tognoli, 1987). Various authors concerned with residents’ evaluation of their neighborhood (e.g., Guest & Lee, 1984) have
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence referred to a theoretical model that considers three main aspects of the neighborhood: spatial (architectonic and town planning, including green areas), human (population and type of social relations), and functional (available services). Subsequently, further developments showed that a fourth component characterized residents’ evaluation of their neighborhood (Bonaiuto et al., 1999; Bonaiuto et al., 2003; Bonaiuto et al., 2006; Fornara, Bonaiuto, & Bonnes, 2010a): that is, contextual features (time and pace of life, health/nonpollution, upkeep). Moreover, within a “contextual” or “transactional” theoretical perspective (e.g., Altman & Rogoff, 1987; Stokols, 1987), investigators have underlined the importance of considering molar units of analysis, such as “place,” in the study of people-environment relationships (Canter, 1977, 1988; Proshansky, Fabian, & Kaminoff, 1983; Russell & Ward, 1982). Researchers have also emphasized recognizing the centrality of the temporal dimension for people’s environmental experience (e.g., Werner, Altman, & Oxley, 1985), both in terms of linear time (referring to the length of time a resident has lived in the neighborhood) and in terms of cyclic time (referring to time spent daily in the neighborhood). In theoretical terms, it is useful here to distinguish among three main conceptual constructs following Bonaiuto (2004). Residential satisfaction (RS): the experience of pleasure or gratification deriving from living in a specific place; that is, global evaluation inhabitants report with their housing, which can be considered at various levels of scale (home, building, neighborhood, city). Place attachment (PA): forms and degrees of affect—feelings, moods, emotions—that people develop over time and come to experience with reference to the places in which they are born, live, and act. Neighborhood attachment (NA) focuses specifically on bonds developed with one’s own residential neighborhood. Another construct dealing with the affective evaluation of the place is the perceived affective quality (e.g., Russell & Pratt, 1980; Perugini, Bonnes, Aiello, & Ercolani, 2002), which is not a place-specific one but can also be used for differentiating residential places (e.g., Bonaiuto & Bonnes, 2002). Residential (urban) quality (RQ): evaluation of the different specific attributes of the residential (urban) environment; such evaluation can be technical (i.e., expert-based, “objective”) or observer-based (i.e., perceived, “subjective”). Within the second one, perceived residential environmental quality indicators (PREQIs) are a standard set of perceived indicators for evaluating a specific place, which can also be used for policy and monitoring functions. The first construct, RS, can be considered an overall, global evaluation of the residential environment from the perspective of the inhabitant and operationally, most of the time, is measured via the inhabitant answer (in a range from “not at all” to “completely”) to global items such as “How satisfied are you with the house (or building or neighborhood)?” It can be, however, conceptually considered as comprising the three main components of the psychological construct of attitude (affect, cognition, behavior): the realm of people’s affective response toward the residential environment, the realm of their cognitive evaluations of the same environment, and the realm of the action carried out in that environment. Only a very few studies concern the behavioral component, while the first two components have been studied to a greater extent. The first two aspects are caught, respectively, by the other two important constructs mentioned above, which are strictly related to, and partly overlapping, with residential satisfaction: namely, PA and perceived RQ. PA, and more particularly residential attachment and NA in our case here, encompasses cognitive, motivational, and behavioral aspects, reflected in psychological correlates such as the tendency to give favorable evaluations of their dwelling place, reasons for improving it, and reluctance to leave it. PA, and specifically NA, can be operatively defined in terms of inhabitants’ responses to items such as (in the case of the neighborhood scale level) “This neighborhood is part of me” or “It would be very hard for me to leave this neighborhood”: it aims to catch the global affective response of the person toward her or his own residential environment. (p. 229) Differently, RQ refers to evaluations of the degree of quality of a range of single features of the home/neighborhood, and perceived residential environment quality refers to such evaluation from the point of view of the users, typically inhabitants. Perceived residential environment quality can be operatively defined in terms of inhabitants’ answers to items such as (again, referring to the neighborhood scale level) “Buildings have unpleasant colors” or “The air is clean”: it aims to catch specific cognitive evaluations with respect to a range of certain
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence residential features from the point of view of the person. Moreover, environmental quality is typically considered a multidimensional construct because, for example, RQ can comprise an array of features (e.g., as mentioned above, from architectonic and town planning features to human and social features, from services to contextual elements, where each of these categories comprises a range of subcategories, each having many different items). Finally, environmental quality, including RQ, can be viewed in terms of both technical and observational assessments (Craik & Feimer, 1987): in the first case, environmental quality is evaluated on the basis of technical systems of measurement (so-called objective or expert assessment); in the second case, perceived environmental quality is evaluated on the basis of consensual impressions expressed in an ordinary language framework by the inhabitants (so-called subjective or layperson assessment). In fact, the quality of the very same urban environment can then be evaluated from at least two perspectives: the technical, expert’s assessment or the observer-based, layperson’s assessment. The first perspective is often referred to as “objective” because it involves tools and measures (metrics, weights) of scientific and technical disciplines; that is, mechanical monitoring equipment or other physical means to produce a reading of environment quality (it does not require individual exposition). The second perspective can be referred to as “subjective” because it relies on self-report tools through which the person expresses her or his everyday life in terms of perceptions, observations, impressions; that is, it employs the perceptual abilities of humans to judge environmental quality. This means that observational assessment offers a measure of the quality of the environment as it is experienced. However, both kinds of environmental assessments aspire to objectivity, inasmuch as they strive to have reproducible measures that are valid, reliable, sensible, and useful. Similarly, both share subjectivity, because technical assessment relies on human choice about selecting which dimension to examine, sampling times and places, interpreting results; and observational assessment is derived, by definition, from individual experiencebased responses (which, however, in some cases can show a strikingly high intersubjective agreement). Both kinds of evaluations aim to address the environment in which people live, but probably different values, ideals, and goals about the environment underlie the expert’s technical and layperson’s observational assessments. Theoretically, such underlying discrepancies reflect the processes of social and cultural construction of the environment and of environmental issues, where social conflicts and controversies affect environmental descriptions and evaluations. For example, ethical, aesthetic, and ideological forces play a role in defining what should be considered “polluted” or “dangerous” for the environment and for people (Douglas, 1966). Therefore, the degree of correspondence among the different types of evaluations (technical and observational) can be a problematic issue. For example, when assessing the quality of urban green areas, experts and laypeople are often in strong disagreement because laypeople give strong importance to green areas’ accessibility and usability during different times of the day, while experts’ assessments tend to overlook such components (e.g., Bonnes & Bonaiuto, 1995). Thus, different systems of values can generate different, and sometimes opposite, evaluations of the quality of the same urban residential environment. For this reason, it is important to compare and to integrate technical assessments with observational ones in designing and managing the environment.
Measures of Neighborhood Cognitions, Affects, and Activities The focus here is on observational assessment exemplified at the residential neighborhood level. A basic issue in observational assessment is to establish criteria and devise valid and reliable tools to operatively describe constructs such as residential satisfaction and perceived quality of the residential environment, as well as to measure them. The general aim here is to know how laypeople—that is, residents—perceive and evaluate such aspects. Such a problem can be generally framed within a broader “place theory” (e.g., Canter, 1977, 1986; Bonnes & Secchiaroli, 1995), which conceives any place experience, at any given scale level, as psychologically constituted by three main elements: the physical attributes of the setting; the activities carried out in (p. 230) it; and the descriptions or conceptions that people hold about it. Therefore, describing inhabitants’ residential satisfaction and perceived residential quality is a prerequisite to gaining a complete environmental psychological picture of their residential place, which should, however, be complemented by a technical assessment on the place’s physical features as well as by an assessment of the inhabitants’ uses of that place (uses and activities are focused in part of this paragraph and then in all the next one, while the relation among people’s descriptions and activities with the technical assessment is referred to here and there in different parts of these same paragraphs).
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence In describing how inhabitants perceive, conceive, and evaluate a residential place, two main methodological approaches can be adopted (Bonaiuto, 2004). The first, more “inductive” approach, which moves from how the inhabitants spontaneously think and/or talk about their own residential environment, and the second, more “deductive” approach, moving from the features of the residential environment that the researcher reckons to be theoretically relevant, and then eliciting the inhabitants’ evaluations about such features. Often the two approaches represent two successive phases of a broader research effort. On the basis of the first approach, inhabitants can take part in unstructured or semi-structured interviews, or in small group discussions, and the researcher can then try to describe the way they talk about their residential environment: this approach usually privileges qualitative evidence to depict the folk, commonsense ways to conceive and evaluate the residential environment. On the basis of the second approach, inhabitants are typically administered a questionnaire where they are presented with several items, selected as relevant within the researcher’s theoretical framework and referring to their residential environment; then they are requested to answer them by filling in agreement-disagreement or satisfaction-dissatisfaction graduated scales: this approach typically privileges quantitative methods, gathering large samples of inhabitants and using statistics to infer a population’s main trends. While the first approach can offer an in-depth and fresh description of the “residential ethnography,” that is, of the inhabitants’ ways to give meaning to and to organize their social-physical residential reality, the second approach can offer quick, systematic, and broad information on how the inhabitants position themselves on the whole array of features that are considered crucial by the researcher to evaluate the perceived residential environment quality. Each method can emphasize different aspects. Take, for instance, the residential neighborhood perceived quality: if you concentrate on inhabitants’ free expressions, you will probably notice that they often collapse together the evaluation of aspects that are “technically” or “theoretically” considered as separate (say, architectonic or urban planning features with social features, or services and social features); on the contrary, if you ask them directly, via ad hoc prepared scales, to evaluate each feature of the residential environment, you will end up with separate, “pure” indicators for each feature. In the first case, you can, for example, appreciate the fact that the method allows you to “reconstruct” the weft of the inhabitants’ residential perceptions and evaluations, discovering how they psychologically bring together different features on the basis that, for example, they all pertain to urban safety. In the second case, you would probably appreciate the possibility of knowing the inhabitants’ position on exactly the same matters you are interested in, which can then be used to make systematic comparison among different groups or places, or among such perceptions and other indicators that consider the very same features from the point of view of a technical assessment. Having said that, it must be recognized that the results of different studies carried out in several countries in the past 30 years converge to show a stable structure lying at the basis of people’s evaluation of their residential environment: keeping the focus on the residential neighborhood scale level and considering the initial starting model mentioned above comprising four main areas of evaluation (space, people, services, context), some main results can be summarized in the following five main points (adapted and updated from Bonaiuto & Bonnes, 2002, referring mainly to a long-term research line that started from that initial model within a UNESCO-MAB Rome Project; see also Bonnes, Carrus, Bonaiuto, Fornara, & Passafaro, 2004). 1. Spontaneous inhabitants’ evaluations of their own residential neighborhood tend to collapse different aspects of the environment, especially gathering together human/social features with architectonic, town-planning, and functional features (Bonnes, Bonaiuto, & Ercolani, 1991; Bonnes, Bonaiuto, Ercolani, & De Rosa, 1991). Laypeople thus tend to evaluate their residential environment not in a molecular way, but according to a molar perspective that almost always integrates social with physical (p. 231) or functional elements. The three main dimensions underlying these links (confirmed in different towns and times) seem to be density (space and social), safety (space and social), and opportunity of use (services and social uses). 2. The “subjective” molar perspective intuitively adopted by laypeople partially correlates with experts’ technical and objective indicators, as far as the built environment is concerned (architectural, town-planning, or functional features of the neighborhood). However, as far as green spaces are concerned, the overlap between laypeople’s perspective and objective indicators is more problematic. Molecular indicators referring to specific aspects of green areas and vegetation tend to negatively correlate with people’s molar evaluations of green areas (which
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence collapse together spatial features with social uses of green areas). These results (see Bonnes & Bonaiuto, 1995) highlight the importance of questioning and further analyzing the correspondence between the two evaluative perspectives: it does not appear that they can be easily reduced, one to the other. Congruently, a proper environmental assessment should always include both perspectives and approaches. These observations also raise the problem of devising proper instruments for tapping both kinds of environmental assessment (as traditionally known; e.g., Craik & Feimer, 1987). 3. The development of the PREQI (perceived residential environment quality indicator) measurement scales aims to give an answer to this problem, too; that is, to provide a reliable and valid tool for measuring inhabitants’ evaluations of their own residential neighborhood. PREQIs are designed to tap three main features of the residential environment according to traditional theoretical models of place (architectonic and town-planning, social, and services; e.g., Canter, 1997; Guest & Lee, 1984), plus contextual features (as emerged from further qualitative exploratory studies). Furthermore, it is conceived with a modular and flexible structure: that is, it provides a tool composed of a set of partly independent indicators that can be used together or separately, according to the needs of the specific environmental assessment. They comprise 19 specific indicators of perceived residential environmental quality. Moreover, a measure of PA has been developed, too, with reference to the residential neighborhood and in terms of both “process” and “outcome” (Altman & Ginat, 1992; Harris, Brown, & Werner, 1996) as one NA scale. Both PREQIs and NA scale have been created and refined with a systematic progression of correlation studies: an initial study on several neighborhoods in Rome (Bonnes et al., 1997; Bonaiuto et al., 1999); a confirmation study on a different sample in Rome (Bonaiuto et al., 2003); a generalization study to extend their validity through a large sample of medium and small cities in Italy (Bonaiuto et al., 2006); and the development of a final extended version and a final short version of the PREQIs and of the NA scale, via confirmatory factorial analyses techniques (Fornara, Bonaiuto, & Bonnes, 2010a). In the last version, the 19 PREQIs are grouped as follows (141-item extended version: 6–12 items for each indicator with 0.71 < alpha < 0.90; 62-item short version: 3–4 items for each indicator with 0.62 < alpha < 0.88): architectural and town-planning features (visual-perceptual space: architectural and urban planning space, functional space: organization of accessibility and roads, green areas: indicators 1–6); socio-relational features (indicators 7–9); functional features (welfare services, recreational services, commercial services, transport services: indicators 10–15); context features (pace of life, environmental health, upkeep and care: indicators 16–19). The 19 specific indicators are the following: 1) buildings aesthetics 2) buildings density 3) buildings volume 4) internal functionality 5) external connections (with the city) 6) green areas (presence and care) 7) security 8) discretion 9) sociability 10) school services 11) social-care services 12) sport services 13) social-cultural activities 14) commercial services 15) transport services 16) relaxing versus distressing pace of life 17) stimulating versus boring pace of life 18) environmental health (unpolluted environment) 19) upkeep There is also a neighborhood attachment (NA) scale (8-item extended version and 4-item short version, respectively alpha = 0.91 and 0.82). A first Italian standard version of PREQIs and NA scale has been released (Fornara, Bonaiuto, & Bonnes, 2010b). Further studies in other countries are in progress to extend the generalizability of the PREQIs and NA scale to different linguistic (p. 232) and cultural contexts, starting with samples from Turkey, France, Portugal, China, and
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence so on. Moreover, some of the PREQIs proved to be important in predicting NA, which appears to have therefore a multicomponential nature, being predicted by a mix of indicators belonging to all the four areas, with the following priority: contextual features especially with pace of life (indicators 16 and 17); then architectural and townplanning especially with built and green features (particularly indicators 1 and 6); and finally social (particularly indicator 9) and services (particularly indicator 13) features (Bonaiuto et al., 1999). Thus, an affective-molar evaluation of the neighborhood is linked to cognitive-molecular evaluations of the same place. Such PREQIs and NA scale, together with traditional measures of RS, have been used in post-occupancy evaluation (POE) researches and assessments, that is, to examine the effectiveness for human users of occupied designed (residential) environments. They have been successfully used, for example, to provide evidence-based information for the design in Rome of a public square in a peripheral degraded area of the city (e.g., see Bonaiuto & Bonnes, 2002), or in the assessment and design of high-quality complexes in residential areas of the city (Fornara, Bonaiuto, Bonnes, Carrus, & Passafaro, 2007). 4. As traditionally stated in theoretical models of people-place transactions (e.g., Canter, 1977, 1986; Russell & Ward, 1982), people’s residential experience is not limited to perceptions and evaluation (whether cognitivemolecular or molar-affective) of neighborhood features: it also comprises activities carried out within the residential place (see also Rapoport, 1990). Moreover, these activities are interdependent with activities carried out within other urban places, namely, the city center and the periphery. Studies showed that each city inhabitant develops a specific multi-place system of activities composed of activities carried out within these three locations (Bonnes et al., 1990). These systems of activities seem to be organized according to very typical and stable configurations that recur in cities of different sizes as well as in the same city across a period of 10 years (Bonaiuto & Bonnes, 1996; Bonaiuto & Bonnes, 2002). Generally, the residential place tends to be a pivot in organizing the inhabitants’ system of activities and each system of multi-place activities tend to integrate complementary activities across different places. However, different social categories of inhabitants are characterized by different patterns of activities: some people living in a large metropolitan area (apparently this does not happen within a small city) are confined in a single place (usually the neighborhood, sometimes the city center); some people use two places; and a relative minority of people display an integrated mastering of the city by using all three urban places. Socialdemographic features allow these categories of inhabitants to be described by gender, age, years of residence, occupation, and so on. On the whole, such an approach shows the systemic and ecological nature of places, which are organized in terms of a system of places interconnected, through the person’s inter-place activities. 5. Finally, such a multi-place system of activities proves to be significantly correlated with perceptions and evaluations regarding the specific residential place involved in such a pragmatic system (Bonaiuto, Bonnes, & Continisio, 2004): that is, environmental cognition and action are coherently merged within the personal and everyday experience of the residential place. In fact, that research shows that four groups characterized by specific different patterns of multi-place activity were significantly different in their degree of satisfaction with respect to the three dimensions of residential environmental qualities. Briefly, as Bonaiuto et al. (2004) summarized, a system of urban practices oriented toward integration—that is, high degree of specificity and variety, high urban mobility, high social exchange (quality users group and multi-place hyperactive group)—is associated with (1) greater perceived residential quality regarding the relational aspects linked to social-spatial security and (2) more negative evaluations for the functional aspects and, to a lesser degree, for the aspects of spatial-social density. In contrast, a system of urban activities oriented toward alienation and confinement—that is, low specificity, low urban mobility, and little social exchange (marginal escape users group) is associated with greater perceived residential quality regarding the aspects of both spatial-physical density and functional adequacy; however, for relational aspects linked to social-spatial security, it is associated with an experience of lower quality. These results verify the association between the evaluations of residential quality and satisfaction regarding the neighborhood and the system of activities carried out in the place-city and in the neighborhood subplace. The existence of this type of association pattern is consistent with the conceptual model of residential place (in this case, the neighborhood) as a psychological unit constituted by activities and by coherently articulated evaluations (p. 233) (Canter, 1977, 1991). Overall, these results show that residential evaluation and satisfaction are articulated coherently with the type of activities carried out in the residential place and in other parts of the city, underscoring the interconnection between evaluative and action aspects involved in the psychological experience
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence of place. Such a relationship has been empirically tested in very few cases (e.g., Aragonés, Amérigo, & Sukhwani, 1992, cited in Amérigo & Aragonés, 1997, p. 51; Skjaeveland & Gärling, 1997). The general issue of uses and activities is therefore expanded in the second point in the above list in relation to recent research about residential place uses and activities relating to both individual health and collective processes.
City Urban green spaces enhance residential satisfaction (Bonaiuto, Aiello, Perugini, Bonnes, & Ercolani, 1999). Van der Meer et al. (2011) have used the city of Berlin as an example of a high-density residential environment to test their model of residential satisfaction. They designed three studies to examine the relationship between objective attributes of residential environments (e.g., street width, building height); people’s evaluations (cognitive and affective judgments); and the effect of different types of greenery (vegetation-covered wasteland areas) on people’s perception and affective judgment; as well as a task-evoked pupillary response as an indicator of cognitive resource allocation. First, they showed that building density has an impact on crowding. This was shown by manipulating specific attributes of the built environment, namely street width, building height, story height, number of parked cars, and greenery. Thus, wide streets, greenery, and a fewer number of parked cars decrease the perception of crowding among residents. Second, they tested the hypothesis that processing highly complex urban wilderness areas consumes more resources than processing less complex urban wilderness areas and measured peak dilation to evaluate the magnitude of the pupillary response. The results showed that visually structured sites (less demanding visually) were associated with smaller pupil dilations. Finally, they examined what factors predicted residential satisfaction in the urban area of Berlin. They found that traffic noise, litter and dirt, unpleasant odors, cold temperatures in winter, and air pollution were rated as the most critical ambient stressors.
Uses and Activities To move a step further into a more ecological and transactional approach to the residential places, this section focuses more on the person’s uses and activities in her or his own residential places, with particular attention to those pertaining to urban green areas and outdoor green spaces, which have been studied as potential determinants of health and well-being. According to the proposed ecological framework (Figure 13.1 and Table 13.1), studies examining these factors can focus on the four main residential places, although obviously without a uniform distribution over the four levels. It is important to stress that although environmental psychology emphasizes the importance of residential green areas for human health and well-being, it is not the only perspective giving such a guideline. The difference, however, from other perspectives that give similar indications—often from nonscientific points of view—is that of being able to scientifically demonstrate the underlying mechanisms and therefore to scientifically explain the guidelines, arguing for an evidence-based design on the basis of both scientific theories and empirical data (Bonaiuto, Bilotta, & Stolfa, 2010; see also, for example, Becker et al., 2011). In fact, from one theoretical perspective, psychological restoration has been studied in terms of stress reduction (Ulrich, 1983); from another theoretical perspective, it has been studied in terms of recovery of cognitive resources (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989). Both perspectives have been largely supported by empirical research (Berto, 2005; Hartig, Evans, Jamner, Davis, & Gärling, 2003; Hartig, Mang, & Evans, 1991; Tennessen & Cimprich, 1995; Ulrich, 1981; Ulrich, Simons, Losito, Fiorito, Miles, & Zelson, 1991). Different psychological mechanisms have also been invoked to explain the restorative effects of green areas in general, including the perception of the restorative potential of the environment and its positive affective quality (e.g., Scopelliti et al., in press).
Home In relation to health and quality of life promotion, which is the focus of this chapter, studies show that green and open spaces closer to home reduce stress with a lower likelihood of obesity being associated with access to a garden and shorter distances to green areas from the dwelling (Nielsen & Hansen, 2007). The health impact of
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence private gardening (Stigsdotter & Grahn, 2004) has also been studied. Green space in people’s living environment has also (p. 234) been examined to see whether social contacts are an underlying mechanism of the relationship between green space and health. Results showed that less green space in people’s living environment coincided with feelings of loneliness and with perceived shortages of social support (e.g., Maas, van Dillen, Verheij, & Groenewegen, 2009a). A current major concern for research refers to sedentary behavior and obesity, particularly among children. A study by Granich (2010) demonstrated that the family home environment (house design and the availability of multiple electronic devices within the home) was associated with children’s use of electronic media (i.e., television, electronic games, and computer) in the home environment. The examination of routine activities showed that children spent two or more hours a day using electronic media. Home and the activity routines related to it may be a strong context-specific factor associated with sedentary behavior among children. However, additional studies related to people’s daily routines in home settings are needed.
Neighborhood In general, the use of the cumulative risk model (Evans & Marcynyszyn, 2004) shows that the ample aggregated number of potential risk factors increases fear of crime and decreases well-being in the inhabitants (Bilotta, Bonaiuto, & Bonnes, 2010). More specifically, research at the neighborhood place level has addressed the percentages of green space in a 1 km and 3 km radius around the home to examine how perceived general health is moderated by amount of green space in the neighborhood. The findings have demonstrated that participants with a high amount of green space in a 3 km radius are less affected by experiencing stressful life events than respondents with a low amount of green space in this radius (van den Berg et al., 2010). When addressing the amount of green space in relation to the prevalence of physician-assessed morbidity, Maas et al. (2009b) showed that green space close to home (1 km radius) was also associated with lower annual prevalence rates of investigated disease clusters than green space farther away. Common outdoor spaces in deprived communities might contribute to social cohesion (Kuo, Sullivan, Coley, & Brunson 1998; Kweon, Sullivan, & Wiley, 1998), and perceived amounts of open spaces and level of vegetation are linked to lower crime rates and feelings of safety in urban contexts (Kuo et al., 1998; Kuo & Sullivan, 2001b). In fact, the amount of green space close to where people live has a significant relationship with their perceived health (Maas et al., 2006) with green spaces being a preferred element when trade-offs among specific attributes of neighborhood open spaces are put into question (Alves et al., 2008). Research findings also point to the potential of neighborhood green space to enhance health by helping people restore from mental fatigue (Scopelliti & Giuliani, 2005), by acting as a resource to facilitate physical activities (Björk et al., 2008), by reducing mortality (Mitchell & Popham, 2008), by reducing stress levels (e.g., Nielsen & Hansen, 2007), and mitigating stressful life events (van den Berg, 2010). Korpela et al. (2010) showed that there is a link between the need for restoration (worries and stress), the use of environmental self-regulation strategies (favorite places), and restorative outcomes. Use of green spaces has also been examined in relation to thermal discomfort during periods of heat stress. Users of selected green spaces in Italy and the United Kingdom have been studied. The findings show that longer and frequent visits to green spaces may alleviate the perception of thermal discomfort during periods of heat stress among users (Lafortezza, Carrus, Sanesia, & Davies, 2009). A group of studies have focused on younger populations and children showing, for instance, that preferred outdoor places vary according to children’s age and degree of vegetation (Castonguay & Jutras, 2009). For example, a study comparing the cultural contexts of Finland and Italy demonstrated the importance of child-friendly neighborhood spaces, particularly the existence of settings that allow outdoor playing (Haikkola, Pacilli, Horelli, & Prezza, 2007). Child-care policies and environment (Trost, Stewart, Ward, & Senso, 2010) and children’s physical activity after school in green space (Wheeler, Cooper, Page, & Russell, 2010) have also been main topics of recent research with proximal social and physical variables been studied (e.g., Aarts et al., 2010). A considerable portion of recent studies have focused on neighborhood variables, such as open and green spaces, and their effect on physical health. Both objective and subjective assessments (e.g., Seaman, Jones, & Ellaway, 2010) have been used to understand why people in urban areas choose to use, or not use, local public
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence green space. Studies have been giving attention to children and have investigated associations between observed built environmental characteristics and children’s walking and cycling behaviors (e.g., de Vries et al., 2010). (p. 235) In relation to objective and subjective/perceived evaluations of green and open spaces, there seems to be a lack of agreement in the literature—suggesting that these measures are capturing different aspects of neighborhood greenness (Leslie et al., 2010). Recent efforts have been targeted to objective measurements of specific diseases (as derived from electronic medical records of general practitioners) and how they are related to green space (Maas et al., 2009b) and to differences in the perceptions and evaluations of urban green areas in relation to people’s attitudes and values toward human-nature relationship (Bonnes, Passafaro, & Carrus, 2010). Moreover, green areas is one of the 19 PREQIs (perceived residential environment quality indicators) identified by Bonaiuto et al. (1999, 2003, 2006) and Fornara et al. (2010a, 2010b), showing therefore that inhabitants focus on both the amount and the maintenance and accessibility of the green areas located in one’s own neighborhood. In fact, green areas’ presence, perceived availability, and maintenance index are also among the best predictors of NA among PREQIs (Bonaiuto et al., 1999). However, subjectively measured general areas’ quality does not seem to relate with objectively measured specific green quality (e.g., Bonnes & Bonaiuto, 1995) because of different foci in the measures. Further research is needed to understand which objective measures of green spaces’ quality better relate with people’s perceptions of quality of green spaces. As previously mentioned, a person’s uses and activities in the residential neighborhood are related to her or his own activities in other places (e.g., the periphery and the city center) and therefore a place’s uses are always part of a broader multi-place pragmatics (e.g., Bonnes et al., 1990; Bonaiuto & Bonnes, 1996; Bonaiuto & Bonnes, 2002).
Outdoor Spaces Research on neighborhood outdoor spaces has addressed specific environmental attributes, such as attractiveness (which is related to the presence of natural features and environments), street connectivity, access to outdoor recreational facilities, and access to places of interest (Sugiyama et al., 2009), demonstrating that these factors are related to recreational physical activity. The perceived attractiveness of streets for walking has also been examined and showed that tidiness of the street, its scenic value, and the presence of activity or other people along the street contributed to walking behavior (Borst et al., 2008). In general, there are few studies concentrating on street settings—specifically for green spaces and outdoor activities (Alves, under review). Specific configurations of park environments have been examined in relation to physical activity (e.g., Floyd et al., 2008) by means of direct observation. Also, assessment of physical activity in public parks has been directed to the study of outdoor play areas and their association with physical activity for children (Sugiyama et al., 2010). Availability of neighborhood parks has been associated with higher participation in active sports, and greater green space coverage has been associated with reporting higher indices of physical activity (Boone-Heinonena, Casanova, Richardson, & Gordon-Larsena, 2010). Outdoor spaces at larger scales, such as woods, have been studied in relation to emotional and physical stress. For instance, Hartig et al. (2003) compared participants taking a walk in the woods versus those taking an urban walk and found lower levels of stress in the nature-related walk. Also, Staas and Hartig (2003) tested social context and the need for psychological restoration by simulating a walk through a forest and a walk through an urban center. They found that fatigue increased preference for the natural over the urban environment. Research has revealed which aspects of neighborhood outdoor spaces affect levels of physical activity and other outdoor activities, such as walking (e.g., Pikora et al., 2006). Specific factors in the neighborhood setting—such as the neighborhood walkability (Saelens et al., 2003), level of traffic in the neighborhood, and the type of urban design (e.g., pedestrian-friendly design; e.g., Cervero & Kockelman, 1997)—also exert an influence on patterns of physical activity (Appleyard, 1981; Strach et al., 2007). Neighborhood socioeconomic status (van Lenthe et al., 2005) is also associated with the levels of physical activity, such as walking, with deprived neighborhoods offering fewer chances for independent mobility for older people. Walking, for instance, can be used by people in diverse settings and the promotion of regular physical activity can be a main nonpharmaceutical measure toward a preventive approach for “a successful ageing” (Vogel et al., 2009).
City
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence Here the relevance of residential green areas and outdoor spaces refers to the fact that a city can have different levels of outdoor and green areas available for its citizens. This can have a range of possible effects, from increase in health indices of, and (p. 236) well-being activities carried out by, the local population, to pollution decrease; from attraction toward tourism to maintenance of local citizenship and contrast to city shrinkage. Cities become differentiated among more and less desirable residential places according to their being more or less “green.” This started from the degree of green and outdoor areas, as a first evidence of their sustainability, and is moving to their capacity of hosting a number of sustainability activities and tools (from proper recycling, to green mobility, to intensive use of alternative energies sources, etc.).
Segregation and Aggregation People’s activities in their places are crucial not only for their physical and psychological well-being, but also for their social-psychological well-being and for the collective well-being: their in-place and inter-place urban activities therefore contribute to macro-social dynamics and are involved in larger societal levels. This third topic (or process) illustrates how transactions among people and their residential places are framed within a large complex ecological system where elements and dynamics of the exosystem and the macrosystem intervene on specific transactions between inhabitants and their residential places. This issue is strictly linked to the fact that people are different, between individuals and between groups. Urban diversities can refer to many different levels and issues (Bonaiuto, Bonnes, Nenci, & Carrus, 2011), but certainly the social-psychological one has a striking relevance for residential places, where it can contribute to a range of phenomena and dynamics with important individual and social consequences. Particular places can serve as contact zones and support or impede particular kinds of social interactions. Some lines of research have focused on differences in terms of material subsistence, that is, they addressed the impact of poverty or aging on the inhabitants’ transactions with their residential places (e.g., social-economical or age status). Other research lines focused on differences in other social features of the inhabitants, such as belonging to different (and conflicting) social groups (e.g., racial segregation). In the following subparagraphs, some examples for different levels of the residential place transactions are presented on the basis of these two main research lines.
Home The immediate home environment represents a major living space, and issues of segregation have been studied in relation to older and younger adults. Based on the understanding that older people in such neighborhoods are prone to different types of exclusion and exposed to different stressors (e.g., reduced material resources, lack of safety), the question arises of the degree to which outdoor spaces can mitigate these negative effects and ameliorate their quality of life. It also must be remembered that this trend toward a home confinement system of place activities, which especially characterizes the older population, is peculiar to a large city compared to a small city (Bonaiuto & Bonnes, 1996, Bonaiuto & Bonnes, 2002). Research by Kuo (2001) in the US context of public housing has revealed that exposure and activities in green spaces may help people cope with major life events—including stressors related to demands of living in impoverished neighborhoods, which may include poverty and violence and bringing up children under stressful conditions. With the aim of testing the attention restoration theory in the context of life demands and coping strategies, the author demonstrated that residents who had some nearby vegetation were more effective in managing major life issues than residents living in barren environments. Higher scores in the measure of attention were also achieved for those in greener settings, showing that contact with natural environments restored individuals from depleted attention resources and helped them cope with major life issues. The explanation has been that exposure to green surroundings refreshes the ability to concentrate, leading to greater effectiveness at coping with major life issues. Goffman’s (1959) concepts of “frontstage” and “backstage” regions have been used to analyze the relationship between adolescents’ use of inside and outside spaces (Abbott-Chapman & Robertson, 2009). Abbott-Chapman and Robertson suggested that adolescent preferences for home-related spaces, including their own bedroom as well as outdoor spaces, may be a way to redefine the boundaries of private spaces and face intergenerational power relationships.
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence Neighborhood A recent literature review on how residential environments may affect health and contribute to social and race/ethnic inequalities in health (with emphasis on obesity and depression) shows how studies have been divided into those that use census proxies and studies that directly measure neighborhood attributes using a variety of methods (Diez Roux & Mair, 2010). When looking at the features (p. 237) of the social environment—for example, safety/violence, social cohesion and related constructs, and measures of disorder—the authors show that the evidence linking neighborhood social environments to health is present for mental health outcomes (specifically depression). In a recent analysis, a study showed that lower levels of social cohesion and aesthetic quality and higher levels of violence were associated with higher levels of depressive symptoms in a large sample of adults (Mair et al., 2009). When addressing residential satisfaction, Checa and Arjona (2010) have demonstrated that “run-down area,” “conflictive inter-ethnic relationships,” “isolated location,” “low quality construction,” “shops,” and “crime” predicted residential dissatisfaction among the inhabitants (immigrants and Spanish-born) of El Puche, a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city of Almeria in Spain. A major factor in the aggregation-segregation literature is the association between deprived neighborhoods with aging. Aging in place may be associated with several risks that are tied to the physical structure of deprived settings, such as poor transportation and housing, high crime rates, and consequent reduced safety and the loss of local amenities and services—which can impair the management of everyday activities, such as going outdoors. It is estimated that the majority of older people will continue to live in the community well into later life. Thus the quality of the neighborhood environment and how it is perceived may play a major role in successful aging and in delaying the chances of institutionalization (Baltes & Carstensen, 1996). Evans (2004) studied the association between income inequalities and development, particularly in childhood, to examine why childhood poverty is so harmful. He has pointed to the role of exposure to multiple stressful conditions (e.g., counting the number of physical or psychosocial risks to which a child has been exposed) to evaluate cumulative risk and its health consequences in adulthood (e.g., Evans & Marcynyszyn, 2004). For example, Wells et al. (2010) showed that early childhood poverty predicted obesity in young adulthood. Social and physical risk factors served as a mediator of the relationship with family turmoil, violence, child separation from family, density noise, and housing quality acting as mediators of the link between poverty and obesity. A life course approach has been used to explain that children exposed to multiple risk factors tend to become overweight adults. The life course approach represents a major contribution of this literature in the sense that it not only elucidates the association between risk exposure and obesity, but also points to key environmental attributes contributing to this relationship. These results show that low-income children are exposed to risk factors, putting much pressure on their adaptive abilities and thus generating stress, which Evans described, to enhance levels of chronic (and toxic) stress within the body (e.g., obesity problems and lower academic achievement). The findings have major implications for the planning of health-related strategies: for example, to target the mediating role of risk factors, such as family turmoil and violence. A key point derived from the research by Evans and colleagues is that in disadvantaged residential settings, individuals are exposed to more than one risk factor at a time. This exposure to multiple stressors has major negative physical and psychological consequences. That is, “chaotic environmental systems,” which are characterized by lack of structure and predictability in everyday activities in daily life, lead to major decrements in health and psychological well-being. Everyday activities thus may be one key element to be targeted in future interventions and health-related strategies. Recent research (Young, LaMontagne, Dietrich, & Wells, 2012) has demonstrated that socioeconomic status (i.e., participants from lower SES families) is associated with negative attitudes (i.e., negative inferential style and ruminative thinking style). It may be that negative life events experienced in childhood will contribute to dysfunctional developments when individuals face stressful and negative situations. Moreover, researches show also that low socioeconomic status is associated not only with lower objectively assessed residential conditions but also with lower perceived quality of residential conditions (e.g., for crowding perception, Bonnes, see Bonaiuto, & Ercolani, 1991).
Outdoor Spaces Do outdoor/green spaces mitigate the experience of multiple deprivation? There are two mechanisms to worsen
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence health: one through psycho-physiological stress and another through unhealthy means of coping with stress. Doing activities in outdoor/green spaces may be a healthy coping strategy against major life stresses. When studying outdoor spaces in deprived areas and trying to prioritize interventions for maximum benefit, a main question to be asked is the extent to which open and green spaces help ameliorate and decrease stress related to deprivation. Evidence shows that older people living in deprived areas are (p. 238) at a higher risk of being affected by poor mental and physical health (Lang et al., 2008). Since they are long-term residents of areas high in social and environmental stressors, they are also directly confronted with negative neighborhood factors. Scharf et al. (2003) have studied the characteristics of poverty and its impact on the daily life of older people in the UK context. The results of this study showed that the experience of multiple exclusion was significantly linked to age and ethnicity. People age 75 and over were more likely to be excluded than those age 60 to 74. Of the respondents who were excluded on the material dimension, 58% were also excluded from social relations. Older people who feel cut off from their surroundings are more likely to experience limitations in their informal relationships than those who perceive their neighborhood more favorably. A key factor to be encouraged in old age is maintenance of independence (Baltes & Carstensen, 1996). Evidence has shown that QOL is reduced by limitations in mobility and difficulties with everyday activities (Netuveli et al., 2006) Situations of reduced independence (Lang et al., 2008), such as inability to participate in activities and social networks, loss of maintenance of usual routines, and forced reliance on other people, may be aggravated in the context of multiple deprivation. Different kinds of disadvantage can combine to exclude older people in deprived neighborhoods, including relying on income from state benefits and being exposed to higher crime rates, air pollution (associated with fewer green spaces), and an accident-prone residential setting. However, despite the poor living conditions, some older people may have resided in these areas for an entire life and may hold a sense of attachment to their neighborhoods (Kearns & Parkes, 2003). Notwithstanding the restricted social and environmental conditions of these places, a percentage of older people in the United Kingdom will spend the rest of their lives in these places. The question raised is how to create more supportive environments to encourage higher levels of mobility and help people undertake daily activities and projects. Research has revealed some key environmental factors that can be used to improve situations of independence for an older population (e.g., Lord, Després, & Ramadier, 2011;). Exposure to open and green spaces has been associated with increased social networks, increased physical activity, increased capacity to deal with major life events such as poverty, and recovery of attentional resources that are depleted in conditions of extreme stress (i.e., to achieve restorativeness): all common relevant factors for people living in deprived urban environments.
City The dynamics of “desegregation and re-segregation” (Dixon, Durrheim, & Tredoux, 2011, p. 239) in residential and urban spaces take different forms. According to Dixon, et al., (2008), segregation is part of a social system, which includes micro-ecological scales of analysis and thus needs to be analyzed according to different scales. Here the focus is on uncovering some of the physical features portrayed in segregation research that afford opportunities for increased sustained social relations and aim to decrease discrimination and inequality. Based on his work in post-apartheid South Africa, Dixon, Durrheim, and Tredoux (2011) observed that urban design reflected in different social-spatial arrangements can either encourage or restrict social integration. In this sense, environmental psychology has a fundamental role to help overcome racial segregation as it can identify person-environment relationships and environmental features that may promote racial social integration. The analysis of ordinary people’s perceptions and evaluations —and everyday patterns of social contact and isolation —is fundamental to understand the different meanings of desegregation in everyday contexts, such as suburbs (Cape Town in Dixon et al.’s research), public seating areas, leisure spaces, bars, clubs, cafeterias, and so on. The processes of segregation have been studied in relation to residential and urban settings. Everyday settings and activities have been researched to understand “lived realities of contact and separation” (Clack, Dixon, & Tredoux, 2005, p. 13). For example, Clack, Dixon, and Tredoux (2005) have investigated segregation in relation to its micro-ecological process by observing social-spatial patterns of seating in a cafeteria among university
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence students from a university in northwestern England. The results showed that segregation is revealed in the socialspatial organization of mundane activities, such as seating and eating. The authors found that most individuals of white and Asian descent sat in units with members of their own ethnic group. These two groups were also found in disproportion in different areas in the cafeteria. One conclusion of this study is that even though the cafeteria served a diverse clientele, its everyday context was marked by segregation, such as convergence of groups in a specific area of the cafeteria. An important aspect of (p. 239) this research is the focus on micro-ecological processes and the understanding that segregation takes place in settings where proximity and co-presence are expected and where informal relationships are taking place.
Branding and Reputation The complex residential ecological system based on inhabitants’ transactions with their own residential places is characterized by: (a) perceptions and evaluations that can or cannot lead to satisfaction and attachment; (b) uses and activities that can or cannot lead to health and well-being; (c) patterns of possible risk factors that can lead to urban segregation outcomes (instead of aggregation) if not properly managed at different levels. The complexity of the residential ecological system with its outcomes can therefore contribute to a rich array of information and data characterization. That is, there is a system of beliefs about residential places that is based on both direct and indirect experiences. Traditionally, attention has been paid to direct forms of transactions among residential places and people. However, there are also indirect, that is, mediated, forms of transactions. This is the case when a person and a place transaction is mediated by another social agent, such as another person or groups, or mass and new media. Indirect place experience is eminently mediated by language uses and can refer to a number of environmental issues (Aiello & Bonaiuto, 2003; Castro, 2006). Once such a complex system of beliefs exists— either being an individual feature and/or a socially shared enterprise—it works as a basis to develop expectations for the future of the transactions between the person and the residential place. In turn, such expectations can be a further basis affecting transactions among people and their residential environments. The set of beliefs and expectations—based on direct and indirect experiences—regarding people-environment transactions, that is, a certain place, can be defined as place branding and reputation. Although this topic has been systematically developed only very recently—compared to the three reviewed above —it can have far and deeper roots in some works linked to the image or the identity of a place (e.g., Lynch, 1960). It is, however, possible to differentiate between an image and a reputation approach because the image or identity of a place is based more on a perceptual transaction than on an action and pragmatic one, which conversely is much more central in a reputational view. The activity or pragmatic focus is intrinsic in the reputation conception of any social entity conceived as a social agent: it is given by the idea that any place experience arises on the basis of environment and person transaction reciprocity as well as on the relevant expectations that that triggers for future transactions. In the study of place reputation (vs. image or identity of place), more emphasis has been given to (a) the a priori pragmatics, that is, the fact that a place reputation primarily develops from past reciprocal actions among people and environment; (b) the a posteriori pragmatics, that is, the fact that a place reputation primarily affects future reciprocal actions among people and environment; and (c) the linguistic and social dimension, that is, the fact that a place reputation develops not only from the direct (perceptual) experience but also from the indirect one (mediated by other people and by the media, essentially by language). It has been only in the past 10 or 15 years that this topic emerged more clearly and research started to focus on place branding and reputation processes. Firstly, contributions in terms of place branding appeared, but they tended to be nearer to a perceptual rather than reputation approach. Then only more recently, and still quite unsystematically, some contributions started to be framed in terms of place reputation especially at the level of the country or nation. Klingmann (2007a) and Lang (2011) addressed “brandscape,” referring to branding and its relation to architecture, in terms of expressing identity. This can be applied to a city, a neighborhood, or an enterprise. The concept of place branding involves the use of the themes of identity, image, and sense of place (Kavaratzis & Ashworth, 2008). According to these authors, place branding is not a new phenomenon, as places have tried to differentiate themselves from each other to be able to gain in economic, political, or social-psychological goals. That means that for the purposes of branding the place—whether a country, a region, a city, or a neighborhood—branding needs to be understood as a multidimensional construct, consisting of functional, affective, relational, and strategic
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence elements that collectively generate a unique set of associations with the place in the public mind (Kavaratzis, 2005). The basic argument is that it is through perceptions and related images that people come to understand a place or a city (similar to more traditional image-based approaches, e.g., Lynch, 1960). For cities, a process takes place in the formation of (p. 240) images that is similar to that of other social entities, such as products or corporations, managed as brands. These arguments are rooted in the assumption that in essence, people “understand” cities in the same way as brands. Extending this assumption raises the argument that the best way to attempt to influence perceptions and images about cities must be similar to the way that businesses have been successfully attempting the same for their products, namely branding. The above assumptions are, of course, subject to scrutiny as is found in the academic literature on place and city branding. According to Klingmann (2007), branding can be seen in positive and negative terms. It is negative when it is a mere “culture of copy.” However, it can be seen as positive and a catalyst for cultural and economic transformation when it puts together architecture, economics, sustainable strategies, and QOL in an attempt to help people and places regain self-sufficiency (for a similar view, see also Florida, 2002).
Neighborhood Brand or reputation at the level of residential neighborhood is a greatly under-researched topic. This contrast with commonsense experience where our information search, judgments, and actions (in terms of approaching or avoiding a certain environment) are greatly affected by a neighborhood’s being famous or infamous on the basis of either our own direct experiences, or of our acquaintances’ reported direct and indirect experiences, or of news and guides’ reported direct and mediated experiences. Moreover, very tangible consequences arise from a neighborhood reputation, such as housing prices on the market, investments, tourism, and so on; as well as consequences in terms of residents’ behaviors (Parmentier, van Ham, & Bolt, 2007). A typology of marketing themes is usually used to change the image of a neighborhood. Quite often, the physical environment is used to build a specific brand identity of the urban neighborhood. For instance, branding attempts include major cultural facilities and entertainment complexes, public art installations, renovated historic areas, and ethnic neighborhoods to represent an attempt to revitalize the image of the entire city. Neighborhood marketing and branding is part of the local government’s strategy to present a positive image of the local place and neighborhood. This is done with the objective of attracting potential investors, tourists, and residents—that is, the various stakeholders. It is often the case that municipalities are engaged in what Pine and Gilmore (1999) called “experience economy.” Similar to the brand of many companies in the global market, which have created a powerful image around their products or services using logos, mottos, jingles, and so on, municipalities also try to “create an experience” and to brand their cities and neighborhoods in a competitive real estate market. The presentation of a positive image, brand, or reputation of a place can bring economic advantages but can as well distract the use of common goods away from the interests of the local community. Urban design and planning have become even more intertwined with branding and imaging (Vale & Warner, 2001). Authors have referred to “staging of experiences” (Grodach, 2009) and “symbolic economy” (Zukin, 1995) to define the manipulation of a neighborhood image. Many cities also promote their manicured suburban neighborhoods. For instance, the San Lorenzo quartiere in Rome is trying to emerge as a more attractive place, particularly for young people, where the presence of places to go out, such as restaurants, cafés, and recreationrelated venues may be a way to put behind the declined industrial past of the district. For example, an antique chocolate factory has been enriched by an attractive café and restaurant, behind the still active chocolate factory. Additional research is needed in this area to find out what are the marketing images of some urban neighborhoods, how they are used to attract specific groups of people, and what images of QOL they try to depict or hide.
City Branding is a holistic process that affects settings and people’s perceptions, activities, and relations with others. Landmarks to communicate a city’s image are constructed, especially to attract tourists and business (and there have been very good examples in recent decades, such as the Guggenheim Museum in the city of Bilbao in Spain). However, the extent to which residents recognize and identify themselves with the image transferred is questioned.
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence The subfield of place management and marketing has emerged in the past decade and recognizes satisfaction with a place as important. Cities and municipalities try to bring together a range of images into a singular, coherent message—or brand. The goal is to increase the symbolic and economic value of their urban spaces and economies (Mommaas, 2002) and to retain tourists, residents, and businesses. Several branding packing and branding practices are used to revitalize the image of a city. It is important to study the ways city branding is used, as these practices play a fundamental role in people’s perception (p. 241) of urban places and in what type of activities people would subsequently engage in there. The discussion also addresses the role of the local community and the social responsibility behind fostering the construction of place brands. Grodach (2009) did an analysis and inventory of the images displayed on the official city and visitors bureau websites in the United States. He showed that picturesque built environments on city sites potentially reflect local governments’ concerns with marketing an attractive quality of life to new and existing residents. Associated with the emphasis on cities as places to play or to engage in unique experiences is the tendency to downplay cities as sites of work. An interesting result is that the portrayal of scenes of everyday life—such as those involving workplaces—is usually avoided in these websites. Grodach said that “when cities claim to portray everyday life, they focus on iconic images such as San Francisco’s homepage, which features pristine Victorian houses, cable cars, and the Golden Gate Bridge under the heading ‘images of life in San Francisco’” (p. 187). Many cities have tried to change or overcome negative images and perceptions of urban decline and enhance perception of a rich multicultural environment. For instance, Bilbao has used the Guggenheim Museum as an urban icon to promote the image of the city characterized by an image of negative social and economic elements. The use of underutilized areas to promote diversity of activities and attract different groups of people has been illustrated in Copenhagen, with its large pedestrian area and good paths and locations for cycling: the city is usually associated with sustainable transport and healthy lifestyle (Gehl & Hook, 2005; Gehl, 1996). The local population is usually a salient target audience for brand construction (Lindstedt, 2011). Thus the types of images that are featured as well as the ones that are not featured in branding campaigns are very important for planners and designers. They can get a better understanding of how people (outsiders and insiders alike) perceive and experience their neighborhoods, local spaces, and cities. Place branding is a political process that is carried out through policy agendas, as branding also means to communicate and target images of places in the continuum of past, present, and future of places. The aim of place branding to control these representations is present in the literature (e.g., Bellini, Loffredo, & Pasquinelli, 2010). Rizzi and Dioli (2010) pointed to some evidence in measuring the effects of place marketing. For instance, these authors showed that Italian cities such as Turin and Genoa have improved their appeal and changed their look by taking advantage of events hosting and by conceiving a new image to communicate. An issue that was mentioned as crucial more than 20 years ago for future reputation research was “the dimensions of reputation” (e.g., Emler, 1990, p. 190). This is central information to be obtained to promote any area of research about reputation and, indeed, some of these areas devoted a high effort in identifying the pillars of reputation. Recently, contributions started to appear addressing the issue of identifying and measuring a country’s or a city’s reputation features. For example, such an approach has been developed by the Reputation Institute (e.g., Fombrun & van Riel, 2004) to measure a country’s reputation. Though the conceptual and methodological assumptions are basically the same of the corporate Rep Trak, used to measure a corporate reputation, the identified dimensions are specific to the peculiarity of this social agent or entity: the country. This highlights that even using the same approach, the reputation dimensions are different for different social agents (in that case, moving from the corporate to the national level). Within the geographical realm, other models have been developed for addressing and measuring city branding. Although this has not been explicitly conceptualized in terms of reputation, it is a field that is evolving along very similar lines, aiming at tapping conceptual and methodological features describing a city’s evaluations from the perspectives of several stakeholders with references to the pragmatic effects that a place exerts on its stakeholders. One of the most well-known examples systematically applied to a geographical entity is the model proposed by Anholt (2007, 2010). In 1996 he used the expression “nation branding” and then developed—in collaboration with GfK (Growth for Knowledge)—the Anholt-GfK Roper Nations Brands Index and, since 2005, the Anholt-GfK Roper City Brands Index (CBI). The CBI has six dimensions: “Presence,” based on the city’s international status and
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence standing and the global familiarity/knowledge of the city. It also measures the city’s global contribution in science, culture and governance. “Place” explores people’s perceptions about the physical aspect of each city in terms of pleasantness of climate, cleanliness of environment, and attractiveness of buildings and parks. “Prerequisites” determines how people perceive the basic qualities of the city—whether they are satisfactory, affordable, and accommodating—as (p. 242) well as the standard of public amenities, such as schools, hospitals, transportation, and sports facilities. “People” reveals whether the inhabitants of the city are perceived as warm and welcoming, whether respondents think it would be easy for them to find and fit into a community that shares their language and culture, and whether they would feel safe. “Pulse” measures the perception that there are interesting things to fill free time with and how exciting the city is perceived to be in regard to new things to discover. “Potential” measures the perception of economic and educational opportunities within the city, such as how easy it might be to find a job and whether it is a good place to do business or pursue a higher education. This system is based on 40 items and a panel of 20,000 people living in 20 different countries, and allows us to rank the main 50 metropolises in the world, but apparently pays little or no attention to the smaller scale urban contexts.
Conclusion The present chapter proposes a general ecological, transactional, and systemic model to frame the study of all residential places, from personal room, to home, neighborhood, outdoor places, and city, up to the country. The model focuses on person-environment transactions emphasizing the role of activities through which affordances are realized, at several ecological levels. Such transactions generate different degrees of environmental fit or misfit that impact the general quality of life of the person. Evidences for such a model are presented with a preferential emphasis on the residential neighborhood, but also with reference to other residential places such as home, outdoor spaces, and city. The processes addressed in this chapter illustrate the components of the conceptual model (Figure 13.1), which include perception, evaluation, and satisfaction with neighborhood spaces; uses and activities in the residential place, particularly in relation to health and well-being; social segregation and aggregation between individuals and groups; and branding and reputation of residential places. The examination of these different topics illustrates the increasing importance of ecological factors in the study of residential spaces. Although many of these processes have been investigated, thus allowing the accumulation of knowledge, for example, in terms of measurement tools and established relationships among variables, there are a number of important processes still to be researched: the following are 12 recommendations.
Future Directions 1. Need for innovative methodologies, integrating different strategies. 2. Need for more standard valid and reliable measurement tools. 3. More behavioral and observational data. 4. More mediation and moderation analyses. 5. Need for an integrated definition of residential places quality, using both subjective and objective measures and comparing these measures to integrate them in one system. 6. Need to enhance the knowledge and methodologies transfers from research to policy: to develop evidence-based residential design and to increase post-occupancy evaluation. 7. Using more new technologies for integrating different kinds of data and making social research data more available to the laypeople or to other scientists and experts, to increase the diffusion of good-quality environmental psychology knowledge on residential places and to increase the probability that it can be used in design and political decision-making over residential place issues. 8. Emphasis on complex social aspects of people’s interaction in and with residential places, linked to multifactorial and cumulative factors models. 9. Exploration of new residential hybrid places: that is, public places people use for carrying out residential activities (e.g., cafés or other places people can use for realizing traditional residential functions, such as emailing or reading as if they were at home). 10. Globalization and/or localization of residential places features and processes. 11. Longitudinal frameworks and time-related analysis as crucial to understand the dynamic relationship of people’s experiences of their residential and neighborhood spaces. 12. Participatory planning strategies are necessary to create a supportive infrastructure for everyday life.
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence Further research on participatory planning can involve issues of urban time policies, therefore taking always into account not only the spatial dimension but also the time dimension involved in people’s uses and activities in residential neighborhood environments.
Acknowledgments The authors are grateful to Professor Mirilia Bonnes for her helpful comments on draft versions of this chapter. They also would like to thank Barrett Gaylord for the English review. (p. 243) The first author would like to thank the Sapienza University of Rome 2010 grant “City Reputation: Multidimensional Offer and Stakeholder Demands” and 2011 grant “City Reputation: Development of Measurement Indicators” in partial support of his work on this chapter. The second author would like to thank the Royal Society of Edinburgh for partially supporting her work on this chapter through the RSE Research Award in the Arts and Humanities.
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence Lawton, M. P. (1980). Environment and aging. Los Angeles: Brooks/Cole. Leslie, E., Sugiyama, T., Ierodiaconouc, D., & Kremera, P. (2010). Perceived and objectively measured greenness of neighbourhoods: Are they measuring the same thing? Landscape and Urban Planning, 95(1–2), 28–33. Lewin, K. (1951). Field theory in social science: Selected theoretical papers. D. Cartwright, (Ed.). New York: Harper & Row. Lindstedt, J. (2011). Place, identity, and the socially responsible construction of place brands. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 7(1), 42–49. Little, B. R. (1983). Personal projects: A rationale and method for investigation. Environment and Behavior, 15(3), 273–309. Lord, S., Després, C., & Ramadier, T. (2011). When mobility makes sense: A qualitative and longitudinal study of the daily mobility of the elderly. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 18(3), 307–319. Lynch, K. (1960). The image of the city. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Maas, J., van Dillen, S. M. E., Verheij, R. A., & Groenewegen, P. P. (2009a). Social contacts as a possible mechanism behind the relation between green space and health. Health and Place, 15(2), 586–595. Maas, J., Verheij, R. A., de Vries, S., Spreeuwenberg, P., Schellevis, F. G., & Groenewegen, P. P. (2009b). Morbidity is related to a green living environment. Journal of Epidemiological and Community Health, 63, 967–973. doi:10.1136/jech.2008.079038 Maas, J., Verheij, R. A., Groenewegen, P. P., de Vries, S., & Spreeuwenberg, P. (2006). Green space, urbanity, and health: How strong is the relation? Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 60, 587–592. Mair, C., et al. (2009). Cross-sectional and longitudinal associations of neighborhood cohesion and stressors with depressive symptoms in the multiethnic study of atherosclerosis. Annals Epidemiology, 19, 49–57. Mareggi, M. (2002). Innovation in urban policy: The experience of Italian time policies. Planning Theory and Practices, 3(2), 173–194. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mitchell, R., & Popham, F. (2008) Effect of exposure to natural environment on health inequalities: an observational population study. The Lancet, 372(9650), 1655–1660. Mommaas, H. (2002), City Branding: the necessity of socio-cultural goals, In T. Hauben, M. Vermeulen, & V. Patteeuw (Eds.). (2002), City branding: Image building and building images., Rotterdam: NAI Uitgevers. Mückenberger, U. (2011). Local time policies in Europe. Time & Society, 20(2), 241–273. Netuveli, G., Wiggins, R. D., Hildon, Z., Montgomery, S. M., & Blane, D. (2005). Functional limitation in long standing illness and quality of life: Evidence from a national survey. British Medical Journal, 331(7529), 1382–1383. Nielsen, T. S., & Hansen, K. B. (2007). Do green areas affect health? Results from a Danish survey on the use of green areas and health indicators. Health and Place, 13, 839–850. Parmentier, M., van Ham, M., & Bolt, G. (2007). Behavioural responses to neighbourhood reputations. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 22, 199–213. Perugini, M., Bonnes, M., Aiello, A., & Ercolani, A. P. (2002). Il modello circonflesso delle qualità affettive dei luoghi. Sviluppo di uno strumento valutativo italiano. TPM-Testing Psicometria Metodologia, 9, 131–152. Pikora, T. J., Giles-Corti, B., Knuiman, M. W., Bull, F. C. L., Jamrozik, K. D., & Donovan, R. J. (2006). Neighbourhood Environmental Factors Correlated with Walking near Home: Using SPACES. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 38(4), 708–714.
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence Pine, J. B., II, & Gilmore, J. H. (1999). The experience economy: work is theatre and every business a stage. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Proshansky, H. M., Fabian, A. K., & Kaminoff, R. (1983). Place identity: Physical world socialization of the self. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 3, 57–83. Rapoport, A. (1990). Systems of activities and systems of settings. In S. Kent (Ed.), Domestic architecture and the use of space (pp. 9–19). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Rizzi, P., & Dioli, I. (2010). From strategic planning to city branding: Some empirical evidence in Italy. Pasos, 8(3), 39–49. Russell, J. A., and Pratt, G. (1980). A description of the affective quality attributed to the environment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38, 311–322. Russell, J. A., & Ward, L. M. (1982). Environmental psychology. Annual Review of Psychology, 33, 651–688. Salingaros, N. (2000). The structure of pattern languages. Architectural Research Quarterly, 4, 149–161. Saelens, B. E., Sallis, J. F., Black, J. B., & Chen, D. (2003). Neighborhood-based differences in physical activity: An environment scale evaluation. American Journal of Public Health, 93(9), 1552–1558. Scharf, T., Phillipson, C., & Smith, A. E. (2003). Social exclusion of older people in deprived urban communities of England. European Journal of Ageing, 2(2), 76–87. Scopelliti, M., Carrus, G., Cini, F., Mastandrea, S., Ferrini, F., … Semenzato, P. (in press). Biodiversity, perceived restorativeness, and benefits of nature: A study on the psychological processes and outcomes of on-site experiences in urban and peri-urban green areas in Italy. In S. Kabisch (Ed.), Advances in people-environment studies (Vol. 3). Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe. Scopelliti, M., & Giuliani, M. V. (2005). Restorative environments in later life: An approach to well-being from the perspective of environmental psychology. Journal of Housing for the Elderly, 19 (3/4), 205–228. Seaman, P. J., Jones, R., & Ellaway, A. (2010). It’s not just about the park, it’s about integration too: Why people choose to use or not use urban greenspaces. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 7, 78. (p. 247) Skjaeveland, O., & Gärling, T. (1997). Effects of interactional space on neighbouring. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 17, 181–198. Stigsdotter, U. A., & Grahn, P. (2004). A garden at your doorstep may reduce stress—Private gardens as restorative environments in the city. OPENspace—an international conference on inclusive environments. Edinburgh, UK. Stokols, D. (1987). Conceptual strategies of environmental psychology. In D. Stokols & I. Altman (Eds.), Handbook of environmental psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 41–70). New York: Wiley. Stokols, D., & Shumaker, S. A. (1982). The psychological context of residential mobility and well-being. Journal of Social Issues, 38(3), 149–171. Sugiyama, T., Sahaf, R., Masters, J., Okely, T., & Moore, G. (2010). Attributes of outdoor play areas in childcare centres associated with children’s outdoor physical activity and sedentary behaviour. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 12(2), 22–23. Sugiyama, T., Ward Thompson, C., and Alves, S. (2009). Associations between neighbourhood open space attributes and quality of life for older people in Britain. Environment and Behavior, 41(1), 3–21. Tennessen, C. M., & Cimprich, B. (1995).Views to nature: Effects on attention. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15(1), 77–85.
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence Tognoli, J. (1987). Residential environments. In D. Stokols & I. Altman (Eds.), Handbook of environmental psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 655–690). New York: Wiley. Trost, S. G., Ward, D. S., & Senso, M. (2010). Effects of child care policy and environment on physical activity. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 42(3), 520–525. Ulrich, R. S. (1981). Natural versus urban scenes: Some psychophysiological effects. Environment and Behavior, 13(5), 523–556. Ulrich, R. S. (1983). Aesthetic and affective response to natural environment. In I. Altman & J. F. Wohwill (Eds.), Behavior and the natural environment (Vol. 6, pp. 85–125). New York: Plenum. Ulrich, R. S., Simons, R. F., Losito, B. D., Fiorito, E., Miles, M. A., & Zelson, M. (1991). Stress recovery during exposure to natural and urban environments. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 11(2), 201–230. Vale, L., Warner, S. B. (2001). Imaging the city: Continuing struggles and new directions. New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research. van den Berg, A. E., Maas, J., Verheij, R. A., & Groenewegen, P. P. (2010). Green space as a buffer between stressful life events and health. Social Science & Medicine, 70(8), 1203–1210. van der Klis, M., & Karsten, L. (2009). Commuting partners, dual residences, and the meaning of home. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 29, 235–245. van der Meer, E., Brucks, M., Husemann, A., Hofmann, M., Honold, J., & Beyer, R. (2011). Human perception of urban environment and consequences for its design. In W. Endlicher et al. (Eds.), Perspectives of urban ecology— Ecosystems and interactions between humans and nature in the metropolis of Berlin. Berlin: Springer. van Lenthe, F., Brug, J., & Mackenbach, J. (2005). Neighborhood inequalities in physical inactivity: the role of neighborhood attractiveness, proximity to local facilities and safety in the Netherlands. Social Science & Medicine, 60, 763–775. Vogel, T., Brechat, P.-H., Leprêtre, P.-M., Kaltenbach, G., Berthel, M., & Lonsdorfer, J. (2009). Health benefits of physical activity in older patients: a review. International Journal of Clinical Practice, 63(2), 303–320. Wallenius, M. (1999). Personal projects in everyday places: Perceived supportiveness of the environment and psychological well-being. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 19, 131–143. Wells, N. M., & Laquatra, J. (2010). Why green housing and green neighborhoods are important to the health and well-being of older adults. American Society on Aging, 33(4), 50–57. Werner, C. M., Altman, I., & Oxley, D. (1985). Temporal aspects of homes: A transactional perspective. In I. Altman & C. M. Werner (Eds.), Home environments: Human behavior and environment (Vol. 8, pp. 1–32). New York: Plenum. Wheeler, B. W., Cooper, A. R., Page, A. S., & Russell, J. (2010). Greenspace and children’s physical activity: A GPS/GIS analysis of the PEACH project. Preventive Medicine 51(2), 148–152. Young, C. C., LaMontagne, L. L., Dietrich, M. S., & Wells, N. (2012). Cognitive vulnerabilities, negative life events, and depressive symptoms in young adolescents. Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, 26(1), 9–20. Zukın, S. (1998). Urban lifestyles: diversity and standardisation in spaces of consumption. Urban Studies, 35(5–6), 825–839. Marino Bonaiuto Marino Bonaiuto CIRPA (Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerca in Psicologia Ambientale) Dipartimento di Psicologia dei Processi di Sviluppo e Socializzazione Sapienza Università di Roma Rome, Italy
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Residential Places and Neighborhoods: Toward Healthy Life, Social Integration, and Reputable Residence Tuzla/Istanbul, Turkey
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Work Environments
Oxford Handbooks Online Work Environments Jennifer A. Veitch The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology, Organizational Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0014
Abstract and Keywords Work environment research is a vibrant area not only within environmental psychology, but also in a broad range of building sciences concerned with making buildings work for their inhabitants. Understanding how work environments affect comfort, satisfaction, performance, and health comes through the study of such processes as privacy, attention, stress, affect, and cognition and builds upon the foundation of previous decades. Conversely, the study of workplace behaviors as they affect the environment is comparatively new, with pressing societal questions needing answers. Psychologists together with professionals from fields such as engineering, physics, architecture, and ergonomics have combined roles to play in adding to human knowledge and to design, construct, operate, and inhabit spaces that support the work we do today while sustaining Earth for the future. Keywords: indoor environment, personal space, satisfaction, thermal comfort, environmental stress, control, positive affect, sustainability, green buildings, workplace
Introduction Offices are the dominant workplaces in North America, and the proportion of the workforce in these settings is increasing (Woods, 2009). Over half of the workforce is employed in offices, a statistic that does not include the many people for whom an office is part of the work setting rather than its entirety (e.g., nurses, teachers, retail managers). Not surprisingly, offices also predominate among the settings studied by environmental psychologists. For that reason, this chapter focuses primarily on the understanding the effects of the physical environment on people in offices, and secondarily on the environmental effects of people’s working in offices. Offices are major resource users, particularly for energy, as well as major sources of employment. Understanding the behavior and experiences of people in offices requires a systems approach. One such approach is shown in Figure 14.1. Individuals experience physical, social, and organizational contexts, and bring to work their individual differences and states created by conditions and social roles outside of work. Many internal processes, acting in parallel, take these various influences and result in a variety of outcomes. This figure cannot show all of the possible contextual influences, processes, or outcomes, but does show the structure underlying the chapter. Internal processes are the organizing principle.
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Work Environments
Click to view larger Figure 14.1 Conceptual Model for Work Environment Effects on Individuals, Groups, and Organizations. © 2011, Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa.
Sundstrom’s book (1986) and handbook chapter (1987) on work environments and the BOSTI books (Brill, Margulis, Konar, & BOSTI, 1984) are the classic work environment psychology documents. The past quarter-century has of course brought dramatic change to offices, principally in the rise of information technology. This has changed both the nature of tasks—for example, few employees now need to read soft pencil or handwritten fourth-generation carbon copies—and jobs—for example, (p. 249) no longer is there a typing pool. Consequently, some of the results reported in these classic works do not generalize to present-day offices. This review focuses primarily on papers published since 2002, with the publication of the second Handbook of Environmental Psychology and its review of work environments (McCoy, 2002). Popular media tell us that contemporary ways of working are dramatically different than old ways. This may be true, but many of the fundamental characteristics of people in organizations are unchanged. Moreover, even in organizations that emphasize teamwork, or that use hoteling to manage the assignment of workstations to itinerant employees, there is need for quiet spaces with suitable lighting, temperature, and accommodation while doing individual work (Brill, Weidemann, & BOSTI, 2001). Employers perennially ask why one might concern oneself with providing superior working conditions. After all, the Hawthorne experiments found contrary results in which performance could be improved even by placebo changes in lighting conditions (Roethlisberger & Dickson, 1939; Snow, 1927). Herzberg (1966) theorized that the physical work environment was a hygiene, rather than a motivating, factor, with increases beyond the baseline of adequacy not providing any substantive return in the form of better job performance. However, several commentators have observed flaws in the design of the Hawthorne illumination experiments (Gifford, 2007; Kompier, 2006), and Herzberg had very limited data to support his theory. More recent analyses of the costs of employment show the value of a better work environment. Brill and colleagues (2001) calculated that over the life of a building, 82% of the costs are associated with the salary and benefits of those who work in it; 10% of the costs (circa 2000) are for the technology they use; 5% is the initial cost of building and furnishings; and 3% is the cost of operations and maintenance for the building. Small investments in the physical (p. 250) environment can pay off well if they enable the employees to be more effective at work. Moreover, unlike person-centered interventions. such as training, coaching, or immediate rewards, they persist over time and affect new waves of employees as the workforce ebbs and flows. There is no general equation to calculate the return on investment of work environment interventions, although there are methodologies that may be applied to organizations (Linhard, 2005; Neftzger & Walker, 2010). As these methods underscore, understanding which investments will pay off requires an integrative approach to research, taking together not only human resources management, industrial-organizational psychology, and facilities management (Haynes, 2007), but also engineering and environmental psychology. In some respects, work
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Work Environments environment psychology illustrates the identity challenge described by Stokols (1995). Although it seeks to understand the person embedded in a specific context (Craik, 1996), a complete understanding requires truly interdisciplinary investigations.
Behavioral Consequences of Work Environments This section of the chapter takes the traditional approach of considering the effects of the physical and social environment on employees. Rather than organizing the literature by independent or dependent variables, the focus is on internal processes. Some internal processes—visual perception, for instance—relate more clearly to a specific physical environmental parameter, whereas others, such as cognitive processing, receive influence from several variables (including other processes).
Social Relations and Personal Space Decisions about the size and arrangement of offices are fundamental to their design, and have financial, functional, style, and practical dimensions. The outcome of these decisions is the creation of the places where people work. Other design decisions have physical ramifications, but these start from the decisions about space. The space decisions influence personal space perceptions, privacy, crowding, and territoriality, processes that themselves form the foundation of environmental psychology (Gifford, 2007).
Office Type Few issues have created such debate among office workers as has office type; arguably, open-plan office design was the inspiration for the comic strip Dilbert, by Scott Adams, and its many panels about life in the “cube farm.” North American offices adopted this arrangement of modular furnishings cubicles in the 1960s (Albrecht & Broikos, 2000). (Note that in Europe, the label “open plan” describes offices in which many individual desks occupy a large area, with no visual barriers between them—what North Americans would call a “bull pen”—and systems of furnishing panels are less common.) One reason for the popularity of the layout is economic: the reduced footprint and ease of rearrangement translates into reduced organizational costs. The other is ideological: the belief that by reducing barriers between individuals, one can increase the opportunities for interaction and communication in ways that will promote teamwork, collaboration, and creative problem-solving. This belief is widespread among designers and has appeared repeatedly in the popular press (Galt, 2002; “Let’s chuck the cubicles!” 2011; Mourtada, 2011). However, the reduced barriers also reduce privacy (Brill et al., 1984), as discussed below. Broad comparisons between office types reveal many simultaneous processes and, consequently, mixed results. For instance, Sundstrom (1987) observed that field studies reported both favorable and unfavorable outcomes in comparisons of office types: some studies found that satisfaction declined with a shift from an enclosed to an open-plan layout, perhaps because of decreases in privacy and increases in noise and distraction, whereas others found that employees preferred more rather than less exposure to other people. Job category appeared to moderate the relationships, in part because of the use of enclosed offices to provide status markers. In recent years there have been few investigations that compared office types, probably because of the dominance of the open-plan form (Brill et al., 2001; Haynes, 2008); BOSTI estimated that 71% of American offices fall into this category (Brill et al., 2001). The recent publications demonstrate the complexity of the issues without a clear conclusion about optimal office types. Brennan, Chugh, and Kline (2002) followed an organization for an extended period before and up to six months following a move from downtown quarters with primarily enclosed offices to a suburban location with open-plan arrangements. The respondents to this longitudinal study reported a decline in privacy and confidentiality in two post-move surveys, as well as persistent declines in environmental satisfaction, job performance, and increases in physical stress. The longitudinal design is a strength (p. 251) of this report, but the authors had no physical measurements of either the pre- or post-move offices and no control group. Moreover, although their questionnaire focused on judgments of the interior of the workplace, the fact that the geographic location had also changed remains a confound. The change in the commute to work might have been stressful, or the new commute itself might be more stressful than the old; commuting stress is known to spill over into other life domains (Novaco & Gonzalez, 2009).
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Work Environments For further consideration of the complexity of the office type issue, consider the results from Danielsson and Bodin (2008), concerning the health status of occupants in various Swedish offices. Classifying offices into seven types differing in both enclosure and the number of occupants, they found that occupants of a medium-size open-plan office (10–24 occupants, with few architectural separations between them) had the highest risk of poor outcomes for physical and emotional health and for aspects of job satisfaction. However, it was not possible from these data to determine precisely which features of this layout were responsible for the increased risk. The large open-plan office, rare in Sweden but more typical in North America, did not show as many increased risks as the smaller version. This is puzzling, as one might expect less privacy and more distraction from the larger number of people.
Privacy The original BOSTI study of workplace productivity identified visual and acoustic privacy as among the most important design elements for individuals (Brill et al., 1984), and this remains an important issue. Veitch et al. (2003) surveyed more than 770 occupants of cubicles in North America and found that privacy was the second-mostimportant feature to them among seven ranked features, and the lack of privacy was most likely to be mentioned in open-ended responses as a disliked feature or a feature that the respondent would change. One way to achieve visual privacy and a degree of acoustic privacy is to provide a higher panel between cubicles. Brill et al. (1984) recommended 65 inches (165 cm) or higher on three sides as a means to provide adequate privacy, but the design trend in recent years has been for panels to be lower than this (“Space planning,” 2003). A field study comparing two Turkish companies found that privacy perceptions were better when panels were 140 cm (~55 in)—high enough to provide visual privacy to the seated occupant—than when they were 120 cm (~47 in) (Yildirim, Akalin-Baskaya, & Celebi, 2007). However, Newsham, Veitch, and Charles (2008), in a reanalysis of the Veitch et al. (2003) data, found no effect of panel height on the risk of dissatisfaction with privacy and acoustics. Workstation size was a significant predictor, with larger workstations reducing the risk of dissatisfaction, probably because of the greater separation between people (and their noise) that larger cubicles provide. Individual differences and the nature of the work both play a role in employees’ responses to work space design (Maher & Hippel, 2005). Stimulus screening and inhibitory ability, perceived privacy, and task complexity showed interactive effects on job satisfaction in this Australian sample. Higher panels increased perceived privacy. When both perceived privacy and task complexity were high, stimulus screening ability was a significant predictor of job satisfaction. Maher and Hippel suggested that this result revealed a weakness in the use of higher panels to improve perceived privacy, in that they provide more visual privacy than acoustic privacy. Without acoustic privacy, those with poor stimulus screening ability who have complex tasks might experience more distractions than the higher visual privacy would lead them to expect, with concomitant reductions in job satisfaction. These authors suggested that noise is a greater problem for poor stimulus screeners when they lack the visual cues to identify where the noise is coming from. The seating orientation in the cubicle offers another means to regulate social interaction or to provide privacy. Physical constraints can limit this choice; for example, Sommer and Augustin (2007) found that 97% of users of desktop computers with monitors worked with the primary work space facing into the corner of the cubicle (an arrangement that was common when almost all monitors used cathode-ray tubes, needing a deep desk area for the tube). However, users of laptop computers varied between orienting into the corner (“facing in”) and facing to the side or the entrance (“facing out”). Interviews with employees of both orientations revealed that those who faced out did so to facilitate communication and to avoid being surprised by visitors entering the cubicle; not being startled by people coming up from behind outweighed increased distractions of people passing by. Those who faced in cited fewer distractions and the availability of more desk space on which to spread materials, as well as the physical constraints of the equipment. Personality variables (introversion-extroversion, locus of control, and self-monitoring capacity) did (p. 252) not predict the choice of orientation, although the small sample size and the fact of physical constraints limiting choice might have obscured the relationship. As computer monitors become shallower the physical constraints should decline in the future, making it easier to detect the influence of psychological variables. The development of Internet-based survey technologies has greatly facilitated the development of large data sets of office employees’ responses to their work environments. Physical measurements lag because they remain time-
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Work Environments consuming and expensive to conduct. The Center for the Built Environment at the University of California, Berkeley, is unusual in having a database comprising more than 50,000 individual responses together with a limited set of physical parameters of each office (Goins, Jellema, & Zhang, 2010). A recent analysis of this data set revealed than the measured height of cubicle enclosures was not as good a predictor of self-rated job performance as was the symbolic character of the office, being viewed as having a home-like atmosphere or being a place to be proud of. The authors suggested that designers seeking to influence organizational outcomes should attend to the symbolic attributes over simple enclosure measures. However, physical attributes matter: the symbolic attributes themselves were influenced by speech privacy, air quality, amount of light, and temperature, all of which are influenced by the physical design of the work space (Newsham et al., 2003).
Communication and Collaboration The belief that reducing barriers between individuals will create a culture of open communication and information flow began with the landscaped office (burolandschaft) movement in the 1950s (Albrecht & Broikos, 2000), and continues today (“Let’s chuck,” 2011). The reality is more complex than this ideology suggests. There exists a tension between providing opportunities for social interaction and creating conditions that are not conducive to concentration (Heerwagen, Kampschroer, Powell, & Loftness, 2004). Successful workplaces achieve a balance between the two that is appropriate to the organization, or more accurately, to the work unit and the nature of its activities. Heerwagen et al. (2004) analyzed collaborative knowledge work along three social dimensions: awareness, which concerns knowledge of what is happening in the surroundings; brief interactions, which are short exchanges of fact or personal connections; and collaborations, which may range from a few minutes to several hours in length. Workplace design features affect these dimensions in different ways, and each dimension has different benefits and drawbacks to the organization. Awareness, for instance, is particularly important in organizations that have high time pressure and require a high degree of coordination between individuals. Proximity to others and high visual access both contribute to awareness. However, they do so at the cost of lost privacy and lost confidentiality (Heerwagen et al., 2004). Brief interactions also benefit from visual access; people tend to interact with people they can see (Rashid, Kampschroer, Wineman, & Zimring, 2006), and they interact more with people who are nearby. Thus, more open office designs and layouts that place groups in close proximity to one another should prove beneficial (Heerwagen et al., 2004). However, because people tend to meet in individual work spaces rather than in communal spaces, even in offices designed to encourage the use of communal spaces, there is a high risk of distraction in more open spaces (Rashid et al., 2006). Collaboration, as defined by Heerwagen et al. (2004), encompasses many types of interactions as well as time spent in individual work. Most of the literature in this area comes from studies of group and team work without a specific focus on the physical environment, and yet this category best captures the balancing act between the individual and the group. Various forms of open design for project or team work can facilitate communication among group members, and this coordination can decrease the time required to complete the task; however, for the parts of the task that require individual work, these open areas can be distracting to individuals and can prove stressful (Heerwagen et al., 2004). Overall, decreasing barriers between individuals appears to increase communication between them, as expected; however, it is less clear that this is, on balance, always a good thing. Not all individuals need to interact with all others all the time. Using physical space to promote social interaction requires a careful consideration of the nature of the work to achieve the appropriate balance given the tasks and needs of the work group. If the balance is wrong, individuals and organizations both lose, as seen in two reports based on data collected 20 years apart. Stokols, Clitheroe, and Zmuidzinas (2002), analyzing data collected in 1987–1988, found evidence for a mediated relationship between environmental distraction, perceived support for creativity, and job satisfaction in which more environmental (p. 253) distraction (more visual access, higher noise levels, more people passing by) decreased perceived support for creativity and this in turn decreased job satisfaction. A longitudinal study of European knowledge workers whose work required little interaction found that cooperation became less pleasant, whereas distractions and difficulty in concentrating increased, after they had moved from private offices to an open-plan space (Kaarlela-Tuomaala, Helenius, Keskinen, & Hongisto, 2009).
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Work Environments
Density Personal space, or the control of it, largely concerns the regulation of our social interactions. The need to do so is partly a function of the density of possible relations. Theorists differentiate between two types of density: “social density” concerns the number of occupants per office, and addresses issues such as the number and complexity of social relationships that an individual must manage. “Spatial density” is the area available to each occupant (e.g., m2 per person) (Duval, Charles, & Veitch, 2002). For a given office size, the two are clearly related: if social density increases, spatial density will decrease. However, the relationship is not perfect because architectural and interior design choices also play a role; one could reduce social density by providing separation between work groups, even if spatial density stayed constant. Taken to an extreme, high social or low spatial density could give rise to perceptions of crowding (Stokols, 1972), which can act as a stressor (Sherrod, 1974). At the other extreme, very low social or spatial density could lead to isolation (real or perceived). Present-day office environment research provides little guidance on the effects of density on employees, despite the importance placed on social interaction. In the facilities management and office design literature it seems that real estate costs (“Space planning,” 2003) and the above-mentioned emphasis on visual access, especially for work groups, drive social and spatial density choices. Duval et al. (2002) surveyed the literature concerning open-plan offices specifically, seeking evidence for recommendations concerning social and spatial density. Many studies were excluded from the review because of insufficiently specific characterization of the density measure. They concluded that overall, both higher social density and lower spatial density had adverse effects on overall environmental satisfaction, but were not able to establish numerical limits. Other data suggested that workstations smaller than 4.5 m2 (49 sq ft) increase the risk of dissatisfaction with privacy/acoustics and dissatisfaction with lighting (Newsham et al., 2008), but were unable to address social density.
Territoriality Territoriality is a difficult process to define (Gifford, 2007), but a colloquial definition would hold that it is the process by which people mark space as their own, both to protect belongings and to regulate social interactions. The literature on territoriality in offices is very limited, and focuses primarily on personalization as the means by which individuals mark territories. Wells has provided valuable insights into the predictors and consequences of office personalization with a series of cross-sectional field investigations. The results are counterintuitive. Although most people believe that the items on display give insight into the personality of the occupant, personality variables as assessed by the Big Five do not predict the nature of the display or the number of items on display (Wells & Thelen, 2002). These personality variables predict the individual’s status in the organization, which in turn does predict personalization: for instance, high-status individuals tend to personalize more. Organizational culture, rather than individual characteristics, is the larger influence on personalization, particularly as it influences the work space design and the explicit policies governing personalization (Wells, Thelen, & Ruark, 2007). Permissive personalization policies are important in that organizations with such policies show a greater degree of personalization, and in turn higher levels of satisfaction with the work environment, job satisfaction, and employee well-being as well as higher organizational well-being (Wells, 2000).
Attention and Distraction Individual knowledge work remains an important component of work in most organizations: Brill et al. (2001) found that in all job categories, people spent 50% or more of their time in solo activities or on the telephone. For these activities, visual and auditory stimuli from people and equipment are detrimental to concentration and are consistently rated by office occupants as problematic (Banbury & Berry, 2005; Haynes, 2008; Schwede, Davies, & Purdey, 2008; Veitch et al., 2003). Auditory distraction lends itself well to laboratory investigation, and the work of applied cognitive psychologists studying attention is directly relevant to environmental psychology. It is clear from the literature that irrelevant sound disrupts cognitive (p. 254) performance (Banbury & Berry, 1998; Perham, Banbury, & Jones, 2004; Szalma
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Work Environments & Hancock, 2011). The nature of the sound is more important to the cognitive effects than is its level, at least within the range of commonly encountered sounds, from 48 dB(A) through 80 dB(A) (Banbury, Macken, Tremblay, & Jones, 2001). Sounds that are repeated are less disruptive than are sounds that have acoustic changes in pitch, timbre, or tempo; the changing state attracts attention and disrupts task-related cognitive processing (Banbury et al., 2001). Individual differences moderate the effects, with those who have smaller working memory capacity being most adversely affected by noise exposure (Sörqvist, Halin, & Hygge, 2010). A different individual difference measure, task absorption, showed complex interaction effects with noise exposure on performance and subjective mental workload ratings (Smith-Jackson & Klein, 2009). Both papers concluded that the role of individual differences is worthy of further investigation. Although some laboratory studies show that habituation is possible, with the effect being diminished after 20 minutes of exposure to the irrelevant sound (Banbury & Berry, 1998), field studies do not find that the problems disappear with repeated exposure (Banbury & Berry, 2005). This might be explained by the fact that even in offices, exposure to irrelevant sound is not continuous. Banbury and Berry (1998) found that even a short silence after a period of noise exposure was sufficient to reverse the habituation effect. Conversely, Szalma and Hancock (2011) suggested that longer or repeated exposures might permit the development of compensatory or coping mechanisms and identified this as a topic worthy of investigation. Cognitive performance is not the only problem associated with distraction; there is also an affective component, varyingly operationalized as annoyance, loudness, and distraction ratings, or combined into ratings of acoustic satisfaction (Navai & Veitch, 2003). Acoustic satisfaction diminishes when the ambient sound level rises above 45 dB(A) and when the ambient sound is predominantly of high frequency (Navai & Veitch, 2003). Speech sounds have the strongest relationship to acoustic satisfaction, and for this reason acousticians have developed a predictive metric based on the physical properties of the acoustic environment. They calculate the speech intelligibility index (SII) to quantify the degree to which speech sounds from outside the target area (a workstation or a room, in the case of offices) are audible against general background noise (Acoustical Society of America, 1997). SII replaces an older quantity known as the articulation index (AI) (American Society for Testing and Materials [ASTM], 1993). Among acousticians, spaces with SII > .20 are thought to be unacceptable. Adding masking sound to the office environment is one way to improve the SII, because it increases the background level. Masking sound, being a continuous sound with no changing state, should not cause cognitive performance problems. A successful masking sound will be loud enough to cover speech sounds and with enough high-frequency sound to cover most speech sounds, but neither loud enough nor over-weighted in the high frequencies to cause annoyance. Veitch et al. (2002) tested a variety of simulated masking sounds and levels in two experiments, and concluded that spectra that closely match the speech spectrum can be good maskers and provide good acoustic satisfaction, provided that they achieve an SII > .20 and an overall sound pressure level not greater than 45–48 dB(A). Schlittmeier and Hellbrück (2009) found that a continuous masking sound played over office noise reversed the ill effect of the office noise alone on a serial memory task, but that legato music was rated as a preferable sound when heard in isolation. They observed that masking sounds need to be acceptable to the hearers, adding that taking other processes into account, it would be preferable to add a degree of individual (personal) control to the sound. Interestingly, Lee and Brand (2010) reported that the effect of distraction on self-rated performance in office settings is mediated by the relationship between distraction and perceived control; people who reported higher distraction reported lower perceived control, whereas those with higher perceived control reported higher performance.
Ocular Light-Initiated Processes Visual Perception In this section we consider the effects of the work environment as processed by the visual system. We see objects and surfaces around us because they reflect light that the retina detects and the visual cortex processes. The light may come from electric sources, daylight, direct sunlight, or all of these sources. The lit environment will achieve
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Work Environments good quality to the extent that the combination of light sources, their location and controls, and the surface properties of the space and objects in it meet functional, cognitive, and emotional needs of the individual occupants of the space in balance with the architectural characteristics of the space and the (p. 255) environmental and energy constraints particular to the context (Quality of the Visual Environment Committee, 2009; Rea, 2000). Lighting requirements for North American workplaces are established by the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IES, 2004). Providing an adequate quantity of light1 to see common office tasks is not difficult because most office workers today use computer monitors, which are self-luminous, and most paper tasks are printed crisply in relatively large type in high contrast (black on white). Under the 300–500 lx that is currently the recommended illuminance for office work (DiLaura, Houser, Mistrick, & Steffy, 2011; IES, 2004), relative visual performance of these tasks will be high (Rea & Ouellette, 1991). Light distribution is another important dimension of lighting design. Both experimental and field investigations have consistently found that office workers prefer a mixture of direct and indirect lighting with higher proportions of occupants rating such lighting as comfortable, judging spaces lit by direct/indirect systems as more attractive, and reporting higher levels of environmental and job satisfaction after working in spaces lit with direct/indirect systems (Boyce et al., 2006a; Hedge, Sims, & Becker, 1995; Houser, Tiller, Bernecker, & Mistrick, 2002; Veitch & Newsham, 2000a; Veitch, Newsham, Mancini, & Arsenault, 2010). Most office workers today use computer monitors for much of the day. Display technology has changed in recent years, with flat-panel liquid-crystal displays (commonly known as LCD monitors) having displaced the cathode-ray tube (CRT). The overall effect is beneficial in that LCDs, being flat and having matte surfaces, are less prone to reflection problems than were the spherical (curved), high-gloss surfaces of CRTs. LCDs are also capable of higher luminances than were CRTs, with average luminances of ~300 cd/m2 for monitors available in 2010 versus 30–35 cd/m2 being typical in the late 1990s (Veitch & Newsham, 2000b). Existing recommendations call for the ratio of luminances between the task area and the surrounding surfaces to be on the order of 1:3 or 3:1 (IES, 2004), although experiments with both CRTs (30 cd/m2 ) and LCDs (91 cd/m2 ) have shown that people prefer ratios closer to 1:1 (Sheedy, Smith, & Hayes, 2005; Veitch & Newsham, 2000b). If this is true, it will be more difficult to lower electric light levels as monitor luminances increase. One obvious way to achieve both higher light levels and reduced energy consumption is to increase the use of daylight. The preference for a window in the office is well established (Collins, 1976; Farley & Veitch, 2001). Successful daylighting, however, requires careful planning so that one delivers the desired light level without causing discomfort. There does not yet exist a widely accepted method to predict visual discomfort from daylight (Osterhaus, 2005), but several methods and metrics have been proposed, such as the daylight glare probability (DGP; Wienold & Christoffersen, 2006) and statistics based on high-dynamic-range images of the office (Osterhaus, 2008; Van Den Wymelenberg, Inanici, & Johnson, 2010). Lindelof and Morel (2008) proposed a Bayesian probability approach in which discomfort is inferred from occupants’ use of lighting and shading controls, and built into the building automation system as an input to creating conditions that provide adequate light levels, limited discomfort, and energy savings. All of these approaches to understanding discomfort assume that discomfort can be reliably predicted from the physical properties of light in the space. Research in this domain would benefit from improved scales to measure discomfort and more sophisticated research designs to explore the role of individual differences and contextual variables on the experience of discomfort. For instance, discomfort ratings are lower when participants are more involved in their tasks (Osterhaus & Bailey, 1992) and when the source of the glare is a scene judged to be interesting (Tuaycharoen & Tregenza, 2005). Pressure to reduce lighting energy use is high, which has resulted in many technological developments in lighting equipment, lighting controls, and daylighting systems. Some of the proposed techniques are controversial because of their overall effects on office occupants. Among the most heated debates have occurred over the suggestion that the electric lighting in an office should use a light source that, although still white, has a relatively higher proportion of short-wavelength radiation (i.e., more blue light) so that its correlated color temperature (CCT) will be around 6,500 K. The basis for this argument are findings that show increased depth of field, higher brightness perception, and improved visual acuity for very small, low-contrast targets under this type of light (Berman, 1992);
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Work Environments therefore, the proponents of so-called spectrally enhanced lighting argue that the same level of visual performance could be achieved with lower illuminance levels than would be needed for other light sources. Although the argument sounds compelling, there is no evidence that the correlated color (p. 256) temperature of a fluorescent lighting system up to 6,500 K influences task performance at light levels typical of office interiors (Boyce, Akashi, Hunter, & Bullough, 2003). In this laboratory experiment, higher CCT reduced pupil size, but the increased depth of field made no difference to the performance of the task. The illuminance (light level) and size of the task did affect both speed and accuracy. There was no interaction of illuminance and CCT, as there would need to be to support the idea of spectrally enhanced lighting. Boyce et al. (2003) concluded that using high CCT light sources would have no practical benefit on task performance. This issue highlights the importance of considering multiple measures when making decisions about suitable design criteria. Visual performance is only one aspect of office work: we might reduce light levels with a particular light source to maintain visual performance of paper-based tasks, only to find that we have caused a problem with other outcomes, such as aesthetic judgments or visual comfort. Taking a different approach to the question, Akashi and Boyce (2006) examined the acceptability of a reduction in illuminance (from ~575 lx, slightly above the recommended range, to ~450 lx, in the middle of the range) and a change in CCT (from 3,500 K to 6,500 K) in a field setting. They found that office occupants could accept a reduction in ambient illuminance following an adaptation period, that the low-illuminance offices were perceived as brighter under higher-CCT lamps (6500 K), and that visual performance remained at the same level even with the reduction in light level. Some individuals added task lamps to boost their local light levels. However, the 6,500 K lamps were perceived as unattractive when used at higher illuminance. Akashi and Boyce concluded that energy savings are feasible, but do not necessitate the use of a high-CCT lamp. Environmental psychologists have long sought an understanding of the effects of color on behavior, operationalized either by using colored room surfaces with conventional white light sources (fluorescent or incandescent), or by using colored lights in a white room. Results in recent years do not contradict the conclusions drawn by Beach, Wise, and Wise (1988) in a thorough review over 20 years ago: there are no simple, deterministic effects of color on behavior. Kwallek, Soon, and Lewis (2007) concluded an extensive series of experiments addressing the interactive effects of environmental sensitivity and room color (white, red, or blue-green) on clerical task performance with a week-long test. Taking into account the changing pattern of results for the various tasks over the work week, the three-way interactions had no straightforward interpretation. Hoonhout, Knoop, and Vanpol (2009) used colored lights on white room surfaces to vary the stimulus, but also failed to find straightforward effects of red versus blue light on task performance. Küller et al. (2006) examined preferences for light and color cross-culturally and across seasons. They found that seasonal differences in mood were more pronounced for people in countries farther from the equator, but overall the main effect held that people preferred offices that they judged to be bright, rather than dim. There was a small effect in which emotional states were more positive for those who judged their offices to be colorful rather than neutral or colorless, but they did not collect data on precisely which colors were present in the offices. A subsequent set of laboratory experiments by part of the team also supported the contention that moderately colorful offices lead to beneficial emotional states that support task performance (Küller, Mikellides, & Janssens, 2009)—but not that any specific color is the ideal color for office decor.
Photobiology Until 2001, it was thought that the only light-sensitive (photoreceptive) cells in the retina were the rods and cones that process visual signals. In that year we learned that there exist intrinsically photoreceptive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs), which transduce information about light and dark but not detailed visual information (Berson, Dunn, & Takao, 2002; Hattar et al., 2002). The ipRGCs have a unique spectral response function that has peak sensitivity in the range from 459 to 483 nm (i.e., in the range of blue light) (Brainard & Provencio, 2006). The information from these cells travels a different pathway from the retina to several higher structures (Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage [CIE], 2009). These structures include the pineal gland, where the information about the presence of light and dark regulates the release of the hormone melatonin, thereby setting the circadian clock (Berson et al., 2002). The ipRGCs also interact with the rods and cones of the visual system and are part of the pupillary light reflex (Gamlin et al., 2007; McDougal & Gamlin, 2010).
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Work Environments This discovery has energized photobiology researchers and has excited the architectural lighting community as well (van Bommel & van den Beld, 2004), although some commentators have cautioned that by placing application ahead of fundamental science, we could do more harm than (p. 257) good (Boyce, 2006; DiLaura, 2005). Those who urge caution point out that those who would make health claims of any kind for any technology require evidence. Changes to workplace lighting based on limited evidence risk causing unintended problems, making early application both an ethical and liability risk to practitioners and industry. Of the many brain structures linked to the ipRGCs, only the connection to the suprachiasmatic nucleus and on to the pineal gland has been extensively studied (CIE, 2009). This has given us a fair understanding of light’s role in circadian regulation but leaves much to be learned about other processes. This understanding has led to one area where applications have been quickly developed: lighting for shift work settings (e.g., Eastman & Martin, 1999; Smith, Fogg, & Eastman, 2009). Judicious use of light exposure during night work and time in darkness at home can aid in maintaining alertness at work and promote better sleep afterward, benefiting the employee, the employer, and society at large (the latter by reducing the risk of accidents both on the job and during the home commute). The International Commission on Illumination (known by its French acronym, CIE) published a consensus report in 2004 (rereleased in 2009 with an erratum page) that outlined five “Principles of Healthy Lighting” as derived from the literature of the day: 1. The daily light dose received by people in industrialized countries might be too low. 2. Healthy light is inextricably linked to healthy darkness. 3. Light for biological action should be rich in the regions of the spectrum to which the nonvisual system is most sensitive. 4. The important consideration in determining light dose is the light received at the eye, both directly from the light source and reflected off surrounding surfaces. 5. The timing of light exposure influences the effects of the dose. (CIE, 2009) The most relevant principle for workplace lighting, for both day- and night-shift workers, is the conclusion that most people in industrialized countries would benefit from higher light exposures than they currently experience. This is controversial because it raises the possibility of a demand for higher light level requirements for electric lighting in workplaces, at the same time as energy and environmental concerns are leading to pressure to lower light levels. The suggestion that this light should be rich in the short-wavelength portion of the spectrum has led manufacturers to propose new light sources and to field-test them. Despite these developments, many questions remain unresolved (Brainard & Veitch, 2007). What should the light exposure be? Need it be continuous, all day, or could it be achieved with an appropriately timed exposure? The sum of knowledge does not yet permit a precise answer to any of these questions, but there are tantalizing hints that light exposure can influence social behavior in the short term and sleep quality later, in addition to measures of well-being cited in the CIE report (CIE, 2009). Using an event-contingent recording method combined with wrist monitors of overall light exposure, aan het Rot, Moskowitz, and Young (2008) found that social interactions that followed exposure to 1,000 lx of white light tended to be less quarrelsome than those following lower light exposures. Participants were exposed to this level for on average 19.6 min per day, a value typical for that latitude and season (Hébert, Dumont, & Paquet, 1998). Three teams have developed devices to enable improved ecological measurements of daily light dose that take into account its spectral properties (Gordijn, Giménez, & Beersma, 2009; Hubalek, Brink, & Schierz, 2010; Miller et al., 2010). Few studies have as yet been completed with these tools. As would be expected, Miller et al. (2010) found that the daily light exposures of day- and night-shift nurses in the United States are very different and suggested that this tool could be used for further studies of circadian disruption and its effects on health. Hubalek et al. (2010) studied office workers in Germany, collecting both light exposures and questionnaire data concerning mood and sleep quality. Light exposure did not directly predict mood but did influence sleep quality on the following night: sleep quality improved with higher light exposure during the day. Partly because of the energy implications and partly in recognition of circadian changes in light sensitivity, researchers have begun to explore ways to increase light exposure for shorter periods rather than as continual increases in light levels. The findings are suggestive but not conclusive, partly because of research design issues. Kaida, Takahashi, and Otsuka (2006) exposed Japanese participants to daylight through a window (> 2,000 lx) for
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Work Environments 30 min after lunch and found that this improved one positive mood scale and reduced subjective sleepiness relative to a control condition (100 lx electric light, lamp type unspecified); a short nap at the same time (p. 258) on a different day improved three mood scales and reduced subjective sleepiness. Another Japanese team examined the effect of using bright light in the morning and into the early afternoon, in comparison to a constant lower level all day. They interpreted the findings to suggest that the higher light level increased afternoon clerical task performance (Obayashi et al., 2007). Both studies, however, have order effect confounds, and the performance data reported by Obayashi et al. (2007) seem to show a strong effect of practice over the three weeks of the experiment. de Kort and Smolders (2010) tested a dynamic lighting scheme in which both light level and correlated color temperature varied according to a schedule that was designed to provide more short-wavelength stimulation at times of day when it was thought to be beneficial, and reduced light levels at other times of day to reduce energy use. The experimental condition varied from 700 lx at 4,700 K in the early morning and after lunch, then shifted slowly to 500 lx at 3,000 K in the later morning and late afternoon. This was compared to a static condition of 500 lx at 3,000 K. The field experiment took place in the Netherlands, where the law requires all employees to have a window within 5 meters of the workstation, and this building had very large and unobstructed windows; thus, all participants also experienced high levels of daylight in the workplace (which would not necessarily be the case in North American offices). Daylight-responsive dimming reduced the amount of electric lighting to the extent that daylight provided the required level, and therefore modified the experimental exposures. Although the experimental design itself was strong (an ABA/BAB design over various floors in the building), it is not surprising that most of the outcome measures did not show statistically significant differences. Most interestingly, however, occupants with dynamic lighting did report higher satisfaction with the lighting than when they experienced the static lighting condition. Another approach to stimulate the ipRGCs has been to use a light source with relatively more light in the short wavelengths to which these cells are more sensitive. The light source that has been tested is nominally white but has a correlated color temperature of 17,000 K. Most people will experience this as much more blue than any commonly used fluorescent lamp (in North America, most lamps are either 3,500 K or 4,100 K, although 5,000 K and 6,500 K lamps are sometimes used, particularly by those who invoke the spectrally enhanced lighting approach described above). Two field trials of the 17,000 K lamp have found that employees in areas with this lamp reported higher alertness and self-reported concentration and performance at work, and reduced fatigue at home in the evening (Mills, Tomkins, & Schlangen, 2007; Viola, James, Schlangen, & Dijk, 2008). These initial positive results merit further investigation and extension to include consideration of the aesthetic judgments of the spaces lit with these lamps. (Anecdotal evidence suggests that some people will strongly dislike the appearance of rooms lit with such an extreme CCT.)
Comfort Comfort as an outcome receives research attention from human factors researchers, from engineers, and to a lesser extent from psychologists, although each discipline takes its own perspective. Among human factors researchers the focus is largely on physical comfort associated with the musculoskeletal system as influenced by furnishings, equipment, and layout, although thermal conditions and thermal comfort also receive some attention (Brand, 2008). Because Brand extensively reviewed physical comfort and musculoskeletal injury issues associated with workstation design, these are not considered here. Here, we consider the temperature and ventilation conditions that contribute to comfort as being topics less well-known among psychologists.
Thermal Comfort The engineering community has a long tradition of interest in thermal comfort and perceived air quality (Fanger, 1970), particularly with the aim of setting standards for workplace temperature and ventilation systems (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers [ASHRAE], 2001, 2004). Although comfort is entirely a subjective phenomenon, few psychologists have engaged in its study. This is puzzling, as de Dear (2004) has noted.2 Among engineers, the dominant model of thermal comfort is Fanger’s (1970) Predicted Mean Vote—Predicted Percent Dissatisfied (PMV-PPD) model. Psychophysical experiments in climate chambers established that thermal
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Work Environments sensation relates to air temperature, air velocity, radiant temperature, relative humidity, clothing, and activity levels. This model forms the basis of standards for thermal conditions in sealed, air-conditioned buildings (typical in North America), with the target being the achievement of conditions that 80% of the population will find satisfactory (ASHRAE, 2004). (p. 259) Although this model has dominated North American engineering practice for 40 years, its limitations have long been apparent in the literature. Rohles (1980) reviewed five studies showing that context influences thermal comfort. Newsham and Tiller (1997) found that the Fanger model predicted only 11% of the variance in thermal sensation scores. Humphreys and Hancock (2007) asked respondents both their desired sensation and their thermal sensation. More than half the time, the desired sensation was not “neutral” and there was substantial individual variation in desired sensation. Elsewhere in the world, natural ventilation (i.e., using windows that open) is more common than it is in North America. In naturally ventilated buildings the PMV-PPD model is not predictive of thermal comfort (de Dear, 2004; Wagner et al., 2007). Better prediction is possible using the adaptive model of thermal comfort, which takes contextual factors into account, such as the individual’s past thermal history, his or her expectations for the thermal environment, and behavioral adjustments he or she makes (Brager & de Dear, 1998).
Ventilation The North American standard for the supply of fresh air in mechanically ventilated buildings specifies that a volume of 10 L/s/person of outdoor air should be provided (ASHRAE, 2001). The level was set with the aim of providing sufficient outdoor air to remove pollutants (including carbon dioxide created by occupants) to maintain health and comfort, and in parallel to limit energy use. In cold climates the outdoor air must be heated in winter, and in all seasons fans are required to move the air. The evidence is mounting, however, that this level may be too low. A multidisciplinary panel of European experts (although not including any psychologists) reviewed the literature in 2002 and concluded that as much as 25 L/s/person might be needed for adequate comfort and health (Wargocki et al., 2002). They also noted that many of the initially identified papers had to be excluded because of methodological limitations. Charles and Veitch (2002) made some of the same criticisms; although they did not view the evidence in favor of levels above 10 L/s/person as being clear, they did conclude that levels lower than this are clearly too low. Many studies are limited to physical data at the building or perhaps the floor level; few have data on local conditions in workstations. Therefore, there is little data on the achievement of the design conditions in the places where people work. Charles et al. (2006) analyzed data from a study of ~770 North American workstations. The dependent variable was a satisfaction with ventilation scale for which ratings of satisfaction with temperature, air movement, and overall air quality were averaged (Veitch, Charles, Farley, & Newsham, 2007). The physical conditions generally met the applicable standards (e.g., the mean carbon dioxide, or CO2 , concentration was 648 ppm [Charles et al., 2006], whereas the standard specifies 1,000 ppm as the upper limit [ASHRAE, 2001]). Satisfaction with ventilation showed the predicted inverse relationship with CO2 , with satisfaction being higher when CO2 levels were lower. Newsham et al., (2008) used log-linear models to analyze the risk of dissatisfaction with this data set, and found that people whose local CO2 levels were above 650 ppm had a three-times-higher risk of dissatisfaction with ventilation. Other risk groups for dissatisfaction with ventilation were those who were either next to, or very far away from, a window; experienced a temperature more than 0.5 degree C away from the calculated neutral temperature; or were female.
Integrated Models of Comfort Practical separations between building systems and furnishings support the development of separate research lines for thermal comfort, ventilation, acoustic satisfaction, and so on. Understanding how temperature conditions influence comfort can enable engineers to design systems to create those conditions. Nonetheless, researchers have called for integrated systems approaches combining these domains (Bluyssen, Ariës, & van Dommelen, 2011; Brand, 2008; Frontczak & Wargocki, 2011; Vink & Hallbeck, 2011). The approach of studying each physical domain separately (temperature, ventilation, acoustics, lighting) does not allow for the possibility of interactions.
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Work Environments The North American workstation environmental satisfaction project cited earlier explicitly took an integrated approach (Newsham et al., 2008; Veitch et al., 2003). All results and reports from the Cost-effective Open-Plan Environments project are available online at www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/projects/irc/cope.html. Its field study led to the development of three separate scales for satisfaction with lighting; privacy and acoustics; and ventilation and indoor air quality. There also was a separate scale for overall environmental satisfaction and one for job satisfaction. Physical conditions in all environmental domains were measured simultaneously with the (p. 260) occupant surveys. Domain-specific and general regressions were run. The value of this approach is evident when one considers the different results for different satisfaction domains. For example, satisfaction with lighting was highest for people next to a window, but satisfaction with ventilation and overall environmental satisfaction were better for people in the second row (who benefit from the daylight without potential thermal problems) (Veitch et al., 2003). Bluyssen et al. (2011) tested regression models for overall comfort on a large European data set for which both summer and winter data were available (N > 5,700). The outcome measures were derived from averages of scores for comfort with individual dimensions (e.g., noise, lighting, etc.). The predictors were self-reported adequacy of building conditions (view; environmental controls; and privacy, cleanliness, decor, and layout as one office conditions scale) and office characteristics (cardinal orientation). The models showed strong effects (~25% explained variance) for which the predictors differed in summer and winter. The strongest predictors in both seasons were the reported quality of the view and the overall satisfaction with the office conditions. However, the between-building differences were large enough to lead the authors to suggest that future studies require additional data collection concerning individual and social variables, before the desired practical shortcuts for building design can be developed. Inadequate data—not enough studies—is a common refrain in this domain. Frontczak and Wargocki (2011) reviewed the literature on workplace comfort, seeking studies that would permit the development of a ranking of the importance of comfort in the domains thermal, lighting, acoustics, and air quality. They observed that such a ranking would permit practical judgments to be made about which condition to address first. It was evident that when such a ranking was possible, thermal comfort was the highest priority for occupants. However, they also noted that there are too few studies to determine whether the importance of the domain is related to the level of satisfaction with it. Some studies have found that when satisfaction with a building condition is high, the importance of that condition is lower (Boubekri & Haghighat, 1993; Veitch et al., 2003). As did Bluyssen et al. (2011), Frontczak and Wargocki (2011) called for more studies, and stronger methodologies, concerning the effects of personal and organizational characteristics on comfort. Ergonomists have begun to distinguish between comfort and discomfort as separate dimensions (Helander & Zhang, 1997; Zhang, Helander, & Drury, 1996). This approach has had little influence as yet outside the domain of product development. The studies cited here have considered comfort to be a unidimensional concept with a negative state (discomfort) and a positive state (comfort), and largely synonymous with the concept of satisfaction with the physical environment. Vink and Hallbeck (2011) have proposed a new model of comfort that differentiates between comfort, neutral, and discomfort outcomes resulting from individual, environmental, and contextual aspects of exposures. Whether indoor environment researchers (from any discipline) take up and test this model remains to be seen.
Stress and Health Interest in work environments as contributors to strain through stress processes has a long history, as seen in nowclassic articles and chapters (e.g., Wineman, 1982). The early focus was on specific stressors in the work environment, such as noise and temperature; this was followed by studies of sick building syndrome—a particular interest in the indoor air quality and ventilation communities. These studies can contribute to workplace design and engineering choices with the aim of preventing adverse outcomes. Such attention to detail is particularly important given evidence that mild to moderate risk factors act in sum as a cumulative stressor to reduce well-being (Evans Becker, Zahn, Bilotta, & Keesee, 2012; Wellens & Smith, 2006), and chronic exposure to environmental stressors can cause learned helplessness (Evans & Stecker, 2004).
Noise
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Work Environments Noise is among the most-studied stressors. Apart from its effects on hearing, chronically high levels of community noise have detrimental effects on health and well-being, influencing outcomes from annoyance to cardiovascular health (Ising & Kruppa, 2004). This has led the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe (WHO Europe) to formulate guidelines for urban noise levels (WHO Europe, 2007). Exposure to very high noise levels is associated with reports of stress-related health problems. Raffaello and Maass (2002) observed a decline in reported stress-related health problems among factory workers whose conditions changed from a range of 78–84 dB(A) to 69–72 dB(A) as a result (p. 261) of a move to a new factory, in comparison to a control group whose conditions stayed in the range of 75–86 dB(A). Other investigations have found that the effects of workplace noise on health are interactive rather than simple. In an industrial setting in Israel where the mean noise level was 71 dB(A), Melamed, Fried, and Froom (2001) found that the effects of noise exposure on blood pressure and job satisfaction were greater for workers with greater job complexity. Fried, Melamed, and Ben-David (2002) analyzed noise exposure and sickness absence data from white-collar workers in Israel. (Both papers used data collected as part of a larger study in industrial organizations conducted between 1985 and 1987.) The mean noise level was 63 dB(A) for this sample. Sickness absence was, as predicted, a function of both noise exposure and job complexity. Working on cognitively complex jobs in noisy conditions had adverse health consequences, particularly for women (Fried et al., 2002). Evans and Johnson (2000) found that exposure to simulated office noise played at an average level of 55 dB(A) with peaks to 65 dB(A) in a laboratory setting resulted in increases in epinephrine secretion (but not in cortisol, the “fight or flight” hormone), reduced postural adjustments, and behavioral aftereffects typical of motivational deficits, as compared to the quiet condition of 40 dB(A). A UK field study observed noise conditions in the range 46–63 dB(A), with a mean of 55 dB(A) (Leather, Beale, & Sullivan, 2003). Noise did not exert a main effect on self-reported health symptoms, but did moderate the relationship between job strain and symptom reports. Job strain had no effect on health symptoms for people in low noise, but the combination of high job strain and high noise exposure was associated with increased reporting of symptoms of ill health. Overall, a workplace noise level of 55 dB(A) or higher may contribute to ill health, particularly for people with complex jobs or who experience high levels of job strain. However, contemporary offices in North America are not typically this noisy. Two field studies of North American open-plan offices found the median background sound level to be 46 dB(A) (Veitch et al., 2003; Warnock & Chu, 2002).
Sick Building Syndrome Sick building syndrome (SBS), also known as non-specific building-related symptoms (BRS), is among the most frustrating contemporary built-environment problems. As compared to diseases with symptoms that cluster according to known physiological mechanisms, SBS is both difficult to describe and difficult to understand. Identifiable diseases, such as lung cancer or asthma, have reasonably well-understood causes. SBS symptoms include eye, nose, or throat irritation, headache or fatigue, breathing problems, and skin irritation, and generally improve following periods of time away from the target building (Mendell, 2003). Despite the absence of an operational definition of the condition (Hodgson, 2002), several risk factors have been identified. After 20 years of study, it is now known that symptoms are associated with high temperatures, low outdoor air ventilation rates, poorly maintained humidification systems, and microbial contamination (Mendell et al., 2008; Norbäck, 2009; Wargocki et al., 2002). The condition is somewhat more likely in mechanically ventilated than in naturally ventilated buildings (Gomzi et al., 2007). In addition to these physical factors, research also shows that individual characteristics and working conditions contribute to symptom reports. Women report more SBS symptoms than do men (Brasche et al., 2001; Runeson, Wahlstedt, Wieslander, & Norback, 2006). Personality variables such as neuroticism, somatic anxiety, and psychic anxiety have been associated with higher risks of reporting SBS symptoms (Gomzi et al., 2007; Runeson, Norback, Klinteberg, & Edling, 2004; Runeson et al., 2006). Working conditions also play a role, but in complex ways. High job demands and role overload have been associated with symptom severity, suggesting a role for stress in the development of sick building syndrome (Mendelson, Catano, & Kelloway, 2000; Runeson et al., 2006), but both studies also found more complex interactions of social support than would be predicted by the traditional demandcontrol-support model of workplace stress (Doef & Maes, 1999). Mendelson et al. concluded that support from the
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Work Environments organization and the reduction of role stress might be effective responses to the problem of SBS, whereas interventions designed to increase support from coworkers are less likely to reduce symptom severity.
Control Classically, stressful conditions are created when environmental stimulation creates demands but one lacks control over the source of stimulation (e.g., Glass & Singer, 1972). In occupational health psychology the dominant model for this is the demand-control model (Karasek & Theorell, 1990). In the absence of control over the job (i.e., when one has (p. 262) little job autonomy), greater demands act as stressors, leading to strain outcomes such as ill health. In work environment psychology, it has long been thought that the provision of individual environmental controls would facilitate stress reduction (Becker, 1985). Specifically, giving people control over the stressor—or the perception that they have the power to control the stressor—would be expected to diminish its physiological and behavioral effects (Averill, 1973; Glass & Singer, 1972). The demand-control model as understood by occupational health psychologists has been modified to include social support (Doef & Maes, 1999). The availability of social support—for example, friendly relations with coworkers—would be expected to buffer (or prevent) the strain associated with exposure to a stressor, even if the support does not itself confer actual or perceived control over the stressor. In environmental psychology, this concept has an extension in the form of organizational support as evidenced in the work space design, the organization’s responsiveness to reported problems in the physical environment, and the involvement of occupants in design and operation (Becker, 1985; Leaman & Bordass, 2001). Vischer (2007) integrated negative and positive dimensions of stress in a proposal for a model of what she called “work space stress,” a modification of the demand-control model (Karasek & Theorell, 1990). The key concepts in Vischer’s model are the psychological demands that the work space makes on the occupant, and the decision latitude available to the occupant for responding to the demands. Such a model, she argued, could encompass the conceptual complexity of physical features that simultaneously influence several processes, such as work space separations that create territories, define the boundaries of privacy, enable social interaction, define work groups and social networks, and permit distractions, particularly by focusing on the fit of the environmental characteristics with the needs of the occupant. Decision latitude, according to Vischer, means the degree to which individuals may participate in determining what the work space conditions will be; a higher degree of decision latitude should provide a buffer against the adverse effects of high levels of work space demands. Most studies in this field examine the effects of perceived control (varyingly defined as limited to the physical environment, or incorporating elements of the job, tasks, or “work life”) on outcomes such as environmental satisfaction, job satisfaction, and self-reported job performance. (A few studies have experimentally manipulated providing physical control; see below.) Lee and Brand (2005) found that perceived environmental control was positively related to environmental satisfaction directly, and both directly and indirectly related to job satisfaction, the indirect effect being through an effect on group cohesiveness. Distractions also negatively predicted environmental satisfaction. Later, the team examined the effect of distractions on perceived (environment and job) control and self-rated job performance (Lee & Brand, 2010), finding that perceived control mediated the effect of distractions on performance; that is, where distractions were greater, control was perceived as lower and in turn, self-rated job performance was also lower. Through the integration of concepts from organizational psychology and environmental psychology comes a more nuanced view of the influence of environmental control on employees. O’Neill (2010) described environmental control as “about giving people the work space design, furnishings, technology and policy tools that provide choice over how to work, as opposed to being controlled by the space and organizational policies” (p. 133). He developed a model of control—actual control, not only the perception of it—at the individual, group, and organizational levels, and identified research directions, pointing out that there is ample evidence for the benefits to individual behavior and performance of adjustability and flexibility in the physical environment, but less evidence for the consequences at the organizational level—that is, the effects on business outcomes that will be used to justify investments. Knight and Haslam (2010a) conducted two elegant experiments testing hypotheses related to the performance and satisfaction effects of working in offices they characterized as “lean” (without decoration), “enriched” (with plants
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Work Environments and art), “empowered” (with plants and art chosen by the participant), and “disempowered” (with plants and art chosen by the participant but then removed by the experimenter). As predicted, permitting people’s input into the office decoration improved performance on clerical tasks and well-being (physical comfort, psychological comfort, and job satisfaction), and removing their choices diminished their performance and well-being. Knight and Haslam (2010a) did not observe expected effects on organizational identification in these laboratory settings; they had expected that providing autonomy over the environment would lead to increased organizational identification. In (p. 263) two field surveys they did find support for such a model (Knight & Haslam, 2010b). Autonomy over the physical work environment and involvement in it predicted psychological comfort (conceptually related to what other researchers have called environmental satisfaction; Veitch et al., 2007), which in turn predicted organizational identification, and this concept in its turn predicted job satisfaction. Organizational identification as defined by Knight and Haslam (2010b) has similarities to affective organizational commitment as understood by organizational psychologists (Allen & Meyer, 1996), and in turn managerial control of space is an element of organizational support, along with human resources practice and policies. Organizational support is a predictor of affective organizational commitment (Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky, 2002). Further exploration of the concepts explored by Knight and Haslam (2010a, 2010b) could provide the needed link to organizational outcomes, by adding office space management concepts to existing models showing that business units with greater average job satisfaction show reduced turnover, higher customer satisfaction, and greater business unit performance (Harter, Schmidt, & Hayes, 2002).
Restoration In addition to the classical physiological consequences of exposure to stressors (Selye, 1956), contemporary researchers also hypothesize that demanding environmental conditions force the allocation of attentional resources to cope with the threat (Hancock, Ross, & Szalma, 2007; Szalma & Hancock, 2011). Kaplan (1995, 2001) argued that natural environments are inherently rich in the properties required to restore directed attention, such as mystery and coherence. Indeed, environmental psychologists studying homes, workplaces, and recreation settings have found consistently that access to nature can provide opportunities for restoration from stressful experiences. This access to nature can take the form of active presence, such as a wilderness hike (Hartig, Mang, & Evans, 1991) or passive viewing of films (Berman, Jonides, & Kaplan, 2008; Ulrich et al., 1991). The possibility of restoration might account for the persistent and strong preference for windows in workplaces (Farley & Veitch, 2001; Veitch et al., 2003). Beyond the simple presence of a window, the amount of view provided is a predictor of the judged pleasantness of the office (Cetegen, Veitch, & Newsham, 2008) and of satisfaction with lighting (Newsham, Brand, et al., 2009). The preference for more view seems to cross cultures, as Dogrusoy and Tureyen (2007) found that occupants of offices in Izmir, Turkey, also preferred window shapes providing more extensive views. Similarly, Ozdemir (2010), studying the judgments of office occupants in a building in Ankara, Turkey, found that occupants of offices with more natural views rated their satisfaction with the room more highly. Chang and Chen (2005) found that watching a nature view and being in the presence of indoor plants reduced both anxiety and physiological measures of tension and arousal. Although most investigations have focused on access to nature, the relationship may be more complex. Ariës, Veitch, and Newsham (2010) obtained independent ratings of the attractiveness of office views, and studied both this variable and the view content (natural vs. urban) as they affected judgments of the room appearance and in relation to physical and psychological comfort at work and sleep quality at home. The data were obtained from Dutch office workers, all of whom are guaranteed window access within 5 m of the desk. Those with more attractive views had more favorable impressions of their offices, better psychological and physical comfort at work, and better sleep quality at home. The views of nature from this set of offices had contrary effects: they directly improved office impressions, thereby indirectly contributing to improved psychological and physical comfort; however, nature views directly reduced comfort, as compared to urban views. The latter finding is very unusual, and the study awaits replication. Few field studies are able to incorporate detailed physiological measurements together with self-reported data on environmental satisfaction, but Thayer et al. (2010) were able to do so in a pre/post comparison of employees in a building undergoing renovation. Many aspects of the interior design changed in the renovation, making causal
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Work Environments attributions difficult; however, the most salient changes according to the environmental satisfaction questionnaire were an increase in daylight availability and access to a view, improved lighting quality, and improved air quality. Overall results of heart-rate variability and cortisol secretion measurements showed lower autonomic activation and lower stress hormonal response in the new space (Thayer et al., 2010). Whether these results relate to the light exposure, the view content, or the air quality—or all three—cannot be determined from these data. (p. 264) In many North American buildings, the large floor plate precludes providing window access to all employees, whereas in many European countries it is a legal requirement (e.g., Danish Building and Housing Agency, 1995; Government of Norway, 1997). It might be thought that one way to provide a natural element in a windowless space, or in a windowed space without a nature view, would be to provide plants. Two recent reviews have concluded that the literature testing this idea has several methodological weaknesses (Bakker & Voordt, 2010; Bringslimark, Hartig, & Patil, 2009). Both reviews concluded that in general, the presence of indoor plants appears to reduce stress in some fashion, but the precise physiological, affective, or cognitive effects and the mechanism by which they operate is unknown. Bakker and Voordt (2010) further noted that little attention has been paid to the type of plant or to its state of health.
Positive Affect Individual control allows people to influence stressors at work, but also allows the possibility of obtaining conditions that suit their personal preference. The default conditions might not themselves be stressors—they might be adequate conditions for the work to be done—but they might not be those that the individual prefers. By making it possible for adjustments to be made it becomes possible for individuals to satisfy their desires. In experimental work, this effect is subtle enough that there might be no main effect of individual control, as seen in Veitch and Newsham’s (2000a) study of office lighting levels and light distribution, but large individual differences in preferred conditions (Veitch & Newsham, 2000b) and evidence that individuals who work under their preferred conditions experience greater well-being (Newsham & Veitch, 2001). Positive affect theory is the mechanism by which this effect is thought to operate (Baron, 1994; Isen & Baron, 1991). Regardless of whether one has chosen the conditions or has the power to alter them, working under preferred conditions can create a state of positive affect that in turn leads to benefits in the form of increased cooperation, reduced competition, improved intellectual performance, and increased creativity (Baron, 1990; Baron & Thomley, 1994). Baron’s experiments concerned scent. Kuller et al. (2006) conducted a multi-nation survey of office lighting and color conditions and found that when light levels were said to be “just right,” mood measures reached their highest levels. Most thermal environment research is atheoretical, seeking deterministic relationships between environmental conditions and various experiential and observable outcomes. However, positive affect might be the mechanism behind findings that are used to justify engineering standards. For example, classroom performance on standardized tests improved when temperatures were reduced such that students reported neutral comfort rather than feeling too hot (Wargocki & Wyon, 2007). In the laboratory, when participants work in thermal environmental conditions close to the neutral point of comfort between “too warm” and “too cold,” they show the best performance on neurobehavioral and clerical tasks (Lan, Wargocki, & Lian, 2011). The benefits of conditions that create positive affect can be used to justify investments in specific design features known to be generally preferred, and particularly to support the implementation of individual environmental controls in offices. Any single design criterion can satisfy only a portion of the population (Newsham & Veitch, 2001), whereas individual control enables a broad range of conditions to be achieved. This was the motivation behind the Light Right Consortium laboratory and field investigations of energy-efficient office lighting featuring workstationspecific, individually controllable direct-indirect lighting as the condition thought to create the best overall environment. Both in the laboratory and in the field, this was the case. In the laboratory, this lighting system was judged to be the most comfortable and the individual control appeared to provide a buffer against the progression of fatigue over the workday (Boyce et al., 2006a). In the field, employees with this lighting installation reported greater satisfaction with lighting, overall environmental satisfaction, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment, and lower intent to turnover (Veitch et al., 2010). Three studies, with five independent data sets, have supported a theoretical model in which people who report
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Work Environments better appraisals of their office lighting show predicted beneficial effects through improved mood. Veitch, Newsham, Boyce, and Jones (2008) used mediated regressions to establish a chain of effects from higher lighting appraisals through improved room appearance judgments to more pleasant mood and on to improved health and well-being in the form of physical and visual comfort reports at the end of the workday and higher end-of-day satisfaction with the environment and their work during the day. Veitch, Stokkermans, and Newsham (in press) found support for a similar (p. 265) model in which improved mood led to stronger work engagement. Data from an organization undergoing an office renovation showed support for a model in which lighting appraisals led to improved room appearance judgments, which in turn led to improved mood; improved mood in turn led to a chain from improved overall environmental satisfaction to reduced intent to turnover and to a separate chain from improved mood to reduced health problems in the form of visual and physical discomfort at work and fewer days absent from work (Veitch et al., 2010). Thus, providing conditions that employees perceive as comfortable or better has benefits for organizations as well as for the individuals themselves. Famously, Herzberg (1966) concluded that the physical environment is a hygiene factor in work motivation—that if the physical conditions are inadequate (e.g., dark, noisy, badly arranged) then motivation will decline, but that there is no room to improve motivation above the baseline using the work space design or furnishings. Contemporary researchers would beg to differ. Although most of the recent research testing the positive affect theory has focused on lighting systems and their individual control, in principle this model could be applied to study the benefits, to organizations as well as to individuals, of providing environmental conditions that create a state of comfort or satisfaction.
Cognition A few investigations have examined how cognitive processes influence one’s environmental appraisals or judgments about work environments. These investigations, although each taking a different perspective, remind us of moderating effects internal to the observer that influence the processes described above. Fischer, Tarquinio, and Vischer (2004) examined the influence of the self-schema on environmental appraisals and job satisfaction. The work environments of the participants were broadly comparable, but the perceptions of those environments differed for participants with a success-oriented or a failure-oriented professional self-schema. Those with a success-oriented professional self-schema tended to hold more positive views of their work environments and of their jobs. For all but the self-employed, the provision of a work environment is management’s responsibility. This has a physical and a symbolic aspect, in that organizations implicitly communicate the value of the employees in the office environment provided (Marquardt, Veitch, & Charles, 2002). One would expect this communication function to influence the organizational identification process that Knight and Haslam (2010b) explored, although no studies appear to have tested this notion. Marquardt et al. (2002) concluded that when individuals’ needs are met by the working conditions provided, environmental satisfaction is improved. Expressing the relation in this form, there is no room for a positive increase in environmental satisfaction. Perhaps similarly, Lee (2006) found that when employees’ expectations for the office environment are met, satisfaction plateaus; office environments that exceeded expectations did not result in higher environmental satisfaction. This finding merits further examination, in view of the contrast with the positive affect results and those of Goins et al. (2010), both discussed above.
Innovative Work Arrangements With the advent of the Internet, increasing real estate costs, and the cost and time associated with commuting, we hear much about the “new ways of working,” including telework (working electronically from a site that is not the corporate office) and hoteling (working at the corporate office in a workstation assigned temporarily). Although computing and communications technology today makes these practices easier, they are not new concepts (van Meel, 2011). Moreover, the fundamental processes that employees experience are not different for different work arrangements; privacy, distraction, comfort, and so on occur regardless of where one is. Very few studies have examined the physical work environment aspect of teleworking (Ng, 2010). Ng’s review
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Work Environments concluded that teleworkers desire in their home office the same qualities they would find in the corporate office, but that there can be challenges to fulfilling these desires. Even for employers with policies that mandate the provision of equipment and furnishings for home-based work, there is no guarantee that the employee’s home will have a suitable space in which to put the office. The health and safety aspects of these issues remain unresolved in both Canada and the United States; as Ng pointed out, there might be hidden costs to organizations associated with moving employees out of the corporate office. This area warrants systematic research. Communications researchers have begun to examine the social dimension of remote working. They note that the information and communications technologies (ICT) that permit distributed working are paradoxical. Distributed work means (p. 266) less face-to-face communication, which some argue is a fundamental aspect of work life (van Meel, 2011), but also creates an expectation of constant, instant availability. Leonardi, Treem, and Jackson (2010) observed that teleworkers used ICT in covert ways to manage availability so that it appeared that they used time in the same way as they would have had they been in the corporate office. Leonardi et al. also observed that some of the same distractions and interruptions that the teleworkers were trying to control, such as e-mail, also affect workers in the corporate office. Others have found that the reduction in the experience of these stressors explained higher job satisfaction for teleworkers as compared to office workers (Fonner & Roloff, 2010). Danielsson and Bodin (2008) presented one of the few studies to consider the effects of hoteling in comparison to other office types. The “flex” offices in their sample were assigned on an as-needed, temporary basis, and offered no opportunity for personalization. Based on the previous discussion concerning territoriality, one would predict that such an office would increase the employee’s risk of adverse health and well-being. In this sample, the reverse was true: people in flex offices had a lower risk of ill health. Why this might be so is unclear from the data.
Summary Overall, research into the effects of work environments on their occupants since the last major handbook chapter (McCoy, 2002) has refined rather than revolutionized our understanding. There is a greater understanding of the influence of the environment on attention processes in particular. Coupled with the increased evidence for the merits of access to nature to promote restoration, we see the importance of understanding the mechanisms of action, as these can lead to innovative or unexpected solutions. For example, if it is not possible to entirely remove the sources of distraction, one might instead seek to provide opportunities for nature restoration.
Environmental Consequences of Workplace Behaviors In commercial buildings the two largest electricity-consuming functions are lighting (38%) and heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) (30%) (United States Energy Information Administration, 2009). Improvements in technology could reduce the total energy consumed for these functions, but they are also targets for behavior change. Research topics concern the usability of the new technologies—particularly demonstrations that they preserve suitable environmental conditions for work—as well as verification of the intended energy savings. Research into the factors influencing the adoption of the new technologies among organizations is at an early stage.
Individual Resource Use Despite the long history of environmental psychologists’ interest in using psychological principles to effect change in environmentally relevant behaviors and in resource management (Geller, 1987; Stern & Oskamp, 1987), comparatively little of this attention has focused on work settings. A few studies have examined values and norms and their influence on energy-conserving behaviors in workplaces (Andersson & Bateman, 2000; Scherbaum, Popovich, & Finlinson, 2008), but there is little guidance available for organizations to follow in promoting environmentally responsible actions to employees. The engineering approach to workplace energy use is technological. Automated lighting controls such as occupancy sensors to turn off lights in unoccupied spaces and daylight harvesting to dim the electric lighting when daylight is available are unquestioned energy savers (Galasiu & Newsham, 2009; Galasiu, Newsham, Suvagau, & Sander, 2007; Jennings, Rubinstein, DiBartolomeo, & Blanc, 2000). It is less well known that individual control can
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Work Environments also save energy; where individuals have the opportunity to control the level of their local lighting, on average the lighting energy use is ~10–15% lower than it would be under a fixed level (Galasiu et al., 2007; Jennings et al., 2000; Veitch & Newsham, 2000a). Given the benefits of individual control associated with positive affect, this makes individual control over lighting a benefit to individuals, organizations, and the environment. However, both the size of the energy savings and the possibility for individuals to obtain their preferred conditions will depend on the equipment and the control system parameters, such as the possible range of light levels (Boyce et al., 2006b; Fotios, Logadóttir, Cheal, & Christoffersen, 2011; Newsham, Arsenault, Veitch, Tosco, & Duval, 2005), which leaves room for further research. As noted above, there is a strong preference for windows in offices and benefits to a view of outside. However, direct sun causes both thermal and visual discomfort, leading people to lower the blinds. When this occurs early in the day the tendency is not to raise them again (Reinhart & Voss, 2003), (p. 267) which can lead to an increase in electric lighting use. The technical solution to this could be to provide automatic blinds, but people dislike fully automated systems, which take away choice (Galasiu & Veitch, 2006). Cultural factors also influence the response to automated building controls (Cole & Brown, 2009). Building automation generally is an area in which psychologists’ contributions seem an obvious, but unmet, need, as there appear to be no systematic investigations of the effectiveness or acceptability of these systems for individual occupants or for building operators. Thermal comfort also offers room for individual action that can reduce energy use, particularly if one adopts the adaptive model. Few North American buildings provide local options to change the ventilation or temperature, so most of the research on adaptive responses comes from other continents. With a push from the adoption of energy codes mandating strict limits on building energy consumption, natural ventilation and passive cooling strategies become more attractive. Such buildings can have wider variation in thermal conditions than occur in mechanically ventilated buildings, to which occupants may respond with adaptive behaviors to maintain thermal comfort, such as adding or removing a layer of clothing, or opening or closing a window (de Dear, 2004). Field surveys reveal that these occupants can perceive these buildings favorably (Barlow & Fiala, 2007; Wagner et al., 2007), but more systematic investigations with more robust measurement tools and statistical analysis would support stronger inferences about the features that work best.
Organizations’ Behaviors Environmental psychologists have paid scant attention to organizational decision-making and its influence on global environmental conditions (Stern, 2011), although a few management and industrial-organizational psychologists have explored these questions (e.g., Bansal & Roth, 2000). Just as individuals choose to ride a bicycle or drive a car, switch lights off or on, or purchase an energy-efficient appliance, organizations also make decisions about their operations, facilities, and policies that influence the state of the environment. The decisions are not based solely on financial considerations of initial costs or simple payback; for example, those who make decisions about lighting systems place a high value on employee satisfaction and want to avoid creating problems that could lead to employee turnover or reduced work output (Light Right Consortium, 2002). Thus, building practitioners need information about the effects of organizational technology choices on individual employees to demonstrate that environmentally responsible work environment choices will not have unintended consequences. For example, “demand response” describes systems in which large electrical users reduce their electrical loads by allowing temperature to drift upward and by dimming the lighting, both in response to a request from the utility company. The system allows utilities to manage the peak demand (particularly on hot summer afternoons) to maintain the stability of the electrical grid. The electrical user receives an incentive from the utility to reduce demand, but overall savings will result only if the resulting work environment conditions remain adequate for the employees. Laboratory and field investigations of the limits of such systems show that, at least for short periods, people can tolerate these changes provided the change is not too rapid (Akashi & Boyce, 2006; Newsham et al., 2006; Newsham, Mancini, et al., 2009). Just as for individuals, the provision of space is a substantial investment for an organization. In the architectural and design communities, so-called green buildings are in fashion, with the emphasis being on the design and construction of buildings to meet targets for energy and water use, waste management, and ecologically sound practices. However, this way of building generally comes at an increased cost that the organization must justify.
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Work Environments Various rating schemes exist, including Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), Green Globes, and BREEAM (Portalatin, Koepke, Roskoski, & Shouse, 2010). Although they differ in their details, each aims to reduce energy and resource use while providing a better indoor environment for occupants. Heerwagen (2000) concluded that done well, such buildings could result in better well-being for occupants as well as improved organizational performance and reductions in energy and resource use. Again, this is a domain in which environmental psychologists and their measurement expertise are needed to validate the rating schemes and provide feedback on the elements intended to preserve or improve indoor environmental quality. Evidence that green buildings save energy as intended is mixed (Newsham, Mancini, & Birt, 2009). The limited information available as yet concerning indoor conditions shows that each building has unique features and context that make case study results difficult to generalize (Brown, Cole, Robinson, & Dowlatabadi, 2010), but environmental psychologists with expertise in post-occupancy evaluation have tools to address this. One issue that has emerged is acoustical satisfaction, in that some of the design features favored in green buildings (few interior partitions, to permit daylight penetration, and exposed concrete ceiling slabs, to reduce material use) lead to higher noise levels and reduced acoustic privacy (Zhang & Altan, 2011).
Summary Engineers and inventors have developed many technologies to improve building energy efficiency, but their adoption has been slower than had been hoped (K. Kampschroer, personal communication, Oct. 26, 2010). A likely reason for this has been the relative absence of psychologists from the development of the technologies and their deployment. The psychological literature is largely silent concerning the barriers to the adoption and use of advanced building technologies and the incentives that might motivate more widespread use. Such research needs to go beyond the general attitude-behavior approach commonly taken in the study of environmentally responsible behavior to focus on specific structural, informational, and practical barriers as experienced by various actors in the decision-making system, from vice presidents responsible for facilities through building engineers who maintain them.
Conclusion Work environments clearly influence the comfort, satisfaction, mood, performance, and well-being of the people who work in them. Multiple physiological and psychological processes occur simultaneously and interactively, often moderated by other contextual and individual conditions, leading together to the behavior of the person in the space. The march of technology, bringing with it the possibility of working away from the corporate office, does not change fundamental human nature. Many of the physical conditions of an effective office are the same regardless of where the work occurs. Our understanding of the influences of the environment on people at work, and equally our understanding of the environmental effects of workplace behaviors, is clearly increasing, but is hampered by two problems, one methodological and one interpersonal. The interpersonal problem arises from the inherently interdisciplinary nature of work environment research. Understanding work environments ought not to be a purely intellectual exercise, but one that leads to the design, construction, operation, and occupation of good environments. This requires psychologists to work together with their counterparts in such fields as engineering, architecture, and physics and not only with anthropologists and sociologists (Veitch, 2008). Without this, it will be impossible to solve the other problem, which is methodological. Many reviewers have noted methodological problems in work environment research (e.g., Bringslimark et al., 2009; Frontczak & Wargocki, 2011; Winkel, Saegert, & Evans, 2009). To the commonly reported issues (monomethod bias, inadequate statistical controls, threats to internal validity, etc.), we can add the tendency to emphasize either the environmental measurements or the behavioral outcomes, each to the detriment of the other. Psychologists can bring the strength of their research methods and statistical training; building scientists with backgrounds in engineering or physics tend to bring expertise in measuring physical quantities with great precision. Absent such a combination, we cannot know exactly which conditions trigger effects or what exactly those effects might be. Overcoming professional inertia to change our own behavior in this regard will not be easy, but psychologists have
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Work Environments the tools for behavior change. Using them, we can reap the rewards of increased influence over the environments we all inhabit (Veitch, 2008).
Future Directions Key research directions for work environment psychology to address in the near term include: – What are the space and physical accommodation needs of the increasingly prevalent older office employee? How do they differ from youth entering the workforce—for example, in the experience of and expectation for privacy (cf. Smith, 2008)? – What are the prospects for an integrated theory of comfort, encompassing the broad variety of indoor conditions and bringing together the work of psychologists, engineers, and ergonomists (cf. Bluyssen et al., 2011; Reffat & Harkness, 2001; Vink & Hallbeck, 2011)? – What are the balancing points between competing processes? For example, when is the inter-workstation distance sufficient for privacy, and when does isolation begin? When does background sound provide a desirable mask for intrusive speech, and when does it become annoying? How much environmental control enables individualized (p. 269) environments, and when does the abundance of choice become a stressor in itself? Investigations of such questions demand precision about the ranges of the independent variables, and technical knowledge appropriate to the domain. – What are the costs, and what are the benefits, to individuals and to organizations, of space management policies that include telework, hoteling, and similar practices that eliminate individual territories at the corporate office? What contextual factors contribute to their success, or their failure? - What beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, or other factors have prevented organizations—or key individuals within organizations—from adopting novel environmental technologies? What specific information do decision-makers need to justify the investment?
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Work Environments Transactions, 103(pt 2), 3–17. Newsham, G. R., & Veitch, J. A. (2001). Lighting quality recommendations for VDT offices: A new method of derivation. Lighting Research and Technology, 33, 97–116. Newsham, G. R., Veitch, J. A., & Charles, K. E. (2008). Risk factors for dissatisfaction with the indoor environment in open-plan offices: An analysis of COPE field study data. Indoor Air, 18(4), 271–282. Newsham, G. R., Veitch, J. A., Charles, K. E., Bradley, J. S., Shaw, C.-Y., Reardon, J. T.,…Geerts, J. (2003). Environmental satisfaction in open-plan environments: 4. Relationships between physical variables. (IRC-RR153). Ottawa, Canada: NRC Institute for Research in Construction. Retrieved from www.nrccnrc.gc.ca/obj/irc/doc/pubs/rr/rr153/rr153.pdf. Ng, C. F. (2010). Teleworker’s home office: An extension of corporate office? Facilities, 28(3–4), 137–155. Norbäck, D. (2009). An update on sick building syndrome. Current Opinion in Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 9(1), 55–59. Novaco, R. W., & Gonzalez, O. I. (2009). Commuting and well-being. In Y. Amichai-Hamburger (Ed.), Technology and psychological well-being (pp. 174–205). New York: Cambridge University Press. O’Neill, M. J. (2010). A model of environmental control and effective work. Facilities, 28(3–4), 118–136. Obayashi, F., Kawauchi, M., Terano, M., Tomita, K., Hattori, Y., Shimoda, H.,…Yoshikawa, H. (2007). Development of an illumination control method to improve office productivity. In M. J. Smith & G. Salvendy (Eds.), Human interface and the management of information. Interacting in information environments (Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4558/2007, pp. 939–947). Berlin: Springer. Osterhaus, W. K. E. (2005). Discomfort glare assessment and prevention for daylight applications in office environments. Solar Energy, 79(2), 140–158. Osterhaus, W. K. E. (2008). Analysis of luminance histograms for the assessment of discomfort glare in daylight offices. In A. Orgulan (Ed.), Proceedings of Balkan Light 2008, Ljubljana, Slovenia, October 7–10, 2008 (pp. 155– 164). Maribor, Slovenia: Lighting Engineering Society of Slovenia. Osterhaus, W. K. E., & Bailey, I. L. (1992). Large area glare sources and their effect on visual discomfort and visual performance at computer workstations. Proceedings of the 1992 IEEE Industrial Applications Society Meeting, Houston, TX, October 4–9, 1992 (Vol. 2, pp. 1825–1829). Piscataway, NJ: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Ozdemir, A. (2010). The effect of window views’ openness and naturalness on the perception of rooms’ spaciousness and brightness: A visual preference study. Scientific Research and Essays, 5(16), 2275–2287. Perham, N., Banbury, S. P., & Jones, D. M. (2004). The susceptibility of a call center–like task to disruption by extraneous sound: The role of semantic relatedness. Paper presented at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Conference. Portalatin, M., Koepke, K., Roskoski, M., & Shouse, T. (2010). Green building rating systems. Houston, TX: IFMA Foundation. Quality of the Visual Environment Committee. (2009). Light + design: A guide to designing quality lighting for people and buildings (Vol. DG-18). New York: Illuminating Engineering Society of North America. Raffaello, M., & Maass, A. (2002). Chronic exposure to noise in industry: The effects on satisfaction, stress symptoms, and company attachment. Environment & Behavior, 34(5), 651–671. Rashid, M., Kampschroer, K., Wineman, J., & Zimring, C. (2006). Spatial layout and face-to-face interaction in offices—A study of the mechanisms of spatial effects on face-to-face interaction. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 33(6), 825–844.
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Work Environments comprehension. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24(1), 67–76. Space planning and interior design report: How much smaller can we go? (2003, September). Canadian Facility Management & Design, 18–20, 22. Stern, P. C. (2011). Contributions of psychology to limiting climate change. American Psychologist, 66(4), 303–314. doi: 10.1037/a0023235 Stern, P. C., & Oskamp, S. (1987). Managing scarce environmental resources. In D. Stokols & I. Altman (Eds.), Handbook of environmental psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 1043–1088). New York: Wiley. Stokols, D. (1972). On the distinction between density and crowding: Some implications for future research. Psychological Review, 79(3), 275–277. doi: 10.1037/h0032706 Stokols, D. (1995). The paradox of environmental psychology. American Psychologist, 50, 821–837. Stokols, D., Clitheroe, C., & Zmuidzinas, M. (2002). Qualities of work environments that promote perceived support for creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 14(2), 137–147. Sundstrom, E. (1986). Work places: The psychology of the physical environment in offices and factories. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sundstrom, E. (1987). Work environments: Offices and factories. In D. Stokols & I. Altman (Eds.), Handbook of environmental psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 733–782). New York: Wiley. Szalma, J. L., & Hancock, P. A. (2011). Noise effects on human performance: A meta-analytic synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 137(4), 682–707. doi: 10.1037/a0023987 Thayer, J. F., Verkuil, B., Brosschot, J. F., Kampschroer, K., West, A., Sterling, C.,…Sternberg, E. M. (2010). Effects of the physical work environment on physiological measures of stress. European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation, 17(4), 431–439. Tuaycharoen, N., & Tregenza, P. R. (2005). Discomfort glare from interesting images. Lighting Research and Technology, 37(4), 329–341. Ulrich, R. S., Simons, R. F., Losito, B. D., Fiorito, E., et al. (1991). Stress recovery during exposure to natural and urban environments. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 11(3), 201–230. United States Energy Information Administration. (2009). Annual energy review. Washington, DC: US Department of Energy. Retrieved from www.eia.doe.gov. van Bommel, W. J. M., & van den Beld, J. G. (2004). Lighting for work: A review of visual and biological effects. Lighting Research and Technology, 36, 255–269. Van Den Wymelenberg, K., Inanici, M., & Johnson, P. (2010). The effect of luminance distribution patterns on occupant preference in a daylit office environment. Leukos, 7(2), 103–122. van Meel, J. (2011). The origins of new ways of working: Office concepts in the 1970s. Facilities, 29(9), 357–367. Veitch, J. A. (2008). Investigating and influencing how buildings affect health: Interdisciplinary endeavours. Canadian Psychology, 49(4), 281–288. doi: 10.1037/a0013567 Veitch, J. A., Bradley, J. S., Legault, L. M., Norcross, S. G., & Svec, J. M. (2002). Masking speech in open-plan offices with simulated ventilation noise: Noise-level and spectral composition effects on acoustic satisfaction. (IRC-IR-846). Ottawa, Canada: NRC Institute for Research in Construction. Retrieved from www.nrccnrc.gc.ca/obj/irc/doc/pubs/ir/ir846/ir846.pdf. Veitch, J. A., Charles, K. E., Farley, K. M. J., & Newsham, G. R. (2007). A model of satisfaction with open-plan office conditions: COPE field findings. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 27(3), 177–189. Veitch, J. A., Charles, K. E., Newsham, G. R., Marquardt, C. J. G., & Geerts, J. (2003). Environmental satisfaction in
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Notes: (1.) The quantity of light falling on a surface is the illuminance of the surface. The SI unit for illuminance is lumens/m2 , abbreviated lx. The quantity of light emitted from a surface or a light source is its luminance. The SI unit for luminance is the candela/m2 , abbreviated cd/m2 . (2.) A few psychologists have bridged these communities. Most notably, Frederick Rohles, now an emeritus professor at Kansas State University, has been awarded Fellow status in the American Psychological Association (and its Divisions 21 and 34), the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, and the American Society for Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers—probably the only person to have been so recognized by these organizations. Jennifer A. Veitch Jennifer A. Veitch NRC Construction Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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School Environments
Oxford Handbooks Online School Environments Henry Sanoff and Rotraut Walden The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology, School Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0015
Abstract and Keywords Education reform has focused primarily on teaching methods and course content. As a result instructional materials have been updated and instructional methods improved. However, what has received too little attention is the physical environment in which education occurs. Highly qualified teachers do not want to work in outdated, unattractive facilities. Parents are much more discerning about which school their child will attend, including the physical appearance of the school and modern technology available. School systems have discovered that schools with “sick” internal physical environments have an adverse effect on student learning and teacher performance. There are a growing number of studies linking student outcomes whose physical environments support the educational process. Keywords: high-performance schools, post-occupancy evaluation, classroom design, green schools, building performance, health, learning, teaching, social behavior, well-being, future directions
Introduction A growing understanding of how our learning environments affect people suggests that a school building is an important tool for learning and teaching, and, like any tool, can enhance or hinder the process. School facility factors such as building age and condition, quality of maintenance, lighting, color, noise, temperature, and air quality can affect student health, safety, sense of self, and psychological state (National Research Council, 2007). Research has also shown that the quality of facilities influences citizen perceptions of schools and can serve as a point of community pride and increased support for public education (Uline, Tschannen-Moran, & Wolsey, 2008). The goal then is to create school facilities that reflect everything known today about providing the best possible education for all students in the twenty-first century.
Historical Evolution of American School Buildings The physical environment is one of the important components of an institutional system, such as schools (Wolfe & Rivlin, 1987). Physical changes in school architecture have always been influenced by the social, political, economical, and educational ideologies of the times. These changes shaped society’s conceptions of children’s development and attitudes toward the educational practices, as well as the types of educational facilities. There have been major turning points in education from the Colonial period and the one-room schoolhouse to the Common School movement starting in the 1840s, continuing with the progressive education movement in the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, later focusing on open education and compensatory education. (p. 277) State-mandated public education did not exist prior to the 19th century (Wolfe & Rivlin, 1987). Education
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School Environments was usually for the elite, through tutoring and one-room schoolhouses accommodating all ages of students with the teacher presiding over instruction. The common school movement brought the idea of equal opportunity for everybody to be educated regardless of economical, racial, or class background (Rothman, 1980). During this progressive period American business and industry rapidly expanded and the school was viewed essentially as a workplace (factory) and students’ learning was perceived in terms of productivity. Teachers were referred to as the factory workers and students as the raw material to be turned into the product, which was to meet the needs of the early 20th century. The common school movement, however, gave rise to the public education system and the principle of free schooling (Pasalar, 2003). During the first quarter of the 20th century, as school populations grew due to urbanization, the need for larger district schools became clear. In the meantime, the idea of elementary and secondary schools appeared, which later included middle schools as well. Buildings designed to specialize in the housing of junior high and high school education programs were constructed, and many more types of auxiliary spaces were added. The junior high school was created with the purpose of easing the transition from elementary school settings to the departmentalized high school settings and solving the problem of general overcrowding (Rieselbach, 1992).
Reform Pedagogy (1890–1932) During the late 19th century, a progressive movement emerged in Europe as well as in the United States as a general critique of the public educational system. A central principle of the progressive movement was the concept of child-centered education, in contrast to the teacher-centered methods where education was shaped according to course content delivered by formal lectures. This brief sketch of the history of school buildings would be incomplete without mentioning the reform movements, which began around the turn of the 20th century. The term “educational reform” of this period actually refers to a multitude of pedagogical ideas within an overall movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (1890–1932) that began to take a stand against the predominant “drill schools,” with their remoteness from real life, intellectualism, and authoritarianism (Oelkers, 1996, p. 39; cf. Borrelbach, 2009).The progressive movement is traced primarily to educators such as Georg Kerschensteiner and Peter Petersen in Germany, Maria Montessori in Italy (1988), and John Dewey (1916 /1967) in the United States. The integration of work into the educational process was promoted primarily by Georg Kerschensteiner (1854– 1932) in the work school (Arbeitsschule) movement he started. Between 1890 and 1933, the concept of “work school” became a synonym for the entire reform pedagogy movement and was considered the essential “new school.” Kerschensteiner saw the activity in the work school primarily as the combination of manual work and intellectual scrutiny of that activity. He was a determined opponent of the traditional “book learning” and accused it of being one-sided and remote from reality, in that it focused primarily on intellectual abilities, while the majority of the students would have to pursue work involving manual activities in their later life (Scheibe, 1999, p. 180; cf. Borrelbach, 2009). Peter Petersen (1854–1952) sought to realize the union of individual and an educational community primarily through a new organization of the school. He abandoned the principle of separation of grades and instead introduced “tribe” groups of students teamed up according to subject interest or other aspects. They included two or three age groups, so that students of very different ages were working together. With these organizational changes and more differentiated instructional content, Petersen achieved a loosening of the rigid structures of the old school, and a more flexible educational process. However, Petersen saw school reform not only as organizational change, but also as a design challenge (Oelkers, 1996, p. 190). He felt that development of a new school architecture was needed. For this, he proposed to redesign the classrooms as “school living rooms.” Students were offered a variety of work materials, books, and objects, so as to turn these school living rooms into the best possible, stimulating instructional environment (cf. Dreier et al., 1999, p. 35). According to Petersen, other necessary spatial conditions for a positive community life were “easily integrated outdoor areas, inviting entrances, spacious break areas, and generously designed hallways and assembly areas.” A good aesthetic design would give the children “opportunities for retreat and relaxation” (Petersen, 1927, p. 7). The Italian physician Maria Montessori (1870–1952) opened her first children’s homes (case dei bambini) in 1900. She was motivated by her belief that schools of that time were designed for adults, (p. 278) with long hallways
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School Environments and bare, monotonous classrooms. Her educational philosophy was dominated by the principle of individual selfguided activity and her child-centered approach. Her ideas generated not only new didactic materials but also valuable concepts for the design and organization of living spaces for children. She started from the belief that from the moment of birth, every child has “the ability to develop into an independent human being through active exploration and learning processes” (Dreier et al., 1999, p. 35; cf. Borrelbach, 2009). John Dewey (1859–1952) suggested that education be based on a broader concept, making it an integral part of the life process whereby students would learn by doing and interacting with one another (Alexander, 2000). Many educators believed that programs needed to fit the child, but not that the child should fit the program. Consequently, schooling in the United States dramatically changed. In the period between World War I and II, the spatial layout characteristics of the school architecture evolved as a result of the pedagogic findings, the advent of the modern movement in the architecture, and the measures taken by the hygienists for the prevention of disease. In finger plan organizations, classrooms were connected to spaces for communal activities, and at the same time aimed to provide appropriate ventilation, lighting, orientation, and immediate contact with external space. For the first time classrooms were connected to the outdoors (courtyards, open playfields) introducing nature as part of the learning experience in addition to classroom activities. However, the classrooms, which were often located along the corridor in a linear development, were still a major component of the school.
The Progressive Movement Throughout the industrialized era (1945–1960), in combination with the idea of mass production, prototype school buildings were created conveying a minimalist approach toward educational space—strict standards and institutional and economic restrictions. The education system and the architectural trend, in general, involved the “factory” approach based on the construction of fast and economical school buildings without questioning its uniqueness and fit to the educational process (Taylor, 1975). Cultural, geographic, social, and ideological aspects were not a priority compared to the interests of a universality that promotes more democratic and universal values in the school architecture. Due to economic constraints in budgets for school constructions the attention and interests focused on the infrastructure of the school with less interest in pedagogy, social organization, spatial layout, and other physical features. During the same period the trend shifted toward creating more scaled, flexible, and convertible spaces that can adopt continuously changing and developing pedagogy. In 1959 J. Lloyd Trump prepared a report emphasizing the necessity of improving the quality of secondary education and school environments for the future. Commissioned by the National Association of Secondary School Principals, this plan influenced the development of many schools during that period. According to the report, the secondary school of the future would not need to have standard classroom units of 25 to 35 students meeting five days a week. In terms of student-teacher relationships, the secondary schools would provide closer relationships. The teacher in this case would be a consultant rather than a taskmaster. Since students have different learning styles, the plan suggested the pursuit of specialized studies. According to Trump, space within the building would be planned for what would be taught, as well as how it should be taught. Spatial flexibility was one of the variables to be considered. The Trump plan suggested that large rooms be flexible enough to be divided into smaller seminar rooms for small-group discussions. The 1960s and 1970s brought new developments in the education system and a thorough analysis of children’s developmental needs. The idea of “open design” was introduced, offering changes in the organization and the structure of the classrooms and overall school building (Barth, 1972; Silberman, 1973). The “baby boom” in the 1960s along with the suburban expansion and the development of new areas led to an increase in the construction of school buildings. The schools constructed had architectural and programmatic variety. Open-space school and informal education were part of that experimentation. Open-space education originated from the need to find an answer to the problem of educating children of varying performance levels in different groups. However, open-design schools were less a philosophic commitment than a matter of cost and efficiency over buildings with partitions. The educational model offered child-centered learning, which emphasized a flexible grouping of students, individualized instruction, open access to learning materials, and the use of all available spaces such as rooms, corridors, and outdoor areas (Wolfe & Rivlin, 1987). The idea provided spaces that encouraged mobility, communication, social (p. 279) interaction, cooperation, and group projects among the students. They were the symbols of “modern” school design and were widely adopted.
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School Environments However, the idea of open-design school was not accompanied by informal or open teaching. There were even attempts to implement informal or open education in settings where school buildings were traditionally designed (Wolfe & Rivlin, 1987). Therefore, the idea later failed due to the disorder caused by the incompatible teaching activities and school buildings. Problems, such as visual distraction and noise as well as territorial need for different activity settings, were experienced as well (Taylor, 1975; Gump, 1991; Sanoff, 2002). Many of those schools implementing the open-design idea have undergone changes returning to the traditional way of divided classroom arrangements (Sanoff, 2002). There are continuing mismatches between the educational philosophies and practices. Although the current schooling system in the United States is experimenting with a student-centered education model in innovative small schools, emphasizing learning through continuous interaction among peers and teachers, it is still possible to observe teachers’ control and dominance on student activities restricting students’ use of different spaces (Cushman, 1999).
School Size In the 1970s and 80s, the United States and other countries built very large schools in most of their cities. Reasons for this were the expectation of economic advantages as well as the benefit of being able to offer students a wider and more comprehensive curriculum. A trend of separating the large schools into smaller, more personal units developed (Duke & Trautvetter, 2001). The goal was, among other things, that a greater significance would be attributed to the personalization of schools. This was shown through decorations, involvement in school clubs, break rooms, works of art, and the overall feeling that “I would like to be here.” The small school literature began with large-scale quantitative studies of the late 1980s and early 1990s that firmly established small schools as more productive and effective than large ones. These studies, involving large numbers of students, schools, and school districts, found a strong relationship between higher academic achievement and lower enrollment (Lee & Smith, 1995; Eckman & Howley, 1997). A study commissioned by the US Department of Education noted that the value of small schools in increasing achievement, graduation rates, and satisfaction, and in improving behavior has been confirmed with clarity and a high level of confidence (Raywid, 1999). Students make more rapid progress toward graduation (McMullan, Sipe, & Wolf, 1994). They are more satisfied with small schools, fewer of them drop out than from larger schools (Pittman & Haoghwout, 1987), and students behave better in smaller schools (Stockard & Mayberry, 1992). According to Wasley et al. (2000), the advantages of smaller schools seem to outweigh those of bigger schools. Isolation, which reveals itself through alienation, vandalism, theft, and violence, can be avoided in smaller schools (cf. Linneweber, Mummendey, Bornewasser, & Löschper, 1984). Smaller schools enable children of minorities and those from underprivileged backgrounds to progress rapidly and encourage teachers to invest their experiences for the benefit of the students (Wasley et al., 2000, p. 2). Barker and Gump already demonstrated in their classic 1964 study (cf. Helmke & Weinert, 1997, p. 94) that students in smaller schools are more inclined to take part in school activities, despite the fact that larger schools may have more opportunities to offer these kinds of activities to students. A report by Carnegie Corporation’s Council on Adolescent Development (1988) revealed that adolescents had been experiencing massive, impersonal schools with unconnected curricula and high student population. The idea of creating smaller learning environments was introduced in the 1990s and was implemented by educational planners. Smaller learning environments were generated through the creation of “academic houses” (or classroom clusters forming a separate unit) accommodating 200 to 300 students. In each academic unit, students and teachers were organized into teams where there were interactive educational and social activities. Other plans emerged to create schools within schools within new and existing schools, sometimes referred to as a neighborhood plan or learning community (McAndrews & Anderson, 2002). More recently the idea of smaller schools with more specialized curriculum and educational activities, such as magnet or academic house schools, has started to be widespread within the United States, thus the school environment attributed to the new views in educational process concerning the organization of flexible classroom spaces and the number of laboratories or project rooms supporting students’ practices. In general, the school environment aimed to offer more stimuli to students who operate in a framework of freedom in a more balanced network (p. 280) of social relations. The goal was integrating youth into various social roles, allowing equal
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School Environments opportunity for each child, and promoting their psychological, social, and moral development and hence, their personal fulfillment. Educational research indicates that participation in school activities, student satisfaction, social connectedness, and achievement are greater in small schools relative to large schools (Barker & Gump, 1964; Blundell Jones, 2007; Cotton, 1996; Sanoff, 2009), while disciplinary problems, incidents of vandalism, truancy, drug use, and drop-out rates are lower (Fowler & Walberg, 1991).
Learning Environment Learning is defined as a relatively long-lasting change in behavior that results from experience. Good teaching can be found in poorly built schools, just as poor teaching can be found in well-built schools. However, it is widely accepted that buildings can both promote as well as hinder learning (Weinstein, 1979). In the results of the PISA study (Program for International Student Assessment; Lemke et al., 2001; OECD, 2004), education ministers, supervisory school authorities, and planners deal with the effects of environment on the performance as well as the social and emotional competence of students in kindergarten, grade schools, and tertiary schools. The concept of the environment as the “third teacher” alongside the children and actual teachers is the central issue within the question of how to optimize conditions for in-school learning (Edwards, Gandini, & Forman, 1998). Loris Malaguzzi (1920–1994), one of the most important “Reggio” pedagogues, made the following fundamental statement: in addition to the teacher and fellow students, the building acts as a third “teacher” (1984 ). Various studies have shown that schools need to be able to meet very diverse educational demands. Schools need to be places of living and learning, and meeting points for social learning, which promotes conflict resolution and encourages individuality and open exchange of ideas. A large volume of evidence shows a correlation between environmental conditions in schools and academic performance (cf. Linneweber, 1996, p. 386; Gifford, 2007). The central focus of the dispute is also found in this chapter, in the analysis of the effects of the physical environment. Well-planned school buildings can promote the development of successful, motivational learning methods that contribute to a love of learning and generate a desire to achieve. Students are the ones responsible for the future of the global market and the social utility of our economic system. Gump (1978) determined that a person spends on average 14,000 hours in the learning environment from kindergarten to the 12th grade. The results of the international PISA study became well known in numerous countries, and since 2003, 7,200 of more than 40,000 schools in Germany were reconfigured to become full-time schools, open all year, in the hope that this concept would help improve student performance. During this time, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research invested four billion euros to help fund the shift to full-time schools. There is a demand for today’s schools to be more responsive (Sanoff, 2001), to be places where students and teachers engage in learning and teaching inside and outside of the classroom. The goal is a school that responds to the development needs of adults and teenagers. A multitude of learning methods and social forms should be applied, such as small-group work, lectures, learning by doing, individual assignments, and study centers (Jacobs, 1999; Lackney, 2009). In addition to target-oriented learning, incidental learning also takes place. The areas in which students spend their free time should also be included in the planning. The social realm should allow room for eating, drinking, playing, and reflection. Also important is the flexibility to be used by various groups, children, adults, and disabled people (cf. Lackney, 2000).
User Evaluation of School Buildings Based on numerous studies, Ahrentzen, Jue, Skorpanich, and Evans (1982) developed a system of classification for the study of stress in elementary school settings. In the 1970s, the avoidance of stress was a subject of major interest, followed by the facilitation of academic performance and creativity. The system of classification (cf. Moos, 1979) is based on the “fit” of personal characteristics to environmental properties. According to Ahrentzen et al., students will exert more effort for the completion of a difficult task in settings that meet their expectations and their needs.
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School Environments Barker’s concept of “behavior setting” (Barker, 1968; Schoggen, 1989) influenced Gump (1991 ; see also Schmittmann, 1985; Ströhlein, 1998) in his definition of the main factors of his analysis as physical environment (interior design and architecture), roles (e.g., teachers and learners), and behavior programs. Barker is concerned with the synomorphic relationships between these components. Gifford (2007) referred to almost the same relationships (p. 281) between personal characteristics of students, the physical features of the learning setting, and the social-organizational climate. There are other measuring tools that include the psycho-social school environment: for example, those from Moos (1979); Anderson and Walberg (1974); Fisher and Fraser (1983); and Fraser, Anderson, and Walberg (1982). The current contribution, however, is principally concerned with the effects of the physical environment on the experience and behavior of students and teachers (see Gump, 1991, p. 723). Interviews, questionnaires, and roleplaying games have been developed in recent years, especially by Henry Sanoff (cf. Tanner, 1999) to measure and evaluate features of the physical environment. Sanoff (2002) encouraged the local community, students, parents, and teachers to participate in the design and building process. At the same time, he developed methods for evaluating school buildings (2001a). In 2001, the Federal Facilities Council (FFC, 2001) defined post-occupancy evaluation (POE) as “a process of systematically evaluating the performance of buildings [or places] after they have been built and occupied for some time. POE differs from other evaluations of building performance in that it focuses on the requirements of building occupants, including health, safety, security, functionality and efficiency, psychological comfort, aesthetic quality, and satisfaction.” (p. 1) And also: “As POEs have become broader in scope and purpose, POE has come to mean any activity that originates out of an interest in learning how a building [or place] performs once it is built (if and how well it has met expectations) and how satisfied building users are with the environment that has been created. POE has been seen as one of a number of practices aimed at understanding design criteria, predicting the effectiveness of emerging designs, reviewing completed designs, supporting building activation and facilities management, and linking user response to the performance of buildings. POE is also evolving toward more process-oriented evaluations for planning, programming, and capital asset management” (FFC, 2001). Typical methods used in conducting POEs are interviews, checklists, behavioral observations, and surveys. Each method reveals different insights into how satisfactorily the building performs for its occupants.
School Condition There is growing evidence of a correlation between the adequacy of a school facility and student behavior and performance. Numerous studies conducted over the past three decades have found a statistically significant relationship between the condition of a school or classroom and student achievement. In general, students attending school in newer, better facilities score 5 to 17 points higher on standardized tests than those attending in substandard buildings (Earthman, 1999; Earthman & Lemasters, 1996). A study of working conditions in urban schools concluded that physical conditions do have direct positive and negative effects on teacher morale, a sense of personal safety, feelings of effectiveness in the classroom, and on the general learning environment. Building renovations in one district led teachers to feel a renewed sense of hope, and of commitment, and a belief that district officials cared about what went on in that building. An improved physical environment affected the social climate of the school, and that subsequently had a positive effect on learning (Duke, 1988). Two scholars have done comprehensive, non-overlapping compilations of research findings on the relationship of school facility condition to student achievement and behavior. In 1979, Weinstein published a review of 141 published studies and 21 papers presented at professional conferences. Three years later, McGuffey (1982) completed another review of the research, discussing 97 published studies. Following is a summary of research on specific quality factors and their effect on educational outcomes. In the mid-1990s, American industrial designer Ruth Lande Shuman initiated the “Publicolor” school design program in New York. “Jail-like” school buildings with “industrial, hostile appearances” were “brightened” by lighter colors and decorated with more variety. The results: lower dropout rates of students, fewer discipline issues, and marked
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School Environments increases in concentration during lessons. These studies in the psychology of color show, for example, that drab colors or bad lighting can create—even if the effect is slight—a depressive mood among students and teachers, which, in turn, influences learning and learning environment (http://www.gnn.com/article/nonprofit-brightens-nycpublic-schools/971361). In elementary school classrooms, warm, bright colors complement the students’ extroverted nature, while cool colors facilitate the ability for middle and high school students to relax and focus concentration (Mahnke, 1996). Wohlfarth (1985) also showed that certain colors have measurable (p. 282) and predictable effects on the autonomic nervous system of people. In numerous studies, he found that blood pressure, pulse, and respiration rates increase most under yellow light, moderately under orange, and minimally under red, while decreasing most under black, moderately under blue, and minimally under green. Gifford (2007) explored whether the maintenance of a school has an influence on students. He proposes that satisfied teachers (and therefore better teachers) more often work in attractive schools. It is clear in the results that students who are taught in new or newly renovated schools are more satisfied. It is important to point out that some of the scholarly research on school facilities and student performance has reached a negative conclusion. Although most scholars who have studied the question concur that achievement suffers in poor school environments, most are deeply skeptical about studies linking improved achievement with top-notch buildings. They point out that much of the work establishing such a link has been done by graduate students, and that many of the facility assessments were done by volunteers, or school officials, and may have lacked rigorous checklists. Some studies failed to control for critical variables, such as teacher experience. Critics also point to anomalies in findings—correlations on math scores, but not reading scores or vice versa; three-year studies that found linkage in two years, but not in the third; one study in which disciplinary incidents were more common in a new school than in older ones; and the fact that some of the research has been commissioned or sponsored by groups of architects or facility planners—people who have a vested interest in proving a link.
Visual Appearance Buildings, settings, and environments are accorded symbolic value by those who use them. Physical entities come to symbolize certain qualities, values, aspirations, and experiences for individuals. A school may symbolize opportunity, hope, stability, and a safe haven in a world of insecurity and transience, or, to someone else, the school structure may symbolize failure and oppressive authority. A study from Rittelmeyer (1994 ; cf. 2004; Forster & Rittelmeyer, 2010) develops conclusions regarding the impact of improvements to aesthetic form by means of renovation or reconstruction of schools. Approximately 600 youths were asked about their preferences and dislikes with regard to certain structural forms, colors, and interior decorations. According to this study, school buildings are perceived as emotional gestures (that is, they appear to be lively, cheerful, sad, brutal, and so on); students see spatial features such as facades, color schemes, and landscaping as interaction partners. The effect of the elements of structure and color produce a background mood for the observers. Rittelmeyer (2004) named three quality-criteria for an existing or planned school to be beautifully, appealingly, attractively, or pleasantly effective: (1) inspiring, (2) unrestricted, and (3) warm or soft to reinforce the significance of buildings’ form, Rittelmeyer (2004) cited an American study, according to which higher levels of performance were achieved in positively rated school buildings (Earthman, 1999, 2004), and a German study (Klockhaus & Habermann-Morbey, 1986), which determined that less vandalism occurs in such buildings. In The Psychology of Vandalism, Goldstein (1996) included a basic study by Pablant and Baxter (1975), which confirms the correlation between wanton destruction and the aesthetic quality as well as the degree of maintenance of school property. Schools with fewer instances of vandalism are characterized by excellent maintenance of the building and surrounding playgrounds. The age of the school shows no correlation with the frequency of vandalism. Schools with low rates of destruction are generally found in districts with a variety of buildings (e.g., commercial buildings, churches) in the surrounding area. Of schools with high rates of destruction, 81% are found near unoccupied land, such as parks and sports fields. Schools with low rates of vandalism can usually be seen by neighbors because they are better lit, which makes it easy to view the property.
Classroom Design
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School Environments One hundred fifty years ago, classrooms represented a common teaching method. Today teaching methods have changed, but often the design of the classroom has remained static. An examination of current learning styles and teaching methods suggests a new form of learning environment characterized by different activity settings and small-group activities. To experience healthy development, students require certain needs to be met. School-agers require diversity in activities and in places where they are performed, which entails different opportunities for learning and different relationships with a variety of people (Levin & Nolan, 2000). In a school that responds to its students’ need for diversity, one would not find students all doing the same thing, at the same time, in similar rooms. One would not (p. 283) expect to see students sitting in neat rows of desks, all facing teachers who are lecturing or reading from textbooks. Instead, in responsive schools, students and teachers would be engaged in different learning activities in and out of the classroom. A variety of teaching methods including small-group work, lectures, learning by doing, individualized assignments, and learning centers would be used (Jacobs, 1999; Lackney, 2009). Teachers are much more influenced by the physical environment than they realize. Malcolm Seabourne, a historian of school buildings in England, suggests that the building made the teaching method (Robson, 1972). The separate classroom was a sign that teachers were trusted to be independent and had greater privacy. The classroom was designed and built to represent and shape a particular form of teaching behavior. The way a school is designed to work reflects social ideas about institutions and the education these institutions are created to further (Grosvenor et al., 1999). The shape of spaces, furniture arrangements, and signs are physical cues that transmit silent messages, and both teachers and students will respond. These environmental messages stimulate movement, call attention to some things but not others, encourage involvement, and invite students to hurry or move calmly. This environmental influence is continuous, and how well it communicates with the users will depend on how well the environment is planned. Classroom arrangement is not a mere technicality, or a part of the teacher’s style. It reflects assumptions about the teaching-learning process and its outcomes.
Classroom Seating The usual classroom seating arrangement of rows headed by a teacher at the front usually assumes that all information comes from the teacher. This arrangement assumes a teacher-centered classroom where the learning process depends upon the teacher’s direction. Considering the new thinking about how students learn, Halstead (1992) envisioned the classroom of tomorrow where classrooms would be like studios where students would have their own work space. In addition, there would be work spaces for cooperative learning by groups of different sizes, quiet private areas for one-on-one sessions, and places where students could work independently. Mobility and centeredness influence teachers’ movement patterns and how they interact with students in the classroom. Student-centered classrooms are those where there is greater teacher movement and more interaction with students. The most teacher-centered classrooms, for example, have a seating arrangement organized in a circle (Horne, 2000). Although transaction theories of student/teacher participatory interaction (STPI) have been discussed in the educational literature for decades (Dewey, 1916; Friere, 1970; Krebs, 1982), more recently there has been research describing a correlation between STPI and student motivation to participate (SMP) in the classroom (Dormody & Sutphin, 1991; Skinner & Belmont, 1993). Similarly, if students experience the classroom as a supportive place where there is a sense of belonging, they tend to participate more fully in the process of learning (Brophy, 1987). Research comparing the behavior of effective teachers with that of less effective teachers has clearly revealed the importance of monitoring the class during seatwork periods. Such monitoring involves teachers’ moving around the classroom, being aware of how well or poorly students are progressing with their assignments, and working with students one-to-one as needed. The most effective teachers: • Have systematic procedures for supervising and encouraging students while they work • Initiate more interactions with students during seatwork periods, rather than waiting for students to ask for help • Have more substantive interactions with students during seatwork monitoring, stay task-oriented, and work through problems with students (Brophy, 1979)
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School Environments Classroom Privacy The complexity of the concept makes it difficult to come up with clear specifications regarding the optimal room setup. Some basic information, though, should be outlined. Every student needs a certain amount of privacy (Gifford, 2007), which varies from individual to individual. Many studies (cf. Gifford, 2007, p. 312) concur that a high classroom density negatively affects students’ performance when they undertake complex assignments, work in small groups, or accomplish tasks, when they need maneuverability, or when games or teaching materials are sparse. Just like classroom density, the location of a student’s seat can influence his or her performance, well-being, and social behavior. Thus, places in the middle of the classroom toward the front offer an optimal position for higher performance (Becker, Sommer, Bee, & Oxley, 1973; cf. Bell, Greene, Fisher, & Baum, 2001, p. 263). According to the sources of McAndrew (1993), the area of the classroom toward the rear is associated with the freedom to interact with classmates while at the same time being outside the control of the teacher. As a result, students arrange themselves within the different rows (Hillmann, Brooks, & O’Brien, 1991). A study by Marx, Fuhrer, and Hartig (1999) researched the relationship between the location of the seat in the classroom and the number of questions asked by fourth graders. The results showed that children seated in a semicircle asked more questions than those seated in rows, and that social interaction was encouraged when individual students could make faceto-face contact. Therefore, seating arrangement can influence communication between students. “Soft classrooms” have semicircular benches covered with pillows, adjustable lighting, a small rug, and a few pieces of movable furniture. Student participation noticeably improves in a soft classroom (Sommer & Olsen, 1980). The “open-plan classroom,” which developed in the 1970s in many American schools, can have a relatively negative influence on the performance of the average student (Bell, Switzer, & Zipursky, 1974; Wright, 1975). It is important that the type of classroom matches the teaching method and meets the students’ and teachers’ needs for privacy and intellectual stimulus. Likewise, the type of classroom should agree with the kind of activity and the length of time needed for it. Glass et al. (1982) believed that when a class reaches 20 to 25 students, each additional student makes a relatively small difference (cf. Schnabel, 2001, p. 482). They concluded that smaller classes of 15 or fewer students result in better learning environments in almost every regard, including teacher and student attitudes, interaction, and performance.
Information Technology Classroom Since the early 1900s technology, beginning with film, then radio, television, and video, has been brought into the learning environment; currently the computer, tablets, and SMART Boards have been introduced into instructional settings. However, none of these past or current technologies are being fully integrated into educational programs, as was anticipated (Weiss, 2007). One reason is that the design of the physical environment does not support the integration of technology (Oliver & Lippman, 2007; Weiss, 2007). Learning environments should be programmed, planned, and designed to support the intended learning activities. There is a growing spirit of innovation in school design and planning worldwide. Information technology introduced into schools promotes individual learning and a closer link with the community. More schools tend to introduce new learning methods, such as interdisciplinary, hands-on, and self-learning. The establishment of networking between school and community also depends on information technology (IT). Satellite schools, homeschooling, and offcampus learning at various sites are increasing in popularity. According to my current research, these trends are seen not only in Japan but also in the United States and several European countries (Yanagisawa, 2009). From the viewpoint of IT application and individual learning, there are necessary conditions for IT schools. To additionally enhance these schools as innovative, the following elements should be considered: • Spaces for self-learning with IT facilities in all parts of the school • Accessible learning resource center as a core of the school • School furniture and workstations designed for information technology
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School Environments
• Development of educational software and curriculum • Promotion of human resources to support information technology, i.e., on-campus/off-campus training for teachers, staff, librarians, and volunteers (Yanagisawa, 2009)
Outdoor Environment Today, school activities involve more than simply listening or writing. Learning can take place in many different kinds and qualities of space. In addition, students’ activities outdoors (e.g., playgrounds) have shown to be more creative than in classrooms or traditional playgrounds (Lindholm, 1995), with positive effects on learning and cognitive qualities (Fjortoft & Sageie, 1999; Fjortoft, 2004). Schools in which children take on an active role outside of the classroom, and schools with an attractive exterior, seem to be ideal schools for children (cf. Gifford, 2007; cf. Wasley et al., 2000). Louv (2008) helped connect the idea of using natural landscaping expressly to K–12 schools. He described American children’s “nature-deficit disorder,” or how children are increasingly becoming disconnected from nature. Louv attributed the trend to several causes: a more technological society, parents’ fear of strangers, less access to natural settings, and so on. But the case he and other child and environmental advocates (p. 285) have made for the benefits of exposing children to the natural world has given schools cause to examine their own surroundings and opportunities for outdoor learning and play. Studies now show that connecting students to the environment improves not only their physical well-being, but also their social and educational aptitude. A 2006 Canadian study (Dyment, Bell, & Lucas, 2009), for instance, found that students who interact on school grounds with diverse natural settings were more physically active, more creative, more aware of nutrition, and more cooperative with one another.
Natural Materials, Niches, and Paths According to McAndrew (1993 ; cf. Flade, 1998; Weinstein & Pinciotti, 1988; Lindholm, 1995; Forster & Rittelmeyer, 2010), schoolyards and playgrounds can be viewed as learning environments where children learn about social skills and cognitive abilities. How does a playground need to look to provide students with the necessary intellectual stimulation? It should contain various niches that stimulate all the senses and are connected by paths. Additionally, schoolyards and playgrounds that are loosely structured, for example, adventure playgrounds with mountains of tires, stimulate children’s creativity. Moore (1989) proposed integrating nature and natural materials. An especially suitable material is wood with rounded edges and corners. Another possibility for improving schoolyards and playgrounds is the introduction of safe entrances and exits to create a meeting place for children and adults and thus creating possibilities for social contact. In this way, delinquency can be better controlled.
High-Performance Schools One proposed solution to the problems facing school facilities is to design and construct high-performance schools. The terms “high performance,” “sustainable,” and “green” are used to describe schools that minimize environmental harm, maximize the performance of facilities, cost less over the life of the building, and create educational environments that are optimal for learning (Gelfan & Freed, 2010). Although these terms do not necessarily have the same meaning, practitioners often use them interchangeably and define them similarly. These terms will also be used interchangeably in this paper to reflect the wording of the authors being cited. School systems in the United States are struggling to build new schools and renovate aging ones to accommodate increasing enrollments and new technologies. Given the high cost of new construction as well as the costs of operating, maintaining, and retrofitting the current, declining building stock, many school systems are recognizing the benefits of high-performance schools. High-performance schools, also called green or sustainable schools, are designed, constructed, and maintained to be resource-efficient, healthy, comfortable, safe, secure, adaptable, and easy to operate and maintain. They cost less to operate and create environments that enhance learning. Additionally, high-performance schools reduce adverse impacts resulting from the construction and operation of built facilities on the natural environment. For example, preserving natural vegetation reduces overall disturbance to the site. And designing to reduce impervious surfaces mitigates storm-water runoff caused by construction and protects the hydrologic functions of the site.
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School Environments Given the level of interaction between people and their environments and other confounding factors, establishing cause-and-effect relationships between an attribute of a school building and its effect on students, teachers, and staff is difficult. The effects of the built environment will necessarily appear to be small, given the number of variables (Bosch, 2004). Empirical measures do not, however, necessarily capture all relevant considerations that should be applied when evaluating research results. Qualitative aspects of the environment are also important. However, there is value in attempting to identify design features and building processes and practices that may lead to improvements in learning, health, and productivity for students, teachers, and other school staff, even if empirical results are less than robust.
Design Guides As school systems seek to improve the performance of their facilities and reduce costs, they are relying on (or creating) a variety of guides to assist them with design, construction, and operation/maintenance. These documents are often region-specific and reflect the priorities of the authoring agency, but they may also be appropriate for other regions and used by school systems across the country. Intended to educate stakeholders about the concepts of high-performance facilities, these documents are important vehicles for implementing research in sustainability, school design, environment and behavior, and related fields. However, to date, there have been no reviews of the guidance documents to examine their focus and content. (p. 286) Without a doubt, those involved with the development of these guidance documents have reviewed similar documents when developing their guides; however, this information has not been published. Also, these reviews were conducted for the purpose of developing a guidance document, rather than for identifying additional opportunities for providing information to stakeholders (Bosch, 2003). A consortium of state and utility leaders in California launched an effort in 2001 to develop energy and environmental standards specifically for schools. The Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS, often pronounced “chips”) aims to increase the energy efficiency of California schools by marketing information, services, and incentive programs directly to school districts and designers. The CHPS website defines green schools as having the following 13 attributes: “healthy, comfortable, energy efficient, material efficient, water efficient, easy to maintain and operate, commissioned, environmentally responsive site, a building that teaches, safe and secure, community resource, stimulating architecture, and adaptable to changing needs” (CHPS, 2005). Green school objectives are to be achieved through guidelines that are similar to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system but specifically geared to schools. Green school guidelines move well beyond design and engineering criteria for the buildings themselves, addressing land use, processes for construction and equipment installation, and operation and maintenance practices. They include design and engineering techniques to meet specific objectives: • Locating schools near public transportation to reduce pollution and land development impacts • Placing a building on a site so as to minimize its environmental impact and make the most of available natural light and solar gain • Designing irrigation systems and indoor plumbing systems to conserve water • Designing energy and lighting systems to conserve fossil fuels and maximize the use of renewable resources • Selecting materials that are nontoxic, biodegradable, and easily recycled and that minimize the impacts on landfills and otherwise reduce waste • Creating an indoor environment that provides occupants with a comfortable temperature, and good air quality, lighting, and acoustics Green school guidelines also recommend construction techniques to meet objectives such as the appropriate storage of materials on construction sites to avoid water damage, the reduction of waste materials and appropriate disposal to reduce resource depletion, and the introduction of commissioning practices to ensure the performance of building systems (US Green Building Council, 2007).
Effects of Green Schools on Health and Performance There are no well-designed, evidence-based studies concerning the overall effects of green schools on the health
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School Environments or development of students and teachers, in part because the concept of green schools is quite new. There are, however, studies that examine specific building features often emphasized in green school design and the effects of these components on health and learning (National Research Council, 2007). Evidence-based design is a field of study that emphasizes the importance of using credible data to influence the design process. The approach has become popular in health-care architecture in an effort to improve patient and staff well-being, patient healing process, stress reduction, and safety. School districts do not typically pursue high-performance design merely to be good stewards of the natural environment. There is convincing evidence of multiple benefits from using high-performance, green design, such as an association between excess moisture, dampness, and mold in buildings and adverse health outcomes, particularly asthma and respiratory symptoms, among children and adults (Lstiburek & Carmody, 1994). Sufficient scientific evidence exists to conclude that there is an inverse association between excessive noise levels in schools and student learning (National Research Council, 2007). The impacts of excessive noise vary according to the age of students, because the ability to focus on speech sounds is a developmental skill that does not mature until about the ages of 13 to 15. Thus, younger children require quieter and less reverberant conditions than do adults who hear equally well. As adults, teachers may not appreciate the additional problems that excessive noise creates for younger students (Picard & Bradley, 2001). Human perception of the thermal environment depends on four parameters: air temperature, radiant temperature, relative humidity, and air speed (Kwok, 2000). Perception is modified by personal metabolic rates and the insulation value of clothing. Thermal comfort standards are essentially based on a set of air and radiant temperatures and relative humidity levels that will satisfy at least 80% of the (p. 287) occupants at specified metabolic rates and clothing values. There is a literature on the effects of temperature and humidity on occupant comfort and productivity, primarily from studies in office buildings (Fanger, 2000; Seppännen & Fisk, 2005; Wyon, 2004; Wang et al., 2005). These studies show that productivity declines if temperatures go too high (Federspiel et al., 2004). The temperature, airflow, and humidity of a classroom will affect the quality of work produced by students. It is agreed among researchers that a classroom with a temperature above 80 degrees Fahrenheit is a very poor environment for learning. When a classroom is too warm, it induces drowsiness and fatigue, increases respiration, and creates conditions favorable to disease. When the human body is fighting to stay alert and is uncomfortable, it is not concentrating on the academic work at hand. Students make “greater gains in academic achievement in climate controlled schools as opposed to those students in non–climate controlled schools” (Jago & Tanner, 1999, 2005). However, there is a paucity of studies investigating the relationship between room temperatures in schools and occupant comfort or productivity (Mendell & Heath, 2004). Between 1999 and 2003, the Heschong-Mahone Group conducted several studies investigating the effect of daylighting on student performance (National Research Council, 2007). In the 1999 study, data were obtained from three elementary school districts located in Orange County, California; Seattle, Washington; and Fort Collins, Colorado (Heschong-Mahone, 1999). The study looked for a correlation between the amount of daylight provided by each student’s classroom environment and test scores. Close examinations of the findings indicate a very small effect and one that cannot be justified as reliable (Boyce, 2004). These results could not be replicated in a subsequent study. Among the authors’ conclusions of more detailed statistical analysis were that sources of glare negatively affect student learning; direct sun penetration into classrooms, especially through unshaded sun-facing windows, is associated with negative student performance, likely causing both glare and thermal discomfort; blinds or curtains allow teachers to control the intermittent sources of glare or visual distraction through their windows; when teachers do not have control of their windows, student performance is negatively affected (HeschongMahone, 2003, p. ix). They summarized that characteristics describing windows were generally quite stable in their association with better or worse student performance. Variables describing a better view out of windows always entered the equations as positive and highly significant, while variables describing glare, sun penetration, and lack of visual control always entered the models as negative. (Heschong-Mahone, 2003, p. viii) Classroom lighting and thermal comfort are commonly cited by teachers as determinants of their own morale and the engagement of their students (Corcoran, Walker, & White, 1988; Jago & Tanner, 1999). Lemasters (1997) identified 53 studies that linked design features to student achievement.
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School Environments School systems, like other public and private organizations, are becoming increasingly aware that design and construction strategies that reduce harmful impacts on the natural environment also contribute to creating a more productive and economically feasible facility. Case studies of schools provide evidence of these benefits. In this day of increasing school enrollment and tight construction budgets, cost savings are often used to justify highperformance design. The Sustainable Building Industry Council estimates that school districts can achieve 30–40% savings on utilities if sustainable design and construction practices are utilized for new schools. In addition to cost savings, high-performance strategies such as daylighting, improved thermal comfort, better indoor air quality, and increased interaction with the natural environment are believed to enhance learning, provide a valuable community resource, and minimize adverse impacts on the environment. Those who pursue highperformance design and construction have common goals, such as environmental protection, eco-education, and superior building performance. “Ecologically friendly” is considered one of the top 10 design and planning solutions for school facilities today (Kennedy, 2003). Principles of sustainable design are incorporated to teach resource conservation, reduce resource use, and to enhance the learning environment.
School Trends School facilities are powerful indicators of community values and aspirations. They not only support the academic needs of students they serve, but can also address the social, educational, recreational, and personal needs of the members of the broader community. It has been argued that successful schools strengthen a community’s sense of identity and coherence. Educational reform, however, has focused primarily on what is taught, and how it is taught. As (p. 288) a result, curricula have been strengthened, instructional strategies improved, and instructional materials updated. However, what has received too little attention is the physical environment in which education occurs. School systems find that parents are much more discerning about which school their child will attend, including the physical appearance of the school and the amount of modern technology available. In addition, school systems have discovered that schools with “sick” internal physical environments are shunned by prospective teachers and parents alike (Stevenson, 2006). Widespread misconceptions reinforce the view that the quality of school building has no impact on academic performance. Consequently, a gap exists between the educators’ view of improving quality and the process of planning schools. It is also becoming more evident that students function best in different educational settings according to their abilities; consequently, identical schools in terms of facilities do not equate with equal opportunity for students. School systems in the United States are offering parents and children more choices about the school a child attends. The one-size-fits-all approach is gradually disappearing and may give way to smaller and more diverse learning environments that give parents and students more choices and options about what, where, and how they learn. Therefore, the focus is shifting away from district-wide planning that provides equality of school facilities toward plans that meet the unique program needs of each school (Stevenson, 2002). And as parents have more choices about where to send their children, it follows that they demand schools that are personalized and fit their needs. Very different scenarios may affect what spaces will be included in future building designs (Butin, 2000). One view of the future suggests that standard academic classrooms will disappear. In their place, specialized labs and learning centers will become the norm (Lackney, 1999, 2009). Those with this vision maintain that separating learning into academics, arts, vocational, and the like is a false dichotomy (Chan, 1996). Instead, they view learning as holistic with, for example, art incorporated into language arts or math taught with specific job skills or vocations in mind. In this scenario, classrooms must be multipurpose, allowing a blending of traditional instruction with meaningful and diverse hands-on, lab-type experiences that may include anything from pottery making to dramatic arts. This idea of personalized learning environments, which has generated immense interest in the design of classroom clusters, house plans, and school-within-school settings, has magnified the role student commons can play in a school’s overall design, serving as a hub for an academic wing or providing a space for alternative teaching strategies. Another scenario sees the development of more shared school facilities. In this view, future schools will be created or redesigned so that instructional and support spaces can also be used by social and community organizations or
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School Environments even businesses. Schools as community learning centers have been supported by research documenting the importance of active parental involvement, the growing importance of lifelong learning, and recognition that communities have many assets to offer that are themselves important learning tools. This awareness presents an opportunity to reconsider what constitutes an appropriate learning environment and to identify those factors that can enhance student achievement. Sharing instructional and support facilities is expected to be beneficial to both the school and the community. In such settings, students have access to a wide array of community and business expertise that can bring the curriculum to life—and those who do not normally have access to school facilities find that the facilities better justify the money spent upon them. In any of the scenarios, school facilities would be different from what exists today. The key to successful planning is to provide the most flexible and adaptable spaces possible in our schools. The previous trends suggest how school facilities may be different in the future. Though the possibility may be remote, another scenario exists: schools as we know them will disappear (Northwest Educational Technology Consortium, 2002). If one thinks about the combination of the rapid development of technology and the increasing lack of confidence parents have in public education, the disappearance of the brick-and-mortar structure called school is possible. The child has access to lessons prepared by the most knowledgeable professionals in the world and can interact electronically with teachers and students in other countries as part of language, geography, or political studies instruction. Parents who homeschool increasingly use technology to access instructional materials. Students in remote areas of Canada and Australia, hundreds of miles from a school building, attend school by logging on to their computers. Technology allows a high school student in a rural location to take a course online from a teacher in another town. The question, perhaps, is not whether it is possible that schools will cease to exist, but how virtual (p. 289) schools will grow and to what extent. No one knows, but it raises some interesting issues about how much to invest in physical structures, what kind of life expectancy they should have, and whether the future emphasis needs to be on schools as traditional learning environments or schools as production and broadcast centers. It also raises a question about the fundamental purpose of schooling. If technology consumes much of the instructional delivery of the future, who or what will assume responsibility for the socialization process that schools have traditionally been held accountable for? Another new element to consider in school design is the reality that there are more active participants who want a voice in how new school facilities are designed. Community-based groups, municipal agencies, and universities are just a few of the groups in the past decade that have voiced their ideas. This activism has led to a greater need for authentic citizen engagement and growing acceptance of shared space and public-private partnerships. In the coming decade educators and facility planners may increasingly be thinking about the needs of preschool children and senior citizens. In this new era of lifelong learning, educators and architects will have to expand their vision of who uses these facilities and be keenly aware of changing demographics. It may be necessary to move away from the traditional emphasis of creating facilities for seniors only and consider approaches that let the generations mingle to keep retirees active and current (Sullivan, 2002). Schools can achieve more innovative approaches to learning by creating learning environments in nontraditional settings, such as museums and shopping malls, as well as by encompassing community needs (Nathan & Thao, 2007).
Conclusion: Schools of the Future In a qualitative study, which Walden and Borrelbach (2010) reported on, architects from six innovative schools answered interview questions about “schools of the future.” Intelligently designed schools should offer their users opportunities to make changes to the environment in response to their own degree of excitement, stress, and fatigue, since the users are experts regarding their own needs (cf. Linneweber, 1993). Innovative school buildings around the world were described in a work by Walden (2009). A team of authors from the United States, Japan, and Germany evaluated 23 trend-setting school buildings from 11 countries and 5 continents and organized certain characteristics of the schools into a model for evaluating school buildings. The following should be avoided with regard to schools in the future (Walden, 2009): • Buildings that are too large and lead to anonymity
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School Environments
• A lack of protection against delinquency, accidents, and violence due to insufficient visibility for supervisory staff and unsafe paths, stairs, and playground equipment • Buildings that are too small and allow little space for project groups because of a lack of specialty rooms • An overly narrow connection between the main entrance and the classrooms • Wasted energy due to drafty and poorly insulated buildings • Dark hallways and rooms that require artificial lighting • Low ceilings • Classrooms that are too small or have insufficient learning materials for students • Designing classrooms while considering only a few learning methods, such as presentations and testing knowledge • Too few or low-quality public facilities for teachers and students (technical equipment, ergonomic furniture, noise), too few rooms for administration, or rooms that are too small • Ineffective sound insulation • No wheelchair accessible facilities for people with disabilities (lacking elevators, ramps, handrails, electric door openers, etc.) • Poor building maintenance, which leads to an increase in vandalism • General lack of cleanliness, due to materials that are difficult to clean, and insufficient waste collection Numerous physical factors have contributed to student and teacher dissatisfaction with the school environment. School appearance, whether the result of poor design or lack of proper maintenance, is a contributing factor to student motivation and teacher performance. Schools of the future should consider (Walden, 2009): • The right of all users to take part in decision-making • The importance of a clear orientation that begins at the entrance (p. 290) • The use of the building by community members outside of class time • The appropriateness of the space design for and the various teaching and learning methods, such as handson project-based learning, team teaching and learning, presentations, and small-group lessons, using common designs, such as large classrooms and relaxation rooms • Division into reasonable units (schoolhouses) within the school complex, each grade with up to 160 students and organized into small numbers of students per class • The introduction of learning studios, suites, and communities for as many as 150 to 160 students of different age ranges; the encouragement of social and emotional learning (Lackney, 2009) • The use of modern information technology; LAN, WLAN Internet connections in all areas of the school along with the promotion of face-to-face social contact and flexible, individual learning areas for self-guided learning, (covered) outdoor classrooms • The use of environmentally friendly, sustainable, low-maintenance, and durable building materials • The opportunity to personally regulate environmental stress factors (lighting, darkness, glare, ventilation, heat, sunshine, protection from rain, acoustics, noise, etc.) and to use sensorial technology • The importance of natural, glare-free lighting • The flexibility and multifunctional nature of rooms • A setup of classrooms and hallways that offers opportunities for privacy • The importance of providing privacy for teachers (separated and spacious teacher areas; group office rooms especially for all-day lessons) • The importance of being able to have experiences with all senses (cf. Kükelhaus & zur Lippe, 1992) In contrast to the one-size-fits-all approach to school design, schools of the future need to provide formal as well as informal places for learning. Clearly not all learning occurs in the classroom. Opportunities for peer interaction
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School Environments constitute an important aspect of informal learning. Similarly, the design process needs to be more inclusive, providing opportunities for the participation of students, teachers, and parents. In the meantime, the building of schools is being addressed by various authors, who all establish a connection to the process of learning to competently contribute to future innovation and sustainability in the interaction with the built environment (Wüstenrot-Stiftung, 2004; Buddensiek, 2001; Engel & Dahlmann, 2001; Kroner, 1994; Rittelmeyer, 2009; Schavan, 2001; Watschinger & Kühebacher, 2007; Wüstenrot-Stiftung, 2004; cf. for the AngloAmerican room: Dudek, 2000, 2007; Gifford, 2007; Sanoff, 1994, 2002; Tanner & Lackney, 2006).
Future Directions Decisions about school facilities tend to be made by a few people who are not themselves building users. Involving a building committee does not by itself always solve the problem of gaining school-wide support. Future efforts need to focus on methods of involving a full range of stakeholders in the design and planning process. Similarly, school building performance from the occupants’ perspective continues to be a neglected ingredient in the building process. The improvement of the research instruments used, specifically the system to assess the quality of school buildings, remains a constant research challenge. There are isolated examples of school designs that support personalized, self-directed learning, such as variableand flexible-size space, and individual work spaces, as well as spaces for collaboration. However, they do not reflect the mainstream of school designs, which are guided by traditional specifications. The gap between how children learn and the places that support this learning needs to be carefully examined, particularly since school buildings today are constructed to support many future generations of children.
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School Environments student achievement, and student behavior. Scottsdale, AZ: Council of Educational Facility Planners International. Eckman, J. M., & Howley, C. B. (1997). Sustainable small schools. Charleston, WV: ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools. Edwards, C., Gandini, L., & Forman, G. (1998). The hundred languages of children. The Reggio Emilia approach advanced reflections. CT: Ablex. Engel, O., & Dahlmann, Y. (2001). Pädagogische Architektur. Wege zu einer menschenwürdigen Schulgestaltung. Abschlussarbeit an der Heilpädagogischen Fakultät der Universität Köln: Seminar für Sozialpädagogik. Fanger, P. O. (2000). Indoor air quality in the 21st century: The search for excellence. Indoor Air, 10, 68–73. FFC. (2001). Learning from our buildings: A state-of-the-practice summary of post-occupancy evaluation. Federal Facilities Council Technical Report No. 145. Washington, DC: Federal Facilities Council. Federspiel, C. C., Fisk, W. J., Price, P. N., Liu, G., Faulkner, D.,…Lahiff, M. (2004). Worker performance and ventilation in a call center: Analyses of work performance data for registered nurses. Indoor Air, 14(Suppl. 8), 41– 50. Fisher, D. L., & Fraser, D. J. (1983). Validity and use of the classroom environment scale. Educational Evaluation & Policy Analysis, 5, 261–271. Fjortoft I (2004). Landscape as Playscape: The Effects of Natural Environments on Children’s Play and Motor Development. Children, Youth and Environments, 14 (2), 21–44. Fjortoft, I., & Sageie, J. (1999). The natural environment as a playground for children: Landscape description and analyses of a natural playscape. Landscape and Urban Planning, 48, 83–97. Flade, A. (1998). Evaluation eines innerstädtischen Schulhofs. In F. Dieckmann, A. Flade, R. Schuemer, G. Ströhlein, & R. Walden (Eds.), Psychologie und gebaute Umwelt (pp. 243–247). Darmstadt, Germany: IWU. Forster, J., & Rittelmeyer, C. (2010). Gestaltung von Schulbauten. Ein Diskussionsbeitrag aus erziehungswissenschaftlicher Sicht [Design of school buildings: A contribution to the discussion from a pedagogical perspective]. Zurich, Switzerland: Education Authority. Fowler, W., & Walberg, H. J. (1991). School size, characteristics, and outcomes. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 13, 189–202. Fraser, D. L., Anderson, G. J., & Walberg, H. J. (1982). Assessment of learning environments: Manual for learning (p. 292) environment inventory (LEI) and my class inventory. Bentley, Australia: Western Australian Institute of Technology. Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. Gelfan, L., & Freed, E. (2010). Sustainable school architecture: Design for primary and secondary schools. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Gifford, R. (2007). Environmental psychology: Principles and practice (4th ed.). Colville, WA: Optimal Books. Glass, G. V., Cahen, L. S., Smith, M. L., & Filby, N. N. (1982). School class size: Research and policy. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Goldstein, A. P. (1996). The psychology of vandalism. New York: Plenum. Grosvenor, I., Lawn, M., & Rousmaniere, K. (1999). Silences and image: The social history of the classroom. New York: Peter Lang. Gump, P. V. (1978). School environments. In I. Altman & J. F. Wohlwill (Eds.), Children and the environment (pp. 131–174). New York: Plenum.
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School Environments Gump, P. V. (1991). School and classroom environments. In D. Stokols & I. Altman (Eds.), Handbook of environmental psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 691–732). New York: Wiley. Halstead, H. (1992, October). Designing facilities for a new generation of schools. Educational Technology, 32(10) 46–48. Helmke, A., & Weinert, F. E. (1997). Bedingungsfaktoren schulischer Leistungen. In F.E. Weinert (Ed.), Enzyklopädie der Psychologie, Themenbereich D: Praxisgebiete, Serie I: Pädagogische Psychologie, Band 3: Psychologie des Unterrichts und der Schule (pp. 71–176). Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe. Heschong-Mahone Group. (1999). Daylighting in schools: An investigation into the relationship between daylighting and human performance. Fair Oaks, CA: Heschong-Mahone Group. Heschong-Mahone Group. (2003). Windows and classrooms: A study of student performance and the indoor environment. P500–03–082-A-7. Fair Oaks, CA: Heschong-Mahone Group. Hillmann, R. B., Brooks, C. I., & O’Brien, J. P. (1991). Differences in self-esteem of college freshmen as a function of classroom seating-row preference. Psychological Record, 41, 315–320. Horne, S. C. (2000). The children/youth environment and its effects on the practice of teachers. Proceedings of the 31st EDRA conference: Building Bridges: Connecting People, Research, and Design. EDRA: San Francisco, CA. Jacobs, E. (1999). Cooperative learning: An educational innovation in everyday classrooms. Albany: State University of New York Press. Jago, E., & Tanner, K. (1999). Influence of the school facility on student achievement: Thermal environment. Athens: University of Georgia. Retrieved from www.coe.uga.edu/sdpl/researchabstracts/thermal.html. Jago, E., & Tanner, K. (2005). Influence of the school facility on student achievement. Athens: University of Georgia. Kennedy, M. (2003). History in the making. American School & University, 75, 1–10. Klockhaus, R., & Habermann-Morbey, B. (1986). Psychologie des Schulvandalismus. Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe. Krebs, A. H. (1982). Critical points in problem solving. Journal of Agricultural Education, 54(10), 5–7. Kroner, W. (1994). Architecture for children. Better: Karl Krämer Verlag: Stuttgart. Kükelhaus, H., & Lippe, R. zur (1992). Entfaltung der Sinne. Ein “Erfahrungsfeld” zur Bewegung und Besinnung (2nd ed.). Frankfurt, Germany: Fischer alternativ Taschenbuch 4065. Kwok, A. G. (2000). Thermal comfort concepts and guidelines. In J. D. Spengler, J. M. Samet, & J. F. McCarthy (Eds.), Indoor air quality handbook (15.1–15.13). New York: McGraw-Hill. Lackney, J. A. (1999). Reading a school building like a book: The influence of the physical school setting on learning and literacy. Jackson: Educational Design Institute, Mississippi State University. Lackney, J. A. (2000). Thirty-three educational design principles for schools and community learning centers. Jackson: Educational Design Institute, Mississippi State University. Lackney, J. A. (2009). A design language for schools and learning communities. In R. Walden (Ed.), Schools for the future: Design proposals from architectural psychology (pp. 155–168). Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe & Huber. Lee, V. E., & Smith, J. B. (1995). Effects of high school restructuring and size on early gains in achievement and engagement. Sociology of Education, 68(4), 241–270. Lemasters, L. (1997). A synthesis of studies pertaining to facilities, student achievement, and student behavior. Blacksburg: University of Virginia, Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Center.
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School Environments Lemke, M., Calsyn, C., Lippman, L., Jocelyn, L., Kastberg, D.,…Bairu, G. (2001). Highlights from the 2000 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). OECD, Retrieved from . http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2002116 Levin, J., & Nolan, J. F. (2000). Principles of classroom management. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Lindholm, G. (1995). Schoolyards: The significance of place properties to outdoor activities in schools. Environment and Behavior, 27, 259–293. Linneweber, V. (1993). Wer sind die Experten?—“User needs analysis” (UNA), “post occupancy evaluation” (POE), und Städtebau aus sozial- und umweltpsychologischer Perspektive. In H. J. Harloff (Ed.), Psychologie des Wohnungs- und Siedlungsbaus: Psychologie im Dienste von Architektur und Stadtplanung (pp. 75–85). Gottingen, Stuttgart: Verlag fur Angewandte Psychologie. Linneweber, V. (1996). Lernumwelt: Schule. In L. Kruse, C. F. Graumann, & E. D. Lantermann (Eds.), Ökologische Psychologie (pp. 383–388). München, Germany: PVU. Linneweber, V., Mummendey, A., Bornewasser, M., & Löschper, G. (1984). Classification of situations specific to field and behavior: The context of aggressive interactions in schools. European Journal of Social Psychology, 14, 281–295. Louv, R. (2008). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin. Lstiburek, J., & Carmody, J. (1994). The moisture control handbook: Principles and practices for residential and small commercial buildings. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Mahnke, F. (1996). Color and the human response. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Malaguzzi, Loris. (1984).. L’occhio se salt ail muro. Catalog of the Exhibit. Regione di Emilia Romagna: Comune di Reggio Emilia, Assesserato Istruzione. Marx, A., Fuhrer, U., & Hartig, T. (1999). Effects of classroom seating arrangements on children’s question-asking. Learning Environments Research, 2(3), 249–263. (p. 293) McAndrew, F. T. (1993). Environmental psychology. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole. McAndrews, T., & Anderson, W. (2002). Schools within schools. ERIC Digest 154. College of Education, Eugene, University of Oregon, Clearinghouse on Educational Management. McGuffey, C. (1982). Facilities. In H. J. Walberg (Ed.), Improving educational standards and productivity (pp. 237– 288). Berkeley, CA: McCutchan. McMullan, B. J., Sipe, C. L., & Wolf, W. C. (1994). Charters and student achievement: Early evidence from school restructuring in Philadelphia. Bala Cynwyd, PA: Center for Assessment and Policy Development. Mendell, M. J., & Heath, G.A. (2004). Do indoor pollutants and thermal conditions in schools influence student performance? A critical review of the literature. Indoor Air, 15, 27–52. Montessori, M. (1988). The Montessori Method. New York: Random House. Moore, R. (1989). Playgrounds at the crossroads. In I. Altman & E. Zube (Eds), Public spaces and places. New York: Plenum. Moos, R. F. (1979). Evaluating education environments. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Nathan, J., and Thao, S. (2007). Smaller, safer, saner, successful schools. Minneapolis, MN: Center for School Change. Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. National Research Council. (2007). Green schools: Attributes for health and learning. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
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School Environments Northwest Educational Technology Consortium. (2002). Virtual schools: What do educational leaders need to know? Paper presented at the 2002 NCCE Conference, Seattle, WA. OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). (2004). Learning for tomorrow’s world: First results from PISA 2004. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/1/60/34002216.pdf Oelkers, J. (1996). Reformpädagogik: Eine kritische Dogmengeschichte [Reform pedagogy: A critical history of dogma]. Weinheim, Germany: Juventa. Oliver, C., & Lippman, P. C. (2007). Examining space and place in learning environments. Paper presented at the CONNECTED International Conference on Design Education, July 9–12, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Pablant, P., & Baxter, J. C. (1996). Environmental correlates of school vandalism. In A. P. Goldstein (Ed.), The psychology of vandalism (pp. 213–233). New York: Plenum. Journal of the American Institute of Planners. 1975, 41, 270–279. Pasalar, C. (2003). The effects of spatial layouts on students’ interactions in middle schools. doctoral dissertation. Retrieved from http://www2.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/record/NCSU1698934 Petersen, P. (1927). Der Jena- Plan einer freien allgemeinen Volksschule [The Jena Plan for a free common elementary school]. Weinheim, Germany: Beltz. Petersen, P. (1930–1934). Der große Jena- Plan. Schulleben und Unterricht einer freien Volksschule. Das gestaltende Schaffen. Die Praxis der Schulen nach dem Jena- Plan [The Greater Jena Plan: Life and instruction in a free elementary school: Creative activity: The practice of schools according to the Jena Plan]. Weinheim, Germany: Beltz. Picard, M., & Bradley, J. S. (2001). Revisiting speech interference in classrooms. Audiology, 40, 221–244. Pittman, R. B., & Haoghwout, P. (1987). Influence of high school size on dropout rate. Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 9(4), 337–343. Raywid, M. A. (1999). Current literature on small schools. Charleston, WV: ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools. Rieselbach, A. (1992). Building and learning. In Architectural League (Eds.), New schools for New York: Plans and precedents for small schools. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Rittelmeyer, C. (1994). Schulbauten positiv gestalten. Wie Schüler Farben und Formen erleben. Wiesbaden, Germany: Bauverlag. Rittelmeyer, C. (2004). Zur Rhetorik von Schulbauten. Über die schülergerechte Gestaltung des architektonischen Ausdrucks. Die Deutsche Schule, 96(2), 201–208. Rittelmeyer, C. (2009). Schule als gestalteter Raum: Schularchitektur. In S. Hellekamps, W. Plöger, & W. Wittenbruch (Eds.), Handbuch Schule (pp. 505–511). Paderborn, Germany: Schöningh. Robson, E. R. (1972). School architecture. Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press. Rothman, D. J. (1980). From conscience to convenience: The asylum and its alternatives in progressive America. Boston, MA: Little, Brown. Sanoff, H. (1994). School design. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Sanoff, H. (2001). A visioning process for designing responsive schools. Washington, DC: National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities. Sanoff, H. (2002). Schools designed with community participation. Washington, DC: National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities.
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School Environments Sanoff, H. (2009). Schools designed with community participation. In R. Walden (Ed.), Schools for the future: Design proposals from architectural psychology (pp. 123–142). Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe & Huber. Schavan, A. (2001). Schulen in Baden-Württemberg. Moderne und historische Bauten zwischen Rhein, Neckar und Bodensee. Stuttgart, Germany: Hohenheim Verlag. Scheibe, W. (1999). Die reformpädagogische Bewegung 1900–1932. Eine einführende Darstellung [The reform pedagogy movement 1900–1932: An introduction]. Weinheim, Germany: Beltz. Schmittmann, R. (1985). Architektur als Partner für Lehren und Lernen. Eine handlungstheoretisch orientierte Evaluationsstudie am Großraum der Laborschule Bielefeld. Frankfurt, Germany: Lang. Schnabel, K. (2001). Psychologie der Lernumwelt. In A. Krapp & B. Weidenmann (Eds.), Pädagogische Psychologie. Ein Lehrbuch (4th ed., pp. 467–511). Weinheim, Germany: Beltz/PVU. Schoggen, P. (1989). Behavior settings: A revision and extension of Roger G. Barker’s ecological psychology. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Seppänen, O., & Fisk, W. J. (2005). Control of temperature for health and productivity in offices. ASHRAE Transactions, 111, 680–686. Silberman, C. E. (1973). The open classroom reader. New York: Vintage Books. Skinner, E. A., & Belmont, M. J. (1993). Motivation in the classroom: Reciprocal effects of teacher behavior and student engagement across the school year. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85(4), 571–581. Sommer, R., & Olsen, H. (1980). The soft classroom. Environment and Behavior, 12, 3–16. Stevenson, K. R. (2002). Ten educational trends shaping school planning and design. Washington, DC: National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities. (p. 294) Stevenson, K. R. (2006). Educational facilities within the context of a changing 21st-century America. Washington, DC: National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities. Stockard, J., & Mayberry, M. (1992). Effective educational environments. Newbury Park, CA: ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 350 674. Ströhlein, G. (1998). Beiträge zur Evaluation schulischer Umwelten. In F. Dieckmann, A. Flade, R. Schuemer, G. Ströhlein, & R. Walden (Eds.), Psychologie und gebaute Umwelt (pp. 178–181). Darmstadt, Germany: IWU. Sullivan, K. (2002). Catching the age wave: Building schools with senior citizens in mind. Washington, DC: National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities. Tanner, C. K. (1999). The school design assessment scale: Validity, reliability, and weights. Paper presented at CEFPI Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD. Tanner, C. K., & J. Lackney. (2006). Educational architecture: Planning, designing, constructing, and managing environments for learning. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Taylor, A. P. (1975). School zone: Learning environments for children. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company. Trump, J. L. (1959). Images of the future: A new approach to the secondary school. Washington, DC: National Association of Secondary School Principals. US Green Building Council. (2007). LEED for schools. Green School Buildings website. http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=1586 Uline, C. L., Tschannen-Moran, M., & Wolsey, T. D. (2008). The walls speak: The interplay of quality facilities, school climate, and student achievement. Journal of Educational Administration, 46(1), 55–73.
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School Environments Walden, R. (Ed.). (2009). Schools for the future: Design proposals from architectural psychology. (T. Mann, Trans.). Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe & Huber. Walden, R. (2010). Kap. 6: Lernumwelten. In V. Linneweber, E.-D. Lantermann & E. Kals (Hrsg.): Spezifische Umwelten und umweltbezogenes Handeln die der Psychologie (Reihe: Enzyklopädie der Psychologie; Themenbereich C, Theorie und Forschung; Serie IX Umweltpsychologie, Bd. 2; Teil II: Umwelten und ihre Nutzer: kleinräumige Umwelten) (herausgegeben von N. Birbaumer et al.) (S. 151–186). Göttingen: Hogrefe. Walden, R., & Borrelbach, S. (2010). Schulen der Zukunft. Gestaltungsvorschläge der Architekturpsychologie (6th ed.). Heidelberg, Germany: Asanger. Wang, D., Federspiel, C. C., & Arens, E. (2005). Correlation between temperature satisfaction and unsolicited complaint rates in commercial buildings. Indoor Air, 15, 13–18. Wasley, P. A., Fine, M., Gladden, M., Holland, N. E., King, S. P.,…Powell, L. C. (2000). Small schools: Great strides. New York: Bank Street College of Education. Watschinger, J., & Kühebacher, J. (Eds.) (2007), Schularchitektur und neue Lernkultur. Neues Lernen—Neue Räume. Bern, Switzerland: h.e.p. verlag ag/Ott Verlag. Weinstein, C. S. (1979). The physical environment of the school: A review of the research. Review of Educational Research, 49, 577–610. Weinstein, C. S., & Pinciotti, P. (1988). Changing the schoolyard: Intentions, design decisions, and behavioral outcomes. Environment and Behavior, 20(3), 345–371. Weiss, A. (2007), Creating the ubiquitous classroom: Integrating physical and virtual learning spaces. International Journal of Learning, 14(3). 77–84. Wohlfarth, H. H. (1985). The effects of color-psychodynamic environmental color and lighting modification of elementary schools on blood pressure and mood: A controlled study. International Journal for Biosocial Research, 7(1), 9–16. Wolfe, M., & Rivlin, L. G. (1987). The institutions in children’s lives. In C. S. Weinstein & T. G. David (Eds.), Spaces for children: The built environment and child development. New York: Plenum. Wright, R. J. (1975). The affective and cognitive consequences of an open education elementary school. American Educational Research Journal, 12, 449–468. Wüstenrot-Stiftung, H. (Ed.). (2004). Schulen in Deutschland: Neubau und Revitalisierung. Stuttgart, Germany: Krämer. Wyon, D. P. (2004). The effects of indoor air quality on performance and productivity. Indoor Air, 14(7), 92–101. Yanagisawa, K. (2009). Trends in the design and planning of schools from the viewpoint of information technology and communication. In R. Walden (Ed.), Schools for the future: Design proposals from architectural psychology (pp. 143–154). Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe & Huber. Henry Sanoff Henry Sanoff College of Design North Carolina State University Raleigh, NC
Rotraut Walden Rotraut Walden Institute for Psychology University in Koblenz Koblenz, Germany
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Health Care Environments
Oxford Handbooks Online Health Care Environments Ferdinando Fornara and Cláudia Campos Andrade The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology, Health Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0016
Abstract and Keywords This chapter addresses the influence of design dimensions on users’ responses in health care environments. The need of a user-centered design based on rigorous empirical evidence is outlined, so that health care services can take full advantage of the environment as an important contributor for the therapeutic processes. Accordingly, we advocate the shift to more humanized health care places by relying on evidence-based design. A theoretical framework based on the multi-place approach is presented to provide a conceptual lens for better investigating the multifaceted nature of hospitals, which include different spaces, physical features, functions, environmental roles (patients, caregivers, visitors), behaviors, and representations. Current research trends witness a growing interest toward this topic, though, despite the increased number of studies, there is yet need of rigorous and systematic research proving the importance of health care design aspects on people’s well-being. Finally, future directions for research are suggested. Keywords: health care design, user-centered design, humanization, evidence-based design, multi-place, systemic view, patients, caregivers, hospital visitors
Introduction This chapter concerns the influence of the environmental dimensions of spatial-physical nature on the psychological and behavioral responses expressed by the users of health care environments. We will often use the words “hospital” or “hospital units” with reference to health care environments, in line with most literature on the effects of health care design. The importance of this topic is firstly witnessed by the fact that it has to do with the birth of environmental psychology as a distinct field of study, when the research group of the City University of New York (including William Ittelson and Harold Proshansky), financially supported by the United States National Institute of Mental Health, started to study the role of the spatial and architectural setting of a psychiatric hospital in patients’ behavior (Ittelson, 1960). In the same period, psychologists and psychiatrists in other countries were involved in similar research projects. In particular, the work of Humphrey Osmond in Canada at the end of the 1950s led him to propose a theory on the existence of “sociofugal” spatial settings, which may discourage social interaction, or conversely, “sociopetal” settings, which may encourage social interaction (Osmond, 1957). Similarly, the studies of Robert Sommer on geriatric wards promoted the formulation of the two important constructs of “human territoriality” and “personal space” (Sommer, 1969), which found a remarkable following in psychology in general and environmental psychology in particular, as well as in architectural design (Gifford, 2002). In Europe, Paul Silvadon —a French psychiatrist—started a research collaboration with architects and studied the effect of the psychiatric hospital design upon patients’ (p. 296) healing. This study was then published in a monograph supported by the World Health Organization (Baker, Davis, & Silvadon, 1960).
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Health Care Environments This brief historical excursus shows clearly how this topic has marked the first steps of environmental psychology. Now we will move to address the state of the art of this research line. The chapter is organized in five sections. The first focuses on user-centered design, then introduces and describes the concept of “humanization,” and finally puts in light the elements that characterize evidence-based design. The second section presents a theoretical lens that conceives the health care environment as a multiplace system, where all the components are strictly interdependent. This framework relies on the place theory (Canter, 1977), the behavioral setting construct (Barker, 1987), Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological approach, and the multi-place approach (Bonnes & Secchiaroli, 1995). The third section briefly illustrates the existing body of publications on health care environment effects, and the fourth section shows the most recent research trends on this topic, organized according to the different groups of (health care) place users. The last section presents a summary of the chapter and tries to outline future directions for research. This chapter does not pretend to be an exhaustive analysis of the literature on the topic. We made some choices that guided our manuscript. For example, we decided to focus on the past three years as regards the presentation of recent research, since we relied on the massive literature review carried out by Ulrich, Zimring, and their colleagues published in 2008 (and, to a lesser degree, on the review published in the same year by Rashid and Zimring). As well, we did not address some aspects that could have been inserted in this chapter, for example, the healing effect of gardens and nature in general, since they would have overlapped with other chapters in this handbook. As regards design requirements for “special” populations, such as psychiatric and Alzheimer’s patients, we refer to the review carried out by Devlin and Arneill (2003). Finally, we will focus on psychological and behavioral responses to health care design, substantially leaving out the effects of environmental features on “hard” responses (such as infection rates, hand-washing patterns, etc.).
Humanizing the Health Care Environment
User-Centered Design During the past decades there has been an increased attention in the design domain to the satisfaction of users’ needs, desires, and goals. This awareness is mirrored in an approach called “social design” (Sommer, 1983) or “user-centered design” (Gifford, 2002), which aims at planning and designing spaces by taking into account the point of view of current and potential users. Thus, the underlying worldview expressed in this design approach focuses on the main social actor for whom a given built space is intended—its user. This point is in contrast with the rapid technological progress, which has encouraged the development of a wide range of design solutions based on (i) new formal design principles, (ii) increased communication between professionals at the international level, and (iii) use of innovative and more sophisticated building materials (Gifford, 2002, p. 472). This development has generated a great deal of attention for the satisfaction of the technical requirements that a formal built space should possess to be considered “well done,” but on the other side the satisfaction of its occupants has been substantially neglected. The contrast between formal satisfaction of technical requirements and users’ satisfaction is rooted in the differences of opinion between designers and users, that is, between “experts,” whose judgment is influenced mostly by their professional background, and laypeople, whose representations and images are socially and culturally built up through the processes of knowledge and goal-directed action, which build on the systems of practices that characterize the specific place (Bonnes & Secchiaroli, 1995). An empirical proof of this dichotomy is provided by the research carried out by Duffy and colleagues (Duffy, Bailey, Beck, & Barker, 1986) on the renewal of a health care residence, where directors and designers preferred a project that fostered social interaction (assuming that this was the need for residents), whereas the residents preferred a plan that would increase their level of privacy. Another study focusing on 10 hypothetical residential projects showed a very weak relationship between the preferences expressed by a group of designers and those of the neighborhood users (Stamps, 1991). Moreover, other studies showed that architects generally prefer residential buildings with unusual forms, whereas non-architects prefer buildings that are recognizable in terms of their residential function (Purcell & Nasar, 1992).
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Health Care Environments Besides the difference of preference, it seems that design experts generally do not know what the preferences of users are, as shown by their substantial failure in predicting users’ wishes when this was explicitly required (Brown & Gifford, 2001). The (p. 297) crucial point is that the key elements influencing the experts’ assessment concern the technical characteristics of the building, thereby promoting the arrangement of built spaces that fully satisfy the “expert” criteria shared by the professional community, thus failing to meet the needs and preferences of users. In other words, a built space has a different meaning for users versus designers and architects (Devlin, 1990). The fact is that the training approach characterizing most of the architectural schools and faculties has focused on the development of qualities such as creativity and sense of aesthetics; thus, many architects and designers still conceive a building as a piece of art, rather than as a suitable place promoting users’ goals (Sommer, 1983). To this point, Sommer (1983 , p. 4) quotes the words of a famous architect, Philip Johnson, according to whom the work of an architect consists only in creating beautiful buildings, but unfortunately the implicit assumption of the congruence between the aesthetic preferences of designers and users is far from obvious. Actually, the field of environmental psychology emerged as a distinct scientific area in response to requests coming from the domains of design and architecture in the 1960s, when the importance of psychological advice was stressed in the light of a more user-centered design. This perspective marks the transition from a kind of design that Bonnes and Secchiaroli (1995, p. 19) termed “self-centered,” which is intended primarily to meet the aesthetic needs and self-assertion of the designer, to a kind of design centered on the needs and aspirations of users. Following this shift of focus, health care planners should have available (and use) both the information about the purposes of each specific setting, and the knowledge about needs of the different occupants. In other words, each health care design project should be completed with specific information about preferences and expectations of the various social actors who will use the setting (e.g., patients, visitors, and caregivers).
The Spatial-Physical Humanization of Health Care Places The “Inhuman” Image of Hospitals It is widely acknowledged that places can affect people’s health both by producing well-being or distress feelings and by conveying positive or negative information for people’s self-esteem, security, and identity (Evans & McCoy, 1998). The claim of designing and arranging spaces based on the needs and expectations of current and potential users is even more important in the case of health care settings, where the design features may play a role in the health promotion and recovery of persons typically living in a state of physical and/or mental fragility. As many studies have supported, an appropriate physical structure of the environment can accelerate the restoration of health and decrease the time of hospitalization (e.g., Ulrich, 1984; Lemprecht, 1996). In contrast, unfamiliar health care settings can produce psychological stress that can negatively affect healing and wellness (Ulrich, 1991). Historically, the first example of user-centered health care design dates from the mid-19th century, and then it became a reference that was followed throughout the world for building new hospitals until the first half of the 20th century. Curiously, it was neither an architect nor a physician to propose this model, but actually an English nurse, Florence Nightingale, who was the first to highlight that “it may seem a strange principle to enunciate, as the very first requirement in a hospital, that it should do the sick no harm” (Nightingale, 1859, our emphasis). Relying on her experience in the hospitals of Scutari, Albania, she found that providing a better physical environment could reduce the mortality rate of patients. A higher degree of sunlight penetration, increased circulation of fresh air, a more appropriate temperature in the rooms, high ceilings, and wide spaces around the beds were the main suggestions that she made for improving the health of patients. In addition, Nightingale advocated a decentralized configuration of departments and functions to improve the service and enhance the overall quality of patients’ experience. Since then the development of building technology aiming at increasing workers’ productivity has dramatically changed the physical conditions of the workplace, since features such as artificial lighting, mechanical ventilation, and electrical systems of heating and cooling have allowed people to stay in artificial environments for many hours a day, and such options were implemented in health care environments as well, contrary to Nightingale’s suggestions. Moreover, the growing technological modernization that has massively characterized the medical disciplines from the beginning of the past century led to a continuous increase of expensive medical equipment, which favored a return to centralization of departments and functions to optimize the work of laboratories and
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Health Care Environments professionals (laboratory technicians, radiologists, etc.) specializing in the use of complex equipment. As reported by Nagasawa (2000), the functional centralization in a (p. 298) hospital implies an articulated flow of movement of both people and materials, since staff is forced to move through various departments, inpatients need to travel for long distances from their units to do analysis or therapy, and outpatients must go through diagnostic or therapeutic units that are often far apart. In contrast, decentralization, especially within separate building types, should provide the chance to create a less forbidding image for the architecture of health care (Verderber & Fine, 2000). Despite the unquestionable positive benefits of hospital modernization, the prevailing approach in the design and organization of health care settings, and thus the allocation of human and financial resources, has typically focused on the efficiency of medical technology. The development and the presence of increasingly complex and specialized technologies for diagnosis and care, though useful for analysis, prevention, and treatment, contributed to the growing neglect of the environment in light of users’ needs and preferences. The lack of attention toward this dimension has undoubtedly resulted in a widespread negative and “inhuman” image of the health care setting in the eyes of users. As a result, according to Veitch and Arkkelin (1995), the word “hospital” evokes “thoughts of long sterile hallways, stainless steel utensils, banks of life-monitoring equipment, people in white uniforms rushing to and from specialized rooms for specialized functions, wheelchairs lined up at elevators, and the smell of rubbing alcohol and disinfectant” (pp. 291–292). Moreover, Nightingale’s claim about what the hospital should not do (i.e., not be harmful for patients) is unfortunately appropriate also in our times, since the risk of hospital-acquired infections is yet a leading cause of death (Ulrich et al., 2008).
The Dimensions of Architectural Humanization In recent years, even for the design of health care environments (as well as for the design of other kinds of environments), the need has emerged for a design that is more focused on people (patient-centered or, more generally, user-centered) rather than on architectural and medical technology. As stated by Arneill and Devlin (2002, p. 345), “The premise that a health care facility be designed as a ‘curing machine’ for medical conditions, rather than as an environment to promote wellness for the individual, is being challenged.” Nesmith (1995) stated that after decades of emphasis on technological growth, the need for a more welcoming environment for the patient is becoming increasingly important in health care design. This option relies on the broader concept of hospital “humanization,” which refers to an array of facets (organizational, social, relational, functional, and spatial-physical) that characterize a healing place. According to this view, organizational and management issues play a significant role for both improving the service and rendering the user’s experience less traumatic and more comfortable. This point stresses the importance of the physical environment both as a context of human relations and behaviors, and as a key factor influencing how the hospital experience is perceived (see Figure 16.1). In the design field, the target of “more humane hospital environments” (Nagasawa, 2000) refers to spatial, physical, and functional design attributes that health care environments should possess for both: (i) reducing the stress level, which can be very high for both patients and caregivers, given their daily contact with disease, pain, and (in some cases) death, and (ii) promoting and increasing the well-being and the quality of life of hospital users. As suggested by many scholars (e.g., Devlin & Arneill, 2003; Evans & McCoy, 1998; Pressly & Heesacker, 2001; Fornara, Bonaiuto, & Bonnes, 2006), a set of design attributes should be provided to satisfy fundamental users’ needs, such as spatial and sensorial comfort (in visual terms, i.e., adequate lighting and panoramic views; auditory terms, i.e., avoidance of annoying noises; and climatic terms, i.e., adequacy of temperature and humidity), orientation, sense of welcome, privacy, social interaction, perceptual consistency, control over space, clear affordance, and restorativeness. To this regard, design attributes to care for that are worth of attention include layout and spatial configuration; colors and materials of furniture, walls, and floors; artwork; type, quantity, and focalization of natural and artificial light; kind of views inside and outside; size of windows; cleanliness; and climate.
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Health Care Environments
Figure 16.1 Environmental Humanization as Interplay Between Users and Spatial-Physical Setting Source: Bonnes, Bonaiuto, Fornara, & Bilotta, 2009
The adequacy of a given combination of these attributes depends on which user, which hospital unit, and which functional area within the unit are involved. For example, a given combination of lights, colors, and materials can be satisfying for patients but dysfunctional for staff. Similarly, what is appropriate in a cardiology unit may not be so in an intensive care unit. And what is suitable for an inpatient area may not be the case in an outpatient area within the same hospital unit. Moreover, it is crucial to take into account individual differences mediated by various sociocultural memberships, (p. 299) such as gender, age, socioeconomic status, nationality, and so on. In sum, promoting a higher level of spatial-physical humanization of a health care setting means to take into account its architectural configuration to on the one hand facilitate the relationship between patients, staff, and visitors, and on the other hand increase the degree of welcome and comfort. Unfortunately, the prototypical view of hospitals is actually characterized by poor materials and furniture, difficult wayfinding, poor lighting, unpleasant views, lack of upkeep, and poor user control over the environment. This negative appearance overlaps with the distress, anxiety, helplessness, and dependence that often characterize the users’ (in particular inpatients’) hospital experience, whereas a humanized environment implies primarily a more familiar place, which refers to a home-like or hotel-like conception of the health care setting (Verderber & Fine, 2000). Examples include the possibility for inpatients to personalize their bedrooms, the reception similar to the hall of a hotel (with plants, pictures, or other ornaments), the reduction of the number of beds per room (single or double room), the use of warm materials such as wood (instead of the cold and aseptic iron), the presence of comfortable furniture and appropriate colors, and the presence of pleasant views (possibly onto green spaces). These suggestions derive from the research literature on the influence of health care environments on users’ wellbeing. Nevertheless, many scholars (e.g., Evans & McCoy, 1998; Nagasawa, 2000; Reizenstein, 1982; Verderber & Fine, 2000) have underlined the need for more empirical research on this topic, since it is more common to find in literature descriptive analyses of idiographic nature, guidelines supporting health design that are based on taxonomies of spatial-physical attributes that seem to play a role in users’ health, and finally post-occupancy evaluation (POE) studies that have dealt mainly with technological “medical” issues but have not taken the issues of users’ well-being and quality of life sufficiently into account (Zimring, 2002). Furthermore, spatial-physical features have not typically been included in assessment surveys on patients’ satisfaction (Devlin & Arneill, 2003), despite the fact that patients mention the importance of aspects such as cleanliness, comfort, and privacy when asked about their rooms (e.g., Bruster et al., 1994; Harris, McBride, Ross, & Curtis, 2002). Nevertheless, some studies have supported that people do not ignore health care environments and that they actually react to different levels of spatial-physical humanization. Comparative investigations among hospitals with a different degree of spatial-physical humanization are provided by the studies of Davidson (1994), Devlin (1995), and Fornara and colleagues (2006). Davidson (1994) showed that patients assessed a recently renewed oncology unit more positively than an older—not renewed—oncology unit. Similarly, in the comparison between (p. 300) two renewed wards and a not-renewed ward carried out by Devlin (1995), all the three main categories of hospital users (i.e., patients, staff, and visitors) express higher satisfaction for the first as regards communication level, relationship between patients and staff, comfort, and the surrounding environment. Fornara and colleagues (2006)
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Health Care Environments developed a set of scales to measure both the “subjective” (i.e., users’ perceived hospital environmental quality indicators—PHEQIs) and the “objective” (by means of an expert grid to be filled in by design professionals) degree of architectural humanization in different hospitals. On the whole, more humanized units received a higher score than less humanized units in PHEQI dimensions (i.e., upkeep and care, building aesthetics, green spaces, spatialphysical comfort, views and lighting, orientation, quietness, care for relationships and organization, and privacy). Such difference was usually wider and clearer in patients and visitors, whereas staff members appeared less sensitive to quality differences of places, which may reflect a psychological mechanism of adaptation to the environment (Gifford, 2002). Health care environments affect not only users’ evaluations of humanization and their general well-being, but also patients’ satisfaction with the service and the staff (e.g., Swan, Richardson, & Hutton, 2003; Harris et al., 2002). These kinds of assessment have been assuming an increasing importance since quality of service and related issues have joined clinical quality as guiding principles for the quality of overall health care delivery, as witnessed by the fact that patient satisfaction measures have become a means by which health managers monitor the quality of care delivery (Sitzia & Wood, 1997).
Promoting “Evidence-Based Design” for Health Care Environments Recently some health care organizations, mainly located in the United States (e.g., the Center for Health Design and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement), have promoted a design approach that is “evidence-based” (Ulrich et al., 2008; Becker et al., 2010). “Evidence-based design” (EBD) is defined as “a deliberate attempt to base design decisions on the best available research findings” (Hamilton, 2003, p. 19), thus the underlying concept that is the basis of this approach: the more empirical research evidence used to guide design, the better the outcomes in terms of health care safety and quality (Becker et al., 2010). Thus, just as medicine has moved toward evidencebased medicine, where clinical choices are informed by research, health care design should be oriented by research linking hospitals’ physical environments to health care outcomes (Ulrich et al., 2008, p. 2). Another view of healthcare EBD, given by Ulrich and colleagues (2004), describes it as the “process for creating healthcare buildings, informed by the best available evidence, with the goal of improving outcomes and of continuing to monitor the success of designs for subsequent decision-making.” In sum, EBD consists in the application of the research evidence to actual health care design and construction; thus, this approach is by definition usercentered because it is based not only on designers’ technical knowledge and requirements, but also on the information available about what is better for users. This means that research on health care environments has an enormous potential to guide design in the production of environments that contribute to health processes and users’ quality of life, and that this opportunity should not be missed. Among the projects founded on EBD, it is worth mentioning the “Planetree” hospital model (see Schweitzer, Gilpin, & Frampton, 2004)—developed in the United States—which is based on a philosophy fostering patients’ access to information, positive staff-patient interaction, and involvement of both patients themselves and their families in the healing process. The Planetree guidelines for more humanized health care environments are informed and continuously updated by the collection of ongoing survey data from patients and staff, a modus operandi that is also typical of other similar US health-care-design-focused projects (e.g., the Pebble Project: see Marberry, 2005; the Press Ganey surveys on patient satisfaction: see Press, 2002). On the basis of the review of the empirical evidence (e.g., Schweitzer et al., 2004; Ulrich et al., 2004, 2008), a set of design guidelines was formulated to inform EBD programs (such as the ones promoted by the Center for Health Design). Such guidelines include replacing multiple-occupancy rooms with private rooms, designing facilities that are “staff friendly,” increasing access to natural light, and reducing noise (Nelson, 2006). The replacement of multiple-occupancy rooms with private rooms is expected to reduce the rate of nosocomial infections, to increase patients’ privacy, to reduce the number of transfers needed, to reduce noise and allow patients to sleep better, and to lessen stress on inpatients and their visitors. A “staff-friendly” design is based on a decentralized plan, consisting of several organized and well-lit nursing stations close to patient rooms, both to lessen distractions and (p. 301) interruptions and to respond more quickly to calls for assistance, and thus increasing the time spent on patient care. The access to natural light should improve health outcomes, since poor lighting also contributes to medication errors. About noise, it has often been reported as a primary source of stress for both patients and staff. In situations where a noise reduction policy was implemented, patients have reported greater satisfaction with their
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Health Care Environments care, better sleep, and lower blood pressure while caregivers have reported higher levels of job satisfaction and sleep quality (Nelson, 2006, p. 26). Despite the importance of promoting EBD for health care environments, what constitutes credible “evidence” and how to translate research findings in design guidelines can be problematic, bearing in mind that “EBD’s ultimate goal is not research for research’s sake, but research to make a difference by influencing practice” (Becker et al., 2010). To this regard, a research report from the British organization HaCIRIC (Health and Care Infrastructure Research and Innovation Centre, Codinhoto et al., 2008) not only complains of the lack of scientific evidence to support decisions within the design process, but also strongly recommends that, besides the literature reviews, more systematic, detailed, and transparent ways of gathering information (and transferring it to decision makers) about the existing empirical research should be developed. This report explains the complexity of building an evidence-base knowledge that can be used by designers with arguments such as (i) the enormous number of levels of analysis, variables, and variants related to a hospital in combination with variables related to patients and outcomes, which provides a considerable number of research scenarios; and (ii) the lack of clarity in relation to cause-effect relationships, and of connection with theory identified in most of the studies. The need of empirical proofs for justifying design choices (what Becker et al., 2010, called “research for justification”) is exemplified by Hignett and Lu (2010), who found that the recommendations for bed space in the United Kingdom have increased from the second half of the 19th century to our time, but with rather scarce implementation, and argued that the very little supporting empirical evidence may have contributed to that. The implementation of appropriate EBD guidelines should necessarily consider the articulated and multifaceted nature of the hospital environment, which can be better focalized by means of a systemic lens, as will be illustrated in the following paragraph.
The Health Care Environment as a Multi-Place System A Systemic View of the Hospital Place When thinking about a health care environment, one should take into account that it consists of several interrelated and interdependent subplaces, this through the relationships that their occupants or users establish with them. This conception relies on one of the most cited theories of the environmental psychology domain, the place theory outlined by Canter (1977), which considers the “place” as the result of the relationship between the setting’s physical attributes, the behaviors that typically occur or are expected to occur in such a setting, and finally the descriptions or conceptions people hold of that behavior in that setting (Canter, 1977, p. 159). The various subplaces we can find in a hospital thus include specific physicalspatial structures, specific systems and operating assets (which in turn depend on both the institutional functions and the social actors and the roles they play), and finally, specific needs, expectations, and objectives of the different place users involved. For example, the factors that characterize an inpatient area differ from the ones of an outpatient area in terms of function, social actors, staff tasks, typical behaviors, layout, physical features, level and nature of patients’ anxiety, and so on.
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Health Care Environments
Figure 16.2 Bronfenbrenner’s Systemic View Applied to the Hospital Environment.
This line of reasoning recalls from one side Barker’s (1987) construct of “behavioral setting,” and from the other side Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological approach. A behavioral setting is conceived as a molar unit of analysis that includes specific persons, behaviors, and spatial-physical and temporal features that represent interdependent components organized according to a specific setting program (Barker, 1987). Thus, each hospital subplace can be seen as a specific behavioral setting, and the interdependence among components appears both intra- and inter-settings. Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) systemic view conceives the “ecological” environment as a series of concentric structures, including the one in the other (see Figure 16.2). Such structures are (i) the microsystem, the interactions between individuals and their immediate environment (e.g., patients or caregivers staying in an inpatient area), (ii) the mesosystem, the relationships and connections among different microsystems to which the individual takes part (e.g., the connections of a diagnosis unit and an inpatient unit with reference to patients’ or caregivers’ behavior), (iii) the exosystem, that system where phenomena occur that can affect individuals, even if they have no direct contact with that system (e.g., changes in the (p. 302) hospital management or events in caregivers’ private life that could influence patients’ well-being), and finally (iv) the macrosystem, the broader system including societal norms and systems of beliefs that characterize a cultural context (e.g., the systems of norms and beliefs that characterize the health care issues in a given nation). Place theory, the behavioral setting construct, and the ecological approach all have in common the conception of the environment as interconnection and interplay between social and spatial-physical features. Following this theoretical framework, Bonnes and Secchiaroli (1995) developed the “multi-place” perspective, where each place can be seen as a system of subplaces whose relationship is expressed by the main criteria of inclusion versus exclusion and nearness versus farness. From this perspective, the different subplaces appear as more or less connected with reference to users’ goals, activities, representations, and opportunities. Thus, applying this view to health care environments, a specific hospital unit (i) includes different areas (such as in- and outpatient areas, or areas mainly for staff and areas mainly for patients/visitors, etc.), (ii) is in a relationship of nearness or farness with another unit of the same hospital, (iii) is included in the hospital to which it belongs, and (iv) is excluded from another hospital. In other words, single places should not be seen as separated, since each place is part of a broader “place system,” that is, within a complex of other places that are connected with it in users’ representation and behaviors. Thus, the individual’s place experience will be organized in a multi-place sense, that is, integrating the various levels of the different place systems implicated through the action in the socio-physical environment (Bonnes & Secchiaroli, 1995, p. 194).
The Specific Nature of the Hospital Spaces and Roles With reference to the hospital environment, we can distinguish a vast array of spaces, each potentially having multiple zones that vary in their need for space, access, environmental control, and technology (Rashid & Zimring, 2008). Thus, we need to take into account that the hospital place includes specific subplaces, such as the
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Health Care Environments hospital’s external spaces, the different care units, the inpatient and outpatient areas, diagnostic areas, waiting areas, and so on. (Fornara et al., 2006). Therefore, the (p. 303) characteristics of subplaces should be analyzed with reference to the different functional goals of the various hospital units. In other words, it is likely that different ingredients are needed for humanizing a geriatric unit rather than a pediatric unit, or a cardiology unit rather than an oncology unit. In fact, each patient group may have different environmental needs, which is an issue that has received very little attention in environmental design research (Rashid & Zimring, 2008). The hospital multi-place system includes different spaces, as well as different behaviors and representations, which are expressed by different social actors. Actually, these behaviors and representations are connected to users’ different “environmental roles” (see Canter, 1977, 1983), which refer to “that aspect of a person’s role which is related to his dealing with his physical environment” (Canter, 1977, p. 128) and are shaped by peculiar functions, goals, motivations, meanings, expectancies, behaviors, and uses of place. The complex nature of interventions of architectural design and transformation is related to the difficulty of combining the sometimes competing needs of the two main types of hospital users, that is, patients and care providers, which differ for their interaction with the environment along the following dimensions (Shumaker & Pequegnat, 1989): (i) familiarity with the context, since patients often feel disoriented, whereas for care providers the hospital experience is familiar and known, and unlikely to be disorienting; (ii) role, since patients typically play a passive and dependent role, whereas care providers typically play an active role as care-providers, which implies a series of responsibilities; and finally (iii) time patterns, since patients typically experience a hospital for a relatively short time, whereas care providers typically experience a certain hospital for a long time on a daily basis. Differences in these dimensions may justify the patients’ response to the health care environment, which is strictly connected to the sense of depersonalization, the lack of control over the place, and the reliance on health care professionals that characterize their experience, making them more vulnerable to stress (Rashid & Zimring, 2008). In this regard, a distinction should be made between inpatients and outpatients, since their hospital experience is definitively different, though their transaction modalities with the place are similar. In the next paragraphs the distinction of health care roles and spaces will be roughly followed in the presentation of research findings about the influence of health care design on users’ health and well-being.
General Remarks on the Influence of Health Care Design on Users Many scholars (e.g., Evans & McCoy, 1998; Nagasawa, 2000; Reizenstein, 1982; Shumaker & Pequegnat, 1989) have been claiming the need for empirical evidence that clearly shows the influence of design attributes on hospital users’ well-being. This need is justified by the fact that it is easier to find published papers reporting either purely descriptive and idiographic analyses, or taxonomies of physical elements that may play a role in relation to the users’ health, rather than empirical outcomes. The idiographic contributions typically describe the positive effects of environmental changes (in the physical space) related to a specific health care environment (i.e., a specific hospital unit or area), but evidence of such effects is just proven by the anecdotal observations of the contributor(s), whereas assessments or considerations of the recipients of such environmental modifications are generally lacking. On the contrary, evidence-based design has been advocated to improve the quality of care and the health care experience for all users (patients, caregivers, visitors, etc.) (Ulrich et al., 2008) by using the best available research findings (Hamilton, 2003). Different research methods (e.g., experiments and quasi-experiments, case studies, epidemiological studies) as well as different tools for data collection (e.g., surveys, interviews, observations, institutional data mining) have been used for providing empirical evidence on the influence of spatial-physical features on health care users (Becker et al., 2010). The most recent literature reviews on the impact of the health care environment were both published in 2008, by Ulrich and colleagues and by Rashid and Zimring. Ulrich et al. (2008), who included papers concerning the relationship between hospital design and health outcomes, stated the presence of a growing number of studies, in particular regarding hospital-acquired infections, compared to patient and staff outcomes. Nevertheless, most of the studies found are not well controlled, often neglecting the impact of confounding variables. The recommendation of the authors is that future research be carefully designed and controlled, so that the
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Health Care Environments independent role of specific environmental changes or interventions can be better understood. On the other hand, Rashid and Zimring (2008), who focused on the impact of both health care and office workplace design dimensions (such as air (p. 304) quality, temperature, noise, and lighting) on stress outcomes, concluded that there is more empirical evidence on the effects of workplace design, but they also suggested that some research findings on the office settings can be useful for health care design. More specifically, the two authors identified the gaps in health care research with regards to specific features of the indoor environment. According to them, more research is needed on the psychosocial and cognitive effects of noise (most of the research is focused on physiological outcomes); on the effects of lighting on more diverse patient populations (most of the findings are related to older people with or without Alzheimer’s disease); and on the psychological, cognitive, behavioral, psychosocial, and social effects of ambient temperature and air quality. In sum, the body of published research gives evidence to the role that health care physical environment can have on people using health care settings, but a lot of conclusive evidence is still missing. Besides, it seems that the existing evidence is not vigorous enough to promote the desirable impact on practice. Devlin and Arneill (2003) listed a number of problems that explain why empirical research on the effect of health care design has been slow to accumulate. Such problems are connected to the fact that architecture lacks a tradition of research, medicine has overlooked the role of the physical environment in patient well-being, and the research process in health care settings is extremely difficult. In the editors’ introduction to the special issue about EBD, Zimring and Bosch (2008) recognized that health care environment research is still in its infancy and that there is a need for a larger body of valid information that can be useful to decision makers. To this regard, Becker and colleagues (2010) made a distinction among three kinds of health care EBD research: (i) research for innovation, which emphasizes discovery and relies mainly on qualitative, ethnographic, and observational data; (ii) research for incremental change, which focuses on identifying problems (rather than in understanding what is causing them) and typically uses surveys to assess users’ satisfaction (and to make comparisons among different users); and (iii) research for justification, which is rooted in hypothesis testing, relies on sophisticated experimental or quasi-experimental designs and inferential statistical techniques, and serves to convince hospital administrators and/or caregivers of the importance to make “evidence-based” design modifications and renewals. According to the authors, research for justification has been the most typical form of EBD research. All these remarks should challenge researchers to find ways to integrate the existing scientific evidence and to find a way to make it visible, comprehensible, and applicable to design decisions, as well as to continue filling the existing gaps with rigorous studies. In the next section we will provide a brief review about the most recent research in the topic.
Recent Trends on Health Care Design Research For our review of the recent research trends on the issue, we decided to focus particularly on the studies published in the past three years, which were not covered by the massive literature review published in 2008 by Ulrich et al. (2008). Thus, to shed some light on the research that has been done in the past three years, we searched for papers published between 2008 and 2010 that alluded or referred to the physical environment of health care buildings and patient and staff outcomes. The review was conducted using PsychINFO and PubMED electronic databases. First, we identified potentially relevant papers using combinations of keywords, such as hospital environment, hospital building, health care design, and health care facility. Then we selected only empirically based papers that examine the influence of health care environment characteristics on patients, family, other visitors, or staff members, and excluded papers about the impact of built environment on infection control, or those whose focus was on patients or health professionals in psychiatry wards. In other words, we reported those studies that are of interest for the environmental psychology domain. The main aim of this review is thus to provide an idea about the current trend of research in this area. Differently from both Ulrich et al. (2008), who organized their review by health outcomes that are affected by health care environment, and Rashid and Zimring (2008), who described which and how specific characteristics of the health care environment affect stress, in our review of recent literature we organized the material according to the target user group that participated in the research (or to which the research is addressed). Of course, this
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Health Care Environments categorization choice has the same kind of limitations that can be attributed to categorizations based on health outcomes or health care (indoor) environment characteristics. Health care environment characteristics have several variants, can be analyzed at different levels of detail, and can produce different outcomes, (p. 305) isolated or in combination with others. Similarly, health outcomes have different degrees and different levels of relevance, and can be influenced by different health care environment characteristics or groups of characteristics. For these reasons, in both cases generalization is often limited. Users of health care environments also vary in characteristics, objectives, role, needs and preferences, previous experiences, and standards, which may affect the way they perceive (and react to) the environment. However, as we reported before in this chapter, the distinction among users makes sense since the different social actors have a specific and peculiar transaction with the place, which is linked to their different “environmental roles” (Canter, 1983). Further, the effects of design dimensions seem to have a different impact on the different users, as they have different needs. The conceptual framework proposed by Rashid and Zimring (2008) emphasizes the individual needs as a crucial and central variable in the process of physical environment leading to stress. According to these authors, the physical environment may induce stress by the ways in which it affects individual needs and, subsequently, affects some immediate outcome variables. Thus, environmental features need to thwart individual needs to ultimately cause stress. Besides, motives, attitudes, and demographic factors may have moderating effects on how deprivation of individual needs affect the resulting immediate outcomes, and individual coping skills, and time may influence each person’s reactions. Rashid and Zimring conceived a useful framework to illustrate that the potential negative effect of an environmental stressor is not linear or automatic, as it depends also on factors such as individual coping skills and time. More important, these authors emphasized individual differences with respect to the relationship with the environment. With this reasoning in mind, we present the most recent research literature partitioned for groups of health care place users: generic patients, particular age groups of patients (i.e., children, and elderly), caregivers, and visitors. This way of organizing research evidence can provide suggestions that can more easily inform design interventions.
Generic Patients Most of the studies found do not relate to any special group of patients. Thus, we organized such studies on “generic” patients in terms of health care environment characteristics. As Dijkstra, Pieterse, and Pruyn (2008a) did, we used the classification of the physical environmental stimuli of Harris et al. (2002). These authors distinguished three relevant dimensions of the physical environment: architectural features, interior design features, and ambient features. Architectural features are relatively permanent characteristics, such as the spatial layout of a hospital, room size, and window placement. Interior design features are defined as less permanent elements, such as furnishings, colors, and artwork. Ambient features comprise lighting, noise levels, odors, and temperature.
Effects of Single Environmental Features Some recent studies provide evidence of the effects of specific environmental features.
Architectural Features The well-known study of Ulrich (1984) is a good example of a study on the effect of an architectural feature. Ulrich focused on the effect of the view from a window that patients recovering from surgery could have. Patients with a view of nature had shorter postoperative hospital stays, received fewer negative evaluative comments in nurses’ notes, and took fewer potent analgesic doses than patients in similar rooms with a view of a brick wall. Also concerned with architectural issues, the studies on the effects of single and multiple rooms tend to support that single rooms are advantageous with respect to improvements in patient care, reduction in the risk of crossinfection, reduction in patient stress, improvement in patient privacy and control, and greater flexibility in operation (Chaudhury, Mahmood, & Valente, 2005). Two recent studies investigated the impact of architectural features.
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Health Care Environments Hall, Kyriacou, Handler, and Adams (2008) evaluated the effect of particular characteristics of the built environment of an emergency department on the time taken for an initial physician assessment of chest-pain patients. They found that patients with chest pain who were located in treatment rooms with a solid door or were located farther from clinician work areas were more likely to have times greater than 10 min for their initial physician assessment. Pines and Hollander (2008) conducted another study to explain the delays in treatment in an emergency department that somehow can be indirectly related to the architectural features. They found that increasing levels of emergency department crowding measures were significantly associated with failure to treat or delayed treatment. (p. 306) Interior Design Features One example of studies regarding interior design features is that of Ulrich and Simons (1986, in Ulrich, 1991), who studied the effects of a television placed in a waiting room where blood donors typically spent 10 to 15 minutes before the phlebotomy phase. The television was turned off on randomly selected days and was playing continuously during other days. Data indicated that on days when the television was on, donor stress was higher than days when the television was off, indicated by higher heart rate and systolic blood pressure. Similarly, Pruyn and Smidts (1998) studied the effect of the presence of a television in the waiting room on the waiting-time perception of patients and found that it does not change the waiting experience when compared to a waiting room without television. Both studies seem to show that other distractions, such as paintings, aquariums, plants, or reading material, should be studied (and used) to produce more positive effects, in both outpatient and inpatient areas (Arneill & Devlin, 2002; Leather, Beale, Santos, Watts, & Lee, 2003). Five recent studies investigated the impact of interior design features. Ohta and colleagues (2008) compared a hospital isolation room that was redecorated with wood paneling and Japanese paper and another that was unchanged (with concrete walls) during the cold season. In the redecorated room patients felt more thermally comfortable and had lower levels of stress (measured by cortisol secretion). Dijkstra et al. (2008a) conducted two experiments to test the effects of environmental coloring (green and orange, both contrasted with white as a control condition) in a health care setting on stress, arousal, and cognitive appraisals of the room. Besides, they focused on individual differences regarding stimulus screening ability, as a measure of environmental sensitivity (high-screeners vs. low-screeners). Results suggest that (compared to white) the color orange has a greater impact on feelings of arousal than the color green has on reducing feelings of stress, since orange yielded a marginally significant effect, whereas green did not. Most significant, stress-reducing effects of green and arousal-inducing effects of orange were both more pronounced for people scoring low on stimulus screening ability than for those who are able to effectively reduce the complexity of an environment (highscreeners), which demonstrated the importance of individual differences in effects of environmental coloring. Dijkstra et al. (2008b) also investigated the mechanism of stress-reducing effects of indoor plants in the built health care environment. After being presented with a scenario describing hospitalization with a possible legionella diagnosis, participants were exposed to a photo of a hospital room with either indoor plants or a painting of an urban environment on the wall. The researchers found that participants exposed to a photo of a hospital room with indoor plants reported less stress than those in the control condition. In addition, the results also demonstrate that these stress-reducing effects are mediated by the perceived attractiveness of the hospital room. Park and Matson (2009) conducted a similar study in the field. Patients recovering from a hemorrhoidectomy were randomly assigned to either control or plant rooms. In comparison with the control, the patients exposed to plants during recovery had significantly enhanced physiologic responses evidenced by lower systolic blood pressure, lower ratings of pain, anxiety, and fatigue, and more positive feelings and higher satisfaction about their hospital room. Nanda, Eisen, and Baladandayuthapani (2008) investigated inpatients’ art preferences. Images were rated on emotional response (how does this picture make you feel?) and selection (would you put this picture in your room?). Findings indicated that patients consistently preferred images of realistic art with nature content (landscapes with verdant foliage, flowers, and water) over stylized or abstract images by masters such as Chagall
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Health Care Environments and Van Gogh. The most positively rated painting depicted a gentle waterfall with vegetation. Certain differences in preference were also found across males and females, since sepia-toned images of nature were preferred by males, whereas certain stylized figurative florals were preferred by females.
Ambient Features Noise is one of the most often examined ambient features in health care environment research, and consequent difficulty to sleep is one of the studied outcomes. Topf, Bookman, and Arand (1996) examined the effects of noise on the subjective quality of sleep. Volunteers, attempting to sleep overnight in a laboratory, were randomly assigned to hear audiotapes of an actual critical care unit or quiet. Participants in the noise condition took longer to fall asleep, spent less time sleeping, and awakened more often. Hagerman and colleagues (2005) focused on the (p. 307) effects of room acoustics on patients with coronary artery disease. They compared patients who were in the unit with sound-reflecting ceiling tiles (bad acoustics) with patients who were there after the replacement with sound-absorbing tiles of similar appearance (good acoustics). Patients with acute myocardial infarction and unstable angina showed lower pulse amplitude during the night in the good acoustics period. In addition to these physiological effects, patients of the good acoustics group considered the staff attitude to be much better and had a lower incidence of rehospitalization than patients treated during the bad acoustics period. Two recent studies investigated the impact of ambient features, focusing, however, not on noise, but on music. Short and colleagues (2010) examined the effects of listening to music via headphones and an MP3 player on reducing noise stress. Participants were randomly assigned to the control or the music intervention group. Results regarding individual comments suggested participants’ enjoyment, distraction, and “escape” from the environment; however, there were no significant differences between groups in terms of perceived stress, positive affect, and negative affect. Nilsson (2009) evaluated the effect of bed rest with music on relaxation for patients who had undergone heart surgery, on postoperative day one. Patients undergoing open coronary artery bypass grafting and/or aortic valve replacement surgery were randomly allocated to either music listening during bed rest (distributed through a music pillow) or bed rest only. Results showed that in the music group, levels of oxytocin increased significantly in contrast to the control group, and that subjective relaxations levels were higher in the music group. Since the oxytocin system operates in parallel with the stress response systems (Evans, 1997, in Nilsson, 2009), Nilsson concluded that music during bed rest after open-heart surgery affects the relaxation system.
Effects of Multiple Environmental Features The following studies give further support to the effect that physical health care environment has on people’s wellbeing. However, because several physical environmental features are analyzed, cause-and-effect relationships are not clear. One example is the study by Leather et al. (2003). They found that a renewed waiting area was associated with more positive environmental appraisals, improved mood, altered physiological state, and greater reported satisfaction than a traditional waiting area before relocation. With the same holistic approach, but using photographs, Arneill and Devlin (2002) showed that perceived quality of care was greater for waiting rooms that were nicely furnished, well-lighted, contained artwork, and were warm in appearance, versus waiting rooms that had outdated furnishings, were dark, contained no artwork or poor quality reproductions, and were cold in appearance. Similarly, Swan et al. (2003) found that appealing rooms result in more positive patient evaluations of physicians and nurses, as well as more favorable patient judgments of the service than in typical rooms in the same hospital. Three recent studies analyze the effect of multiple physical environment features on patient outcomes. Devlin and colleagues (2009) investigated the judgments of therapists’ qualities based on displayed credentials and family photographs in their offices. Participants viewed a projected digital image of a therapist’s office with or without family pictures and with a different number of credentials (zero, two, four, or nine). Results indicated that in
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Health Care Environments general, the greater the number of credentials, the more positive the judgment of the therapist’s qualifications and energy, and that the presence of family pictures had no significant impact on judgments. The participants’ comments regarding the rationale for their judgments suggested that the range of aesthetic factors may also have influenced their judgments, comparable to what Devlin had found in her and Arneill’s previous study on waiting rooms (Arneill & Devlin, 2002). In addition to the wall certificates, participants tended to highlight the furnishings (e.g., chair, desk, and lamp, and their location) and decoration, personalization, and neatness. Devlin (2008) examined as well the relationship between the appearance of medical building exteriors and judgments of the perceived care that would be delivered in and the expected comfort level that would be felt in those facilities. After viewing photographic slides of the exterior of medical facilities, participants made judgments about the quality of care they would receive and how comfortable they would be in that facility. Respondents rated facilities of the large medical type to be highest in both quality of care and expected comfort. However, building exteriors labeled as traditional house types also produced a positive impression, being described as “homey,” “friendly-looking,” “white,” “clean,” and “neat.” (p. 308) Rowlands and Noble (2008) conducted a qualitative study to explore the views of hospitalized patients with advanced cancer on the effect the ward environment has on their overall well-being. Four main themes emerged from the interviews: staff behaviors, the immediate environment, single versus multi-bed rooms, and contact with the outside environment. Even if it was explained that the purpose of the study was to assist the redesign of the ward, the first response was related to staff, especially nurses. Subthemes related with the immediate environment were cleanliness, a view of the outside, light and airy environment, and being supportive of interaction, all of which were perceived to have an impact on mood. Regarding the single versus multi-bed rooms issue, although the current policy recommends the use of single-bed rooms (e.g., Chaudhury et al., 2005), in this study patients spontaneously identified the need to have a choice of multi-bed wards and single cubicles. They reported that when they or other patients were very ill they would want a cubicle, but when they were able to interact they preferred to be in the company of others; the majority of the patients expressed a strong preference for a multi-bed room when they were well enough to interact, and a single cubicle when they were very ill or dying.
Specific Age Groups of Patients: Children and Elderly Very few studies investigated the influence of health care physical environment on children’s outcomes, and very scarce references emerge in Ulrich et al.’s (2008) review. Two recent studies addressed children’s perception of health care environment by using innovative data collection techniques. Both are qualitative studies, one focusing on the perceptions of the pediatric hospital atrium, the other on design preferences. The first study, carried out by Adams and colleagues (2010), aimed to assess how the pediatric hospital atrium, designed to provide comfort, socialization, interface, wayfinding, contact with nature and diurnal rhythms, and respite from adjacent medicalized spaces, contributes to the well-being of young patients. Children’s and youth’s evaluations, perceptions, and uses of the space were elicited through observations, focused interviews, and textual and photographic documentation. The following themes emerged: (a) architectural scale; (b) connectivity and surveillance; (c) wayfinding, access, and navigation; (d) architectural associations; and (e) consumption and distraction. Authors conclude that child-friendly techniques enabled a diverse group of children and adolescents to articulate their perceptions of and experiences in this type of space in terms of the domains they considered relevant, and that architects should involve children in the design consultation. The second study, led by Coad and Coad (2008), explored the views of children and young people regarding their preference of thematic design and color for their hospital environment in a new children’s unit. The authors used child-friendly interviews and questionnaires developed with the assistance of an advisory group of children and young people who also contributed to verify findings. The most notable findings included strong preferences for color, with blue-green colors being the most popular, and the use of water, nature, the beach, and the sea as the preferred thematic design. About the older patients, some studies have focused on elders’ needs and preferences (e.g., Wakamura & Tokura, 2001; Kearney & Winterbottom, 2005). For example, Arneill and Devlin (2002) used pictures of physicians’ waiting rooms to compare perceptions of the
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Health Care Environments quality of care and of the environment of seniors and students. Students and the elderly did not differ that much in terms of their judgments about the quality of care, but differed in terms of what kinds of environments made them feel comfortable (e.g., elderly reported feeling more comfortable in waiting rooms that look like Victorian parlors or sitting rooms, as well as in dark or sparse rooms). More interesting, another finding from written and verbal comments was that seniors differed from students in some of the criteria they used to rate the waiting rooms. In general, seniors were more concerned with the functional nature (e.g., accessibility of the coatrack) rather than the structural nature or physical appearance of the waiting rooms. More concretely, Wilmott (1986) conducted in a study in which 58 elderly hospital patients walked along a 10-m length of carpeted corridor and a 10-m length of vinyl-tiled corridor. On the carpeted surface elders showed significantly greater speed and step length, and higher perceived safety, than on the vinyl surface. These two examples make sense if we consider that when people get older, they may have movement or sensory challenges and get more sensitive to environments that present problems in these areas. Two recent studies investigated the influence of multiple features of the health care physical environment on older patients’ outcomes. Both studies examined the impact of refurbishing residential care (p. 309) facilities, with positive and negative results. They are included here because in residential care facilities, similar to other health care environments where people stay temporarily (e.g., hospital), people need (at least) some care, and the setting is not strictly personal. Weenig and Staats (2010) investigated the impact of a refurbishment of two communal spaces of a care home— lobby and recreation room—on residents’ subjective well-being. The refurbishments aimed to improve the aesthetic appearance of both spaces and to offer residents more gradation of space, and thus, more control over their social interactions. Results showed that nearly all respondents had noticed at least some alterations in both communal spaces and that a large majority considered the refurbishments an improvement on all aspects measured, that is, residential quality, aesthetic quality, and possibility of controlled interaction. Moreover, residents’ subjective wellbeing increased significantly, which appeared to have a quite strong positive relationship to experiencing the residential quality of the spaces refurbished. Contradictory results were found by Falk, Wijk, and Persson (2009), who followed and examined the effects of a routine refurbishment in two residential care facilities, performed in real life by facility administrators with limited insight in evidence-based knowledge. The purpose of the refurbishment was to enhance the general aesthetic impression and to create a more supportive physical environment in all shared spaces (i.e., entrance, hallways, kitchen, and living room), thus promoting the orientation, mobility, and social interaction of the residents. Falk et al. evaluated the effects on residents’ quality of life, well-being, and perceived care climate, but the research team had no influence on the refurbishment plan and execution. A third facility had no intervention and functioned as a reference. Interviews with the high-functioning residents revealed that the new and refurbished physical environment was generally appreciated in terms of improvements of the overall aesthetic impression but did not contribute to an added sense of community among the residents, nor did it affect their self-reported sense of wellbeing. Quantitative results indicated a worsening of the residents’ quality of life and well-being, and no significant changes were found for perceived patient centeredness, patient mood (strength, satisfaction, and security), and general behavior (confidence and accessibility).
Caregivers Ulrich and colleagues (2008), in their literature review, observed different aspects in the built environment that can affect staff outcomes, such as injuries, stress, work effectiveness, and satisfaction. Chaudhury et al. (2009) proposed a conceptual approach in which factors such as stress, fatigue, distractions, and satisfaction might be viewed as mediating factors in the relationship between both management decisions and organizational processes and physical environment aspects, and nursing medication errors. For instance, Blomkvist, Eriksen, Theorell, Ulrich, and Rasmanis (2005) found that lower noise levels were linked with reduced perceived work demands, less pressure and strain, and better speech intelligibility. These results seem to indicate that improved acoustic conditions in the health care environment may increase capacity to care for the patients and reduce risks of conflicts and errors (Blomkvist et al., 2005; Chaudhury et al., 2009). In fact, like patients, staff are not immune to effects of the health care physical environment. Fornara, Bonnes, and Bonaiuto (2006) verified that staff members were less sensitive than patients and visitors to differences in design
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Health Care Environments quality, measured by environmental quality perception indicators. Alternatively, due to their particular needs, role, and objectives in the hospital setting, staff may be affected in different degrees by the same aspects of the environment, but with an impact in different outcomes. Six recent studies investigated the influence of health care physical environment on staff outcomes, most of them focusing on architectural features. Additionally, two recent studies compare caregivers’ and patients’ responses to health care physical environment. Virtanen and colleagues (2008) assessed bed occupancy rate in a hospital ward each month over a five-year period and collected from national registers daily data on employees’ antidepressant purchases. They found that ward overcrowding was associated with new antidepressant treatment among hospital nurses and physicians. Medication preparation and administration are critical activities that require nurses’ undivided attention. Conrad and colleagues (2009) evaluated a project whose goal was to enhance medication administration safety and efficiency by improving the physical design and organizational layout of the medication room. The room changes improved the medication administration process, decreased reported medication errors, and enhanced nursing satisfaction. Seo, Choi, and Zimring (2010) investigated the impact of unit size on nurses’ walking distance to (p. 310) get medication, extra stops, and interaction. They compared a smaller intensive care unit (ICU) with a larger ICU designed for patient-centered care, both with only one medication room. The differences in the design of the two units were mainly size and visibility, since in the ICU designed based on a patient-centered care concept, every patient room had a family area and additional substations for direct observation. Seo et al. found that the nurses did not walk more in the larger unit than they did in the smaller one, and that nurses made extra stops and interacted significantly more in the smaller unit, possibly because of a better visibility to what is happening in the unit. The authors concluded that walking distance and stops are more affected by unit design than unit size. Smith, Schoenbeck, and Clayton (2009) did a pre-post survey study aimed at examining the impact on staff perceptions and performance of transforming a neonatal ICU (NICU) with an open-bay design to one with private rooms. As a result, rankings of overall physical environment, patient care, job, technology, and off-the-job quality significantly improved, but rankings of patient care team interaction quality significantly declined. The authors associated this negative finding to the ineffective modifications in NICU operational management. Such a physical redesign initiative would have benefited from an approach that looked at other elements in the work system, not just the physical environment. Similarly, Shepley, Harris, and White (2008) compared a NICU with single-family rooms with a NICU with open-bay arrangements in terms of caregiver experience. Survey results showed that staff members in the single-family room units were more satisfied with the physical environment and had higher job satisfaction and lower stress than those in the open-bay unit. ICU nurses experience a variety of performance obstacles in their work environment on a daily basis, which might contribute to nursing workload, poor patient safety, and poor nursing quality of life. Gurses and Carayon (2009) conducted semi-structured interviews to identify the performance obstacles perceived by ICU nurses. The obstacles related to physical work environment, family relations, supplies, equipment, information transfer and communication, help from others, and intra-hospital transport. With respect to physical work environment in particular, this research identified the amount of space, crowdedness, and noise as major obstacles. Two more studies were found that compare caregivers’ and patients’ responses: one was carried out by Hashiguchia, Hirakawaa, Tochiharaa, Kajib, & Karakic (2008), focusing on an ambient feature of the environment (humidity), and the other by Fornara, Bonaiuto, and Bonnes (2010), focusing on the affective response of multiple features of the environment. Hashiguchia and colleagues (2008) studied the effects of setting up humidifiers in a hospital during winter. Before setting up the humidifiers, the existence of a low-humidity environment (which is known to promote the spread of influenza viruses) in the hospital was verified. Humidifiers were introduced into about half of the rooms under study, resulting in an increase of the relative humidity in sickrooms from 32.8% to 43.9% on average. Additionally, that was effective in improving the thermal comfort only for staff members, though not among the patients. Hashiguchia
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Health Care Environments and colleagues (2008) argued that one reason for the lack of effect of the installed humidifiers on the patients’ subjective symptoms might be sensitivity of elderly people to changes in air humidity and air temperature declines. Fornara et al. (2010) carried out surveys in various hospitals, focusing on the perceived affective qualities of places. Results confirmed differences in the interaction that caregivers and patients have with the hospital environment, since caregivers expressed an overall “active” modality of interaction with the hospital environment, in both positive (i.e., judging it as more exciting and stimulating) and negative (i.e., judging it as more distressing) terms, whereas patients (and also visitors) revealed a more “passive” modality of interaction, in both positive (i.e., judging it as more relaxing) and negative (i.e., judging it as more gloomy and sleepy) terms. Staff members also judged the places as less unpleasant than patients, thus confirming previous findings emerged with different tools (i.e., the PHEQIs; see Fornara et al., 2006; Andrade, Lima, Fornara, & Bonaiuto, 2012).
Visitors Another important category of users is represented by visitors, that is, patients’ relatives and friends who are using the place for visiting patients. Visitors’ needs have been generally neglected by designers (Zimring, Reizenstein, & Michelson, 1987), since they represent the last considered category in the typical hierarchy of needs in the hospital, where the first are the caregivers, the second (p. 311) are the inpatients, and the third are the outpatients (Leather et al., 2003). This scarce attention to visitors is witnessed by the fact that those who go to a hospital to find a relative or a friend often have to cope with a stressful experience, since they may have difficulty in finding their way around, or may have to stay in an unfriendly, frightening, chaotic, and aseptic environment. Empirical studies that compared the responses of visitors with the ones of patients and staff show that visitors’ assessment is generally closer to patients’ than to caregivers’ evaluation (Fornara, 2005; Fornara et al., 2006); however, a recent research indicated that visitors are the least satisfied group, and rate the places as more unpleasant and gloomy than patients and staff (Fornara et al., 2010). Previous studies have found that social support from families reduces patient stress (e.g., Koivula et al., 2002), and that family members have several cognitive, emotional, social, and practical needs (Verhaeghe et al., 2005), which indicates that design should be more supportive of this group of users. A recent study by Meert, Briller, Schim, and Thurston (2008) explored parents’ environmental needs during their child’s hospitalization and death in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). Through semi-structured in-depth interviews with parents who had experienced the death of their child two years before, the environmental themes identified included privacy, proximity, adequate space, control of sensory stimuli, cleanliness, safety, facilities to care for self and others, access to their children, and the physical presence of people who provide professional and personal support. They concluded that parents clearly remembered specific features of the PICU and that the environmental attributes that have been found to benefit patients seem to support families as well.
Conclusion This chapter has addressed the relationship between health care design features and users’ psychological and behavioral responses. It showed the shift from a kind of design more affected by technological progress to a more user-centered design, which tends to environmental humanization, thus recovering the lesson that Florence Nightingale left us in the 19th century. Then it delineated the recent push toward an evidence-based design concerning health care environments, which is evidenced by the interest of important associations (such as the Center for Health Design and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in the United States, and the Health and Care Infrastructure Research and Innovation Centre in the United Kingdom) and the implementation of massive programs (such as the Planetree model and the Pebble Project) at a national level. A theoretical framework was then outlined to provide a conceptual lens that can be useful for the study of psychological patterns occurring in the health care environment. Such a lens is composed of what we learned from Canter’s (1977) place theory, Barker’s (1987) behavioral setting, Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological approach, and the “multi-place” approach proposed by Bonnes and Secchiaroli (1995). The view of hospitals as multi-place systems takes into account the presence of different categories of place users who differ in their environmental roles (Canter, 1977, 1983) and thus, often show different responses to the settings’ spatial-physical dimensions and express different design needs.
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Health Care Environments
Consistently, the recent research literature on the issue was organized according to the different target groups of health care place users, that is, generic patients, specific patients in terms of age groups (children and elderly), caregivers, and finally visitors (i.e., patients’ relatives and friends). Studies that focus on generic patients show new and important evidence of the impact of architecture features on the delivery of care. As previous studies have shown (e.g., Ulrich et al., 1991; Ulrich & Gilpin, 2003), recent findings confirm the positive effects of the presence of plants on stress and hospital room appraisal, and also that inpatients prefer realistic nature paintings over abstract (even if best-selling) art. Redecoration of rooms with wood paneling and Japanese paper has a positive influence in thermal comfort and decreasing stress levels, and room colors seem to have different impact on stress and arousal, depending on screening ability differences. The recent results on the study of music effects on well-being are contradictory, which might indicate that music can be effective only under certain circumstances (see also Evans, 2002), and that in some situations a quiet environment can be more beneficial. Overall, recent studies on multiple environmental features reinforce that people can make judgments about care, comfort, and therapist qualities only by looking at some prompts in the health care physical environment. Additionally, results of Rowlands and Noble (2008) warn researchers and decision makers that single rooms are not preferred by all users. Recent studies focusing on children are based on interviews and other child/adolescent-friendly (p. 312) techniques. The authors claimed that those approaches can be useful to inform architects and designers about young people’s preferences; however, further studies evaluating the effects of health care environment and children’s/adolescents’ behavioral, cognitive, and psychosocial outcomes are important to strengthen such results. Concerning studies about elderly people, contradictory results were found with respect to the effects of residential care refurbishment. These studies seem to indicate that different sensibilities of elders to environmental change need to be investigated, and that refurbishments should therefore be planned carefully, taking such differences into account. Moreover, since the older population is increasing, so should the studies about how health care and residential environments should benefit this group of users. About studies that analyzed the impact of the health care environment on staff outcomes, positive effects of single rooms were found, but effective modifications in operational management of the whole service seem to be crucial for caregivers who experience the change from open bays to single rooms. Nonetheless, these effects, as well as the effect of crowding on antidepressant treatments, need stronger evidence since they may be explained by other confounding variables. Unit design affects also nurses’ walking distance and stops, and improving the physical design and organizational layout of the medication room seems to have positive results. Some of these aspects emerged on the qualitative study carried out by Gurses and Carayon (2009). Finally, about visitors’ experience of the health care environment, it seems that their environmental needs are similar to those of patients but that their response to spatial-physical setting is more negative, which may be justified by the fact the hospital designers usually ignore visitors’ needs. Anyway, research about the availability and conditions of proper space for visitors and the impact on relevant visitors and patient outcomes is lacking.
Future Directions The review of the most recent studies about the effects of health care environment on users shows that this field is growing, thus confirming the opinion of Ulrich et al. (2008), which was based on their extensive literature review on health care evidence-based design. It also confirmed the complexity of this area of research, given the high number of environmental variables implied and the various methods that have been used to analyze their relationship. Because of that, some effects can still be considered inconsistent or unclear. Given this scenario, we have to agree with other scholars that there is still a lack of more rigorous and controlled studies (Ulrich et al., 2008; Dijkstra et al., 2006) to obtain more credible and reliable evidence that can be applied to the design of health care settings. Thus, the field needs more studies that can disentangle the independent effect of different environmental features, measure relevant health outcomes, account for the processes that lead environment to affect outcomes, as well as of the possible implicated mediators and moderators, and that can consider users’ characteristics and needs. The fact is that the difficulty of controlling variables represents a dangerous risk for the usefulness of evidence-based design, and as stated by Malkin (1991), “for many design questions, there is no
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Health Care Environments sound research yet available to inform the designer’s personal intuition, sensitivity, and experience” (p. 28). Connected to this point, there is the yet unsolved problem, in common with the more general architectural design domain, that concerns the difficulty practitioners have with understanding research that appears in academic journals. Nevertheless, researchers increasingly recognize the need to make their findings available in nonacademic journals (Arneill & Devlin, 2003). Future research should take into account this communication mode more deeply. An important aspect to address for informing future research concerns the way in which the health care environment is conceived. Hospitals are very complex settings, with multiple subplaces that have different functions, characterized by multiple features, and where different activities are performed by different groups of users. Staff, patients, and visitors have different functions, roles, needs, expectations, and characteristics. Moreover, different kinds of patients may have different preferences (Rashid & Zimring, 2008), and different functional units represent different behavioral settings (Barker, 1987). Finally, it needs to be considered which uses and behaviors a target subplace facilitates or hinders, in other words, which affordances are provided (Gibson, 1979). It seems obvious that the impact of health care environments on people cannot be reduced to a simple formula. However, to provide valuable information to decision makers involved in the design of health care buildings about how to promote the best conditions for a positive relationship between environment and people, research has to be specific, but without ignoring this complexity. (p. 313) Following the multi-place approach, Becker and colleagues (2010) provided a thoughtful example of the interdependence of different components of a setting as complex as the hospital. They stated that changes in the design of the microsystem (for example, a nursing unit) may make a difference in the microsystem itself (for example, increasing face-to-face interaction between nurses and doctors on a medical unit by designs that improve visual sight lines). This, in turn, may lead to improvements at the mesosystem level by fostering changes in different but related microsystems (e.g., the hospital administration and its commitment to creating a culture of teamwork). The suggestion of considering the health care environment as a multi-place system is not necessarily in contrast with the auspices of more rigorous and controlled research, since the former can be seen as a theoretical driver that should be used as a foundation for whatever kind of studies (i.e., ethnographic, observational, survey, experiment, etc.). In sum, future research should (i) increase the internal validity of the studies, (ii) verify multifaceted models that reflect the complexity of the unit of analysis, (iii) enhance the transferability of findings to designers and decision makers, and (iv) consider the health care environment as a multi-place system made up of interdependent components including people, behaviors, images, and physical features.
References Adams, A., Theodore, D., Goldenberg, E., McLaren, C., & McKeever, P. (2010). Kids in the atrium: Comparing architectural intentions and children’s experiences in a pediatric hospital lobby. Social Science & Medicine, 70, 658–667. Andrade, C., Lima, L., Fornara F., & Bonaiuto, M. (2012). Users’ views of hospital environmental quality: Validation of the Perceived Hospital Environment Quality Indicators (PHEQIs). Journal of Environmental Psychology, 32, 97– 111. Arneill, A., & Devlin, A. S. (2002). Perceived quality of care: The influence of the waiting room environment. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 22, 345–360. Baker, A., Davis, R., & Silvadon, P. (1960). Psychiatric services and architecture. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization. Barker, R. G. (1987). Prospecting environmental psychology: Oskaloosa revisited. In D. Stokols & I. Altman (Eds.), Handbook of environmental psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 1413–1432). New York: Wiley.
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Health Care Environments evidence-based healthcare design. Health Environments Research and Design, 1, 61–125. Veitch, R., & Arkkelin, D. (1995). Environmental psychology: An interdisciplinary perspective. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Verderber, S., & Fine, D. J. (2000). Healthcare architecture in an era of radical transformation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Verhaeghe, S., Defloor, T., Van Zuuren, F., Duijnstee, M., & Grypdonck, M. (2005). The needs and experiences of family members of adult patients in an intensive care unit: A review of the literature. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 14, 501–509. Virtanen, M., Pentti, J., Vahtera, J., Ferrie, J. E., Stansfeld, S. A.,…Kivimäki, M. (2008). Overcrowding in hospital wards as a predictor of antidepressant treatment among hospital staff. American Journal of Psychiatry, 165, 1482–1486. Wakamura, T., & Tokura, H. (2001). Influence of bright light during daytime on sleep parameters in hospitalized elderly patients. Journal of Physiological Anthropology and Applied Human Science, 20, 345–351. Weenig, M. W. H., & Staats, H. (2010). The impact of a refurbishment of two communal spaces in a care home on residents’ subjective well-being. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30, 542–552. Wilmott, M. (1986). The effect of a vinyl floor surface and carpeted floor surface upon walking in elderly hospital inpatients. Age and Aging, 15, 119–120. Zimring, C. (2002). Post-occupancy evaluation: Issues and implementation. In R. Bechtel & A. Churchmann (Eds.), Handbook of environmental psychology (pp. 306–322). New York: Wiley. Zimring, C. M., & Bosch, S. (2008). Building the evidence base for evidence-based design. Environment and Behavior, 40, 147–150. Zimring, C., Reizenstein Carpman, J., & Michelson, W. (1987). Design for special populations: Mentally retarded persons, children, hospital visitors. In D. Stokols & I. Altman (Eds.), Handbook of environmental psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 919–949). New York: Wiley. Ferdinando Fornara Ferdinando Fornara Department of Psychology University of Cagliari CIRPA (Centre for Inter-University Research on Environmental Psychology) Cagliari, Italy
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Correctional Environments
Oxford Handbooks Online Correctional Environments Richard E. Wener The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology, Forensic Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0017
Abstract and Keywords Correctional environments are unique as settings in which people are confined involuntarily, possibly for very long periods of time, and not for their own welfare. As such they can be very difficult places to endure. Moreover, inmates and staff are exposed to multiple environmental stressors whose effects may be magnified by the time of exposure and the difficulty in avoiding them. Inmates commonly need to cope with lack of privacy, high levels of crowding, isolation from needed human contact, constant high levels of noise, poor lighting conditions (too little in the daytime and too much at night), and little access to nature or nature views. New models of correctional design, with increased direct contact between inmates and staff, and greater control over environmental conditions, have had success in reducing violent behavior in recent decades. A model of environmental determinants of violence is presented that attempts to explain this success. Keywords: corrections, jails, prisons, stress, control, violence
Introduction Cavernous spaces with dull gray surfaces of concrete and steel, rooms with solid metal doors or bars, floors that can be washed down with a hose, a loud din that blends voices, alarms, TVs, loudspeakers and banging doors, and a constant acrid smell (a mixture of sweat, food, urine, and disinfectant). Some men in colored pajamas mill about or stare at a TV; others in uniforms watch from the other side of bars or in glass booths. Anyone who has watched action films or prime-time video would recognize this as a prison. Actual places vary considerably—some have cells with one or two beds while others have dormitories with stacks of bunks. Many have surfaces that are hard, fixed, and inflexible, as above, while some use more comfortable and moveable furniture, brighter colors, and windows to courtyards. In some, officers and inmates speak with military-like discipline, while in others interactions are more informal and casual. Nevertheless, whether the furniture consists of concrete benches or upholstered chairs, single rooms or large dorms, speaking through intercoms or face-to-face, a correctional setting is a place of its own kind, not easily mistaken for any other. What makes correctional environments so unusual is their very reason for being. There are other circumstances in which people are detained involuntarily, though usually for brief periods or for their own health or improvement. Prisons are unique in being settings where people are held against their will, for what may be very long periods of time (often months or years, occasionally decades), and for purposes typically not intended for their own betterment. Because these environments afford extraordinarily little control to their occupants, the potential psychological and behavioral impact of the physical environment is likely to be magnified. If crowding on a subway is bad, how much worse in a cell; if (p. 317) isolation in a college dorm room is distressing, what about prison solitary confinement?
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Correctional Environments Noise can be louder and more discordant as well as impossible to avoid. Many stressors may impinge at the same time, leading to strong psychological and psychophysiological responses both for inmates and members of the staff. This chapter reviews issues relating to privacy, personal space and territoriality, the impact of crowding and isolation, and ambient conditions such as noise, lighting, and view. It also discusses architectural design and layout as it affects critical behaviors, such as violence. These are difficult settings into which to gain access for research. Further study is needed on the nature and impact of crowding, and a thorough empirical assessment on the impact of isolation is particularly lacking, especially in its most extreme forms. Correctional institutions, such as prisons (institutions for sentenced individuals, often involving long-term stays) and jails (pretrial or short-term detention), are, in Goffman’s (1961) terms, total institutions—places that apply more restraint and control over the life and behavior of the occupant than any other in society. As such there are several indisputable truths. One is that the context of living in or even working in such an institution colors all perceptions, actions, and social and power relationships. Imprisonment causes a reduction in the level of control one has over all aspects of life, so that any environmental feature that can afford control, even something as small as a light switch, takes on new meaning. Another is that because of the above truth, particularly the lack of control available to occupants, the impacts of environmental stressors are magnified in these settings (Evans & Strecker, 2004; Ruback, Carr, & Hopper, 1986). In addition, the degree and time of exposure to environmental stressors can be greater in a prison than other settings. Both crowding and isolation can exist to a greater degree and for longer periods of time than almost anywhere else in society. Noise from people and equipment must be endured 24 hours a day. People can be significantly shut off from daylight, high-intensity electric light, and access to or even view of nature. Social intrusion may be omnipresent and fear and boredom are common. This chapter will address environmental issues in prisons or jails as they can be understood from the perspective of environmental psychology. It will look at the nature of specific environmental features and stressors in terms of what is known about them and their observed or likely impact in a correctional setting. It will also address broader issues of architectural design and corresponding management approaches as they affect behavior. In almost all cases environmental conditions should be discussed in terms of how they affect both inmates, who have basic human rights to humane and safe conditions, as well as members of the staff, who have the right to work in a safe and healthful environment.
History—Trying to Change Behavior with Force The history of jails and prisons is far too long and complex to address in detail here (see, e.g., Johnston, 2000; Morris & Rothman, 1995). Prior to the Age of Enlightenment there was very little attention paid to the impact of these environments on the life or psyche of their inhabitants, or to their potential use for reform or rehabilitation. The first example of broad movements to eliminate abuses and make use of prisons to change behavior for the benefit of both the inmate and society occurred in the late 18th and early 19th century, with John Howard’s (1777) exposé of conditions in English jails, and the development of the first penitentiaries in the United States (Johnston, 2000). The Eastern State Penitentiary (Johnston, 2004) used extreme isolation as a way to promote penitence among inmates through reflection and remorse. This institution was widely visited and written about as a grand social experiment in trying to improve society. Dozens of penitentiaries in the United States and in Europe were built copying this approach. Eastern State Penitentiary was extraordinary in both its good intentions to change criminal behavior, and the intensity of its oppressive environment. Prisoners could spend years in complete isolation, and contemporaneous accounts describe the damage to inmates from this almost total isolation (Toch, 2003). This experiment also reinforced the notion that society had a right to impose systems that attempt to alter criminal conduct upon those convicted of crimes. In the intervening decades, many different kinds of approaches to criminal rehabilitation have been attempted, though they have often been corrupted by overcrowding or political interference, leading to repeated cycles of “exposés, reports, proposals, then more exposés” (Rotman, 1995, p. 169). One late 20th-century model has explicitly attempted to use the physical setting to promote positive behavior
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Correctional Environments change. This approach, which has become known as direct supervision (Nelson, 1988b; (p. 318) Wener, 2005), proposed to bring the officer into direct and constant contact with inmates, by removing the separation of bars and locked control stations. It used “normalized” design to reduce the institutional feel of the setting. Direct supervision correctional design has been much discussed and studied, and it has had significant reported success (Wener, 2006).
Environment-Behavior Issues in Correctional Settings This section addresses the role of the physical environment in the correctional setting, including privacy, personal space and territoriality, research on crowding and isolation, noise, light, window, and view. This section will also look at broader issues of the impact of environmental design on behavior through the lens of direct supervision, and conclude with an overview of a model for understanding the role of the environment in affecting the likelihood and incidence of violent behavior.
Proxemics The social ecology of a place may be viewed in terms of considerations of privacy, personal space, and territoriality that are experienced in the context of interpersonal relations. These are central to the way the correctional space is seen and felt.
Privacy Altman (1975) defined privacy as a dynamic and dialectic process in which the individual struggles to match access to self and the desired amount of contact with others with the level of contact and access allowed by the setting. As such, privacy is a matter of regulation and control for an individual who tries to alter his or her setting to meet changing needs. While there is great cultural variation in how this is achieved, Altman suggested that the need for control is universal. Personal space and territoriality serve as spatial mechanisms for boundary control, while crowding and isolation are conditions that arise when boundary control fails. Boundary control, of course, is precisely and intentionally what inmates are missing in prisons and jails, as Foucault (1979) pointed out. For Foucault, prisons and jails are the antithesis of privacy, and institutional design exists, in part, to remind inmates of their diminished circumstances. Westin (1967) described privacy’s functions—to promote the development of personal autonomy, provide opportunities for emotional release, support attempts at self-evaluation, and limit and protect communication —and the various forms or levels of privacy: solitude, intimacy, anonymity, and reserve. These have obvious implications for correctional settings. Solitude (being alone by choice), for instance, is difficult to achieve in situations where forced contact with others or involuntary isolation are common. Inmates often desire to be alone, for sleeping, reading, studying, thinking, or personal hygiene, but cannot, or they may be cut off from others when company is wanted, as in early penitentiaries and modern administrative control units or maximum-security facilities. Privacy may be necessary for emotional development by providing an opportunity for emotional release in response to important, difficult, or troubling personal news (Altman, 1975; Pederson, 1999; Westin, 1967). When people have to confront such intense feelings, they may seek the comfort of others in spaces that are away from the gaze of strangers, which is an option that is generally unavailable in correctional settings. Prisoners are often faced with bad news about a job, relationship, or court proceeding and there are few good places they can go for an emotional outlet. The lack of such privacy options in a correctional setting may hinder an inmate’s ability to accept, understand, and maturely deal with bad news. Privacy supports thoughtful self-evaluation as part of “integrating experience into meaningful patterns” (Margulis, 2003, p. 412). We may need to get off the public stage to reflect and make sense of what is going on. Educational or therapeutic programs often encourage reflection and self-evaluation in prisoners, but the lack of privacy may inhibit their success. Opportunities for solitude in prisons or jails are uncommon and becoming even rarer as fewer and fewer institutions provide single-bed cells. Anonymity in a crowd can serve some of the same privacy functions (Westin, 1967), but correctional managers typically discourage anonymity. Staff members are expected to know who and where inmates are at all times for
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Correctional Environments accountability and security. Another privacy strategy is “reserve”—withdrawing into oneself to create a mental distance from others. It is often the only option remaining available to an inmate as a way to limit access and contact. For reserve to be useful, however, that desire to maintain a distance has to be understood and respected by others (Margulis, 2003), which may not always be the case in correctional culture. The loss of privacy in correctional settings is especially salient around issues of personal hygiene, (p. 319) particularly toilet and shower use. Cells that serve as both sleeping and toilet spaces have doors with open bars or small windows. Being on view is uncomfortable and often stressful, and may be emblematic of loss of social and spatial control (Kira, 1976). Also lost is the ability to exploit bathroom privacy norms for other activities, such as uninterrupted reading time. There is no place to be off-stage, off-camera, and away from scrutiny. Moore (1980) found that cell blocks with the least levels of visual privacy had greater levels of health care utilization than did those with more visual privacy. The ecology of a spatial behavior changes greatly when a second person moves into a cell. Normally solitary behaviors (sitting, reading) shift from bedrooms to public places when a single room becomes a double, in jails (Wener & Olson, 1980) as in other kinds of institutions (Wolfe & Golan, 1976; Zimring, Weitzer, & Knight, 1982). Single cells provide options for solitary behaviors that are lost in multiple cells.
Personal Space Personal space violations may be connected to aggressive incidents. Interpersonal distances are larger for violent or aggressive persons (Curran, Blatchley, & Hanlon, 1978; Hildreth, Derogatis, & McCusker, 1971; Kinzel, 1970; Roger & Schalekamp, 1976), and minimal required interpersonal distances may be a good predictor of which inmates will engage in fighting (Walkey & Gilmour, 1984). Studies in several kinds of settings have shown connections between personal space invasions and aggressive behavior—in young children (O’Neal, Caldwell, & Gallup, 1977), cognitively impaired nursing home residents (Ryden, Bossenmaier, & McLachlan, 1991), dementia patients in an Alzheimer unit (Bridges-Parlet, Knopman, & Thompson, 1994), and psychiatric inpatients (Fagan-Pryor et al., 2003). Increasing the amount of space available on a unit for the profoundly retarded was shown to reduce aggressive incidents (Rago, Parker, & Cleland, 1978)
Territoriality Territorial markings, as real barriers or symbolic ones, have often been related to defensive and aggressive behavior (Ardrey, 1967; Brown, 1987), perhaps most clearly in total institutions where any possibility to exert control takes on special meaning (Paluck & Esser; 1971). Formal or informal boundary marking can reduce confusion and clarify rights for use and reduce the likelihood of accidental spatial intrusions that can lead to conflict, such as described for youth correctional boot camps (Bobbitt, 1995) and non-correctional residential settings (Abu-Ghazzeh, 2000; Brown & Altman, 1983; Zeisel et al., 2003). Adding opportunities for territorial control can result in a significant improvement in the environment. When dormitories in a federal prison added a low partition around otherwise open bunks, inmate scores on some measures of crowding and stress were as low as those of inmates in single cells (Schaeffer, Baum, Paulus, & Gaes, 1988). Institutional residents show territorial behavior that is often related to power hierarchies (Austin & Bates, 1974; Cooley, Jewitt, & Oren, 1973; Roth, 1971; Wener & Olsen, 1980). Those high in the social hierarchy have more success in claiming desired space and objects and intruding in others’ spaces (Deutsch, Esser, & Sossin, 1978; Paluck & Esser, 1971; Paslawskyj & Ivinskis, 1980; Sundstrom & Altman, 1974). There were correlations between turnover, dominance hierarchies, aggression, and territoriality among boys in a juvenile detention cottage (Sundstrom & Altman, 1974). Dominance hierarchies were clear and territoriality was high with stable populations but deteriorated with an increase in aggression when there was a great deal of population turnover.
Social Conditions Crowding Crowding is a perennial problem in correctional settings both in the United States and in other countries (Buckley, 2001; Cabral, 1991; Cabral & Stangenhaus, 1992; Chui, 2007; Commentary: The H. M. Northward Prison Report—
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Correctional Environments The Reception of Inmates, 2001; Hill, 2001; Shabangu, 2006; Specter, 2010; Steiner & Wooldredge, 2008)—hence the considerable amount of research that has focused on this issue. Variations among correctional institutions and within settings over time provide natural laboratories for studying crowding in ways that are impossible to replicate in an academic setting because of the level of density, the pervasiveness of the experience, the time of exposure, and the involuntary nature of incarceration. Paulus (1988) used these variations to address the impact of crowding on individual inmates. He reported that the number of inmates per room, more than space per person, is related to measures of perceived environmental quality, crowding, control, and stress, as well as psychophysiological measures of stress. Density was also related to use of health services, the number of inmates seeking or getting medical services, and (p. 320) the level of reported incidents. Ratings for dormitories improved when the spaces were larger, had single beds (vs. double bunk beds), and included partitions. Having more inmates in a room has also been related to increased escapes (Bruehl, Horvat, & George, 1979, cited in Paulus, 1988) and recidivism (Farrington & Nuttall, 1985). Longitudinal studies have found that blood pressure increased when inmates moved from single rooms to dormitories, and fell again when they moved back (D’Atri, 1975). In a juvenile detention facility, blood pressure correlated highly with density (Ray, Wandersman, Ellisor, & Huntington, 1982). Students who were leaders and doing the best in school were the most adversely affected by density increases. Density increases were also related to an increase in illness complaints, greater levels of hostility and expression of anger, more disruption of treatment programs, and an increased sense of social disorganization, as measured by Moos’s Social Climate Scale. In a metropolitan jail with relatively small changes in population, perceived crowding and sick call rates increased as populations levels increased and fell as populations fell (Wener & Keys, 1988). Inmates in this study also responded to the experience of change in density. Even though density levels in two living units were equal after population was increased in one unit and lowered in the other, inmates in the unit that had seen density levels increase showed higher sick call rates and lower environmental ratings than the other, which had seen density levels fall. As density levels rise in correctional settings, detainees feel less safe (Roush, 1989) and view others as more hostile (Lawrence & Andrews, 2004). Increased institutional density has been related to increased aggressive behavior (Gaes, 1985; Nacci, Teitelbaum, & Prather, 1977), most significantly for young inmates (Jan, 1980; Clayton & Carr, 1987; Franklin et al., 2006; Ruback et al., 1986; Nacci et al., 1977) in studies that for the most part have used system-wide surveys of inmates. Older inmates may be more likely to develop health problems (Toch, 1985) or withdraw under crowding pressure. The proportion of the population that resides in dormitories may also predict assault rates (Gaes & McGuire, 1985). Crowding also can hinder the success of supportive programs. In a study of four institutions (Jan, 1980), increased population density was related to decreases in class attendance, graduation from school, use of programs, and the likelihood of achieving parole, in addition to an increase in disruptive behavior. Negative crowding effects have not always resulted from increases in prison density (Innes, 1986; Pelissier, 1991; Porporpino & Dudley, 1984), and some have suggested that aggression may be a function of the design of the institution and nature of the population more than of crowding per se (Ekland-Olson, 1986). In some cases crowding may even lead to reduced misconduct, because of organizational adjustments made to deal with conditions (Franklin et al., 2006). Suicide rates showed increases with higher density in some research (Huey & McNulty, 2005), and the opposite in others (Wooldredge & Winfree, 1992). There is some question as to whether inmates adapt to crowding over time. There does seem to be some adaptation, as shown in lessening of illness complaints and clinic use (Paulus, 1988; Ostfeld, Kasl, D’Atri, & Fitzgerald, 1987) and blood pressure (D’Atri, 1981), but not for measures of perceived crowding and stress (Paulus, 1988). In a reexamination of this research, Gaes (1994) suggested that the connection between crowding and health is difficult to determine because of the complex set of circumstances that determine outcome measures such as illness reports, and the potential significant impacts of management responses to crowding.
Isolation To be imprisoned means to be isolated from society, community, family, and job. In most cases, however, the
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Correctional Environments inmate becomes part of an internal social system, an alternate community that can be socially supportive (Toch, 1992). Isolation as used here, however, refers to situations in which even that level of social contact and support is lost in highly restrictive settings where inmates have little or no contact with others. Recent attention has centered on the growth of so-called Supermax prisons, intended to house the most dangerous inmates, usually in extreme levels of isolation. Researchers have had little access to study these kinds of institutions (Pizarro & Stenius, 2004), even though it has been suggested that extreme isolation creates a kind of social pathology that reduces inmates’ ability to function normally when returned to the prison population or to society outside of prison walls (Haney, 2003). Symptoms that have been attributed to extreme isolation include sleep disturbance, anxiety, panic, rage, loss of control, paranoia, hallucinations, anger, ruminations and (p. 321) confused thoughts, and self-mutilation—dubbed special housing unit syndrome (Haney, 2003) or Ganser’s syndrome (Andersen, Sestoft, & Lillebaek, 2001; Grassian & Friedman, 1986). Distress and symptomatology seem to increase as level of restriction gets more severe (Miller, 1994). Inmates with mental illness are more likely to end up in isolation and may be most vulnerable to it. Inmates in isolation have lower self-esteem (Blatier, 2000) and a range of other significant psychiatric symptoms (Benjamin & Lux, 1975; Korn, 1988; Kupers, 2008), including self-mutilation (Jones, 1986). Shutting off these inmates from social contact can have devastating effects (Benjamin & Lux, 1975; Cohen, 1998; Toch, 1992), as seen in the high incidence of mental illness in isolation units (Hodgins & Cote, 1991; Nurse, Woodcock, & Ormsby, 2003). Risk of psychiatric hospitalization increases with time in isolation (Sestoft, Andersen, & Lilleboek, 1998) and psychological functioning can improve when transferred to normal housing (Andersen et al., 2003). Approximately one-third of all inmate suicides in Finland took place in isolation rooms (Joukamaa, 1997). Isolated inmates use prison health care services more than other inmates (Moore, 1980). Not all studies found negative effects of isolation on cognitive tests (Weinberg, 1967) or mental health (Gendreau & Bonta, 1984; Zinger, Wichmann, & Andrews, 2001), especially when the impacts of isolation are differentiated from the harsh treatment that sometimes accompany it. Suedfeld, in particular, has advocated for the potentially beneficial effects of isolation through restricted environmental stimulation therapy (REST) (Suedfeld, Ramirez, Deaton, & Baker-Brown, 1982). He has argued that serious side effects are relatively rare and that most inmates develop coping mechanisms, while many develop a more positive attitude and increased participation in programs. In spite of Suedfeld’s arguments, prison isolation is most commonly considered a negative and even harmful experience, although the conceptual explanations are not as obvious as they may seem at first glance. Some have related prison isolation to early laboratory research on sensory deprivation (Grassian & Friedman, 1986; Haney, 2003), though conditions even in the most strict prison isolation do not bear much resemblance to the complete elimination of sensory inputs in laboratories (Suedfeld et al., 1982). Moreover, the original sensory deprivation studies themselves had serious methodological flaws (Orne, 1962). These environments are, at the very least, monotonous and boring, particularly as inmates in isolation have reduced access to programs and services, and lose whatever benefits these may provide. Boredom has been linked to depression and hostility (Vodanovich, 2003), and the level to which inmates volunteer to be subjects in research programs (Moser et al., 2004). Another explanation refers to the loss of privacy experienced in isolation, where it is often the case that inmates are under constant observation by people and technology. Severe loss of privacy itself may be a significant source of stress (Altman, 1975; Margulis, 2003; Westin, 1967). Ultimately, though, it may be social deprivation—the inability to establish or maintain interactions and relationships with other people—that is the most obvious and most damaging consequence of prison isolation. Haney (2003) has suggested that isolated inmates suffer because they are removed from the rhythms of life. Isolated individuals are unable to make contacts with other inmates as well as other aspects of the natural world, including access to natural light and exterior views (discussed further below). Social connections made within the prison environment have been cited as important mechanisms for coping with the hardships of incarceration (Toch, 1992), and deprivation of these relationships may lead to a diminished ability to establish normal social relations (Haney, 2003). Without social interaction inmates also lose opportunities for reality testing, as described by social comparison theory, which suggests that we define and understand ourselves significantly by our interactions with others (Suls, 1977) and that the “meaning of one’s behavior is in the response to it” by others (Burke, 1996, p. 143). Solitary confinement removes our ability to use others for that purpose,
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Correctional Environments making reality less clear, which is a particular problem for many assigned to isolation cells whose hold on reality may already be fragile (Arrigo & Bullock, 2008).
Physical Conditions Noise Research in the laboratory and other settings has demonstrated that noise can be a significant environmental stressor (see Stansfeld, this volume). It is, therefore, deserving of attention within the prison context especially because prison design and the many sources of sound in correctional settings make them inherently difficult spaces for acoustics, because many of these sources are present 24 hours (p. 322) a day, and because acoustics has not received significant attention from correctional planners. There are several factors that make typical prison and jail settings very poor acoustically. First, the interior spaces of living units for 50, 60, or more inmates are often very large with cavernous dayrooms. Building materials are usually very hard and reflective of sound, with very little carpeting, wall hangings, or upholstered furniture for sound absorption. Reverberation times longer than two seconds are common, creating uncomfortable echoing (Rostad & Christoff, 2006). As reverberation time increases, holding decibel levels constant, sound intelligibility drops precipitously (Anhert & Tennhardt, 2002). There are many generators and sources of sound. The sound that comes from dozens of voices, occupying a large open space at the same time and engaged in tasks or casual activity, can be considerable. Mechanical and manual doors constantly open and bang closed, and intercoms, public address speakers, televisions, and radios are ever present. On top of that, these settings have a number of mechanical sources of sound, such as fans from heating, cooling, and ventilation systems, which can add a significant constant background hum to the space. There are very few studies of the psychological and behavioral impacts of noise in correctional institutions, so most of the relevant research comes from other settings. One of the most obvious of noise impacts is in the disturbance of normal nighttime sleep (Griefahn, 2000; Tarnopolski, 1977), when there is less habituation to noise levels than there is during the day (Tarnopolski, 1977). Repeated exposure to 50 dBA or more of noise can cause increased heart rate and blood pressure during sleep (Stansfeld & Matheson, 2003). Noise that impairs sleep can impact cognitive functioning, mood (Pilcher & Huffcutt; 1996), stress, and staff burnout (Topf & Dillon, 1988; Topf, Bookman, & Arand, 1996; Topf, 2000; Topf & Thompson, 2001). In a correctional setting, partial sleep deprivation may make aggression more likely (Ireland & Culpin, 2006). The stressful properties of noise are related less to its loudness than to predictability and controllability (Cohen, 1980; Evans & Stecker, 2004; Glass & Singer, 1972). These findings have implications for prisons and jails, where many of the sources of noise are, to a large extent, intermittent, unpredictable, and beyond control of inmates and often even of staff members. Impacts of exposure to unpredictable and uncontrollable noise include reduced motivation and frustration tolerance, interpreted by Glass and Singer (1972) as effects of learned helplessness (Seligman, 1975), with significant behavioral, emotional, and mental health consequences. Prolonged exposure to noise levels similar to those commonly found in prisons and jails elevates blood pressure and may affect stress hormones, such as cortisol (Babisch, Fromme, Beyer, & Ising, 2001; Babisch, Fromme, Beyer, & Ising, 2003; Evans & Johnson, 2000; Ising & Kruppa, 2004; Stansfeld & Matheson, 2003). The presence of noise may also reduce the likelihood of people engaging in positive social behaviors, such as helping, possibly because they are less likely to pay attention to their context and notice the person in need (Jones, Chapman, & Auburn, 1981; Mathews & Canon, 1975). High noise levels can also change the social ecology of spatial behavior (Stansfeld & Matheson, 2003). In institutions, such as prisons and jails, people often are unable to escape from the noise, for example, by going into another space and closing a door (Daffern, 2004), which may increase stress levels and the chances of aggressive responses (Wener & Olsen, 1980). Stress resulting from exposure to uncontrollable noise may even be higher in populations such as those often found in prisons, with low levels of perceived self-efficacy (Kuno, Yazawa, & Ohira, 2003), or those who have experienced the helplessness that comes from chronic long-term unemployment (Weiss, 1997).
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Correctional Environments Visual Aspects of the Setting Although windows and lighting are addressed in the standards used by American prisons and jails to assess conditions of confinement (American Correctional Association, 2004), they are often viewed more as amenities than critical environmental conditions. Views, including those of nature, and color are largely ignored in standards.
Lighting Since these are 24-hour settings, the quality of electric lighting is critical for visual tasks, such as inspection and surveillance, reading, viewing video screens, and paperwork. Natural and electrical lighting can also have important effects on the general ambient environment, the periodicity of biological cycles (circadian rhythms), and mood (Ariës, Veitch, & Newsham, 2010; Espiritu et al., 1994; Pechacek, Andersen, & Lockley, 2008). There is very little research on the psychological effects of lighting specifically in correctional facilities, so extrapolation from research and other settings is necessary, as discussed in detail by a number of (p. 323) authors (Cawthorne, 1991; Gifford, 1994; Lockley, 2009; Illuminating Engineering Society of North America, 2009; Veitch, van den Beld, Brainard, & Roberts, 2004). The biological impact of light depends largely on the intensity, quality, and timing of exposure (Veitch, 2002)—all of which may be issues in correctional institutions. Many prisons and jails, for example, provide very little daylight into living areas. As organisms that evolved in daylight, we may be sensitive to its variations, including the much greater intensity of daylight as well as qualitative differences (broader spectra, polarization, and variation by time of day and season). People have shown a preference for daylight over electrical lights, although that may be related to daylight’s higher levels of illuminance (Galasiu & Veitch, 2006, Markus, 1967). Levels and quality of lighting in jails and prisons may also affect sleeping. Adequate sleep seems related not just to having enough light during the day but also to enough dark at night (Burgess, Sharkey, & Eastman, 2002). Sleep deprivation and abnormal sleep patterns may be pervasive issues for inmates, who often live in settings with inadequate lighting during the day and too much light at night. In addition, light exposure is important in settings where staff members must constantly rotate work shifts, as is the case in prisons and jails. Light intensity and time of exposure may affect the likelihood of experiencing sleep disorders with impacts on job performance, mood, and social stress (Barger, Lockley, Rajaratnam, & Landrigan, 2009).
Windows Windows may be psychologically important design features in confined settings. In such situations windows can provide diversion and psychological distance from others (Haines, 1988) as well as reduce perceived crowding, in part by increasing perceived spaciousness (Desor, 1972; Schiffenbauer et al., 1977). Windows add stimulation to stimulus-deprived situations, provide information about weather, time of day, and season, and potentially allow for nature views. In most settings people have a preference for being in spaces with access to window views (Stone, 1998). Inmates have been observed to go to great lengths to spend time looking through windows with views of panoramic urban vistas (Wener & Olsen, 1980). They enjoy views of nature and animals (West, 1986) particularly as an alternative to the internal view and reality of the institution (Heerwagen, 1990).
Nature Views Exposure to nature and nature views has been shown to have important effects in reducing levels of stress and providing restoration from mental fatigue (Ulrich, 1993; Kaplan, 1995). It may also positively affect inmate health as indicated in several studies that found significantly reduced levels of illness reports (Moore, 1981; West, 1986) and blood pressure (Moore, 1981) for inmates who had views of nature, compared to similar inmates without such views. West (1986) found that the positive effect of nature views was strongest where inmate turnover (which can increase stress in an institutional situation (Sundstrom & Altman, 1974)) was highest. Use of prison gardens has also been proposed as a way to reduce prison stress (Lindemuth, 2007). Nature views do not have to be of real environments to have a positive impact. Simulated views (such as slides or
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Correctional Environments murals of nature scenes) have positive effects on stress reduction and mental restoration (Heerwagen, 1990; Ulrich, 1999). In a recent intervention by Farbstein, Farling, and Wener (2009), data were collected from corrections officers in a busy jail intake area before and after a large nature mural was introduced on the waiting room wall. In the post-mural period, cognitive performance (digit span backward) was significantly better and there was improved recovery from the stress of work shifts, as measured by change in heart rate variability.
Color There has not been a great deal of attention to the use of color in correctional settings, and where color has been addressed as a design issue, its use has not necessarily been based on research findings. Typically colors have been used in the hope that a particular scheme or hue might lead to a calmer or more relaxing response. For instance, colors have been suggested for use in Canadian correctional institutions to reduce tension (Krames & Flett, 2000), though there is not any published information on effectiveness. At one point many detention centers, juvenile facilities, and other residential institutions in the United States were experimenting with the use of a shade known as Baker-Miller pink to calm highly aroused residents. Schauss (1979) had proposed that short-term exposure to this color could quickly and significantly reduce aggressive behavior, and was supported by anecdotal reports (Johnston, 1981) and quasi-experimental studies (Caudill, 1981; Pellegrini, Schauss, & Miller, 1981). More recent studies with (p. 324) better control have shown mixed or negative effects (Elliot et al., 2007; Gilliam & Unruh, 1988; Gilliam, 1991; Profusek & Rainey, 1987), and some have suggested that something like the Hawthorne effect may be an explanation for positive results (Pellegrini et al., 1981).
Broader Architectural Issues The history of prisons and jails is replete with examples of innovators who have developed novel programs for the treatment of inmates, and often created physical environments to support those programs. One of the most daring and innovative recent changes in the physical setting emerged in the 1970s when the US Bureau of Prisons (BOP) opened three new jails for federal detainees, called Metropolitan Correctional Centers. These facilities emerged from a long process of planning and development that was intended to change expectations for both inmates and staff members, and radically alter the nature of officer-inmate interaction, in part by creating settings that were more residential than institutional in appearance (Wener, 2005). The direct supervision model involved several key alterations of standard operating procedures, all of which were intimately linked to elements in the design of the physical environment. The key elements were (1) changing the role of the officer to one that involves much more communication and even counseling; (2) taking officers out of locked control rooms, separated from inmates, and placing them in living areas where they would interact directly with inmates; (3) implementing decentralized, small living units where inmates could gain access to many resources and officers could stay in constant contact with the inmates, which also allowed some measure of unescorted inmate movement through the setting to reduce regimentation and the sense of confinement; and (4) promoting the use of non-institutional, “normalized” environments, including the use of carpeting, residential materials, bright colors, and soft materials. Architects were asked by the BOP to design these jails to be secure, safe, and humane. These were pretrial facilities in which inmates had the legal presumption of innocence, and a goal was to reduce the trauma of incarceration with small living units that provided some measure of privacy (single cells with doors rather than bars). These jails were located in city centers to ease movement to court, encourage family visiting, and allow for work-release programs. When these federal jails were opened in 1976, they were so different from most other jail designs that some correctional professionals thought the model could not be applied to state, county, or city inmates. A few predicted that it would be impossible to maintain control in such settings, which would result in widespread vandalisms and assault (Anderson, 1983). Post-occupancy evaluations of these first prototypes, however, indicated that the plans worked very well indeed—better than expected by most correctional officials (Wener & Olsen, 1980). Both inmates and staff reported that stress levels were lower than usual. There was very little damage to property, and even fragile fixtures, such as residential-grade lamps and bulbs, were rarely broken. There was no visible graffiti. Serious assaults, including sexual assaults, by inmates on other inmates or against staff members, were nonexistent during
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Correctional Environments the first year after opening, and remained very rare afterward. The only areas within the jails that suffered any amounts of significant vandalism at all were those few spaces (the intake holding areas where new inmates waited for processing) that used designs much more like traditional jails. These case studies concluded that the success of these new and innovative jails was related to the constant casual level of communication between staff members and inmates, as supported by the architecture; the positive behavioral expectations promoted by the quality of the design; the level of privacy afforded by the space; and the level of control over exposure to social and environmental stressors available to inmates. Evaluations were also conducted at the first local jails to adopt this model and they also noted low tension levels and very safe living conditions (Frazier, 1985; Schneiger, 1985; Sigurdson, 1985; Wener, 1985; Zimring, 1989). In the past three decades hundreds of new correctional institutions have made use of this model of design and management (National Institute of Corrections Information Center, 2006), mostly in the United States but with some diffusion to other countries (Hellmayer, 2005). Over three dozen case studies, longitudinal studies, and crosssectional comparisons have addressed the level and cause of the success of direct supervision design and management (Wener, 2006). The most consistent finding has been that direct supervision correctional institutions were perceived as safer and less stressful and had fewer incidents of violence and other serious kinds of misconduct. This was accomplished while costing the same or less to build and operate than traditional jails (Nelson, 1988a; Farbstein & Wener, 1989). In none of these studies did the traditional facilities perform better, and only a few showed differences that were small or negligible.
(p. 325) An Environmental and Contextual Model of Violence Direct supervision is both a management style and an approach to environmental design. Any impact on inmate behavior is likely related to both, especially since behaviors in natural settings rarely have single direct deterministic causes. A model that describes the causes of violence should be relevant to both direct supervision and more traditional institutions. It needs to address the broad context of the setting as well as the elements that can mediate and moderate effects (Baron & Kenny, 1986; Evans & Lepore, 1997). The model, presented in Figure 17.1, suggests that the environment of the institution can influence the level of violent behavior in several ways. Violent behavior is affected, in the first instance, by the institutional context, which is made up by the physical environment (including spatial organization, ambient conditions, provisions for privacy, and visibility), the nature of the organization (policies, procedures, oversight, and more), and the social conditions (such as the number, qualities, and background of the staff members and inmates). The model suggests that these have an impact in the degree to which inmates perceive themselves to be at risk of assault, the level at which resources are viewed as scarce commodities, and the amount of stress and mental fatigue inmates and staff members experience. These responses to the environment result in a number of adaptive (often maladaptive) responses by inmates, which can lead to increases or decreases in the level of violence. Inmates who see themselves in danger of assault, for example, are likely to respond by finding some way of protecting themselves. They might seek to obtain or make a weapon for self-protection. The more weapons that exist in the institution, the more other inmates, as well as staff members, will be concerned and anxious. Inmates may respond in other ways, such as acting tough, “macho,” or “crazy,” to scare off potential attackers or affiliating with a group or gang for self-protection. All of these increase tension and the likelihood that some event will trigger a violent response. In addition, aspects of institutional context—design, policy, and population—affect the level of critical resources available to inmates. Increases in perceived scarcity lead to competition, such as for food, cigarettes,2 the best chair, television channel, or telephone, which creates the kind of friction that could also generate violent responses. Environmental factors (such as crowding, noise and view) can also induce stress and mental fatigue, which can make people irritable and reduce tolerance for frustration, also making conflict more likely. An important moderator of violent behavior can be the apparent consequences of behaviors. That is, conditions that increase the chances that assault or vandalism will be seen or otherwise attributed to the perpetrator, such as high visibility and close contact between the officers and inmates, may inhibit the behavior.
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Correctional Environments
Click to view larger Figure 17.1 Environmental Model—Institutional Violence.
The direct supervision model of correctional design and operations reduces violence by intervening in all of these conditions. The close presence of officers increases the likelihood that staff members will be able to protect inmates (reduce fear) by (p. 326) intervening in a conflict before it gets out of hand. They are more likely to identify who caused a problem (consequences). Similarly, the ability of inmates to retreat to their room to avoid conflict helps make inmates feel less at risk and less likely to resort to the kinds of response (weapons, etc.) that increase tension throughout the living area (reduced stress). The fact that few weapons are typically found in direct supervision jails, for instance, is probably due more to a reduced sense of need for self-protection than any better ability to screen them out. Further, there is greater freedom of movement and increased access to facilities within the direct supervision living unit, and the responsiveness of staff members to inmate needs (reducing perceived scarcity) lessens the likelihood of conflict caused by competition from resources. Living areas with a greater number of telephones and televisions for inmates have less likelihood of conflict over their use.
Conclusion Correctional environments exert powerful effects on inmate and staff members, but research on the degree and causes of these impacts on psychological, behavioral, and psychophysiological variables is comparatively scant. Moreover, some critical and potentially damaging spaces and issues are among the least studied. The inability to conduct careful research in the high-security institutions that have the most extreme levels of isolation leaves us speculating about the kind and degree of impact these settings have on their involuntary guests. It seems to be more and more difficult to gain access to many institutions to collect psychological, behavioral, or psychophysiological data. Most of the recent studies on crowding are cross-sectional studies that use broad, system-wide data, from surveys and archival sources, rather than prospective data collection of the kind used by Paulus (1988) and his colleagues. Conditions in institutions can affect the individual, the group, and the organization. Crowding can lead to social withdrawal and reduced cooperative behavior, cause stress-related effects on physical and mental health, and lead to increased aggressiveness that can overwhelm services and programs and that can affect almost every aspect of institutional functioning. The impact of crowding can be moderated by both physical design and management strategies. On the other end of the spectrum, isolation can, at the very least, produce or exacerbate social and psychological disturbances, reduce the ability of individuals to function well once they return to the general population (and possibly to society), and increase the chances of self-harm. Lack of privacy makes it hard for those inmates who have an interest in changing their behavior to engage in reflection and self-evaluation. Exposure to uncontrollable noise results in reduced tolerance for frustration, increased irritability and argumentativeness, and greater likelihood of responding aggressively to provocations. Lack of access to nature can increase stress and irritability and decrease ability to recover from attentional fatigue, all of which can make aggressive behavior more likely. Reduced exposure to daylight can affect mood and health, and reduce sleep quality. Sleep is an issue that is little discussed or studied in correctional contexts, even though it can have significant behavioral and health effects. Sleep deprivation harms physical and mental health, mood, and behavior. There
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Correctional Environments may be a negative relationship between the amount of sleep and aggressive behavior. Sleep can be affected by many of the conditions we have discussed in these chapters—privacy, crowding, lighting (and darkening), and noise. Trying to get a good night’s sleep in a crowded space when regularly exposed to others, in an environment that is too bright and noisy, would be challenging to most people. Physical, organizational, and social conditions that increase the likelihood that inmates will be fearful for their own safety can trigger maladaptive responses that increase both perceived and objective risk. Approaches that use both design and organizational innovations to reduce risk and fear have led to safer, less assaultive, and less vandalized settings.
Future Directions 1. Further research on the impact of correctional settings on behavior is needed. The problem for researchers is in getting into prisons to conduct studies. This is especially true for the most extreme settings, such as Supermax institutions, where the impacts are likely to be the strongest but where gaining access for research is most difficult. 2. With increasing numbers of inmates being placed in long-term isolation, controlled longitudinal studies are needed to determine the level of stress, impacts on behavior and psychopathology, and long-term effects on social adjustment within and outside the institution. 3. Research is needed about the effects of daylight and electric lighting, and views of nature on variables such as quality of sleep, mood, cognitive performance, and aggressive behavior. (p. 327) Attention to these environmental qualities in design offers important potential benefits for inmates and staff members. 4. Although correctional staff recognize noise levels as important, relatively little attention has been paid to the impacts of noise or the benefits that can come from improved acoustic design in prisons and jails. 5. There has been little attention to the potential effects of design on the critical long-term outcome of recidivism, other than one study that suggested that even brief exposure to direct supervision living units could have positive effects (Applegate, Surette, & McCarthy, 1999). 6. The limits and robustness of direct supervision as a design and management system need further exploration. What are the critical design and management parameters and how far can they be stretched before the quality of the environment and staff and inmate safety suffer? 7. Violent behavior remains the defining concern for correctional managers. There is a need to better understand how the context affects the risk of assault, such as through tests of the violence model offered here.
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Correctional Environments the Environmental Design Research Association, Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Wooldredge, J. D., & Winfree, L. T., Jr. (1992). An aggregate-level study of inmate suicides and deaths due to natural causes in US jails. Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency, 29(4), 466. Zeisel, J., Silverstein, N. M., Hyde, J., Levkoff, S., Lawton, M. P., & Holmes, W. (2003). Environmental correlates to behavioral health: Outcomes in Alzheimer’s special care units. Gerontologist, 43(5), 697–711. Zimring, C. (1989). Post-occupancy evaluation: Contra Costa County Main Detention Facility. Unpublished report. Atlanta: Environment/Behavior Inquiry. Zimring, C., Weitzer, W., & Knight, R. C. (1982). Opportunity for control and the designed environment: The case of an institution for the developmentally disabled. In A. Baum & J. Singer (Eds.), Advances in environmental psychology, Environment and Health (Vol. 4, pp. 171–210). Hillside, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Zinger, I., Wichmann, C., & Andrews, D. A. (2001). The psychological effects of 60 days in administrative segregation. Canadian Journal of Criminology, 43(1), 47–83.
Notes: (1.) Much of the information in this chapter is adapted from Wener, R. (2012). The environmental psychology of prisons and jails: Creating human spaces environments in secure settings. New York: Cambridge University Press. (2.) Though most American prisons and jails are now smoke-free. Richard E. Wener Richard E. Wener Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Polytechnic Institute of New York University New York, NY
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Natural Landscapes
Oxford Handbooks Online Natural Landscapes Massimiliano Scopelliti, Giuseppe Carrus, and Mirilia Bonnes The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0018
Abstract and Keywords This chapter presents an overview of theories and empirical research on human relations to natural landscapes. The first part reviews evolutionary models and related research on preference for natural landscapes. The role of several environmental properties in promoting individual adaptive response to natural settings is examined. Then the response to natural landscapes is discussed through the analysis of the relationships between preference and either actual or perceived opportunity for psychological restoration. The role of cognitive and affective mediators in the search for adaptation to the environment is also outlined. In the second part, moving from an evolutionary and cognitive to a social psychological frame of reference, the role of worldviews, values, and attitudes—and their sociocultural correlates—in the transaction with natural landscapes and resources is analyzed, and the possibilities for both positive and negative human responses to natural landscapes are illustrated. Finally, directions for future research are identified. Keywords: natural landscapes, evolutionary models, psychological restoration, sociocultural models, worldviews, values, attitudes, social dilemmas, health
Introduction What are the bases of human relations with natural landscapes? What are the psychological processes implied in these relations? Natural landscapes can be defined as environmental scenes, totally or predominantly untouched by human activity, of smaller or larger extent, that can be seen in one view from one place. By assuming this perspective, the psychological literature on natural landscape has traditionally focused on the visual properties of the environment, and on human responses to these properties. Beyond the “expert” and “experiential” approaches, the former based on professionals’ judgments and the latter on subjective meanings and impressions of particular persons (Zube, Sell, & Taylor, 1982), environmental psychology has mostly analyzed individual responses to natural landscapes on a more scientific ground according to two main perspectives. The psychophysical approach has considered human responses to natural landscapes as a way to gain information about the properties of the landscapes that contribute to its quality; this implies a focus on the physical properties of the landscape. A positive response by people is supposed to be associated with the quality of the environment. This perspective is thus aimed at understanding the physical characteristics of the environment that are more likely to elicit positive responses. The idea behind the psychophysical approach is that a quantitative relation between the level of physical properties of the environment and the amount of human responses can be identified. As a result, human responses can be translated into objective and reliable indexes of quality (Daniel, 1990). The relation between physical and subjective measures is usually investigated by recruiting (p. 333) adequate samples of respondents who are asked to give their evaluation of several landscapes, differing in the levels of
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Natural Landscapes physical features. Among the physical properties of the environment, degree of wilderness, level of biodiversity, plant coverage rate, grass and shrubs rate, and amount of water have often been considered as potential features promoting positive responses by people; among the measures of positive human response, subjective judgments of aesthetic or visual quality and scenic beauty (Feimer, Smardon, & Craik, 1981; Daniel & Vining, 1983; Daniel, 1990) or preference (e.g., Schroeder, 1987) have been most frequently used. The Scenic Beauty Estimation (SBE) is a traditional method developed in this respect (Daniel & Boster, 1976). Through appropriate statistical procedures, including multiple regression analyses, SBE, considered as a subjective response, can be derived in a prediction model as a function of various physical features of the environment, each contributing to a different extent to overall SBE. Once this relation has been established, natural landscape quality can be objectively assessed through the measurement of relevant physical features, and evaluations of selected observers are no longer needed (Daniel & Vining, 1983). For example, in a study on agricultural landscapes in Spain, Arriaza, Cañas-Ortega, Cañas-Madueño, and Ruiz-Aviles (2004) found that the degree of wilderness, the presence of wellpreserved man-made elements, the percentage of plant cover, the amount of water, the presence of mountains, and the color contrast were all factors contributing to overall visual quality. On the other hand, the psychological approach has considered human responses to natural landscapes as a way to analyze the cognitive, affective, and behavioral processes implied in people-environment transactions. Human responses to natural landscapes are still considered a way to gain information about the quality of the environment, as feelings, perceptions, and behaviors may range from positive, to neutral, to negative. Differently from the psychophysical approach, however, human responses to perceived (not objective) properties of the landscape are analyzed. The psychological approach is thus aimed at understanding whether and how specific perceived properties of the environment are associated with positive or negative emotional, cognitive, and behavioral human responses. Aesthetic response (Berlyne, 1971) or preference (Herzog, 1985; Herzog & Bosley, 1992; Kaplan, 1985), approach/exploration or contemplation (Ulrich, 1993; Heerwagen & Orians, 1993), stress reduction (Ulrich, 1983), and recovery of attentional capacities (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989) have been mostly analyzed as relevant positive human responses to—and outcomes of—nature experience, in the cognitive, affective, and behavioral domains. Studies in this field have identified many perceived properties of natural landscapes influencing human responses, such as: – visual depth or openness, which refers to the amount of unobstructed space that it is possible to see in the landscape (Kaplan, Kaplan, & Brown, 1989; Ulrich, 1983) – the degree to which the landscape contains a focal point, which refers to the presence of one or more dominant elements in the scene that attract the observer’s attention (Kaplan, 1992; Ulrich, 1983) – the smoothness of the ground surface, which suggests ease of movement (Herzog, 1985; Kaplan et al., 1989; Ulrich, 1977) – the degree of coherence (the extent to which the elements of the environment combine to one another), complexity (the richness and variety of elements in the environment), legibility (the ease of comprehending the environment and of finding one’s way), and mystery (the promise of new and relevant information going deeper in the environment), the “informational variables” that give the observer knowledge about how the environment is organized, what is going on, and how to manage it effectively (Kaplan, 1987) – the natural character of the landscape itself, often contrasted to predominantly man-made sceneries (Purcell, Lamb, Mainardi, Peron, & Falchero, 1994; Ulrich, 1986).
Perceived Environmental Properties of Natural Landscapes and Preference Some traditional research areas can be identified in environmental psychology, with reference to the psychological responses to natural landscapes, and to the way these responses are related to the perceived properties mentioned before. The study of environmental aesthetics is undoubtedly one of the most extensively addressed, and stems from Berlyne’s model of aesthetic responses to stimuli. According to Berlyne (1971), all stimuli have the potential to arouse an observer. The level of arousal is determined by a comparison between the present stimulus and those experienced in the past, and the resulting discrepancy. The amount of discrepancy emerging from this comparison is associated with the level of “collative variables” of the (p. 334) stimulus, namely incongruity,
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Natural Landscapes complexity, novelty, and surprise. Berlyne’s theory suggests that aesthetic responses of pleasure for any stimuli follow an inverted U-shape, as a function of the stimulus’s arousal potential, which is determined by its collative variables. Intermediate levels of incongruity, complexity, novelty, and surprise are thus associated with most positive responses. Wohlwill (1976) proposed an application of Berlyne’s theory to the field of environmental perception. Environmental research has thus applied this theory to the study of natural landscapes, trying to verify whether moderate levels of collative variables were associated with preference. Results of empirical research on natural landscapes have often been inconsistent with Berlyne’s (1971) model. Complexity was the collative variable that received the most attention at the beginning. Kaplan, Kaplan, and Wendt (1972) found a positive linear relationship between complexity and preference for natural environments, even though no environments with extreme (very low or very high) levels of complexity were included in their study. Herzog (1987) developed an analysis of preference for natural landscapes with reference to different categories of environment, namely, mountains, canyons, and deserts. Among other variables, the role of complexity in predicting preference emerged, although with specific differences among categories, and the trend of the relationship was still linear. With reference to the other collative variables, coherence (which recalls incongruity) has consistently shown a positive linear relationship with preference in forest landscapes (Herzog, 1984; Herzog & Kropscott, 2004), waterscapes (Herzog, 1985), and agrarian landscapes (Strumse, 1994). Specific studies on the relationships between novelty, surprise, and preference for natural landscapes are mostly missing. However, Wohlwill (1976) suggested that the limited evidence supporting the inverted U-shaped relationship between levels of collative variables and preference might depend on the choice of the natural landscapes to be evaluated in the studies, usually lacking extreme examples of complexity, coherence, novelty, and surprise, and on other methodological shortcomings in the manipulation of the variables. The role of discrepancy in producing arousal, and its relations with preference for natural landscapes, was considered from a different perspective by Purcell (1992). In his view, the experience of a landscape is not simply related to its physical properties, but stems from past experience with similar exemplars, which contributed to the development of general knowledge structures. Knowledge structures are cognitive representations of categories of objects (and landscapes in this case) that share regularities. Regularities can exist at both abstract (or higher) and specific (or lower) level. At the abstract level, natural landscapes are characterized by physical attributes such as the scale of the scene, the degree of naturalness, distinct topographic features (e.g., landform and soil color), and amount of water. These attributes make a natural landscape more or less typical, as the general representation of nature includes these features. The less these attributes are present, the more atypical the landscape is in the category of natural landscapes, and the more it becomes typical in other categories, such as residential or industrial scenes. At the specific level, natural landscapes are characterized by physical attributes such as tree species, branch structure, shrub shape, and color of vegetation. These attributes make a natural landscape more or less familiar, as people in a given geographical location are more used to experiencing specific tree species, branch structures, shrub shapes, and colors of vegetation. According to Purcell (1992), it is the discrepancy between the specific landscape under vision and the general knowledge structure that induces arousal, and again, moderate levels of discrepancy are supposed to be associated with higher preference. But to express preference, at what level of abstraction do we need to experience the discrepancy from the knowledge structure? Through a comparison between “home” and “outside” natural landscapes, Purcell (1992) has shown that discrepancy associated with preference is experienced at the specific level. “Home” and “outside” natural landscapes do not differ at the abstract level, as both have examples covering the full range of typicality (i.e., from low to high level of scale, naturalness, topography, and water). Conversely, they differ at the specific level, as “home” natural landscapes have been repeatedly experienced, and are thus more familiar, while “outside” have not been experienced, and are thus less familiar, in terms of tree species, branch structure, shrub shape, and color of vegetation. Indeed, these findings showed that the less familiar outside natural landscapes were preferred, and this is consistent with the view that preference can be related to attributes of knowledge structures at the specific level. Within a cognitive framework, Kaplan (1987) proposed a different model of environmental preference. In his theory, preference is guided by an information-processing mechanism, through which (p. 335) people try to make sense of the organization of the environment. Understanding and exploration are thus major goals of people-environment transactions, and environments supporting both processes are likely to be preferred. Understanding and exploration can be promoted by both immediate or inferred information. Environments showing high levels of the
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Natural Landscapes “informational variables” supporting understanding (i.e., coherence, immediate, and legibility, inferred) and exploration (i.e., complexity, immediate, and mystery, inferred) are associated with higher preference. Empirical research on natural landscapes has supported this model. Beyond coherence and complexity, discussed above, also legibility and mystery emerged as relevant predictors of preference for natural landscapes. For example, Herzog and Leverick (2003) and Herzog and Kropscott (2004) found that legibility is a relevant predictor of preference in forest landscapes, and visual access plays a central role in making this setting category highly legible. With reference to mystery, empirical research was more extensive, but more controversial, at the same time. Mystery was found to be both positively and negatively associated with preference, depending on the context: in urban settings, mystery is often associated with perceived danger, and thus preference decreases; in fields and forest landscapes, mystery is positively associated with preference (Herzog & Smith, 1988; Herzog & Miller, 1998). In natural environments, van den Berg and ter Heijne (2005) have identified close encounters with potentially dangerous animals, forceful natural situations (windstorms, thunder, rushing rivers, etc.), overwhelming situations (e.g., the size of a forest), and loss of orientation as factors that may turn the positive aspects of mystery into fear. Several studies have shown that mystery is negatively correlated with preference in forest and field settings, but when it is associated with visual access and ease of penetration and movement in the environment, this relationship becomes positive (Herzog & Kirk, 2005; Herzog & Kropscott, 2004; Herzog & Kutzli, 2002). Herzog and Bryce (2007) have proposed that inconsistent findings could have two explanations. First, no clear distinction in the level of visual access in forest landscape categories was made. With very low visual access landscapes, mystery is confused with surprise, because low visibility impedes continuity of information with what is already available, which is a fundamental aspect of mystery. This environmental condition makes surprise possible, but not mystery. Forest landscapes with very low levels of visual access should thus be distinguished from forest landscapes with greater visual access as a separate category. Second, no clear distinction between mystery and surprise was made in the definitions of mystery used by previous studies. An improved definition in this regard should hence be used. By considering the specific distinction in forest landscape categories, as well as an improved definition of mystery, the authors argue for a positive relation between mystery and preference for forest landscapes in both low- and high-visual access settings, and found empirical support for their argument. Stamps (2007) has also recently identified several environmental features playing a role in shaping the levels of environmental mystery, such as light, visual occlusion, and, partially, visual depth. In a meta-analysis on the role of the four informational variables in predicting preference for both natural and built landscapes, Stamps (2004) found huge differences across the studies in the direction and power of the relationships. The author emphasized that results have not been reproducible given the heterogeneity in the procedures (choice of environments, materials of presentation, definitions of the variables, sampling methods, etc.). Together with informational variables, other perceived environmental factors were found to affect preference for natural landscapes: among the others, the role of visual depth, spaciousness (the extent to which it is possible to wander in the setting), and smoothness (uniformity of the ground) was ascertained (Herzog, 1985, 1987; Herzog & Kutzli, 2002; Kaplan et al., 1989).
Responses to Natural Landscapes: Evolutionary Models Instead of considering preference within a perspective of pure aesthetics, some authors have suggested that such a response, often expressed easily, rapidly, and without full awareness, can be considered as an automatic guide to adaptive behaviors. As a consequence, preference for specific environmental features of natural landscapes may hide an evolutionary bias, leading the individual away from potentially harmful situations and toward favorable ones. In this vein, Appleton (1975) pointed out that environmental features such as visual depth, spaciousness, and smoothness of the ground might be preferred because they provide a wide view of what is going on in the environment, including the potential presence of threats and resources for survival. Using the author’s own words, they provide “prospect.” In addition, from an evolutionary perspective, also having a safe hiding place from which (p. 336) it is possible to see what is going on in the environment without being seen would confer an adaptive advantage to the individual. Using the author’s own words, preference should encompass also “refuge.” The prospect and refuge model was assumed as a theoretical framework in many studies on preference for natural landscapes (Hagerhall, 2000; Hammitt & Ruddell, 1987; Nasar, Julian, Buchman, Humphreys, & Mrohaly, 1983; Woodcock, 1984). For example, Nasar et al. (1983) conducted a field study in which students were accompanied to one of four sites, resulting in a combination of prospect and refuge (open view and protected observation point,
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Natural Landscapes open view and unprotected observation point, closed view and protected observation point, closed view and unprotected observation point). Judgments of preference, arousal, and safety were collected. Although the landscapes with open view were considered as safer, the effect of refuge on preference was not always significant; males, for example, expressed more liking toward the setting with less refuge. In a study on Swedish landscapes, Hagerhall (2000) applied a cluster analysis to study the relationships between different environmental attributes (including prospect and refuge) and preference. It was found that perceived safety (which also encompasses some aspects of refuge) clustered with preference, while overview (which was used to communicate prospect) formed a different cluster. With reference to the absence of relations between overview (prospect) and preference, the author suggested that the term used could have been misleading, as the respondents’ attention would have probably been drawn to the richness, shape, and distribution of trees and bushes instead of the openness of the view. From a different perspective, Ulrich (1983) suggested that although all the perceived environmental variables considered by the literature can affect preference, it is the natural character of landscapes in itself that evokes a positive response by the observer. His perspective stems from an evolutionary model of human response to natural environments, called the biophilia hypothesis (Kellert & Wilson, 1993; Wilson, 1984). According to the biophilia hypothesis, human beings, who have evolved in natural environments, have developed an innate tendency to positively respond to nature as a consequence of an adaptation process. In line with the biophilia hypothesis, Ulrich (1983) suggested that a positive affective response to nature, as expressed in terms of liking or preference, can have several advantages to human survival, and thus it is likely that evolution has supported such a response. For example, preference is likely to promote approach and exploration of nature, and this brings to knowledge of the environments, namely where it was possible to find resources for survival (e.g., food, water, hiding places) and threats to be avoided (e.g., wild animals, ravines). In addition, Ulrich (1983) proposed that liking and preference can promote also other activities that may have adaptive outcomes as well, for example, sustained contemplation and nonvigilant attention. Contemplation of a likeable environment can induce positive feelings and thoughts, and thus offer a respite from stress. Within this framework, Ulrich (1983) has put forward his stress reduction theory (SRT) with reference to human response to natural landscapes. The stress reduction effect of people-nature relation consistently emerged in many experimental studies, in which psychophysical (e.g., cortical activity, heart rate, blood pressure, skin conductance) and psychological (e.g., affective states, such as expressed fear, anger, sadness) measures of stress were considered (Ulrich, 1979, 1981; Ulrich et al., 1991; Hartig, Mang, & Evans 1991; Laumann, Gärling, & Stormark, 2003; Hartig et al., 2003). The general methodology of these studies, employing a pre-post design, was based on a comparison of stress reduction for respondents in different experimental conditions, namely the (direct or simulated) exposure to natural versus urban landscapes. Results have consistently shown that the experience of natural (vs. urban) landscapes promotes stress reduction. For example, Ulrich et al. (1991) first showed 120 subjects a stressful movie and then randomly assigned them to viewing a recovery video in one out of three experimental conditions (natural landscape, urban setting with traffic, urban setting with pedestrians). The authors registered both physiological (i.e., heart rate, muscle tension, skin conductance, and blood pressure) and psychological (i.e., self-reported positive and negative affect) measures of stress. Physiological measures were registered throughout the experiment, while psychological measures were collected before and after the stressful movie, and after the recovery video. Findings from the physiological and psychological measures converged to indicate that stress recovery was faster and more complete when subjects were exposed to the natural landscape compared to the urban environments. Within an evolutionary framework, Kaplan and Kaplan (1989) have put forward a different model explaining the positive response to natural (p. 337) landscapes. Instead of considering human response to natural landscapes with respect to stress reduction, they emphasized the adaptive outcomes of people-nature relation in terms of effective cognitive functioning. A key concept of their attention restoration theory (ART) is directed attention. Directed attention is a fundamental mechanism in everyday human behavior, as it allows people to focus on stimuli that may be uninteresting in themselves, but nonetheless important to attend to. Just think about a boring text you have to study to go through an exam. In a classical and comprehensive work, James (1892) has argued that directed attention is voluntary and requires effort, as uninteresting stimuli can be adequately taken into account only when potential distractions are warded off. Moving a step further, Kaplan and Kaplan (1989) have suggested that such an inhibitory mechanism, necessary to avoid distractions, is susceptible to fatigue from repeated use. In
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Natural Landscapes addition, the ultimate state of being mentally fatigued can be reached also when our activities are pleasant, but require a prolonged cognitive effort. Kaplan (1995) has discussed the negative outcomes of losing an effective cognitive functioning, in terms of inability to select relevant information for the task at hand, difficulties to think and plan solutions for occurring problems, and increased tendency to impulsive, not reflected, and then potentially inappropriate behaviors. To allow this inhibitory mechanism to recover, it must go unused for some time. People then have to be exposed to stimuli that are capable to catch their interest automatically and without mental effort, so that the use of directed attention becomes temporarily unnecessary. These stimuli can be experienced through the use of a different mechanism, called involuntary attention. What can be these stimuli? According to Kaplan and Kaplan (1989), stimuli that have to do with human evolution are interesting in themselves, and thus likely to draw people’s attention through involuntary attention. Natural landscapes are an example of those stimuli. ART hence postulates that the relation with natural landscapes can allow people to recover an effective cognitive functioning. Evidence of the restorative effect of nature on cognitive functioning is largely provided in the literature (Berto, 2005; Hartig et al., 1991, 2003; Laumann et al., 2003; Tennessen & Cimprich, 1995). For example, Hartig et al. (1991) have compared the recovery of directed attention, as well as physiological restoration, in natural versus non-natural settings, through a quasi-experimental and a true experimental field study. Wilderness backpackers, non-wilderness vacationists, and people engaged in everyday routines were compared in the first study. Subjects who had been cognitively fatigued and then randomly assigned to a natural walk, urban walk, or passive relaxation in a comfortable room were compared in the second study. Baseline and pre-post treatment measures of physiological stress and cognitive performance were administered. Taken together, the results of the two studies showed higher stress reduction and recovery of directed attention in participants exposed to natural environments. Tennessen and Cimprich (1995) have studied the cognitive restoration promoted by natural landscapes in a different setting, namely dormitories for university students. Views from dormitory windows afforded different kinds of landscape, which were categorized into four groups ranging from all natural to all built. Cognitive restoration of university students was analyzed through both neurocognitive and subjective measures of directed attention. The view of natural landscapes was associated with better performance on the different measures of directed attention. Although stress recovery and attention restoration are distinct processes occurring in natural environments, they are far from being independent. Kaplan (1995) has argued how even stress and mental fatigue can concur or the former be the cause, or the consequence, of the latter. For example, a stressful event can lead to mobilization of cognitive resources to deal with the harmful situation, and this can lead to exhaustion and mental fatigue. Alternatively, the effort required by the task at hand can exhaust cognitive resources, and this can lead to both a negative performance and a stress response. Likewise, the experience of natural landscapes can allow stress recovery and attention restoration to mutually reinforce each other. Laumann et al. (2003) found that mentally fatigued individuals have a better performance on a cognitive task after viewing a video of a natural landscape, as compared to individuals who had viewed an urban video. During the video presentation, the nature group showed a significant decrease in an autonomic stress measure (i.e., heart rate). The authors claimed that reduced stress associated with viewing the natural landscape engendered an improvement of cognitive resources in the nature group compared to the urban group. In a field study, Hartig et al. (2003) studied stress recovery and cognitive restoration in two groups of subjects, randomly assigned to a natural or an urban condition. Stress recovery was analyzed through physiological (i.e., blood pressure) and psychological (p. 338) (i.e., self-reported positive and negative affect) measures. Cognitive restoration was analyzed through the performance on an attentional test. The experimental conditions included both viewing and walking into a natural versus non-natural environment. To manipulate participants’ need for restoration, half of the subjects for each experimental condition were mentally fatigued before the treatment. Baseline, ongoing, and final measures of stress and cognitive resources levels were recorded. Physiological stress reduction was higher in the natural versus non-natural group during both the vision and the walking phase, but improvements rapidly dissipated after the walk. With reference to self-reported measures, positive affect increased and negative affect decreased in the natural group at the end of the walk; the opposite pattern emerged in the non-natural group. Both self-reported measures of stress reduction were better for the nature group in the not fatigued condition. Performance on the attentional test improved a little in the natural group from the baseline to the midpoint of the walk, while it declined in the non-natural group. This performance gap persisted at the end of the walk. Overall, the authors claimed that stress reduction and cognitive restoration processes may complement one
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Natural Landscapes another, manifesting in different positive physiological and psychological outcomes that emerge at different rates, and persist over time to a different extent. Can we think of natural landscapes as undifferentiated beneficial environments? If not, what kind of natural landscapes are more likely to elicit a positive response? If an evolutionary explanation lies behind the positive response to nature, natural environments in which human beings evolved should promote the best responses. This perspective was exposed in the savanna hypothesis by Orians (1986). The savanna hypothesis predicts a preference for the savanna-type landscape, in which the first steps of human evolution were likely taken. The savanna environment provided the essential for human survival: food, trees for protection from predators, and open views from which it was possible to see both predator and prey (prospect and refuge, in Appleton’s view mentioned before). Besides open views and refuge spots, other environmental features reminiscent of savanna habitats should be generally preferred. Acacia trees existed in the African savanna and were associated with favorable habitats for survival (Orians, 1986). Tree form recalling acacia trees has thus been considered as a potentially relevant factor in explaining preference for natural landscapes in several studies. Research showed that trees with acacia-like characteristics, such as spreading canopies, rounded forms, and short trunks, are generally preferred over other tree forms (Sommer & Summit, 1995; Summit & Sommer, 1999). In addition, the savanna hypothesis predicts that individuals prefer trees with spreading forms because of unaware and longestablished positive associations with the habitats in which they evolved. If this hypothesis is correct, then people from different cultures are expected to show a preference for trees with acacia-like characteristics. Cross-cultural studies have empirically supported this hypothesis (Orians, 1986; Orians & Heerwagen, 1992; Sommer, 1997). Results suggesting an overall preference for savanna over other biomes were indeed reported in several other studies (Balling & Falk, 1982; Falk & Balling, 2010).
Sociocultural Models of Preference for Natural Landscapes Human beings are not only biological entities, equipped by evolution to achieve a perfect adaptation with their physical surroundings. They are also social individuals, inserted in environments that are filled with cultural meanings, providing knowledge tools for an effective sociocultural adaptation. In this view, the evolutionary-based positive responses toward natural landscapes are likely to represent a starting point on which socialization and learning processes contribute to build up more complex people-nature transactions. Falk and Balling (2010) have thus proposed a more comprehensive model of landscape preference, starting from an evolutionary and biological interpretation of human response to nature, and then in accordance with a sociocultural conception of human development. The authors pointed out that “human landscape preferences can be best understood as a continuous progression of aesthetic ideals, tempered by social convention, passed on from one generation to the next through human culture” (p. 487). Along with this perspective, all human behaviors, and landscape preferences as well, should be considered as the product of our culture and history. The authors clearly refer to a view of the individual as a sociocultural entity that has a long-established tradition in social sciences, and particularly in psychological disciplines through earlier works of L. S. Vygotsky (1978) and, more recently, U. Bronfenbrenner (1979). The model proposed by Falk and Balling (2010) comes to summarize a wide empirical analysis of the role of sociocultural influences on preference for natural landscapes. In a seminal study, Balling and Falk (1982) found that American respondents, regardless of age and educational and socioeconomic background, prefer savanna landscapes at least as much as more familiar natural settings, namely deciduous and coniferous forests. However, younger subjects demonstrated a significant preference for savannas over all other environments. Savanna and the familiar environments were also significantly preferred by all age groups over two other biomes, namely desert and tropical rainforest. The authors argued that the evolutionary bias in favor of savanna is initially expressed by children, and then modified by experience with other biomes. The data supported the savanna hypothesis, as savanna was never significantly less preferred than the more familiar environments for any participant. However, the role of some cultural bias over this innate tendency clearly emerged. Zube, Pitt, and Evans (1983) found strong differences between children, adults, and elderly groups in preference judgments for several categories of natural landscapes. Lyons (1983) showed that not only age, but also gender and residential experience (urban vs. rural) can influence preference judgments for different natural landscapes, with familiarity playing a major role in judgments. Strumse (1996) analyzed evaluations toward different landscape categories in Norway and found both similarities and differences among respondents in their preference for natural versus human-influenced
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Natural Landscapes landscapes. Preference for natural landscapes was consistently higher, supporting evolutionary models of preference. However, evident group differences emerged with respect to several demographic factors, above all gender, membership in environmental groups, expertise with natural landscapes (e.g., comparing students of landscape-related disciplines vs. psychology), and density of residential areas. Van den Berg, Vlek, and Coeterier (1998) found that aesthetic evaluation of different natural landscapes is influenced by the different “user background” as well, namely being residents, farmers, visitors, or experts. Educational level more than familiarity emerged as a relevant factor in explaining the different user background. Sociocultural influences on preference for natural landscapes were also analyzed through cross-cultural studies. Kaplan and Herbert (1987) compared preference judgments for Australian forest and open-area landscapes in three groups, namely American students, Australian students, and members of the wildflower society of Western Australia. This allowed them to perform both a cross-cultural and a subcultural comparison. Correlations between groups were very high, showing strong similarities between the two cultures. However, interesting differences also emerged. Both Australian groups showed higher mean preference ratings, which can be explained through a familiarity effect. Subcultural differences also emerged, with wildflower society members showing a higher preference for native eucalyptus tree landscapes than imported pinewood landscapes. This difference did not emerge for students. Herzog, Herbert, Kaplan, and Crooks (2000) included a broader sample of settings, namely human-influenced natural landscapes, open coarse and open smooth landscapes (both with little vegetation), agrarian landscapes, vegetation landscapes, and rivers landscapes, and examined several subcultural groupings. American students were compared to several Australian sub-cultural groups, namely students, who were further divided by age, and adults, who were further divided into four professional groups. The strong correlations between preference judgments of American and Australian participants can be interpreted with reference to both evolution and cross-cultural affinities. Similarities in expressed judgments included the lowest level of preference for the human-influenced and the two open landscape categories. In addition, vegetation and agrarian landscapes were significantly more preferred, and similar in preference judgments to each other. The most preferred category, significantly above all others, was rivers for both cultural groups. Small differences also emerged, with the greatest divergence coming from the four professional groups of Australian adults. Clear age differences were also outlined, and age trends were very similar in the American and Australian cultures. Adults showed greater internal variability in preference judgments across landscape categories compared to the other age groups, while correlations reported among younger respondents were much higher. The authors interpreted this trend as the result of a developmental sequence, in which cultural influences are presumably stronger with increasing age maturity; this, in turn, might explain the distinctive patterns in preferences. Cross-cultural comparisons of preference for natural landscape were also developed between very different cultural groups. Yang and Brown (1992) compared preference for natural landscape in Western (European and American) and Eastern participants (Korean). Beyond common—and presumably evolution-based—positive responses for water, dense vegetation, and rounded forms, both Western and Eastern groups showed a preference (p. 340) for landscape styles not matching their own cultural experience. This shows the influence of enculturation on preference judgments, but the direction of preference judgments is more in accordance with the role of the unfamiliar experience suggested by Purcell (1992). Falk and Balling (2010) have recently found further empirical support to their sociocultural model of landscape preference. They compared preferences for natural landscapes representing five biomes, namely tropical rain forest, temperate deciduous forest, temperate coniferous forest, tropical savanna, and mid-latitude desert in three different populations in Nigeria. Results are consistent with earlier findings, showing that individuals have an innate preference for savanna-like settings, but this preference is then modified through experience and enculturation. What can be the social and cultural factors involved in the formation of individual responses to natural landscapes? Socialization within specific social and cultural environments is likely to shape evolutionary bias, and thus the role of acquired knowledge and preferences, as expressed through psychological constructs such as values and attitudes, should manifest beyond cross-cultural regularities. These factors will be discussed more thoroughly in the next paragraphs.
Worldviews, Values, and Behaviors Toward Nature and Natural Environments In the past four decades, a great deal of research in environmental psychology has been devoted to investigating
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Natural Landscapes the social and cultural processes at the basis of people’s awareness of, beliefs on, and concern for nature and natural environments. Typically, these studies tried to identify the main public opinions about nature and natural resources, and the attitudes and beliefs shared across different social groups in industrialized countries (Dunlap & Van Liere, 1978; Weigel & Weigel, 1978). Dunlap and Van Liere (1978) defined these belief systems as “worldviews” or “primitive belief systems,” and argued that, since the mid-1970s, a “new environmental paradigm” (NEP) has gradually replaced the former traditional and anti-ecological “dominant social paradigm” (DSP). This has also been labeled as “human exception paradigm” (HEP), based on the idea that human beings, unlike other living beings, are exempt from the constraints of nature. As these authors proposed later on, “We [humans] are in the midst of a fundamental re-evaluation of the underlying world view that has guided our relationship to the physical environment.… In particular suggestions that a more ecologically sound world view is emerging have gained credibility in the past decades” (Dunlap, Van Liere, Merting, & Jones, 2000, p. 426). The NEP Scale, which is a specific psychometric instrument proposed by these authors originally in 1978 to measure such a new worldview, became very popular in the ensuing years, and was used by many scholars in different countries. Its updated version (Dunlap et al., 2000) includes the most recent orientations of the sustainable development perspective. In the NEP Scale, this ecologically sound worldview seems mostly based on the “new awareness” of the following aspects: (a) the existence of limits in the availability and use of natural resources by humans; (b) the fragility of the so-called natural balances; and (c) the need for human activities to value natural resources for their own sake rather than exclusively dominate on them for exclusive human purposes. During the 1990s, other studies were also aimed at investigating the different values or ethical principles forming the basis for pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. For example, the importance of universal and altruistic values, compared to individual and egoistic ones, has often been shown (e.g., Schwartz, 1994; Stern & Dietz, 1994), as well as the importance of the so-called post-materialist values (Inglehart, 1997). Other studies also emphasized the ethical implications connected with environmental values (Katz, 1997). A further possible distinction about human ideological positions toward nature that was proposed in this field of research refers to the “ecocentrism vs. anthropocentrism” (Thompson & Barton, 1994), or “biocentrism vs. anthropocentrism” (McFarlane & Boxall, 2000) dichotomies. Ecocentric or biocentric individuals should be more willing to conserve nature for its own sake, across different contexts and situations, compared to anthropocentric individuals, who, in contrast, should be more willing to conserve nature only when linked to any specific advantage for human beings. Starting from the NEP-HEP and ecocentrism-anthropocentrism distinctions, Corral-Verdugo, Carrus, Bonnes, Moser, and Sinha (2008) have recently proposed an updated conceptual framework, and a related measuring instrument, which should more explicitly encompass the sustainable development concept put forward by the United Nations since the publication of the so-called Brundtland Report (WCED, 1987). In particular, based also on results of previous studies (e.g., Bechtel, Corral-Verdugo, & Pinheiro, 1999; (p. 341) Bechtel, CorralVerdugo, Asai, & González, 2006), Corral-Verdugo et al. (2008) suggested that the elements of this dichotomy might not necessarily be conceived as contradictory and pertaining to incompatible belief systems, at least in some specific cultures. For example, it was found that these two belief systems were independent among US people, but positively correlated among Brazilian, Japanese, and Mexican people (Bechtel et al., 1999, 2006; Corral-Verdugo & Armendáriz, 2000). Therefore, Corral-Verdugo et al. (2008) proposed a new measuring instrument, labeled as “new human interdependence paradigm” or NHIP Scale, tapping this possible alternative worldview to the idea of ecocentrism and anthropocentrism as incompatible positions. This new worldview, and its related measuring instrument, should fit more closely to the main pillars of the sustainable development concept envisaged by the UN (i.e., the functional interdependence between human development and nature conservation, on the one hand; the temporal interdependence between well-being of current and future generations, and the quality of natural resources, on the other hand). Indeed, Corral-Verdugo et al. (2008) empirically showed that the NHIP scale is a better predictor of self-reported water conservation behavior, compared to the traditional NEP-HEP scale.
Attitudes Toward Urban Green Areas and Natural Landscapes in the City Moving forward from this corpus of research on general worldviews and values toward nature and natural environments, some studies have also tried to investigate the more specific attitudes toward the presence of green spaces in the urban residential context. Generally speaking, one could argue that the environmental value system endorsed by an individual could be linked to the appreciation of nature within and nearby the residential setting. In psychological theories, values and worldviews are assumed to guide individual evaluations and choices in a broad
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Natural Landscapes range of life domains: hence, they should be somehow related also to how residents evaluate urban and periurban green areas and landscapes; namely, to their attitudes. But how are attitudes toward green spaces and natural landscapes in urban settings shaped in residents’ experience? Despite the generalized preference for natural over built environments, highlighted by the literature on landscape preference and psychological restoration reviewed so far, some authors have also argued that people’s relationship with urban natural landscapes could be characterized by a certain degree of ambivalence. Individuals asked to describe their relationship to urban green spaces often mention contrasting arguments (e.g., Burgess, Harrison, & Limb, 1988; Henwood & Pidgeon, 2001; Bonnes, Aiello, & Bonaiuto, 1999). Positive experiences within urban green areas are most often reported, based on the possibility of a closer sensorial contact with nature and positive social interactions afforded by urban green spaces. Urban green areas are appreciated because of the possibility of touching, smelling, viewing, and hearing the basic elements of nature, and enjoying the view of the recurring seasonal changes, as well as walking and performing physical exercise surrounded by these elements (e.g., Burgess et al., 1988). Since urban green areas also represent a recurrent source of variation in an otherwise predominantly built-up (and uniform) cityscape, they could also be perceived as a pleasant scenery change within the static features of a typical urban skyline. Other motives for positive evaluations of urban green spaces are linked to the opportunities for outdoor social interaction provided to people of all ages, to the possibility of engaging in leisure and sport activities, and meeting friends. As already discussed above, they can also serve as an escape and refuge from stressful demands of everyday life, so that a high restorative power is usually ascribed to green areas by city dwellers (e.g., Hartig, 2004; Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989; Korpela, Kytta, & Hartig, 2002; Lafortezza, Carrus, Sanesi, & Davies, 2009; Scopelliti & Giuliani, 2004). At the same time, urban residents also report negative experiences in relation to nature in the city, albeit less frequently. A condition for urban green spaces to be appreciated by residents is their upkeep and proper maintenance (e.g., grass cut and trees pruned) by the local administrations. Urban green areas are considered well maintained when they are clean, open, and accessible, well equipped with furniture for children playing activities, and running or walking trails and benches for users in general. In these cases, green spaces can more easily provide opportunities for social interaction, leisure, and physical activities, which, in turn, are linked to positive evaluations (see Bonaiuto, Aiello, Perugini, Bonnes, & Ercolani, 1999; Bonnes, Aiello, & Bonaiuto, 1999; Burgess et al., 1988). If one or several of these features are missing, residents might express dissatisfaction and negative attitudes toward urban green areas (e.g., Bonnes, Uzzell, Carrus, & Kelay, 2007). In particular, reasons for these negative evaluations are to be found in concerns for personal safety and fear of crime (p. 342) (e.g., Michael & Hull, 1994; Nasar & Fisher, 1993; Talbot & Kaplan, 1984). A study by Bonnes et al. (1999) seems indeed to suggest that positive and negative attitudes toward urban green areas can coexist in people’s perceptions. In this study, participants’ answers in terms of agreement/disagreement with about 100 statements concerning urban green areas were factor analyzed. Findings showed that rather than collapsing in a unique bipolar dimension, responses to statements expressing positive and negative aspects of urban green loaded on two distinct factors, respectively. These findings were corroborated in a further study by Carrus, Passafaro, and Bonnes (2004), where the bidimensional structure of attitudes toward urban green spaces was tested through confirmatory factor analyses. Findings in this case showed that positive and negative attitudes toward urban green correlate only moderately with each other, and correlate differently with demographic and individual difference factors (e.g., ethnocentrism and authoritarianism). More generally, all these findings suggest the possibility of a certain degree of ambivalence in attitudes toward natural landscapes in urban residential settings. If this is true, ambivalence toward urban green areas should be reflected in lower correlations with some of the variables mentioned before, such as ecocentric versus anthropocentric worldviews, or with behavioral tendencies toward urban natural landscapes (e.g., the frequency of use of urban and peri-urban green areas). In fact, it is likely that those individuals with a more ecocentric view of the natural world, or endorsing more biospheric values (i.e., those who appreciate nature for its own sake), will show a more clear and unambiguous appreciation of nature in the city. Conversely, it is likely that those with a more anthropocentric view of nature (i.e., appreciating nature only for its contribution to the quality of human life) and those endorsing more egoistic and conservative values (see also Stern, Dietz, & Guagnano, 1998) will perceive also the discomforts or problems (and not only the advantages) connected to the presence of nature in the city. Therefore, a greater ambivalence in attitudes toward urban green areas (as well as a less frequent use of them) should characterize the latter, compared to the former. A recent work by Bonnes, Passafaro, and Carrus
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Natural Landscapes (2011) found support for these arguments. In sum, findings of research on environmental worldviews, values, and attitudes suggest that more general orientations toward nature could be reflected in the subjective appreciation (or devaluation) of urban natural landscapes. At the same time, a subjective appreciation (or devaluation) may be influenced by the capacity of urban green spaces to fulfill specific residential needs, in addition to the overall system of worldviews and values endorsed by the individual. These might account for the fact that a general appreciation for the presence of green in the city is frequent among the majority of people, either because of the values endorsed or because of the functional importance of these areas for the residents’ life, or both.
Attitudes Toward Natural Landscapes, Natural Resources, and Social Dilemmas A further line of research in the field of human relations to natural settings has been devoted to understand how worldviews, values, and attitudes toward the natural world can be linked to the performance of environmentally friendly actions. In general, the collective characteristics of natural landscapes and resources suggest the importance of considering also the group and community implications of these processes (e.g., Hardin, 1968; see also Olson, 1965, for a more general discussion on human collective action). Therefore, a different look at the relationship between human beings and the natural environment can be found within theories and research on human decision-making in social dilemmas situations involving the use of common resources (considering, therefore, not only natural landscapes, but also the specific natural resources therein). Social dilemmas are usually defined as “situations that contain a conflict of interest between the private interests of individuals and the broader public interest of society at large” (Van Vugt, Biel, Snyder, & Tyler, 2000, p. 3), where “each individual always receives a higher payoff for defecting than for co-operating, but all are better off if all cooperate than if all defect” (Dawes & Messick, 2000). This paradigm allows to frame many pro- or anti-environmental actions as a choice between the pursuit of personal advantages in spite of its potential collective damages versus a limitation of personal benefits in view of a collective gain. How can we apply this theoretical perspective to the study of human relations to natural landscapes? Some works on public acceptance of the designation of natural protected areas could offer examples for reflection (Bonaiuto, Carrus, Martorella, & Bonnes, 2002; Carrus, Bonaiuto, & Bonnes, 2005; Stoll-Kleemann, 2001). The designation of natural protected areas is often problematic since it frequently encounters the opposition of local residents and communities, especially in densely populated (p. 343) zones. Local residents could conceive a protected area as an economic damage, and/or as a loss of freedom (West & Brechin, 1991). The status and regulations of a protected area typically ask local residents to change traditional or habitual ways of economic exploitation of land in a more sustainable direction. In turn, deciding whether (or to what extent) to comply with these proenvironmental regulations can put local communities into a social dilemma situation. In fact, if they choose to comply, residents make more likely the continuity over time of the resources to be protected, but they might apparently go against their immediate interest as single harvesters. Following this line of reasoning, one might expect that local residents, and particularly those more directly interested in traditional (and usually less sustainable) exploitation activities of the natural resources within a protected area, would be less likely to support its designation. An important role in the public reaction to the designations of natural protected areas is then played by the direct economic interest of individuals, groups, and communities: those who are more engaged in direct resources exploitation activities are more likely to oppose a protected area, if they do not envisage a potential benefit from it, at least in the long run. However, an important role is also played by the degree to which people feel themselves attached to, and identified with, their own territory (see Bonaiuto et al., 2002; Carrus et al., 2005; see also Stoll-Kleemann, 2001). In fact, a strong place-identity and place attachment could either drive local support or opposition to the protected areas, depending on the procedures followed in the designation process by public authorities, as well as on their local versus centralized status. More inclusive or bottom-up (vs. top-down) procedures, as well as local (vs. centralized) authorities are more likely to provoke positive reactions in the local communities, and also to channel local identity and attachment into a positive and supportive direction; that is, the higher local identification and attachment, the higher the support for protected areas. Vice versa, when local communities feel or think that something has been imposed on their territory from a too-centralized authority, a strong local attachment and identity might form the basis for negative opposition and protest (Bonaiuto et al., 2002; Carrus et al., 2005). Earlier laboratory studies on the role of social identification in social dilemmas situations have
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Natural Landscapes also found results that are compatible with these more recent field studies (see Brewer & Schneider, 1990).
Conclusions In this chapter we have reviewed the methodological, theoretical, and empirical literature on the relationships between people and natural landscapes. We first discussed the different perspectives developed in environmental psychology and related disciplines to study human responses to natural landscapes, and then focused on a more psychological approach to this research theme. Environmental psychology has studied human responses to natural landscapes mainly in terms of preference and positive reactions to perceived environmental properties of nature. Different theoretical models, such as prospect and refuge, stress reduction theory, attention restoration theory, and the savanna hypothesis, have discussed these responses within an evolutionary perspective. Empirical studies have consistently supported these models. Finally, human responses to natural landscapes have been considered within a more comprehensive framework, in which evolution and sociocultural processes combine with each other. What evolution disposes is shaped by people’s experience of their sociocultural context, resulting in distinctive environmental worldviews, values, and attitudes toward specific everyday natural landscapes. Recent studies on attitudes toward natural landscapes have thus shown that they can include both positive and negative dimensions. A further relevant aspect influencing attitudes and related behaviors toward natural landscapes has to do with group and community inclusion, as shown in the studies on the use of natural resources within the theoretical framework of social dilemmas.
Future Directions The study of people’s relations with natural landscapes has been developed along different directions, but a number of relevant issues are still to be adequately addressed. First, beyond a general positive response to natural landscapes, the ways people perceive, evaluate, and develop transactions with different categories of natural landscapes is far from being completely understood. The studies on preferences for various natural settings (e.g., Falk & Balling, 2010; Herzog, 1984, 1987) have started addressing this question, but several issues still remain unresolved. Just to give an example, the role of natural elements of the landscape at the microlevel of analysis has been addressed only to some extent. Findings on preference for trees with spreading canopies, rounded shapes, and short trunks (Sommer & Summit, 1995; Summit & Sommer, 1999), reminiscent of (p. 344) the natural landscapes of human evolution, presumably tackle only one aspect of this problem. What can be the role of other natural elements in shaping the overall response to a natural landscape? An interesting analysis in this regard has been recently proposed by Nordh, Hartig, Hagerhall, and Fry (2009), who considered the effect of grass, ground vegetation, flowering plants, shrubs, and water in natural landscapes on psychological restoration. Further research in this direction is undoubtedly needed. Second, human responses to seasonal changes of natural landscapes have not been empirically studied yet. Within an evolutionary perspective, one may hypothesize a better response to natural landscapes when environmental conditions recall to the mind positive elements for survival (e.g., the presence of a flourishing nature in spring and summer vs. the absence of foliage in fall and winter). What can be the role of sociocultural processes in this respect? And what can be the interplay between cross-cultural regularities and cultural peculiarities? Third, exposure to green areas and natural landscapes can also affect health (de Vries, Verheij, Groenewegen, & Spreeuwenberg, 2003; Maas, Verheij, Groenewegen, de Vries, & Spreeuwenberg, 2006; Maller, Townsend, Pryor, Brown, & Leger, 2006; Mitchell & Popham, 2008). Among the psychological mechanism implied, the literature has identified the role of perceived social safety (Maas et al., 2009), social contact (Maas, Van Dillen, Verheij, & Groenewegen, 2009) and physical activity (Bedimo-Rung, Mowen, & Cohen, 2005; Cohen et al., 2007). What can be the role of different activities in natural environments in promoting health and well-being? In an exploratory study, Scopelliti et al. (2012) provided preliminary results in this regard, showing that the more the activities promote personal involvement in the natural environment, the better are the outcomes in terms of individual wellbeing. Future research should be addressed to confirm these findings. A more comprehensive understanding of these—and presumably also other—issues would be highly relevant also for practical implications, as the design and management of natural landscapes could be better oriented toward the
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Natural Landscapes promotion of people’s health and well-being.
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Natural Landscapes (p. 346) Kaplan, S. (1995). The restorative benefit of nature: Toward an integrative framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15(3), 169–182. Katz, E. (1997). Nature as subject: Human obligation and natural community. London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kellert, S. R., & Wilson, E. O. (1993). The biophilia hypothesis. Washington, DC: Island Press. Korpela, K., Kytta, M., & Hartig, T. (2002). Restorative experiences, self-regulation, and children’s place preferences. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 22(4), 387–398. Lafortezza, R., Carrus, G., Sanesi, G., & Davies, C. (2009). Benefits and well-being perceived by people visiting green spaces in periods of heat stress. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 8(2), 97–108. Laumann, K., Gärling, T., & Stormark, K. M. (2003). Selective attention and heart rate responses to natural and urban environments. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 23(2), 125–134. Lyons, E. (1983). Demographic correlates of landscape preference. Environment and Behavior, 15(4), 487–511. Maas, J., Spreeuwenberg, P., Van Winsum-Westra, M., Verheij, R. A., de Vries, S., & Groenewegen, P. P. (2009). Is green space in the living environment associated with people’s feelings of social safety? Environment and Planning A, 41(7), 1763–1777. Maas, J., van Dillen, S. M. E., Verheij, R. A., & Groenewegen, P. P. (2009). Social contact as a possible mechanism behind the relation between green space and health. Health and Place, 15(2), 586–595. Maas, J., Verheij, R. A., Groenewegen, P. P., de Vries, S., & Spreeuwenberg, P. (2006). Green space, urbanity, and health: How strong is the relation? Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 60(7), 587–592. Maller, C., Townsend, M., Pryor, A., Brown, P., & St. Leger, L. (2006). Healthy nature healthy people: Contact with nature as an upstream health promotion intervention for populations. Health Promotion International, 21(1), 45–54. McFarlane, B. L., & Boxall, P. C. (2000). Factors influencing forest values and attitudes of two stake holder groups: The case of the Foothills Model Forest, Alberta, Canada. Society and Natural Resources, 13(7), 649–661. Michael, S. N., & Hull, R. B. (1994). Effects of vegetation on crime in urban parks. Blacksburg: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, College of Forestry and Wildlife Resources, Department of Forestry. Mitchell, R., & Popham, F. (2008). Effect of exposure to natural environment on health inequalities: An observational population study. The Lancet, 372(9650), 1655–1660. Nasar, J. L., & Fisher, B. S. (1993). “Hot spots” of fear and crime: A multi-method investigation. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 13(2), 187–206. Nasar, J. L., Julian, D., Buchman, S., Humphreys, D., and Mrohaly, M. (1983). The emotional quality of scenes and observation points: A look at prospect and refuge. Landscape Planning, 10(4), 355–361. Nordh, H., Hartig, T., Hagerhall, G. M., & Fry, G. (2009). Components of small urban parks that predict the possibility for restoration. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 8(4), 225–235. Olson, M., Jr. (1965). The logic of collective action. New York: Schocken. Orians, G. H. (1986). An ecological and evolutionary approach to landscape aesthetics. In E. C. Penning-Rowsell & D. Lowenthal (Eds.), Landscape meanings and values (pp. 3–22). London: Allen and Unwin. Orians, G. H., & Heerwagen, J. H. (1992). Evolved responses to landscapes. In J. H. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (pp. 555–579). New York: Oxford University Press. Purcell, A. T. (1992). Abstract and specific physical attributes and the experience of landscape. Journal of Environmental Management, 34(3), 159–177.
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Natural Landscapes Purcell, A. T., Lamb, R. J., Mainardi Peron, E., & Falchero, S. (1994). Preference or preference for landscape. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 14(3), 195–209. Schroeder, H. W. (1987). Dimensions of variation in urban park preference: A psychophysical analysis. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 7(2), 123–141. Schwartz, S. H. (1994). Are there universal aspects in the structure and contents of human values? Journal of Social Issues, 50(1), 19–46. Scopelliti, M., Carrus, G., Cini, F., Mastandrea, S., Ferrini, F.,…Semenzato, P. (2012). Biodiversity, perceived restorativeness, and benefits of nature: A study on the psychological processes and outcomes of on-site experiences in urban and peri-urban green areas in Italy. In S. Kabisch, A. Kunath, P. Schweizer-Ries, & A. Steinfuhrer (Eds.), Vulnerability, risks, and complexity. Impacts of global change on human habitats—Advances in people-environment studies (Vol. 3, pp. 255–269) (Vol. 3). Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe. Scopelliti, M., & Giuliani, M. V. (2004). Choosing restorative environments across the lifespan: A matter of place experience. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 24(4), 423–437. Sommer, R. (1997). Further cross-national studies of tree form preferences. Ecological Psychology, 9(2), 153–160. Sommer, R., & Summit, J. (1995). An exploratory study of preferred tree form. Environment and Behavior, 27(4), 540–557. Stamps, A. E. (2004). Mystery, complexity, legibility, and coherence: A meta-analysis. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 24(1), 1–16. Stamps, A. E. (2007). Mystery of environmental mystery: Effects of light, occlusion, and depth of view. Environment and Behavior, 39(2), 165–197. Stern, P., & Dietz, T. (1994). The value basis of environmental concern. Journal of Social Issues, 50(3), 65–84. Stern, P. C., Dietz, T., & Guagnano, G. A. (1998). A brief inventory of values. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 58(6), 984–1001. Stoll-Kleemann, S. (2001). Barriers to nature conservation in Germany: A model explaining opposition to protected areas. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 21(4), 369–385. Strumse, E. (1994). Perceptual dimensions in the visual preferences for agrarian landscapes in western Norway. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 14(3), 281–292. Strumse, E. (1996). Demographic differences in the visual preference for agrarian landscapes in western Norway. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 16(1), 17–31. Summit, J., & Sommer, J. (1999). Further studies of preferred tree shapes. Environment and Behavior, 31(4), 550– 576. Talbot, J., & Kaplan, R. (1984). Needs and fears: The response to trees and nature in the inner city. Journal of Arboriculture, 10(8), 222–228. Tennessen, C. M., & Cimprich, B. (1995). Views to nature: Effects on attention. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15(1), 77–85. (p. 347) Thompson, S. C. G., & Barton, M. A. (1994). Ecocentric and anthropocentric attitudes towards the environment. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 14(2), 149–158. Ulrich, R. S. (1977). Visual landscape preference: A model and application. Man-Environment Systems, 7(5), 279– 293. Ulrich, R. S. (1979). Visual landscapes and psychological well-being. Landscape Research, 4(1), 17–23. Ulrich, R. S. (1981). Natural versus urban scenes: Some psychophysiological effects. Environment and Behavior,
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Giuseppe Carrus Giuseppe Carrus Department of Cultural and Educational Studies, University of Roma Tre Centre for Inter-University Research in Environmental Psychology Rome, Italy
Mirilia Bonnes
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Natural Landscapes Mirilia Bonnes Department of Social and Developmental Psychology Sapienza University of Rome Centre for Inter-University Research in Environmental Psychology Rome, Italy
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses
Oxford Handbooks Online Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses Peter Suedfeld The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0019
Abstract and Keywords Extreme environments pose serious danger to human well-being and even survival, an effect that can be exacerbated if the environment is novel (unusual) either to the individual or compared with “normal” environments. In many cases, such environments are deliberately sought out; in others, the individual chooses to encounter situations that have a probability of turning dangerous; in yet others, the extreme environment is entered accidentally or as the result of natural or anthropogenic disaster. For well over a century, the psychological literature has focused on the adverse characteristics and effects of such experiences, but in recent decades observers and researchers have come to be more appreciative of human resilience and coping, and of the positive aspects and consequences of extreme environments. Keywords: environmental challenge, trauma, resilience, coping, salutogenesis, PTSD, post-traumatic growth
Introduction Shortly after a severe storm damaged his ship, and with illness and depression striking him and his crew, the French Antarctic explorer Jean-Baptiste Charcot wrote, “I re-read my diary on Le Fran ç ais, written during a period quite as agonizing as this. I light on a passage where I assert that, if ever I return to France, I will embark no more on such adventures. A few weeks after my return, I was thinking of nothing but the organization of a new Expedition, and three years later, I started off again!” (Charcot, 1911; quoted in Rosove, 2000, p. 171). There have been hundreds of books, articles, films, and TV shows describing the horrors experienced by survivors of genocide, only implicitly recognizing their eventual ability to recover from psychological as well as physical trauma. A widely read book symbolizes a growing counterpoint to this negativity: Against All Odds: Holocaust Survivors and the Successful Lives They Made in America (Helmreich, 1992). It presents interviews and histories of people who built healthy, happy, and productive lives after surviving the 20th century’s—and in some ways history’s—worst episode of persecution and genocide. Aron Lee Ralston, an American mountain climber, had his arm trapped under a boulder in May 2003. To free himself, he eventually broke the bone in his forearm and amputated the lower arm with a small knife. He then had to rappel down a 65-foot cliff and hike eight miles to his truck. He continues to engage in mountain climbing and other demanding outdoor sports. The public fascination with his courage and toughness has led to a book, a full-length movie project, and a new career as a public speaker (see Ralston, 2004). In August 2010, 33 miners were trapped 2,300 feet underground in a Chilean cave-in. When their survival was discovered, about two weeks later, their families, politicians, and international media (p. 349) converged on the site. Chilean and international equipment and experts bored a hole, first to send supplies down to the refuge and, 69 days later, to hoist the miners, one at a time, to the surface. A deluge of newspaper and television stories
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses followed the progress of the rescue and interviewed mining engineers and psychologists (including experts sent from NASA). The group’s ability to come through the ordeal psychologically intact was discussed over and over; by one estimate, a billion people watched at least part of the process on TV. The public was again awed when one of the men “ran, walked, and hobbled his way to the finish line of the New York City Marathon” a few weeks after his rescue.
The Approach of This Chapter These chronologically ordered anecdotes demonstrate a number of the points I wish to make in the chapter, aside from the fact that stories of individuals in extreme and unusual environments (hereafter, EUEs) fascinate many people. One is the wide variety of environments we may justly consider to be extreme; another is the equally wide variety of ways in which individuals can find themselves in such environments. Then we come to issues related to how those individuals respond to the challenges, affordances, and shortcomings of their particular EUE environment: do they cope adaptively or not; do they suffer psychological damage, and if they do, what kind and how long does it last; and what can outside observers know or understand about the perceptions and reactions of those who have actually walked the walk? The last of these points also shines a light on how fashions in literature and science change our understanding even though the facts have not changed. Because EUEs differ so widely in impact—some are uncomfortable, others are deadly; some affect only a few people, others disrupt the lives of great populations; some are even enjoyable—it is difficult to generalize about their psychological effects. The dangers and horrors of extreme environments such as natural and anthropogenic disasters cannot be overstated. Millions have suffered and died as a result of such disasters, and many of the survivors have had long-lasting—even lifelong—physical and psychological disabilities. For these reasons, and because the behavioral sciences embrace clinical practice (the helping professions), not only dispassionate research, the psychological literature has concentrated on the salient disability-producing (“pathogenic”) aspects of EUEs. There has been much less attention to the ways in which people have coped with the environments themselves as well as with their aftermath. Coping, resilience, and possible benefits of the experience—healthconferring “salutogenic” effects—if they are discussed at all in the scientific/professional literature, are dealt with summarily and almost as an afterthought, and those who seek out risky EUE experiences are often considered to be maladjusted (with a few exceptions, such as astronauts). In this chapter, I shall consider the positive aspects of how people deal with environmental challenge on the same level of importance as the negative ones. The terms “salutogenic” and “pathogenic” (Antonovsky, 1987) refer to the positive and negative aspects of stress, and cover both psychological and physiological health. This is not a new outlook; some theorists and researchers have for some time focused on successful coping with extreme environments and stressful experiences, drawing on more general studies of stress (e.g., Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Selye, 1956). But one of the most important developments in psychology has occurred since the publication of the counterpart of this chapter in the first Handbook of Environmental Psychology (Suedfeld, 1987): the tremendous increase of attention to positive aspects of personality and behavior. Although such an orientation has a long history, it became much more salient and fruitful for one intriguing reason: an accurate, unifying, and catchy name. “Positive psychology” (Peterson & Seligman, 2004; Snyder & Lopez, 2002) became a banner under which a diverse and burgeoning movement gained a solid identity. A positive approach of this sort includes, but goes beyond, the mere ability to cope; Selye himself in a later book (1974) recognized that there is such a thing as stress that has positive characteristics (“eustress”) as well as his original focus, stress with negative ones (“distress”). The positive outlook in psychology encompasses the possibility, envisioned by Antonovsky, among others (e.g., Frankl, 1959; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1995), that going through such experiences may actually result in a psychological benefit. The fact that this point seems simplistic, unrealistic, or counterproductive to many psychologists and psychiatrists (Azar, 2011) reflects another important issue. Experiences, including experiences in EUEs, often look different from the outside and the inside. That is, observers of life on an offshore oil rig or other unusual environment may not understand how the people who actually live there experience it. Perhaps because of their professional (p. 350) training and focus, mental health professionals emphasize the hardships, stressors, and problems, overlooking what the inhabitants perceive as the satisfaction of challenges faced and overcome, the pleasures of camaraderie,
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses the excitement of a novel set of life circumstances, and so on. Thus, a broader focus requires the researcher to consider not merely the environment, but people’s actual experiences within that environment (Suedfeld, 1991). Much of the popular literature emerging from EUEs reflects this. For example, Maurice Herzog (1953), a famous French climber and member of the first team to summit a mountain over 8,000 meters high, wrote, “I nearly burst with happiness.… The rapture I had felt on the summit, which might have seemed a purely, personal, egotistical emotion, had been transformed…into a complete and perfect joy with no shadow upon it.… This victory was not just one man’s achievement, a matter for personal pride; no…it was a victory for us all, a victory for mankind itself” (pp. 213–214). But perhaps tragedies are more interesting to the public than stories of successful survival, and may have more impact on the survivors themselves. Many survivors feel the need to purge the strong emotions aroused by the death or serious injury of close others, and for that reason emphasize those parts of the entire experience. For example, books about mountaineering typically focus on dangers, difficulties, and disasters rather than on success and exultation (e.g., Krakauer, 1998; Kodas, 2008).
Extreme and Unusual Environments: A General Definition As has been suggested before (Suedfeld, 1987), “extreme” environments can be defined by their level of survivability. By this definition, an extreme environment is one in which human beings cannot survive without special training, supplies, and equipment (specialized shelter, clothing, and transportation, food, and perhaps water brought in from elsewhere), and in some cases high-tech apparatus such as totally encapsulated shelters, air scrubbers, air tanks, recyclers, human-robot interfaces, and so on. Extremeness is to a great extent a function of the physical parameters of the environment. Some environments are hazardous, temporarily or all the time. Yet, many EUEs pose relatively few problems for professionals and devoted amateurs under normal conditions. They are usually properly trained and equipped, they choose to be in the environment, and they understand its dangers. The exception is when those experts find themselves in an accident, equipment failure, or hostile action. Although their experience and training still increase their chances beyond those of novices, the physical dangerousness of the environment may become insuperable. The history of Mt. Everest ascents gives dramatic evidence of this: of the over 200 deaths recorded, almost one-third were of sherpas, who are professional mountaineers, and many of the other victims were experienced professional expedition leaders. Unusualness is more variable, depending on the individual. A climb in the Himalayas is extreme and unusual for a tourist from Australia, but not unusual for her sherpa, while he would likely find it both unusual and extreme to join her on a scuba vacation on the Great Barrier Reef. Because making a plethora of individual definitions of unusualness is impractical, the term is frequently used to characterize environments that are very different from the common experiences of those who live in modern, technologically advanced, largely urban societies. What we are calling EUEs have had a number of other labels in the psychological literature. Among these are exotic environments, dangerous environments, and traumatic environments. None of these quite fits the bill. “Exotic” evokes palm trees and soft tropical nights, not exactly the phenomenon we are dealing with; “dangerous” comes closer, but it also describes an urban intersection at rush hour. As we shall see later, “traumatic” is appropriate to some EUEs, but sailing aboard a submarine, flying in space, or spelunking in a deep cave are not traumatic unless something goes drastically wrong. Furthermore, although some EUEs are considered to be traumatic for people in general, most such environments may traumatize some individuals but be shrugged off by others. One frequently seen term is “isolated, confined environments” (ICEs). Generally, “isolated” refers to remoteness from one’s accustomed home and separation from much (not necessarily all) human contact; “confined” means being prevented from leaving a circumscribed area either by natural conditions outside it or by human force. ICE is a reasonably accurate label for a range of situations, but it is not synonymous with “extreme and unusual.” Many ICEs are not extreme: for example, protective custody units in modern penitentiaries and at least some campsites in government-run parks. By the same token, many extreme environments are neither isolated—think of cities under aerial bombardment, for example—nor are the people necessarily (p. 351) confined, as on mountaintops or in trekking across a desert.
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses Natural and Human-Made EUEs We can distinguish between two kinds of EUEs, those fashioned by nature and those that are created or at least made dangerous through human action or neglect. Naturally occurring EUEs tend to have several relatively unchanging characteristics that endanger human life. These include extreme temperatures, lack of oxygen, unaccustomed levels of air pressure, excessively high or low humidity, solar radiation, scarcity of food and water, and unstable terrain features (for an excellent summary of the physical dangers of such EUEs, see Kamler, 2004). Other natural factors, often related to the weather or terrain features, that lead to extremeness are episodic or temporary disruptions, such as storms and earthquakes. Such disruptions may be termed natural disasters if they have a serious impact on a wide area and/or a large number of people. Normally inaccessible environments—outer space, the deep ocean—lack everything needed for human survival. Their extremeness is total and permanent, and survival for more than a few seconds or minutes depends entirely on technologically advanced life-support equipment. Dangers remain even in short-term anthropogenic EUEs entered into voluntarily and after training. Take, for example, environments characterized by excessively low or excessively high ambient air pressure, such as scuba diving and high-altitude flight. In both, the major physical dangers are rapid pressure changes and changes in the composition of the breathed atmosphere. Both “rapture of the deep” and high-altitude euphoria are well known (Cousteau & Dumas, 1953). The deep divers’ syndrome, more formally called nitrogen narcosis, leads to a decline in cognitive efficiency and complex psychomotor performance, some mild euphoria, and impaired judgment (especially overconfidence), and if the diver goes below about 90 meters (300 feet), can result in disorientation, hallucinations, loss of consciousness, and death (see, e.g., Petri, 2003; Smith, 1987). Diving poses other dangers as well, but most do not have psychological symptoms. The aviation counterpart was discovered when aircraft first began to reach heights where the atmosphere was deficient in oxygen. Even after oxygen masks were installed, some pilots refused to wear them because early models were uncomfortable or interfered with movement and vision. The gradual onset of hypoxia is so subtle as to be virtually unnoticeable, and euphoria makes it even more so, but the non-benign symptoms include cognitive deterioration, loss of perceptual-motor coordination, unconsciousness, and death. Hypoxia is not the only problem: some high-altitude pilots become so engrossed in the flight that they neglect to check their instruments or their orientation vis-à-vis the ground, while others manifest the “break-off phenomenon,” a sense of unreality and loss of psychological contact with the earth (Clark & Graybiel, 1957). Artificial environments nested in dangerous natural ones often take the form of a live-in capsule. The most common examples are capsules that make human survival possible in the polar regions, deep under the ocean, and in outer space. These are hybrids of natural and man-made EUEs. Each of these is physically dangerous to some extent, and all tend to be physically uncomfortable. Their negative social and psychological features include remoteness from one’s customary social and physical environment, dependence on life-support equipment that may fail, confinement plus the need for bulky clothing when it is possible to go outside the capsule at all, overcrowding and lack of privacy inside the capsule, possible interpersonal friction, and the unavailability of help from outside. They also tend to be monotonous, both physically and socially: the interior of the capsules is often impervious to human aesthetics and the need for stimulation, and personnel changes during the mission are difficult or impossible. I classify polar stations as natural EUEs, because the capsule does not require unusual technology for supporting life—it needs heat, light, provisions for food and water, proper outdoor clothing, and so on, but nothing out of the ordinary; the outside environment, while harsh and often dangerous, is frequently (primarily in summer) accessible to people without sophisticated high-tech protection. In contrast, space stations and oceangoing submarines and submersibles do require constant, sophisticated life support equipment both within and outside the capsule, without which death is absolutely certain. Generally, the number of people living in a given capsule environment at any one time is small, in the tens or hundreds rather than thousands or millions—as may be the case in EUEs classified as natural or anthropogenic disasters (see below)—and the duration of any one stay in a capsule is usually short, seldom more than a year or two and often as little as a few days.
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses (p. 352) Some terrestrial EUEs are “extreme”—that is, dangerous—only temporarily; eventually, the natural environment reverts to its normal, nonthreatening condition. Some actions causing the original change are inadvertent: industrial accidents (or industrial disasters, depending upon their impact) releasing into the soil, water, or air toxic agents such as acids, poisonous elements and gases, or nuclear radiation. Others—fires, explosions, and engineering mistakes—lead to the destruction or collapse of buildings, bridges, roads, dams, and aircraft. The event is time-limited, and the destroyed or damaged constructions can be rebuilt. Still other human-created EUEs, often having an adverse effect on many people, are brought about through deliberate action in the course of ethnopolitical conflict: war, violence, terrorism, or persecution (“complex disasters”). The long list of the dangers these pose includes lethal and sublethal forms of violence, deprivation of necessities, and exposure to many of the sources of danger listed previously. In these situations, many victims could survive given adequate food, water, medical care, and shelter, but these are unavailable or inaccessible, or are purposely withheld. Different paths to the EUE are important factors in coping with the experience (Suedfeld, 1987). Some groups, such as Bedouins, Australian aborigines, sherpas, and Inuit, are both culturally and individually native to an extreme environment and learn from infancy the methods that maximize safety. Other people, for whom the EUE is a recreational or occupational site—mountaineers, spelunkers, deep-sea divers, astronauts, sailors, soldiers—are trained and equipped to survive and even to enjoy the experience. On the other hand, many of those trapped in natural, industrial, or complex disasters are unprepared for coping with such circumstances, especially if their life until then had consisted of the routine circle of conditions and activities that characterize the daily experiences of people in urbanized, technologically advanced societies. For them, the experience is more likely to be fatal, or if not, at the very least frightening and perhaps traumatic. Even for well-trained individuals voluntarily pursuing a recreational or professional activity, unwanted and unforeseen traumatic experiences may occur when the situation changes unexpectedly: for the crew of the space station Mir when a fire broke out, for Alan Ralston when a recreational climb turned into the potentially fatal entrapment of his arm, for 33 Chilean miners when a cave-in occurred in 2010, trapping them underground with (at first) uncertainty of eventual rescue. Ordinary—that is, non-extreme—environments can change in the same way: for example, for civilians who find themselves living in a city under aerial bombardment, or air passengers who survive a crash in an adverse natural setting. Complex disasters frequently have the most severe psychological effects (e.g., Jacobs & Kulkarni, 1999), because the victims attribute their plight to the vicious power of others, against whom they themselves are helpless. Thus, perceived lack of control and consequent feelings of humiliation exacerbate the suffering. Industrial disasters in turn are likely to have longer-lasting and more widespread negative effects than natural disasters (Baum, Fleming, & Davidson, 1983), perhaps because they tend to be interpreted as the results of human error, stupidity, ignorance, or neglect on the part of others. Natural disasters strike where they will. Fault may be laid at the door of authorities who should have given more advance warning or done more to ameliorate their impact, but as a rule the supremacy of nature’s power over human efforts is recognized (Kumagai, Edwards, & Carroll, 2006). In these cases, the negative outcomes are less stressful because they are not attributable to one’s own shortcomings. Many disaster environments involve the severe experience of living in chaos—that is, the disruption of normal order, also referred to as “the world turned upside down” or, in Janoff-Bulman’s (1992) evocative phrase, “the shattering of the assumptive world.” In such situations, the customary links between behavior and outcome are severed, so that actions that would normally enhance one’s safety now may still do so, but may unpredictably have the opposite effect. Taking shelter during an earthquake can save you from debris outside, but can also bring the building down on your head; staying in your house during a tornado can protect you from flying objects but may also trap you inside (or waft you to Oz); volunteering to help in a work project may mean an extra food ration but may also become a death march; jumping into a shell hole can protect you from flying bullets but the next mortar round can land in the same place as the one before; friends and neighbors may hide you or betray you. The consequences of one’s own actions, hitherto reliably predictable, suddenly become unforeseeable— characteristics often found in natural, industrial, and deliberate disasters, and in ethnopolitical violence, war, revolution, and genocide.
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses (p. 353) Physical and Psychological Characteristics of Selected EUEs In this section, I shall examine in more detail some examples of the different types of EUEs mentioned earlier, looking briefly at their physical parameters and concentrating on their psychological effects and aftereffects, both positive and negative. Table 19.1 shows the environments to be discussed and their taxonomic category. I shall discuss one example from five of the six categories, looking first at natural and then at human-made EUEs within each type of EUE entry (recreational, occupational, and traumatic). Recreational, human-made EUEs are omitted. Such environments might include, for example, racing highperformance automobiles, skydiving, or scuba diving. The duration of each of these is too brief for significant psychological effects (beyond the EUE itself) to emerge, although, as we have seen, some physiological consequences may have direct psychological consequences. One reliable pattern among those who repeatedly engage in these environments is that at first, anticipatory anxiety is high, followed by immediate post-EUE relief (happiness, self-confidence). Both emotions fade as the individual gains more experience, and many thrill-seekers then try to recapture the highs by engaging in more difficult and more risky versions of the sport (e.g., Price & Bundesen, 2005). A longer-lasting EUE in this category is solo sailing around the world; here, the sample size is tiny, the participants are clearly unrepresentative, and psychological studies are rare, with the exception of dramatic and often tragic episodes (see Heaton, 1976; Suedfeld, 1982). Perhaps the most interesting aspect of their experiences is the occasional sensation that someone else is there with them and is helping them through the ordeal. This sensation also occurs in other EUEs (Geiger, 2009), especially although not solely when the individual is in serious danger and in bad shape from cold, hunger, and exhaustion. Table 19.1 A Sampling of Extreme, Unusual Environments Natural
Human-Made
Recreational
Mountaineering
Solo circumnavigation
Occupational
Antarctic stations
Space stations
Traumatic
Natural disasters
Ethnopolitical violence
A Natural, Recreational EUE: Mountains Background One natural EUE is found in high, mountainous terrain. Recreational and professional mountain climbers have been active all over the world, including in Antarctica; in fact, climbing the highest peak on each of the seven continents is one of the claims to elite status. The Andes, the Alaska Range, the Alps, and other mountain ranges have attracted (and killed) climbers. But the highest mountains are the 14 so-called eight-thousanders, at least 8,000 meters high, all of them in the Himalayas or Karakorum ranges (having summited all 14 is another major source of high status). Among them is Mt. Everest, the highest on Earth and an icon of mountaineering. For those reasons, it shall be referred to as the prototype of its kind, even though there are others with worse records as far as human fatalities are concerned. Some of the most common dangers of high-altitude mountaineering are cold temperature that may lead to frostbite, high winds, sudden changes in weather conditions, falls, dehydration, and ultraviolet radiation that can cause snow blindness and severe sunburn. Another is oxygen deficiency, which begins to cause symptoms at 2,500 meters and above (to set the context, Mt. Everest is close to 9,000 meters high). This syndrome is known as acute mountain sickness (AMS), altitude sickness, or soroche. It is not restricted to mountain climbers: although inhabitants of communities that are above the critical altitude are adapted and do not
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses suffer from the syndrome, visitors may do so. AMS can be prevented or alleviated by ascending to the goal altitude slowly enough and with enough stops on the way to allow the body to become acclimatized, or, more recently, by climbing somewhat higher each day but returning to lower levels at night. It is also important to keep as warm as possible and to maintain hydration. Medication can be helpful, and alcohol is to be avoided. Under circumstances less dramatic than mountaineering, I have seen a colleague faint after a few swallows of a cocktail at a conference reception in Bogotá (altitude 2,640 meters). Interestingly, alcohol intake, even to excess, is not unknown among climbers acclimatizing to altitude at the Mt. Everest Base Camp in Nepal, at over 5,500 meters (Kodas, 2008). Most, but not all, climbers going above 8,000 meters use oxygen bottles to counteract the low oxygen content of the air. Amazingly, however, some do not, either from a desire for “purity” in their climb (p. 354) or because they decide that the drawbacks of carrying heavy, cumbersome oxygen bottles to high elevations outweigh the advantages of the extra oxygen. Statistics show that high climbs without supplementary oxygen double, or more than double, the chance of dying en route. When appropriate precautions are not taken, AMS causes headaches, dizziness and nausea, fatigue, shortness of breath, swelling of the hands and feet, and symptoms of depression. If the true cause of the effects is not recognized, and they are attributed to inadequate rest, food, or clothing, acute high-altitude sickness may develop into pulmonary or cerebral edema, both of which are fatal if not treated. On the other hand, if the patient is taken down below the critical altitude in time, recovery is likely. Sunburn and snow blindness, caused by the increased level of solar radiation in the thin air of high altitudes, play an important part in the timing of the expedition. Climbers usually “hole up” in some sheltered place during the height of day to avoid the brightest level of sunshine. Still, although painful and perhaps incapacitating for a while, both symptoms heal with time. Other dangers can have lasting effects: hypothermia impairs both physical and mental functioning, and eventually causes death if it affects the internal organs; frostbite can lead to the loss of inadequately protected fingers, toes, noses, and ears, and may permanently affect blood circulation. In the past two decades, there has been a significant drop in the percentage of deaths among climbers in the Himalayas and elsewhere, despite the growing number of attempts by people who try to reach summits for which they have insufficient experience or preparation: for example, up to 1990 the ratio of Everest deaths to successful summits was 37%; from 1990 to 2003 it was under 5%. The other eight-thousanders show similar temporal patterns, as do mountains such as Mt. McKinley (Denali) in Alaska (McIntosh et al., 2008). Newly developed climbing equipment, the general use of bottled oxygen, training given in base camps, and improvements in both search-and-rescue and medical procedures are probably responsible for most of this change.
Psychological Effects The challenge of the high mountains is both physical and psychological. A reasonable level of physical fitness is necessary for the arduous climb and descent with packs of equipment, spare clothing, oxygen bottles, and so on (although fitness is no protection against AMS). In recent years, there has been an explosion of less fit and less experienced climbers attempting the highest (and highest profile) mountains, such as Everest, many essentially being carried by their sherpa porters (Kodas, 2008). Psychologically, two contradictory tendencies affect success or failure on the mountain. On the one hand, the motivation and positive experiences of the expedition urge the climber on. Achievement motivation is satisfied by the pride of reaching the summit, perhaps a “personal best” or being the first to pioneer on a new mountain or a new route. Meeting the challenge of foreseeing, planning for, and successfully overcoming difficulty and danger is an opportunity to exercise coping self-efficacy. Thrill-seeking is fulfilled by the beauty of the mountain scenery and the fascination of carrying out the project in an exotic culture, a novel place, and with new people. Those who relish positive social interaction have the pleasure of sharing the experience with a group of cooperative, competent teammates and with other, friendly teams (although, cf. Kodas, 2008). The process of doing all this, and doing it successfully, provides enjoyment of both process and goal (telic and paratelic, Apter, 2007) and may generate both flow and peak experiences (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Afterward, the satisfaction of having done it can provide a life-long positive memory (Wickens, Keller, & Shaw, 2012). Maurice Herzog (1953), who was so frostbitten on Annapurna that he had to be carried off the mountain and lost several fingers and toes (as did other
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses members of his team), wrote of “the wonderful adventure which linked us to these mountains” (p. 294). Psychological problems include cognitive decrements that lead to errors of planning and execution based on insufficient knowledge, overconfidence, haste, and the need to process several kinds of information at once (e.g., snow conditions, the weather, the time of day, the climber’s fatigue, the team as a whole, the condition of equipment and supplies). All of these decisions may have to be reached and carried out under time pressure. Haste, stress, and fatigue all interfere severely with complex decision-making and parallel processing (multitasking) (Svenson & Maule, 1993). As time on the mountain increases, so do fatigue, the impact of hypoxia and the other adverse physical conditions, and—especially once the summit has been reached—the eagerness to finish. Deaths occur more frequently on the way down than up. Wickens et al.’s (2012) information processing theory provides a thorough analysis of how cold, wind, hypoxia, (p. 355) hard physical effort, and in some cases the painful and debilitating symptoms described previously can lead to serious deterioration of information processing and decision-making.
A Natural, Occupational EUE: Antarctic Stations Background The Antarctic environment is generally thought of as among the most difficult for human beings to tolerate. Antarctica is the highest, coldest, driest, and windiest continent, 98% of which is covered by thick ice and the remaining 2% by bare rock. It is the only continent with no history of indigenous human inhabitants or of land mammals. Some coastal areas offer the diverting sights of different species of penguins, seals, and sea lions, as well as leopard seals and elephant seals (a veritable seal zoo), and a variety of birds, whales, and fish. But in the interior of the continent, only an occasional stray skua breaks the monotony. The natural environment is accessible during most of the summer and occasionally during the winter, although hazards persist. There are patches of thin sea ice (especially in summer), and deep crevasses covered with a thin layer of ice and snow, which can crack under the weight of vehicles or even individuals. Sudden blizzards and white-outs make wayfinding difficult; people have been known to die of hypothermia a few yards from a shelter that they could not see. Areas of the continent lie at imperceptibly high altitudes that reach levels equivalent to mountains. Scott-Amundsen South Pole Station, for example, is about 2,800 meters above sea level, well within the zone for oxygen bottles and other safety precautions. Unmedicated visitors sometimes faint as soon as they step out of the plane that brought them there, and a favorite T-shirt reads, “Ski South Pole—1/4 inch of powder, 3 miles of base.” Antarctic stations differ from each other in size, design, location, and whether they operate only in the summer or all year. Although all are open to scientists of any nationality, each has its own cultural aura. They also have their own culturally derived supplies: the many thirsty trekkers from the US McMurdo Station to the nearby, much smaller New Zealand Scott Base have sometimes depleted the latter’s store of superior beer, forcing the temporary suspension of such visits. Station sizes range from fewer than 10 people to more than 1,000 (McMurdo in some summers), and location makes a big difference. Stations on the Antarctic Peninsula are relatively accessible by ship or plane, and may be visited by tourist ships when the summer weather is good. However, isolated stations on the continent may be barely reachable during the winter (mostly by plane, or a combination of plane and overland traverse) and only for duty-related flights at other times.
Psychological Effects Members of the early expeditions suffered from storms and ice that immobilized and sometimes crushed their ships, and from scurvy, food poisoning, starvation, frostbite, and accidents that disabled them physically as well as affecting them psychologically. Many died. But even under the most harrowing circumstances, explorers described the beauty and grandeur of the environment, periods of stimulation and relaxation, increased sensitivity, and feelings of personal growth and self-insight—as did their Arctic counterparts (Mocellin & Suedfeld, 1991). Most of the early expeditionary crews included at least one person who exhibited serious psychological maladjustment during the trip. Explorers were among the first to record the symptoms of what would later be labeled as winter-over syndrome: spells of anxiety, occasional symptoms of depression, reduced motivation, sleep disturbance, and decline in hygiene (almost inescapable, given the circumstances). Many also mentioned
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses interpersonal conflict, often with the commander, and disobedience that sometimes rose to the level of mutiny (Woodman, 2005). The early explorers made their ships homelike with handmade decorations and memorabilia, and staved off boredom with elaborate programs of theatrical and musical performances, athletic contests, demonstrations of seamanship, poetry recitals, handicrafts and arts, lectures on a variety of topics, the publication of shipboard newspapers, and the like (Johnson & Suedfeld, 1996). These activities were both enjoyable and prophylactic against psychological and physical deterioration. The point is not that EUEs of this severe level don’t have negative psychological impact; it’s that their impact is not only, or even primarily, negative. For present-day Antarctic (and Arctic) adventurers as opposed to station crews, the experience is a form of recreation. They purposely make it difficult for themselves by devising various limitations—no airdrops of supplies, no caches along the way, no mechanical aids to travel (it is now prohibited to import animals such as dogs). A High Arctic expedition organizer once joked in an interview that the only remaining unusual trek to the Pole would (p. 356) be on elephant-back—and he soon got an offer of sponsorship if he would organize one. Life on present-day Antarctic stations is far different from the harrowing experiences of the iconic early polar explorers (Brandt, 2004; Rasky, 1976) and of today’s adventurous expeditioners (Leon, 1991). Today’s worker in Antarctica has a relatively easy time. With a few exceptions, large 12-month stations are reasonably comfortable. They are equipped with modern heating, lighting, and plumbing; there is no scarcity of food or drinking water (water for showers is limited), appropriate clothing, and equipment. Medical treatment, communication with the outside by satellite telephone and e-mail, and decent recreational facilities are available. Smaller stations and camps, inhabited during the summer season, have fewer amenities, but the sojourn there is relatively short, and occasional breaks in the larger outposts can be arranged. An interesting difference between early explorers and present-day stationers is that the former frequently mentioned dreaming about elaborate meals they had eaten; the latter, about their loved ones leaving them. Presumably, 19th- and early 20th-century men on expeditions had fewer concerns about their wives’ fidelity; their successors, on the other hand, were not worried about the quantity or quality of their food (Mocellin & Suedfeld, 1991). In most 12-month Antarctic stations, summer seasons are much more crowded, with scientists, technicians, and a greatly increased number of support staff, who have undergone little if any selection and training for survival in the environment. The major problem is the long winter. One of its consequences, with minor differences across station details, is that monotony becomes a major stressor and boredom becomes one of its major consequences. During the winter, the physical and social worlds are both relatively unvarying. To begin with, it is constantly dark outside for six months a year, and mostly so for another two. During the other four, it is never completely dark. Even then, the stretches of ice, sea, and sky are mostly devoid of color, and inland on the continent, of movement and life. Inside, the shelter is built according to engineering considerations of load weight and cost, so that building interiors tend toward the stark and invariant. The inhabitants liven it up as much as they can, but the options are limited. Food is one of the major, and most appreciated, sources of variety, individual choice, and pleasure—if it is tasty and interesting. Otherwise, the cook becomes a target of serious disapproval and anger. There is work, but for many support workers it becomes unexciting, unvarying, and unfulfilling. Many of the support staff go to “The Ice” for novelty, challenge, and adventure (of course, the high pay and limited things to spend it on are also attractive); they then find themselves mostly restricted to the station, to their workplace, and to a limited and ultimately repetitive range of amusements and other people. It might be better to recruit staff who are not thrill seekers but pursue their work to the exclusion of other interests, as many polar scientists do (Blair, 1986), but this recommendation is no remedy for the long stretches of time when weather conditions prevent them from pursuing their planned research—sometimes for an entire season. In winter, the station can be lonely as the complement shrinks drastically to the same few faces seen every day. “Station opening,” when the summer workers and next year’s winter-overs start arriving, relieves the social monotony. But the station becomes crowded with people who don’t know the ropes and standard operating procedures. They jam the queues in the dining room, the bar, the gym, and other facilities. In some stations, privacy is lost as rooms now need to be shared. It sounds bleak. But human beings are creative, and can help themselves in bleak situations. Just as did the crews of high-latitude whaling and exploring ships in past centuries (Johnson & Suedfeld, 1996), present-day Antarcticans
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses make their rooms as much like home as possible. They import posters, photos, artwork (their own and others’), memorabilia, music, video and audio tapes and discs, books, and magazines. They attend lectures on a wide variety of topics, including the science projects they are helping to support. They form clubs and musical groups (musical ability is highly prized) and organize competitions, costume parties, dances, and concerts. They celebrate personal, national, and religious holidays, and devise their own: the successful completion of half of the winter, the first reappearance of the sun, and so on. Early empirical studies identified the winter-over syndrome described previously, whose symptoms overlap with those of the more recently discovered seasonal affective disorder, a mild form of depression, social withdrawal, and cognitive slowing that some people suffer during the short and sunless days of temperate-zone winters. There have been well-publicized episodes of sexual rivalry and jealousy (a predictable consequence of mixed-sex crews). Irritability certainly increases over the winter, as what appeared at first to be someone’s innocuous (p. 357) habits become irksome and eventually loathsome (see Stuster, 1996, pp. 171–175). A number of assaults have occurred on station, and there has been at least one rumored murder. In addition, polar station residents have noted the idiosyncratically named Big Eye (chronic insomnia) and Long Eye (a fugue state—the 20-foot stare in the 10-foot room, which renders the individual essentially unaware of what is going on in the vicinity, unless it is a very strong stimulus indeed). All of these symptoms tend to increase as the winter wears on, and may reach a peak in the period after the halfway point of any mission (the “third quarter phenomenon,” Bechtel & Berning, 1991). But they typically disappear before, or shortly after, the return from Antarctica. Estimates of the prevalence of cases serious enough to warrant a psychiatric diagnosis range only up to 5%, and cluster at 1–3%, of winterers. Even of this small number, the great majority require no more than brief counseling or a short-term prescription of medication (Stuster, 1996). Some of the problems may be due to inadequate selection. Summer workers, scientists, and their university-based assistants undergo no assessment of their personal fitness for working in Antarctica; winter-over support personnel do. However, the assessment methods differ widely from country to country, with a variable mix of interviews, projective tests, standard personality scales, and scrutiny of biographical data. The ideal recruit, according to an early analysis that has stood the test of time (Gunderson, 1966), has high levels of three “abilities”: emotional stability, sociability, and task ability. People who are emotionally volatile can upset everyone else; the optimal interpersonal orientation is “sociable introversion”—that is, enjoying company but not being dependent on it—and someone who is not competent on the job makes life more difficult, and possibly more dangerous, for the group as a whole. Negative effects are certainly distressing to the individual, and often to friends and coworkers. But from the start there have been findings of beneficial aspects, as has already been noted, and psychologists have been urged to pay more attention to that evidence (Suedfeld, 2001). Data are increasingly being collected that validate such calls (e.g., Norris, Paton, & Ayton, 2010; Palinkas & Suedfeld, 2008). Aside from anecdotal self-reports that recount many pleasant and salutogenic experiences, there is also more rigorous research evidence. Data from 104 Australian winterers (four stations, two winter seasons, thus reducing possible bias in the results) showed that although the list of complaints was long, most appeared rarely; by contrast, fewer positive reactions were noted, but they were cited much more often (Wood et al., 2000). A very recent Australian literature review (Norris et al., 2010) concluded that the majority of winterers experience positive outcomes, and that the process of Antarctic adjustment facilitates resilience and personal growth. In an American study, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) showed significant reductions in dependency and paranoia, and the Personal Orientation Inventory showed significant increases in selfactualization (motivation and capacity for intimate contact, and ability to react flexibly to situations) (Butcher et al., 1989). Of 29 winterers in a small station who participated in the study, 27 rated it either “good” or “one of the best” experiences of their life (10 and 17, respectively); one each called it “bad” and “one of the worst” (Oliver, 1991). Carrère, Evans, and Stokols (1991) noted that the Antarctic should be viewed as a dynamic environment whose effects on the individual are comprised of both chronic characteristics and acute events. All members of their small group of winter-over scientists and support personnel concluded that the positive aspects of the experience outweighed the negative. As a last example, Palinkas (1986) reported a longitudinal study of US naval personnel who had volunteered for and completed duty in Antarctica, compared to personnel who had also volunteered and
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses were found to be qualified, but for some reason had not been assigned there. The men with Antarctic experience subsequently had better careers (e.g., more promotions) and better health (e.g., 20% fewer first hospital admissions) than the control group. We can leave it at that.
A Human-Made Occupational EUE: Space Stations Background Although there have been hundreds of human spaceflights, beginning with Yuri Gagarin’s orbital flight in 1961, long-duration flights—months, rather than days or a couple of weeks—have been restricted to space stations. The maximum size of long-duration space crews has been six, although most have numbered only two or three. For this reason, building up a reasonable sample size for psychological studies is a slow process, and limitations of time, load weight, and room for equipment, and priorities make psychological research on space vehicles difficult. Accordingly, much of (p. 358) the psychological investigation of the effects of prolonged spaceflight has been done in simulators and analogue environments. Among the favorite analogues of space vehicles and orbiting stations have been Antarctic stations. Although they obviously do not replicate all of the characteristics of living in space—they have normal gravity, for one important difference—the two environments have much in common: isolation, confinement, danger, a harsh outside milieu, remoteness from normal surroundings and social circles, monotony, and unusual light-dark cycles. Another important similarity space habitats also share with the circumpolar sailing vessels of previous centuries and with present-day polar expeditions is the importance of good leadership (Dinges, 2011). Although the best leaders can take full charge in emergencies, they also consult with specialists and with the entire crew on appropriate issues. When there is a trade-off between acting as efficient taskmasters versus builders of morale and esprit de corps, they emphasize the latter (Brcic, 2011; Kanas & Manzey, 2003; Leon, 1991; Suedfeld, 2010). Each of the original space stations was run by one agency: the Salyut program (1971–1982) and Mir (1986–2001) by the Soviet/Russian space organization, and Skylab (1973–1974) by NASA. When astronauts from other countries flew in these stations, they were frustrated at being treated like “guests” rather than fully integrated colleagues (Suedfeld, Wilk, & Cassel, 2011). This problem may be avoided in the most recent (and currently operational) version, the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS began as an American plan but eventually developed into a multinational one. Its on-orbit construction began in 1998 and is scheduled to be completed in 2012. The full crew complement is six astronauts, who are drawn from around the world and train together in a number of countries before launching for a six-month deployment. Short-term visitors arrive from time to time to carry out specific tasks. Over long periods, the stressors overlap with those of Antarctica. These include monotony, lack of privacy and interpersonal space, insomnia, fatigue after periods of intense work and sleep deprivation, lack of control over the environment and one’s own activities, difficulty in keeping one’s body, clothes, and capsule environment clean (exacerbated in space by debris and worse floating around), and a lack of meaningful activity when there is no important work to be done. Getting used to microgravity is another problem at first; once learned, practicing the skills involved can be a source of entertainment. In addition, astronauts are aware of the dangers of bone demineralization, skeletal and cardiac muscle deterioration, increased intraocular pressure that may affect their eyesight (a recently documented symptom), radiation, solar flares, random space debris hitting the capsule, constant loud noise, mechanical failure of some important life-support system, and so on. They are also aware—and not happy about—constant scrutiny from ground control and, if anything goes seriously or even noticeably wrong, from the media and the public at large. Early in the space age, NASA officials and astronauts scoffed at the possibility that any psychological issue could possibly bother people who had the “Right Stuff”; even today, one can hear the opinion that astronauts, being mature and competent individuals, would not let something like interpersonal conflict affect their job performance. In fact, the history of spaceflight, like that of Antarctic station life, shows only a few dramatic incidents related to psychological problems. But missions have had to be cut short because of psychological or psychosomatic symptoms among the crew, or barely staved off that outcome. Symptoms similar to Antarctic “winter-over syndrome” have appeared, including “the space stupids”—temporary cognitive deterioration (Kanas & Manzey,
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses 2003). Several astronauts have experienced periods of anxiety or deep depression, a few times because of bad news from home. Some crew members disliked each other from the beginning of a flight to the end; others developed a high level of hostility toward each other as the mission wore on. There have been cases where two men spent much of the mission without even speaking to each other. Many astronauts grow to dislike their mission controllers and agency administrators on the ground, either individually or en masse. To some extent this may be a psychological defense mechanism (Kanas et al., 1991); in others, it is realistic resentment. Participants in both short and long missions have complained about the relentless, overpacked work schedules imposed by mission control, and in several cases (the Skylab 3 crew’s spontaneous weekend rest period being perhaps the best known) have themselves changed those schedules to make them less onerous. This countermeasure is now being studied by NASA under the label of “autonomy” (Kanas, 2011). Time and effort spent on trivial and pointless tasks have also (p. 359) come in for criticism (Stuster, 2010). On the other hand, many crew members became fast friends with each other and even with mission control; in journals written aloft, several mentioned plans to thank and reward ground crews for their helpfulness when they returned (Stuster, 2010). Nevertheless, psychological issues have loomed large in the concerns of major space agencies. The Soviet Union, whose cosmonauts were the first to spend six months or more in space, selected compatible crews for those missions, using a variety of situational tests to assess their ability to withstand isolation, to function cognitively under stress, and to tolerate crowding. If one member of the primary crew had to be replaced, an entire backup crew was substituted. NASA, on the other hand, relied more on personality tests and interviews, and replaced individual crew members when necessary. As a result, there were missions on which teammates did not know each other as well and were not as used to working together. Both organizations being large bureaucracies dependent on government funding and political connections, the best-suited candidate for a mission was sometimes put aside in favor of someone who was either better liked by space administrators or preferred by political leaders (Santy, 1994). With the recent prospect of much longer space missions, such as a two- to three-year exploration of Mars, psychological concerns have risen in the hierarchy of potential problems (Ball & Evans, 2001). The Mars voyage, or an alternative trip to some near-Earth object (NEO) such as an asteroid, will undoubtedly involve an international crew. Prolonged journeys to and from the objective, with some period (in the case of Mars, most likely measured in months) of surface exploration, will be required. Each of these three phases will have its own discomforts and dangers. Training in cross-cultural sensitivity as well as in anticipating and understanding the effects of crowding, isolation, lack of privacy, and so on has been intensified (NASA, 2011). Consider just two examples of the novel problems faced by the Mars expeditioners. In previous missions, the crew has been kept quite busy with various work assignments, including conducting experiments designed by scientists on Earth. When they did have spare time, as much as 40% of it was spent in viewing and photographing Earth. On a long trip, the astronauts are likely to run out of meaningful things to do, and as the spaceship approaches and then remains on Mars, Earth will shrink in view until it is only a point of light, almost certainly increasing the crew’s sense of isolation. Countermeasures have been and are being devised, ranging from changing the illumination within the ISS, to installing partitions with varied and perhaps changeable colors and configurations, to installing a greenhouse where astronauts can relax in a quasi-natural setting and grow the fresh vegetables they will enjoy eating (as at McMurdo Station, Antarctica). Plans are being made to test the installation of virtual “windows” showing different scenes from Earth. Other improvements in environmental design, such as more private space (especially for sleeping and personal hygiene) and locating the food preparation and dining area away from the toilet, are being implemented. Like maritime and terrestrial explorers of earlier centuries, and like contemporary polar crews, astronauts also devise their own ways to overcome the boredom and monotony of long-duration confinement. In three space station programs (Skylab, Shuttle/Mir, ISS) much of the astronauts’ spare time was spent looking at Earth, identifying places of personal interest or relevance, and taking photos—activities that failed to engage a few crew members, one of whom said, “After a couple of weeks, you look, say, ‘Oh, yeah. Been there. Seen that’” (N. Thagard, quoted in Johnson, 2010, p. 563). Some turned this rather passive recreation into something more active:
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses for example, an astronaut interested in the history of exploration traced the routes of famous explorers that the station flew over. Crew members also took full advantage of recreational materials brought into the station, such as books, games, puzzles, drawing materials, music CDs, musical instruments, and movie videos. Using computers for sending and reading e-mail and for keeping up with the news, and chatting with people on Earth by telephone, were also popular. Part of health maintenance on the station is a prescribed program of exercise to counteract bone demineralization and muscle atrophy. Working out is also a form of recreation, and some astronauts make even more of it by conducting races and competitions. At the time of the Boston Marathon, Suni Williams ran the equivalent distance on the ISS treadmill. Her time was 4 hours, 23 minutes, and 46 seconds; on the other hand, she circled the entire Earth three times during that period, making her by far the fastest long-distance runner in history. As in Antarctica, both pleasure and displeasure with food were mentioned often by the ISS astronauts, who appreciated the periodic resupply (p. 360) rockets bringing fresh fruit and vegetables, plus special favorites packed by their families. When these did not arrive, or when someone else ate a disproportionate share of preferred items, the disappointment was intense (Johnson, 2010; Stuster, 2010). The ISS crews also instituted celebrations, such as “change of command” and other ceremonies derived from US naval tradition, and welcoming ceremonies offering the traditional Russian bread and salt to newly arriving crew members. Other special occasions include national and religious holidays, birthdays and anniversaries of the crew and their family, as well as major space-related events (anniversaries of important firsts, crew achievements such as a successful spacewalk or a record number of days in space). Among memorable boredom and stress relievers are the practical jokes that astronauts have played on each other and on people on the ground (and vice versa). Johnson (2010) describes several; my favorite is a prerecorded tape by the wife of one of the crew, which was then played during a communication with mission control as though she were actually aboard Skylab, claiming that she had just gone up there to cook a hot meal for “the boys.” Control personnel pretended to be mystified as to how this was done, until her husband explained it 25 years later. In view of the importance of minimizing the impact of adverse psychological factors, it is understandable that space agencies don’t worry about positive effects, but they are mistaken in ignoring them. They should, as Australian researchers in the Antarctic have already done, recognize that “Identification of the salient predictors of resilience and articulation of the mechanisms linking them to adaptive outcomes will enable proactive prevention and intervention strategies to focus on enhancing this capacity…from pre-departure through reunion and reintegration” (Norris et al., 2010, p. 337). There is a growing impetus for recognizing and studying salutogenesis and post-mission growth among astronauts when they return from flights. Anecdotal and oral history evidence gave rise to that widening perspective (Suedfeld, 2001), which has been buttressed by systematic content analysis and by self-report instruments. Content analysis of archived accounts of astronauts after returning (debriefs, oral histories, memoirs, media interviews) showed very frequent references to positive experiences vis-à-vis crewmates, family on the ground, the space agency and its staff, the capsule, the wonders of space and of Earth as seen both through a window and during extra-vehicular activities (EVAs), as well as satisfaction with having accomplished tasks and developed courage and resilience that the astronaut had not been aware of before. Quantified content analysis of the same materials demonstrated salutogenesis. For example, a pre- to post-flight comparison of astronauts’ hierarchy of basic values changed in the direction of more concern with values oriented toward the collective good: universalism, spirituality, and power (social recognition), and many have used their increased visibility to pursue social and environmental goals (Suedfeld, Legkaia, & Brcic., 2011). Ihle, Ritsher, and Kanas (2006) used an adaptation of Tedeschi and Calhoun’s (1996) Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory (PTGS), which they named the Positive Effects of Being in Space Questionnaire (PEBS), to measure positive outcomes. The PEBS was filled out by 39 former and current space voyagers. Every one reported a positive reaction to being in space. The most strongly endorsed items dealt with appreciating Earth’s beauty, appreciating Earth’s fragility, treasuring the Earth, a sense of wonder about the universe, and perceiving new opportunities. A similar questionnaire administered to 17 retired Russian cosmonauts reported higher scores on the dimensions of personal strength and new possibilities when compared to other sample norms on the PTGS.
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses Cosmonauts who had spent more than a year in space, and who flew on both Mir and ISS, were most likely to report increased appreciation of life (Suedfeld, Brcic, Johnson, & Gushin, 2012). Once again: as in the other sections, the point is that neither negative nor positive aspects of the EUE should be overemphasized or neglected. Both have profound impact on the people in the environment, during and after the mission. Agencies with the responsibility for such missions and for the people in them need to appreciate and make provisions for both (Suedfeld, 2005).
Introduction to Traumatic Environments The three environments discussed until now are restricted in how many people have entered them. As of 2003, fewer than 9,500 people had seen the summit of any of the 8,000-meter peaks (Eight-thousander summiters, 2006); the number by now is likely to be over 10,000, but probably not as high as 15,000. The winter population of Antarctic stations totals under 1,000 annually. Since Gagarin’s flight in 1961, about 550 human beings have been (p. 361) in space, accelerating in recent years (List of space travelers, 2011). By contrast, although many disasters affect only a few people in a relatively circumscribed area, others have affected most of the world and have killed, maimed, uprooted, and impoverished millions. Another crucial difference between the recreational and occupational categories on the one hand and the traumatic on the other is that the first two are entered into voluntarily, while the other is imposed by an outside agency, whether human or natural (for example, geological or meteorological). People are in a recreational or occupational EUE because they expect to gain something: enjoyment, excitement, challenge, pride, fame, money, security, or some combination of these. Some of them have described what may well be peak or flow experiences (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Victims caught in disasters, whether large- or small-scale, at most hope to survive them without injury or loss; the prospect of gain is rarely discernible. Thus, one could reasonably expect more negative and fewer positive outcomes of the experience in such cases. In the last two types of EUEs covered in this chapter, we shall see to what extent any positive effect can be found. A final word about the next two sections. The literature review covers only the effects of the EUE on victim survivors. Studies of first responders and other rescue and recovery personnel in natural disasters, and perpetrators, bystanders, and so on in genocides, are not included. Also, the review uses generally accepted concepts and definitions. It will not cover controversies over such issues as whether the diagnostic category of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) should be abandoned as an example of Western-centric, medical overreach (van Ommeren, Saxena, & Saraceno, 2005), and how accurate the death rate ascribed to any particular genocide is or is not.
A Natural, Traumatic EUE: Natural Disasters Background Natural disasters usually afflict people who are unprepared and unsuspecting. Their geographic impact and temporal duration are usually clearly defined. There is no agreed-upon definition of how severe an event has to be to qualify as a disaster, and how severity should be assessed (Walker, 1998): by number of deaths, number of people displaced, monetary loss, or damage to life-sustaining factors, such as farmland? There is also a controversy concerning what is to be considered “natural.” For example, if the excessive cutting of timber induces instability in the soil and a landslide results, or people build houses on the slope of a volcano and a catastrophic eruption occurs, how should these disasters be classified? Such issues make it difficult to ascertain the toll of natural disasters per se. One estimate is 3.5 million deaths in the 20th century, not including deaths from drought and famine (Munich Re, 1999). Compared to an estimated 260 million victims of deliberate human action during the same period (Rummel, 1997/2002), natural disasters are considered to cause far less human damage. The sources and types of natural disasters are highly varied, as are their outcomes. Large-scale disasters may be caused by windstorms (hurricanes, cyclones, tornadoes, typhoons); dangerous water conditions such as rogue waves, tsunamis, monsoon rains, floods, and droughts; geological disruptions (earthquakes, mudslides, rockslides, avalanches, and cave-ins); and dangers from fire, for example, volcanic eruptions and wildfires. Casualties range from under 10 to hundreds of thousands. In addition, some definitions include famines and epidemics under the
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses heading of natural disasters, in which case deaths in the millions can be added to the toll. If famines are included at all, one must delete those that are actually caused or exacerbated by deliberate human action, such as the starvation of at least three million Ukrainians under the Stalin regime (e.g., Snyder, 2010) and of somewhere around 30 million Chinese who starved as a result of Mao’s drive to industrialize the country and collectivize its agriculture —a period (1958–1961) that until recently the Chinese government, presumably with no sense of irony, called “Three Years of Natural Disasters” (Banister, 1984).
Psychological Effects Most of the relevant literature focuses on symptoms of traumatic and post-traumatic stress. It is roughly divided between large-scale statistical analyses of the frequency, nature, and severity of symptoms often subdivided by demographic and geographic categories, and clinical studies of what kind of psychological support and counseling should be provided to the survivors. There has been insufficient psychological research on individual survivors to identify the extent to which reactions to disaster are uniform across different types of disasters (e.g., floods, earthquakes) and levels of exposure to the trauma (e.g., number of casualties, area of impact, personal experiences of injury or loss). Briere and Elliott (2000) reported that exposure severity—especially physical injury, fear of death, and loss of (p. 362) property—were better predictors of trauma symptoms in the aftermath of disaster than the type of disaster. Other relevant variables are the level, type, timing, and duration of support that individuals and groups receive from each other, from charitable organizations, and from governments. Whether the individual is relocated after the disaster or is able to return home has an effect, with relocation apparently leading to more depression and general symptoms of stress (e.g., Najarian et al., 2001). Frequently noted symptoms cover the whole range of stress and trauma syndromes, including PTSD, but the prevalence of specific symptoms varies widely. The so-called disaster syndrome has four phases: behavior during the disaster, optimism as recovery begins, disappointment and resentment about losses and the recovery process, and reconstruction of normal life. The syndrome is related to PTSD, generalized anxiety, and clinical depression (Shore et al., 1986). In general, it seems that the level of serious psychiatric impairment is not very high, although there are contradictory reports. The same is true of the course of recovery. One reviewer concluded that “diagnosable pathology is the exception rather than the rule,” and rarely affects more than 25% of the survivors by just one year after the event (Green, 1995, p. 309). Another study found that most symptoms decrease in less than two years after the disaster (Solomon & Green, 1992). Ohta et al. (2003) reported that during 44 post-evacuation months after a volcanic eruption in Japan, the course of recovery was uneven across symptoms. Although selfrated anxiety, tension, insomnia, lack of energy, and social dysfunction decreased significantly, depression was only beginning to lessen at 44 months and interpersonal dysfunction had not abated. Most studies in this literature are post hoc, because pre-disaster measures are rarely available on the individual level. One exception is an interview study of psychological symptoms among residents of Iowa. In 1993, a year after the data collection, the area suffered a massive flood. The residents were re-interviewed one to three months after the flood had abated (Ginexi et al., 2000). Only a small rise in depressive symptoms was found. Another major topic is the analysis of risk factors (McFarlane, 1989). Green (1995) and many other authors identified exposure to danger as one of the most reliable predictors of post-disaster symptoms. The closer the person was to the event geographically or psychologically (e.g., proximity to the focus of the disaster, being injured, losing close relatives or friends, witnessing deaths or injuries, losing economic resources such as a house, etc.), the higher the risk of trauma symptoms. Demographic factors also play a role, although that role is not always clear and may interact with risk and type of disaster. There are mixed results for gender, but in Green’s as in other studies, there is some evidence that women and girls are more likely to experience symptoms after surviving a natural disaster. People across the entire life span are at risk of psychological symptoms to some extent, but their reactions differ by age and interactive variables. For example, children’s PTSD is affected by the social support they receive during and after the event. In one study of children in an early-morning 6.9 magnitude earthquake, 30% reported that they
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses had not felt surprised and some slept through it. Those under seven years of age experienced less fear during the event. Parents reacted by holding or touching the children until the quake was over (Negayama, 2010), an example of another common finding: that children’s symptoms are affected by whether they have a close and protective family. The elderly regard the loss of economic resources as more important than do younger people, but report less severe mental or physical aftereffects of disasters (Kilijanek & Drabek, 1979). Kato et al. (1996) found that three weeks after a Japanese earthquake, elderly subjects (60 years or older) showed significant decreases in 8 of 10 PTSD symptoms compared to rates immediately after the earthquake, whereas symptom levels had not gone down among those under 60. On the other hand, Ohta et al. (2003) reported that middle-aged and older evacuees tested 44 months after the volcanic eruption had more difficulty with recovery than their younger counterparts. Preexisting psychiatric problems are reliably and positively correlated with the severity of post-disaster trauma symptoms (e.g., Green, 1995). Whether specific diagnostic categories pose particular risk factors remains to be established. Socioeconomic status has a multifactorial impact. Poor people and racial minorities may live in housing that is more crowded and less resistant to earthquakes, floods, and fire, so that their community suffers more damage and personal injury. They are less likely to have insurance. These factors, together with their lower income and savings, mean that they are less able to afford the loss of economic (p. 363) resources. Loss of resources, in turn, is an important magnifier of stress. Additionally, people in disadvantaged circumstances may have less access to vehicles (cars, boats) needed to escape the disaster area, and at least in some cases, their neighborhood may not receive as much attention from emergency response organizations. All of these factors increase their level of stress and consequently their risk of trauma and post-trauma symptoms. The effects of socioeconomic class interact with other demographic characteristics, such as age, gender, and race. Older men with low occupational status were at greatest risk for psychological, but not physical, symptoms after a flood in Kentucky (Phifer, 1990). Both black and low-income residents of New Orleans suffered from Hurricane Katrina more than white, higher-income townspeople, but those who were black and poor were most in need of assistance (Elliott & Pais, 2006). Their disadvantage continued after evacuation: Settles and Lindsey (2011) reported that media and the public in Houston, Texas, blamed the mostly African-American post-Katrina refugees for what statistics showed to be a nonexistent crime wave. Despite the primarily pathogenic emphasis of the literature, many authors at least mentioned that resilience exists, and some examined its possible determinants. For example, Benight et al. (1999) measured a set of variables including social support and loss of personal resources, both of which the literature generally considers crucial predictors of adverse reactions to disaster trauma. As it turned out, the best actual predictor of both general and trauma-related distress was coping self-efficacy. This is not to say that the other variables had no role; lost resources affected the levels of both coping self-efficacy and optimism. In an interesting cross-cultural comparison, Fernando and Hebert (2011) conducted post-disaster interviews with seven women in Sri Lanka who had survived the Asian tsunami and seven female survivors of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Both groups referred to their Christian faith as sources of support during and after their disaster. Both felt fearful of future natural disasters. The Sri Lankans tried to be optimistic, and referred to internal strength and motivation. The Americans described more symptoms of PTSD, and all of them requested counseling to help them recover. Both groups considered the support they received from friends, family, their community, and their church to be instrumental in helping them cope with their problems. Despite the differences in culture and in the nature of the disaster they had endured, their reactions seemed amazingly similar. Previous experience with EUEs can be a help. Park, Miller, and Van (2010) remarked on the resilience of Vietnamese refugees (“Boat People”) who had settled in a Biloxi, Mississippi, neighborhood (“Little Saigon”) that was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Like many survivors of actual genocide, the Katrina survivors compared their latest stressors with earlier travails—in their case, during the Vietnam War, the perilous voyage from Vietnam, and life in refugee camps. “If you endured hardship in Vietnam, nothing in the U.S. is hard” (Park et al., pp. 90–91). Members of the community helped each other both materially and psychologically, although young, educated, English-speaking individuals were “getting on with their lives and trying to look towards the future” (p. 96).
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses Natural disasters can evoke positive behavior on the part of outsiders and survivors. Governments, religious and charitable organizations, and private citizens—including many from the international community—rally to find survivors and help with money, food, medical aid, shelter, potable water, and so on. They also provide places where displaced survivors can gather, find friends and relatives, meet with representatives of relief organizations and with members of the local community, and share stories, meals, and company (Park et al., 2010). Survivors themselves may share this prosocial pattern. Fernando and Hebert (2011) describe how women who had survived the devastating Asian tsunami of 2005 felt a sense of purpose amid their grieving when they shared their resources with their extended family members and helped neighbors with shopping and similar chores. Rao et al. (2011) conducted studies after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake (magnitude 8.0; 89,000 dead, 375,000 injured, 1.15 million people deprived of their livelihood because of devastated farmlands and forests). They found that living in the devastated area was positively correlated with altruistic responses in two experimental scenarios. These were administered 1 to 2 months, and again 6 and 12 months, after the quake. The researchers found the same results among residents of an area that had been hit by a major earthquake (655,000 dead) more than 30 years earlier. Actual prosocial behavior, in the form of donations and personal help from survivors of the 1976 earthquake to victims of the 2008 earthquake, showed the same relationship between having experienced a natural disaster and behaving altruistically. (p. 364) Another group of researchers, also studying the aftermath of the Wenchuan quake, found that with social support as a moderating variable, adolescents showed signs of post-traumatic growth (Yang, Lin, & Qian, 2010). In another study, Roxberg et al. (2010) analyzed televised interviews with 39 survivors of the 2004 Pacific Ocean tsunami. The survivors were citizens of Sweden, Thailand, or Sri Lanka and were between 12 and 70 years old. All but 10 of the interviewees had lost at least one close relative in the tsunami, which occurred one year before the interviews. Both post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth appeared. Some prominent themes in the interviews were a profound sense of loneliness, loss, and grief, anger at the injustice of the loss, and hopelessness because of the uncertainty of the future and the lack of sufficient aid to recovery. Sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, inability to concentrate, nightmares, generalized anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and other post-traumatic stress symptoms were mentioned. But that was only part of the story. Surviving family members and friends were important sources of support to the interviewees. They also found it comforting to memorialize the dead, visiting graves or memorials and participating in mourning rituals. Although one symptom of PTSD is the avoidance of stimuli that reactivate the memory of the trauma, respondents found solace in being near the ocean that had swept away a loved one. A survivor said, “When I step into the water she hugs me. I just feel it is wonderful to swim here [in Thailand] because then I know that I am with her” (Roxberg et al., p. 712). Going beyond coping with the loss to post-traumatic growth, some of the interviewees spoke of finding new meaning in their life, new awareness of life as a gift to be enjoyed, and becoming more attentive to friends and family. One participant summed up this salutogenic outcome as follows: “I now try to build a new life. I do not know at all what the substance of this life will be except that it will include human warmth, love and good things” (Roxberg et al., p. 712). Ursano, Fullerton, and McCaughey (1994) quoted a survivor of the 1992 Oakland, California, fires: “‘I value my family so much now. It’s amazing how the little ‘things’ [in life] matter. The fire taught me that and I owe it a debt of gratitude for teaching this lesson.’” The authors continued, “The effects of traumatic events are not always bad. Although many survivors of the 1974 tornado in Xenia, Ohio, experienced psychological distress, the majority described positive outcomes: learning that they could handle crises effectively, feeling that they were better off for having met this type of challenge.… Trauma may also bring a community closer together or reorient an individual to new priorities, goals or values” (Ursano et al., 1994, p. 8). As in the other EUEs we have examined so far, the major focus of researchers has been on the adverse aspects of the experience. This outlook persists, but a growing number of scholars are paying more attention to stress resistance and coping. Carp (2010) has argued that the clinical approach may be counterproductive: the professional who views the survivors as weak and helpless victims may overlook the flexibility and resilience of both the individuals and the social systems whose normal functioning has been disrupted. We shall next turn to the pattern in the worst kinds of disaster, those that human beings visit upon each other.
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses A Human-Made Traumatic EUE: Genocide Background Genocide is defined as “the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group” (United Nations, 1948), vague enough for considerable argument about whether it covers such offshoots as the killing of people based on their economic status (classicide) or political adherence (politicide), or the attempt to destroy a people’s culture (cultural genocide). There is also legal controversy as to how close to success a genocidal attempt has to come—that is, how large a “part” of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group must actually have been destroyed—to qualify. A catch-all term to cover all of these is “democide” (Rummel, 1997), covering genocide, politicide, massacres, extrajudicial executions, and other forms of mass murder by state and quasi-state regimes, and nonstate groups. It does not include military deaths in combat. According to Rummel’s statistics, updated in 2002, democides killed upward of 260 million people in the 20th century. No genocidal campaign in recent history has succeeded in completely annihilating groups fitting under the definition, and only one has attempted to do so. Atrocities and massacres were perpetrated by Imperial Germany against the Hereros, by Ottoman Turkey against the Armenians, by the Khmer Rouge against class, cultural, and ethnic outsiders, and by Rwandan Hutus against Tutsis, to name only a few examples. But the Nazis were alone in formulating the goal of eventually killing every single member of a religious-ethnic group, the Jews, wherever they (p. 365) could be reached in the whole world. The Holocaust (referred to as the Shoah in Hebrew) caused the death of over half of the Jews of Europe, including over 90% of their children, some six million people altogether. The Holocaust is unique among genocides. The persecution of the Jews and the mass murders lasted 12 and 6 years, respectively, longer than any other such campaigns. The Nazis followed systematic procedures and kept extensive records. Many of the victims were literate and educated, and produced correspondence and diaries that survived the war; after the war, survivors who were scattered around the world recorded their histories. In consequence, the literature of the Holocaust is unique among genocides. Thousands of autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, scientific papers, historical and philosophical treatises, and most recently videotaped oral histories have been amassed in Holocaust documentation. Many of these were created several decades after the end of the war, when survivors, rescuers, perpetrators, and bystanders had had time to gain insight about the long-term role of the genocide in their lives. Psychological research has addressed the personality and motives of all of these groups (see, e.g., Suedfeld, 2000), but here I shall deal only with studies of survivors—a sizeable enough literature, with studies of concentration camp survivors alone numbering almost 2,500 publications before the end of the past century (Krell & Sherman, 1997). There is not much point in rehearsing the well-known details of the horrible circumstances in which so many died (e.g., Friedländer, 2007; The Holocaust Chronicle, 2000). Civilians in most of Europe faced the dangers of war— invasion and brutal occupation, aerial bombardment, collapsing buildings, shells, mines, and bullets, as well as food shortages, power failures, and so on. But in addition, Jews first lost their civil rights and then were dehumanized and degraded, starved, beaten, and forced to live in crowded ghettoes or concentration camps. There, they were denied warm clothing, sanitary facilities, and medical care, and subjected to torture and medical experimentation. Many were worked to death; others were brutally murdered if they showed resistance or if they belonged to the “wrong” demographic group (if they were too young, too old, too weak, or too sick to work, and in the camps, if they were mothers with small children). Any of these was sufficient, none was necessary: Jews could be killed at the whim of their persecutors, who were sometimes their former friends and neighbors. Many who survived all this were taken on death marches and killed as the Allied armies approached. In the many episodes of Jewish resistance, revolution, escape, and guerrilla warfare, few participants survived. Of those who hid, many were dependent on the Gentiles who sheltered them (and who sometimes exploited or betrayed them). Some concealed themselves in hidden rooms, cellars, sewers, or underground hideouts in the wilderness, or moved about such places to avoid detection. They were hunted, hungry, cold, afraid, and tired. Others, mostly children, were hidden by Gentile families or institutions (orphanages, convents, and churches), sometimes with false documents and sometimes only with a cover story, which they had to memorize and remember, always on the alert so as not to give away their true name, identity, and family origin. For men and boys, being circumcised was proof of being Jewish, so that concealing it was crucial; some Jewish parents dressed
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses their sons in girls’ clothing to reduce the probability that they might be examined by authorities.
Psychological Effects This history, and photos and films of the liberation of the camps, shocked the world. The psychiatrists and clinical psychologists who produced the earliest wave of behavioral science writing about the victims of the Shoah were influenced by their own traumatized reactions when the facts of the genocide became public, exacerbated and made more vivid by the patients’ accounts. Soon, a set of general symptoms affecting survivors was labeled as “concentration camp syndrome” (or KZ syndrome, from the German abbreviation of Konzentrationslager), “survivor syndrome,” or “persecution syndrome.” The symptoms were the precursors of what we now know as PTSD: episodes of generalized anxiety and anger, depression, psychosomatic and sexual dysfunction, anhedonia, insomnia and nightmares, memory flashbacks, hypervigilance, intrusive ideation, and emotional withdrawal, plus “survivor guilt,” deriving from having survived when so many others had died (Krystal, 1968). Most psychologists and psychiatrists were convinced that the trauma of the Holocaust experience, particularly that of concentration camp survivors (there was much less attention to hidden adults and children), had irretrievably damaged them. They would never be able to enjoy life, to pursue successful careers, or establish warm interpersonal bonds (see, e.g., Garland, 1993). Professionals who examined the few children who survived the camps were appalled: “a homogeneous mass, with no hair, (p. 366) faces swollen from hunger and uniform clothes; a group with an apathetic, unconcerned and indifferent attitude, with no laughter or even a smile, and a marked aggressiveness towards the personnel; mistrust and suspicion” (Hemmendinger, 1981). The prognosis was dismal. This focus on pathogenesis carried over into later writings about the second generation, the survivors’ children, who were often described as suffering from “intergenerational transmission of trauma” (e.g., Williams-Keeler et al., 1998). Survivor parents supposedly “transmitted” their own traumas to their children, making them averse to doing anything to disappoint or oppose their parents. The younger generation learned to feel the parents’ grief at the murder of family members—especially of members of a dead first family, who were sometimes presented as idealized role models. Members of the second generation felt anxious and guilty when they failed to live up to the parents’ expectations, or when they complained about anything, because all their problems were trivial compared to what their parents had gone through. Many were haunted by the horrors they imagined their parents to have experienced, which were sometimes worse than the actual histories of parents who (like many survivors) shied away from talking about the Holocaust. Some observers (e.g., Garland, 1993) have asserted that the trauma is transmitted even to the grandchildren; one wonders how many generations it might take to disappear. The dire predictions certainly came true for some survivors, across all age ranges. But although the literature was for decades dominated by descriptions of the personal and familial damage done to, and unwittingly by, the survivors, some discordant observations began to emerge, an early warning to the doomsayers being sounded by Weinfeld, Sigal, and Eaton (1981). A major cause was the incorporation of community-based samples in the research, instead of limiting the subject population to clinical patients and counselees. With more representative groups, therapists and interviewers realized that the long-term effects of the Holocaust were variable, and that in general survivors and their children managed to overcome their trauma (Sigal & Weinfeld, 1989). Even among survivors who presented with symptoms, these were often mild and stimulated by recent acts of anti-Semitism (Eaton, Sigal, & Weinfeld, 1982). In an influential book, Helmreich (1992) reported interviews with several hundred survivors living in the United States. He found that they were very resilient, had succeeded in building happy and successful personal and professional lives, and had passed their positive traits down to their children. Similar findings emerged from a series of studies that began in 1994, using quantitative content analyses of interviews and self-report instruments with Holocaust survivors participating in oral history projects and survivor gatherings (summarized in Suedfeld, 2002). The results showed a range of mostly positive outcomes. The interviews were scored for a variety of factors; the scores were then compared by age, gender, and Holocaust experiences as well as across the parts of the narrative dealing with the period before, during, or after the Holocaust. The coping strategies described in the survivors’ reminiscences showed predominantly active attempts at solving or escaping from problems rather than emotion-oriented amelioration. Integrative complexity scores (a measure of flexible, open-minded decision-making) were high, with a decline when the Nazi program first affected them—a
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses universal pattern under stress—but rebounding after liberation to among the highest levels found for any group in past research. Erikson’s psychosocial crises were resolved successfully, except for a prevalence of mistrust over trust. The survivors’ occupational status in their new homelands was mostly middle to upper middle class (child survivors’ educational level was higher than the US national average), and they valued interesting and socially useful work above salary and hours. They had close, affectionate bonds with family and friends; they believed that the world and other people were mostly benevolent, and acknowledged that help from others, including non-Jews, had aided their survival; and they were content with their life and with what they had accomplished. Responding to questionnaires handed out at a survivors’ gathering, they reported very few symptoms of PTSD: only sleep disturbances were marked as occurring more than “seldom,” with a mean between “seldom” and “occasionally” (Cassel & Suedfeld, 2006). Incidentally, sleep disturbances were also highest among stress symptoms reported by the native-born US Jewish comparison group. The survivors had high scores on Antonovsky’s (1987) measure of salutogenesis and on a measure of self-esteem. Differences between camp and hidden survivors were relatively small. Thus, it is clear that for survivors in unselected community samples, predictions of permanently ruined lives were far off the mark. As to the transgenerational transmission of Holocaust trauma, survivors’ offspring report (p. 367) themselves to be susceptible to minor ailments, but to be task-oriented, active copers. They also express favorable attitudes toward their parents, seeing them as dependable, responsible, industrious, and intelligent, and their mothers specifically as caring (Leventhal & Ontell, 1989). Another researcher concluded that living with their traumatized parents built strength and stamina in some second-generation members, made them identify with and help the disadvantaged, and guided many of them into the “helping professions” (Wardi, 1992). Magids (1998) found that the children of hidden child survivors showed no significant personality differences from those of native-born American Jewish parents who had not suffered trauma. Kaplan (undated), after reviewing the pathogenic literature on the second generation, reported that “these results lend support to more recent sociological research claims that the traumas of the Holocaust may not have had pathological effects on all survivors.” Kaplan concluded that positive traits may develop as a result of trauma, and that these are worth investigating. In an essay emphasizing the traumas of Holocaust survivors, Jucovy (1998) pithily summarized the positive view: “Many survivors have shown an unusual depth of psychic strength and resilience, and have adapted to their renewed lives with great vitality. Many have achieved remarkable success and, due to their commitment to continuity and life-affirming attitudes, have inspired their children to be dedicated to a life of responsibility and service” (p. 32). The group of concentration camp children whose prognosis at first was so hopeless grew up to include at least one Nobel laureate and a chief rabbi of Israel, among many less famous but successful and happy members. The eminent historian Sir Martin Gilbert (1997) referred to them as exemplars of what human beings could achieve despite experiencing horrors early in life. Because the Holocaust is unique among democides along the dimensions discussed earlier, it would be enlightening to have records and data from other mass murder projects to identify which findings can be generalized across such tragedies. Some that occurred from just before, during, and shortly after World War II were perpetrated in the Soviet Union and others in the People’s Republic of China, whose files on such matters are classified. Research on the psychology of survivors would be very useful but is unavailable. The later Khmer Rouge massacres in Cambodia, the Rwandan genocide, the mutual persecutions and mass murders in the former Yugoslavia, the widespread atrocities in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Darfur, and the like have attracted the attention of therapists. There is a growing pathogenic literature on the treatment of survivors, both those who have emigrated or are still in refugee camps and those who stayed or returned home. Among the accounts of PTSD and other problems, there are some signs of hope: Nou (2007), after citing troublesome findings about Cambodians resettled in the American Midwest, wrote, “Our respondents had remarkable intuitive psychological buoyancy toward their current life circumstances in spite of overwhelming adjustment/adaptation challenges” (p. 185). Again, as in the cases of other EUEs, to argue for recognizing positive outcomes is not to deny negative ones, nor to ignore the fact that the two kinds frequently coexist in the same person. Psychologists must give due attention to both if we want to understand and be ready to respond appropriately to human reactions during and after such
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses experiences. It is to be hoped that the behavioral and social sciences, now having recognized salutogenesis and post-traumatic growth among Holocaust survivors, will not be blind to such effects in the future.
Conclusion and Future Directions EUEs differ along many dimensions, only a subset of which was discussed in this chapter. Some are more important than others, and importance varies across specific EUEs. Clearly, the subjective experiences of the individual also vary widely, from the excitement of challenges one chooses to face and strives to overcome, to facing forces much greater than oneself and hostile to life, and striving to survive and recover. It is equally clear that the range of reactions encompasses self-destructive ones that may have a deleterious impact on the subsequent life of EUE dwellers and everyone in close contact with them. Potential physical damage spans the gamut from the trivial to the inescapably lethal, and from the momentary to the permanent. Posttraumatic stress symptoms and other adverse psychological reactions may make life miserable for a while, or forever. They may even have a deleterious effect on offspring who were not even born when their parent went through the EUE. But it is also undeniable that EUE experiences cannot be considered only from a negative point of view. Some are chosen because they are seen as offering a chance of a positive payoff, often psychological (p. 368) but sometimes both psychological and material. Others are not chosen, but cannot be avoided. Resilience, strength, optimism, hope, support from others, and the exercise of one’s own intellectual and physical abilities can lead to survival and success. Human beings as a species and as individuals can be indomitable in overcoming challenges, and professionals and scientists should intensify their attempts to understand, explain, and foster that trait (Suedfeld, 1997, 2012).
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses Suedfeld, P. (1987). Extreme and unusual environments. In D. Stokols & I. Altman (Eds.), Handbook of environmental psychology (pp. 863–886). New York: Wiley. Suedfeld, P. (1991). Groups in isolation and confinement: Environments and experiences. In A. A. Harrison, Y. A. Clearwater, & C. P. McKay (Eds.), From Antarctica to outer space: Life in isolation and confinement (pp. 135–146). New York: Springer-Verlag. Suedfeld, P. (1997). Homo invictus: The indomitable species. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne, 38, 164–173. Suedfeld, P. (2000). Reverberations of the Holocaust fifty years later: Psychology’s contributions to understanding persecution and genocide. Canadian Psychology, 43, 1–9. Suedfeld, P. (2001). Applying positive psychology in the study of extreme environments. Human Performance in Extreme Environments, 6, 21–25. Suedfeld, P. (2002). Life after the ashes: The postwar pain, and resilience, of young Holocaust survivors. Washington, DC: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. Suedfeld, P. (2005). Invulnerability, coping, salutogenesis, integration: Four phases of space psychology. Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine, 76(Suppl. 6), B61–73. Suedfeld, P. (2010). Historical space psychology: Early terrestrial explorations as Mars analogues. Planetary & Space Science, 58(4), 639–645. Suedfeld, P. (2012). Are we still indomitable? Homo invictus fifteen years later. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne, 53(1), 21–31. Suedfeld, P., Brcic, J., Johnson, P. J., & Gushin, V. (2012, in press). Personal growth following long-duration spaceflight. Acta Astronautica. Suedfeld, P., Legkaia, K., & Brcic, J. (2010). Changes in the hierarchy of value references associated with flying in space. Journal of Personality, 78(5), 1411–1435. Suedfeld, P., Wilk, K., & Cassel, L. (2011). Flying with strangers: Post-mission reflections of multinational space crews. In D. Vakoch (Ed.), Psychology of space exploration: Contemporary research in historical perspective (pp. 143–176). Washington, DC: NASA. Svenson, O., & Maule, A. J. (Eds.). (1993). Time pressure and stress in human judgment and decision making. New York: Plenum. Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (1995). Trauma and transformation: Growing in the aftermath of suffering. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (1996). The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory: Measuring the positive legacy of trauma. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 9, 455–471. The Holocaust chronicle (2000). Lincolnwood, IL: Publications International. United Nations. (1948). United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. New York: United Nations High Commission for Human Rights. Ursano, R. J., Fullerton, C. S., & McCaughey, B. G. (1994). Trauma and disaster. In R. J. Ursano, B. G. McCaughey, & C. S. Fullerton (Eds.), Individual and community responses to trauma and disaster: The structure of human chaos (pp. 3–30). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. van Ommeren, M., Saxena, S., & Saraceno, B. (2005, January). Mental and social health during and after acute emergencies: emerging consensus? Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 83(1), 71–75. Walker, P. (1998, December). Victims of natural disaster and the right to humanitarian assistance: A practitioner’s
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Extreme and Unusual Environments: Challenges and Responses view. International Review of the Red Cross, No. 325. Wardi, D. (1992). Memorial candles: Children of the Holocaust. London and New York: Routledge. Weinfeld, M., Sigal, J. J., & Eaton, W. W. (1981). Long-term effects of the Holocaust on selected social attitudes and behaviors of survivors: A cautionary note. Social Forces, 60, 1–19. (p. 371) Wickens, C. D., Keller, J. W., & Shaw, C. (2012). Mountainous regions: Human factors of high-altitude mountaineering. In J. Kring, J. Barnett, & P. Suedfeld (Eds.), Human performance in extreme environments. Under review. Williams-Keeler, L., McCarrey, M., Baranowsky, A., Young, M., & Johnson-Douglas, S. (1998). PTSD transmission: A review of secondary traumatization in Holocaust survivor families. Canadian Psychology, 39, 247–256. Wood, J., Hysong, S. J., Lugg, D. J., & Harm, D. L. (2000). Is it really so bad? A comparison of positive and negative experiences in Antarctic winter stations. Environment and Behavior, 32, 84–110. Woodman, R. (2005). A brief history of mutiny. New York: Carroll and Graf. Yang, F., Lin, M-Y., & Qian, M-Y. (2010). A study of the relationship between posttraumatic growth and social support in children and adolescents following Wenchuan earthquake. Chinese Journal of Clinical Psychology, 18, 614–617. (p. 372) Peter Suedfeld Peter Suedfeld Department of Psychology University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC, Canada
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Noise
Oxford Handbooks Online Noise Stephen A. Stansfeld, Charlotte Clark, and Rosanna Crombie The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0020
Abstract and Keywords Noise exposure from air, road and rail transport, construction, and industry is a pervasive environmental pollutant. Noise causes annoyance and sleep disturbance and may interfere with cognitive performance in both children and adults. Generally the stress hypothesis is believed to underlie noise effects on health. Evidence for effects of noise on mental health is mixed. Noise exposure is associated with increased report of psychological symptoms, especially anxiety symptoms, increased prescription of minor tranquilizers and hypnotics, and impairment of wellbeing in both adults and children. On the other hand, community studies have generally not found increased rates of common mental disorders related to noise exposure. There is a need for methodologically stronger longitudinal studies to definitively address whether noise has more serious mental health effects. Keywords: noise, aircraft, traffic, mental health, depression, anxiety, medication, annoyance, sleep
Introduction Environmental noise is increasingly pervasive. This is largely noise from transport, industrial construction, and leisure activities. Although the sound level of overflights from individual aircraft has diminished in recent years, there are more aircraft and the same might be said for cars. Thus, although the sound intensity of many common noise sources has diminished, there is still disturbance from noise that may occupy more of the 24-hour period. One of the most telling changes has been that although in the United Kingdom there was a diminution of daytime ambient noise levels during the 1990s, the nighttime quiet period has decreased, with noise levels rising earlier in the day and continuing later into the night (Ling, Skinner, Grimwood, & Raw, 2002). Traditionally quiet rural areas are also more under threat from noise and population growth, and industrialization in many areas of the world is accompanied by higher noise levels. Thus it is an important public health question to ask: Does noise exposure affect health and especially mental health? This chapter will deal with the effects of environmental noise on various indices of mental health, sleep disturbance, cognitive performance, and more general emotional responses such as annoyance.
Definition of Noise Noise is generally defined as unwanted sound. It is often thought of as a nuisance interfering in activities and disrupting communication. It can be classed as a type of environmental stressor. The concept of noise involves both a significant psychological component (“unwanted”) as well as a physical component (perceived by the ear and then transmitted by the auditory nerve to the temporal lobe in the brain) (Bell, Greene, Fisher, & Baum, 1996). It is possible for sound to be harmful for health without subjective perception of the sound (for instance, (p. 376) sound exposure during sleep), although usually most of its adverse effects are mediated through the perceived unpleasant quality of the sound. Recurrent or persistent exposure to ambient noise is likely to be more damaging
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Noise for health than single noise events because of the development of chronic stress responses that may represent a failure of adaptation (Bell et al., 1996). Physically, sound is perceived by rapidly changing air pressure at the eardrum. The description of sound is typically characterized by intensity or sound pressure level (measured in decibels, or dB), frequency (pitch), periodicity (continuous or intermittent), and duration (acute or chronic). Other characteristics, which are not related to its physical components, are also important in determining the interpretation of perceived sound. These include the predictability of noise; episodes (random or fixed interval); attitudes to the noise source; the meaning of the noise; and the degree of personal control over it. There has been less research examining the effects of sound frequency on health than examining the effects of sound intensity on health. Intermittent, higher-frequency, short-duration, intense sounds create greater disturbance and probably have greater effects on health than do continuous, low-frequency, long-duration, and low-intensity sounds (Baker & Holding, 1993). It is difficult to isolate the effect of particular sound frequencies on health because most noises are a mixture of frequencies, but special attention has turned to the effects of persistent low-frequency noise that may elicit feelings of annoyance and helplessness (Berglund, Hassmen, & Job, 1996).
Noise and Other Physical Environmental Stressors One pertinent question is “How does the impact of noise differ from other environmental stressors?” Excessive heat has been related to increased levels of aggression and hostility in an inverted U-shaped relationship (Bell & Fusco, 1989). Air pollution has many associations with physical ill health, such as the triggering of asthma attacks and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Interestingly, some associations have been found between level of air pollutants and mental health. Small positive associations have been found between daily levels of pollutants and the number of psychiatric emergencies on those days. The strongest effects were for carbon monoxide and ozone (Halpern, 1995). Unless air pollutants are accompanied by an unpleasant odor, there is unlikely to be a subjective response to air pollution. Odor is related to annoyance in a dose-response association but pleasantnessunpleasantness is a stronger determinant of annoyance than intensity, unlike noise, where intensity is more important (Sucker et al., 2009). Also it has been found that odor annoyance may mediate the association of odor exposure with reporting common symptoms (Sucker et al., 2009), which is not the case with noise. In this way noise exposure, within the limits of human hearing, is very different from air pollution in being perceived subjectively. Perhaps the major differences for noise are that it is readily perceived and that the source is often identifiable, and associated with that, there may be particular attitudes related to the source of the noise.
Effects of Noise on Health and Behavior Noise exposure can have a wide range of effects on health and behavior. Aircraft and road traffic noise as well as industrial noise and noise from neighbors have been linked to both annoyance and sleep disturbance. There is evidence for exposure-effect relationships between aircraft and road traffic noise and annoyance and sleep (Schultz, 1978; Miedema et al., 2003). There is also increasing evidence in recent studies for raised high blood pressure and hypertension in relation to both aircraft noise and road traffic noise (Jarup et al., 2008; van Kempen et al., 2002; Babisch, 2006) and even a small contribution to the risk of myocardial infarction (Babisch et al., 2005). Noise as a stressor has been implicated in raised levels of cortisol in field studies (Babisch et al., 2001; Selander et al., 2009). Moreover, there is also evidence that aircraft noise and, perhaps to a lesser extent, road traffic noise have effects on children’s reading and episodic memory (Stansfeld et al., 2005; Clark et al., 2006; Hygge et al., 2002). Overall this suggests that environmental noise has a wide spectrum of effects across different areas of human activity. In this chapter we will largely focus on the effects on mental health.
Noise Exposure and Symptoms Many early studies related noise exposure in industrial settings to reports of physical and psychological symptoms. Exposure to noise in industries such as weaving mills and factories meant exposure to very high levels of industrial noise giving rise to nausea, headaches, argumentativeness, changes in mood, anxiety, post-work irritability, and sexual impotence (Melamed et al., 1988). High levels of illness-related absenteeism (Cameron, Zaks, & Robertson, 1972), social conflicts at work and (p. 377) home (Jansen, 1961), and documented absenteeism (Cohen, 1976)
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Noise have been found to be more frequent in noisy rather than quiet industries. However, the findings from these industrial studies are difficult to interpret because noisy industries very often have other physical and psychosocial problems that may be additional causes for illness and absenteeism. An important issue in studies of noise and health is that of selection into and out of noisy environments. Jobs in noisy areas may be less desirable and more difficult to fill, and hence may be selectively filled with individuals who have higher rates of health problems that have prevented them from attaining better jobs and who thus may report more symptoms irrespective of noise in the workplace. On the other hand, selection of personnel for jobs in high–noise exposure areas that are also dangerous, demanding toughness and resilience, may preferentially select for people who are not bothered by noise. An example of this is the few symptoms that were found among men working on aircraft carriers in highnoise conditions (Davis, 1958). Additionally, some studies have shown that the increase in symptoms with noise level was found only for those who were highly annoyed (Melamed, Luz, & Green, 1992). In very many of these symptom studies, it is possible that there is a bias toward overreporting symptoms when the question asks explicitly “does noise cause” the specific symptom. Barker & Tarnopolsky (1978) have shown that questions that contain an explicit link between a noise and symptoms result in higher rates of symptom reporting than when the same question is asked without it being linked to noise exposure. Community surveys using the former type of question found high percentages of people reported “headaches,” “restless nights,” and “being tense and edgy” in high-noise areas (Kokokusha, 1973; Finke et al., 1974; Öhrström, 1989). However, a study around three Swiss airports (Grandjean et al., 1973) that did not mention that it was related to aircraft noise did not find any association between the level of exposure to this noise and symptoms. In the West London survey, “tinnitus,” “burns, cuts, and minor accidents,” “ear problems,” and “skin troubles” were all more common in areas of high noise exposure (Tarnopolsky, Watkins, & Hand, 1980). However, apart from “ear problems” and “tinnitus,” 20 out of 23 chronic symptoms were more common in low-noise environments. It may be that low–noise exposure environments in this study, in deprived inner-city areas in London, were also areas with poorer health, irrespective of noise exposure. This raises the difficult issue of adjusting for other environmental exposures and social disadvantage that may be related to noise where they may to act as a confounding factor in studies of noise and health. At the same time, it seems plausible that people with existing illness might not move into highly noise-exposed areas or be less tolerant of noise and try to move out of such areas. However, the evidence on mobility related to noise exposure is thin and it may be that these objections are more theoretical than actual.
Noise Exposure and Mental Hospital Admission Rates The earliest studies of environmental noise exposure, usually aircraft noise exposure, and mental health concerned admissions to psychiatric hospitals from noise-exposed areas compared to quiet areas. Early studies found associations between the level of aircraft noise and psychiatric hospital admissions, both in London (AbeyWickrama, A’Brook, Gattoni, & Herridge, 1969) and in Los Angeles (Meecham & Smith, 1977). These early studies were not methodologically sophisticated and were criticized in relation to the definition of noise areas, population denominators, and adjustment for confounding factors (Chowns, 1970; Frerichs, Beeman, & Coulson, 1980). A replication study by Gattoni & Tarnopolsky (1973) of the original study by Abey-Wickrama et al. (1969) failed to confirm the findings. These studies were followed by a large London-based study that found that agedstandardized admission rates to the same London psychiatric hospital used in earlier studies over a longer followup of four years were lower in higher aircraft noise exposure areas. Noise levels were measured by the composite noise and number index (NNI) including both noise levels and number of overflights and the perceived noise measured in decibels taken from government supplied contours. The “maximum” or high-noise area was defined as NNI of 55 or above or perceived noise of 100 or more (Jenkins et al., 1979). At the same time lower noise areas were also central urban districts where traditionally high admission rates would be expected (Jenkins, Tarnopolsky, Hand, & Barker, 1979). A further study of three hospitals (Jenkins, Tarnopolsky, & Hand, 1981) found that high aircraft noise was associated with higher admission rates in two hospitals but not the third. This study was comprehensive, covering admissions from a population of about one million, largely in inner (p. 378) and outer London but also including less urban areas in Berkshire, Surrey, and Buckinghamshire. There was a wide range of aircraft noise exposure across these areas. In this study non-noise factors seemed to be more important in determining admission rates and the effect of noise was felt to have a moderating rather than directly causal association with admissions. Kryter (1990) carried out a reanalysis of this data and found “a more consistently
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Noise positive relation between level of exposure to aircraft noise and admission rates.” Hospital admission is likely to be determined by many other factors more potent than noise. This is particularly the case now when acute psychiatric hospital beds have been reduced in number and, at least in the United Kingdom, are almost confined to those with severe psychosis in which noise is very unlikely to be a causal factor.
Noise Exposure and Health Services and Medication Use The prescription of medication and use of health services has also been taken as an indirect indicator of the relationship between noise and psychiatric disorder. Grandjean et al. (1973) reported that a higher proportion of the Swiss population took medication in high–aircraft noise areas than low-noise areas, while Knipschild & Oudshoorn (1977) found that the purchase of sleeping pills, antacids, sedatives, and antihypertensive drugs all increased in a village newly exposed to aircraft noise, but not in a “control” village where the noise level remained unchanged. Both studies also found an association between the rate of contact with general practitioners and level of noise exposure. In the Heathrow study (Watkins, Tarnopolsky, & Jenkins, 1981), no association was found between levels of aircraft noise and a range of health care indicators—use of psychiatric or self–prescribed medication, visits to the general practitioner, attendance at the hospital, and contact with community health services. Recent studies, however, show a different pattern of results. Areas with high levels of aircraft noise exposure were associated with higher use of non-prescribed sedatives, but not prescribed sedatives, than in quieter areas in the Health Impact Assessment around Schiphol Airport (Franssen, van Wiechen, Nagelkerke, & Lebret, 2004). Results from the Hypertension and Exposure to Noise near Airports (HYENA) Study of the effects of aircraft noise in populations living around seven airports in six European countries found an association between aircraft noise exposure (measured both by LAeq,16h —the energy averaged measure of noise level over 16 hours— and Lnight—the energy averaged measure of noise level over the night period from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.) and the odds of prescription of anxiolytic medication (odds ratio [OR] = 1.28 95%CI 1.04–1.57 for daytime noise exposure and OR = 1.27 95%CI 1.01–1.59 for nighttime exposure) (Floud et al., 2011). A statistically significantly increased risk is indicated by an odds ratio greater than one with 95% confidence limits that do not span one. Reported annoyance due to aircraft noise measured by questionnaire was also associated with prescription of anxiolytic and antidepressant medication. Further analysis did not support a moderating effect of annoyance on medication prescription related to aircraft noise exposure, although the study may have been underpowered statistically to test this. Similarly, road traffic noise, at levels above 55 dB(A) was associated with increased risk of taking hypnotics for sleeping difficulties (OR = 2.22 [95%CI 1.13–4.38]) and overall prescriptions (OR = 3.65 [95%CI 2.13–6.26]), relative to road traffic noise exposure less than 55 dB(A) in a study of five rural Austrian communities (Lercher, 1996). This study suggests that effects were present at fairly low noise levels. It may be the case in this study, especially because there were raised levels of hypnotic prescriptions, that mental ill health is secondary to sleep disturbance, which occurs at lower nocturnal noise levels than mental health symptoms resulting from daytime noise exposure. Studies of medication prescription in relation to transport noise tend to find higher rates of medication prescription for anxiety, sleep disturbance, and in some recent studies, drugs for hypertension in noisier areas.
Noise Exposure and Psychiatric Morbidity in the Community In the West London survey, aircraft noise exposure measured by the noise and number index was linked to psychiatric disorder in the community measured by the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ; Goldberg, 1972). In the pilot study Tarnopolsky, Barker, Wiggins, & McLean (1978) found no association between aircraft noise exposure and either GHQ scores (Goldberg, 1972), or estimated psychiatric cases based on GHQ threshold scores for defining clinical caseness based on a validation study involving clinical interviews carried out by a psychiatrist (Goldberg et al., 1970). However, significant associations were found in three subgroups: persons ages 15–44 of high education, women ages 15–44, and those in “professional or managerial occupations.” The authors thought (p. 379) that noise might have an effect in causing morbidity within certain vulnerable subgroups, but clearly these results need replication in further studies. In the full West London Survey of Psychiatric Morbidity (Tarnopolsky & Morton-Williams, 1980), 5,885 adults were randomly selected from within four aircraft noise zones. No overall relationship was found between aircraft noise
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Noise and the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity either for GHQ scores or for estimated numbers of psychiatric cases using various indices of noise exposure. However, as in the pilot study there was an association between noise and psychiatric morbidity in two subgroups: those who “finished full-time education at age 19 years +” and “professionals.” These two categories, which had a strong association with each other, were combined and then showed a significant association between noise and psychiatric morbidity measured by the GHQ. Their overall conclusion was that their results “show so far that noise per se in the community at large, does not seem to be a frequent, severe, pathogenic factor in causing mental illness but that it is associated with symptomatic response in selected subgroups of the population” (Tarnopolsky & Morton-Williams, 1980, p. 73). It seems possible that these subgroups may represent people whose non-manual work or leisure activities involve complex cognitive tasks such as reading and writing or involve extended concentration that might be interfered with by noise, but this is speculation. There have been criticisms of this cross-sectional study as being a study of “noise survivors” where members of the population who are most susceptible to noise effects have either moved away or avoided living in the area. In a further study the association between noise and psychiatric disorder was examined in a population unlikely to have been selected by noise exposure. The Caerphilly Collaborative Heart Disease Study looked at the association between road traffic noise exposure and psychological distress in people from the small town of Caerphilly, South Wales (Stansfeld, Sharp, Gallacher, & Babisch 1993). In the cross-sectional results, the initial level of road traffic noise based on traffic noise maps was not associated with minor psychological distress, again measured by the GHQ with adjustment for socio-demographic factors (Stansfeld et al., 1993). In further longitudinal analyses, road traffic noise was not associated with psychological distress after adjustment for socio-demographic factors and baseline psychological distress, although there was a small nonlinear association of noise with increased anxiety scores (Stansfeld et al., 1996). A more recent Sardinian study compared subjects living close to an airport with control subjects living in other areas matched by sex, age, and employment status. This showed that exposed subjects had a higher frequency of diagnosis for “generalized anxiety disorder” and “anxiety disorder not otherwise specified.” This is one of the first studies finding an association between aircraft noise exposure and psychiatric diagnoses as opposed to psychiatric symptoms (Hardoy et al., 2005). The disadvantage of this study is that it did not measure noise levels but used distance from the airport as a proxy measure of noise exposure, but it is interesting and needs replication. Causal associations are supported by evidence of dose-response or exposure-effect associations, where increases in the exposure are matched with increases in the outcome. For example, the degree of mental health disturbance might increase with the intensity and duration of noise exposure. Exposure to higher levels of military aircraft noise around the busy Kadena military airport in Japan was related in an exposure-effect association to “depressiveness” and “nervousness” measured by questionnaire, using the Todai Health Index, based on the Cornell Medical Index (Ito et al., 1994; Hiramatsu et al., 1997). Clear exposure effect relationships were not found between scale scores and noise exposure, as expressed in five-unit steps. However, a significant difference was evident between the highest noise-exposure group and lower exposure groups, indicating a threshold effect rather than a linear relationship. A further Japanese study of 5,963 inhabitants around two air bases in Okinawa also found that those exposed to noise levels of 70 dB(A) Ldn or above had higher rates of “mental instability” and “depressiveness” (Hiramatsu et al., 2000). A similar survey, on 6,486 respondents, found exposure-effect associations between aircraft noise exposure, nervousness, and mental health (Miyakita et al., 1998). These are important studies because of the opportunity to examine the effect of high noise exposure levels and the probability that out-migration of vulnerable persons from noisy areas biasing the sample was small. However, these studies have been criticized because noise measurements were assessed about 18 years before the health measurements and thus may not accurately represent noise exposure at the time the health outcomes were measured. Secondary analysis of a large British road traffic noise study found that the noise level in dB(A) exceeded for 10% of the time (a measure of peak (p. 380) noise level) was weakly associated with a five-item mental health symptoms scale adjusting for age, gender, income, and length of residence (Halpern, 1995). The results would be more convincing of mental health effects if the scale items were all related to mental health but they also included items on asthma, undue irritability, and sleeplessness. Noise is only one aspect of traffic “stress” and it may be difficult to separate the effects of noise from other hazardous aspects of road traffic. “Traffic stress,” comprising “traffic,” “auto maintenance,” and “accidents,” was cross-sectionally associated with depressive symptoms in a
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Noise Chinese-American sample in Los Angeles, adjusting for individual social class and neighborhood poverty (Gee & Takeuchi, 2004). The effects of traffic noise on depression were worse in areas with more vehicle use. The Japanese military aircraft studies mentioned above suggest more mental health effects at high levels of noise exposure. This was similar to the results of a community study of 366 Japanese women that found that road traffic noise has effects on depression, fatigue, and irritability only above a threshold of 70 dB(A) (Yoshida et al., 1997). However, it is difficult to be confident of the results of these analyses, as they were not adjusted for age or social deprivation. A road traffic noise study in Belgrade also showed mental health effects at high noise levels: 253 residents exposed to road traffic noise levels of > 65dB(A) experienced significantly more fatigue, depression, nervousness, and headaches, compared with residents exposed to < 55dB(A) (Belojevic & Jakovljevic, 1997). There was good matching between high- and low-noise exposure areas for age, gender, employment, and subjective noise sensitivity in this study. Overall, environmental noise seems to be linked to the report of psychological symptoms, rather than to clinical psychiatric disorder. However, there may be a link to psychiatric disorder at much higher noise levels and there is a need for further studies using standardized interview measures of psychiatric disorder.
Noise Exposure and Mental Health in Children It may be that children are especially vulnerable to noise effects on health and cognition because they have less capacity than adults to anticipate or cope with stressors. Environmental noise exposure may also have greater effects in children because this is a time of rapid growth and learning that environmental stressors could disrupt. Poustka, Eckermann, and Schmeck (1992) studied the psychiatric and psychosomatic health of 1,636 children ages 4 through 16 in two geographical regions that differed according to the noise made by jet fighters frequently exercising at low altitude. Associations with noise exposure were demonstrated for subclinical depression and anxiety, although there was no adjustment for the differing socioeconomic status of the areas. In a study that did adjust for socioeconomic factors, the Schools Health & Environment Study around Heathrow airport (Haines et al., 2001a), chronic aircraft noise exposure was not associated with anxiety and depression (measured with the Child Depression Inventory and the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale), after adjustment for socioeconomic factors. In a larger study of children’s health around Heathrow airport—the West London Schools Study (Haines et al., 2001b)—an association was found between aircraft noise exposure level and increased hyperactivity scores measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman, 1997). These findings were replicated in the Road Traffic and Aircraft Noise Exposure and Children’s Cognition and Health (RANCH) study of 2,844 children ages 9 and 10 living around Schiphol airport in the Netherlands, Barajas Airport near Madrid, and Heathrow airport in the United Kingdom. There were no overall effects of aircraft noise or road traffic noise on children’s mental health, measured by the SDQ. However, an association was found between higher levels of aircraft noise and increased scores on the hyperactivity subscale of the SDQ (Stansfeld, Haines, Berry & Burr, 2009). There was also an inverse association between exposure to road traffic noise and the conduct problems subscale. The hyperactivity findings in the RANCH Study replicated the earlier findings from the West London Schools Study, and suggest that this is not due to chance. In addition, the analyses were adjusted for a wide range of sociodemographic, environmental, and parental factors, suggesting that this result is not indicative of confounding. Nevertheless, this finding was unexpected. Children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are distractible, with a short attention span, and it might be expected that external stimuli, such as aircraft noise, could specifically interfere with their attention. Children with ADHD exhibit reduced ability to process auditory information when required to divide and focus their attention for a sustained period of time (Riccio, Cohen, Hynd, & Keith, 1996). They show problems with signal recognition, as well as poorer auditory discrimination and poorer speech discrimination in (p. 381) noisy situations (Pillsbury et al., 1995; Corbett & Stanczak, 1999). It is a common complaint that these children are distracted by background noise (Gray, Breier, Foorman, & Fletcher, 2002), and it seems likely that aircraft noise exposure may exacerbate these children’s difficulties. Certainly, it does not seem likely that aircraft noise is causing hyperactivity; more likely it is making an existing tendency toward hyperactivity worse. Studies have also shown effects of noise exposure on milder indicators of mental health. For example, in the Munich Study, children living in areas exposed to high aircraft noise had lower levels of psychological well-being than children living in quieter environments (Evans, Hygge, & Bullinger, 1995). In subsequent longitudinal analyses
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Noise from around Munich, after the inauguration of the new airport, the newly noise-exposed communities demonstrated a significant decline in self-reported quality of life, measured on the Kindl scale, after being exposed to the increased aircraft noise for 18 months, compared with a control sample (Evans, Bullinger, & Hygge, 1998). It is possible that the effects of noise exposure on mental health outcomes are moderated by other factors. For example, in a more recent study, child self-reported mental health on a standard scale and teacher ratings of classroom adjustment in response to motorway, road, and rail noise were studied in a large sample of 8- to 11year-old Austrian primary-school children. Noise exposure was significantly associated with classroom adjustment scores but, intriguingly, child self-reported mental ill health was impaired in noisy settings only for children who were postulated to be biologically vulnerable because of low birth weight and preterm birth (Lercher, Evans, Meis, & Kofler, 2002). In a similar vein, it could be that noise exposure creates additional problems for children already experiencing mental health difficulties. For example, Nurmi and von Wright (1983) found that noise during learning impaired the subsequent recall performance of children with high neuroticism scores and with a high score on state-anxiety. Overall the evidence that environmental noise affects children’s mental health is weak and inconsistent, although the evidence is stronger for milder conditions such as impairment of well-being. The studies presented suggest that noise does not lead to psychiatric disorder in children but it may affect their sense of well-being.
Noise Exposure and Quality of Life As environmental noise predicts annoyance and psychological symptoms, but does not seem to be associated with more severe psychiatric disorder, it might be that noise exposure is associated with milder conditions, such as those measured by scales of well-being, as was found in children in the Munich Study. Psychosocial well-being has been shown to be reduced in areas exposed to high traffic noise, but the results have not been especially consistent. Decline in well-being may be mediated through disruptive effects on sleep, which has been associated with aftereffects on mood, reaction time and cognitive performance (Öhrström, 1989, 1993). An inverse association between road traffic noise annoyance and quality of life, including the general mental health scale of the SF-36, has been found in a large Swiss cohort study (Dratva et al., 2010). Further evidence to support this comes from the finding of a nonlinear association between aircraft noise exposure, but a significant association between aircraft noise annoyance, and the SF-12 general mental health scale in residents living around Frankfurt airport (Schreckenberg et al., 2010). Lower scores on the general mental health scale of the SF-36 were associated with aircraft noise exposure in a study of residents around Sydney airport (Black, Black, Issarayangyun, & Samuels, 2007). These results do seem to suggest associations between well-being and noise annoyance and possibly noise exposure—but it is difficult to be certain in these studies whether confounding has been entirely accounted for. Health functioning and well-being were also examined at the first stage of an intervention study on the effect of introducing a bypass to relieve traffic congestion in a small town in North Wales (Stansfeld et al., 2009). Health functioning was measured by the SF-36 General Health Survey (Ware & Sherbourne, 1992). There was no evidence that respondents exposed to higher levels of road traffic noise had worse health functioning than those exposed to lower levels, adjusting for levels of deprivation. In addition, the introduction of the bypass did not lead to an improvement in levels of psychological distress, although the reduction in noise levels was modest. Noise has also been reported to affect well-being in office workers, with stronger effects reported than for many other nuisances (Klitzman & Stellman, 1989). However, in such cross-sectional studies, it is difficult to be certain of the direction of causation and the contribution of other stressors.
Noise Exposure and Sleep Disturbance Exposure to nighttime noise can potentially interfere with the ability to fall asleep, shorten sleep (p. 382) duration, cause awakenings, and reduce the perceived quality of sleep (Michaud et al., 2007). Noise effects on sleep could impact health in several ways. First, it could have an effect on biological responses, such as increasing heart rate, blood pressure, finger pulse amplitude, body movements, awakenings, and sleep quality, as the individual responds to stimuli in the environment (Health Council of the Netherlands [HCN], 2004; Muzet & Eberhardt, 1980). There is evidence that these physiological responses to sound do not habituate with repeated noise exposure, and
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Noise activation of these biological responses could have long-term effects on health, although some scientists argue that these physiological changes in response to noise are within the normal range of such responses to environmental triggers and simply indicate the usual physiological responses to external stimuli. Second, sleep disturbance can impact well-being, causing low mood, annoyance, irritation, fatigue, and impaired task performance (HCN, 2004; Öhrström, 1982). Third, noise exposure at night predicts insomnia (Kageyama et al., 1997), which in turn may be a precipitant of psychiatric disorder (Ohayon & Roth, 2003), including depression (Riemann, Berger, & Voderholzer, 2001; Roberts, Roberts, & Chen, 2002). Generally, the degree of sleep disturbance experienced is proportional to the amount of noise experienced, in terms of an increased rate of changes in sleep stages and in the number of awakenings. The probability of awakening increases with the number of noise stimuli in the night up to a threshold beyond which further exposure does not increase the likelihood of waking. The maximum sound level of individual noises at night may be more important for awakening than the energy-averaged sound level over the night, though they are both quite highly correlated. It has been suggested that continuous noise exposure is likely to interrupt REM sleep, while intermittent noise is likely to interfere with slow wave sleep (Passchier-Vermeer et al., 2002). Studies on noise abatement show that by reducing the indoor noise level, the amount of both REM and slow-wave sleep can be increased (Vallet, Gagneux, & Clairet, 1983). Evidence for an effect of noise exposure on sleep disturbance is generally stronger from laboratory studies than from field studies. However, comparison between the findings of laboratory and field studies can be limited, as laboratory studies tend to involve individuals who are not chronically exposed to noise, whereas individuals who are chronically exposed to noise may exhibit habituation. Habituation to environmental noise occurs with an increased number of sound exposures, both per night and across nights. A noteworthy recent laboratory study tried to simulate the effect of aircraft noise exposure on sleep for 128 subjects over a 13-night period (Basner & Samel, 2005). Prior to the experiment, the subjects spent a noise-free adaptation night in the laboratory, as sleep is initially affected by the laboratory setting. The experiment showed a prominent first-night exposure effect of noise on sleep disturbance, which wore off by the second night, which was interpreted as indicating habituation to noise exposure. On the subsequent nights no significant change in sleep structure was observed if the number of noise events and maximum sound pressure level did not exceed 4*80dB, 8*70dB, 16*60dB, 32*55dB, and 64*45dB. While this is methodologically one of the strongest studies of aircraft noise effects on sleep to date, this study is still limited by having examined short-term exposure to aircraft noise, and conclusions cannot be drawn from this study about the long-term effects of exposure to aircraft noise on sleep structure (Basner & Samel, 2005). A majority of community studies of noise exposure, examining individuals in their homes exposed to their usual noise exposures at night, have found evidence for a direct effect of noise on sleep disturbance. However, recent reviews, assessing the strength of the evidence, came to different conclusions. A synthesis of field studies concluded that there was satisfactory evidence that nighttime noise exposure was causing direct biological responses, at approximately 40dB SEL (sound exposure level), as well as affecting well-being and quality of sleep (HCN, 2004). This report found that evidence was weaker for an effect of nighttime noise on social interaction, task performance, specific disease symptoms, or fatal accidents at work. Similarly, a meta-analysis of 24 field studies, including data from almost 23,000 individuals exposed to nighttime noise levels ranging from 45 to 65dBA, found that aircraft noise was associated with greater self-reported sleep disturbance than road traffic, and road traffic noise with greater disturbance than railway noise (Miedema & Vos, 2007). In contrast, a recent review focusing on aircraft noise exposure concluded that the evidence for noise-induced sleep disturbance differs considerably (Michaud et al., 2007). This review of five studies found little evidence for an effect of outdoor noise on sleep disturbance, while it did find that indoor noise was associated more closely with (p. 383) sleep outcomes. However, there was evidence from several of the studies reviewed that a greater number of awakenings occur that are either spontaneous or attributable to other noise in the home, than are attributable to aircraft noise (Michaud et al., 2007). The equivocal conclusions of these reviews may be because they are comparing studies that examine a range of outcomes, from more objective measures of sleep disturbance, such as polysomnography (PGS) and wristactimetry, which measures sleep disturbance based on body movements, to subjective measures, such as selfreported sleep disturbance. Evidence of noise effects may be stronger for subjectively assessed sleep disturbance than for objectively assessed sleep disturbance. For example, an earlier UK study around Gatwick and Heathrow
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Noise airports found that the relative proportion of total sleep disturbance attributable to noise, but not the level of total sleep disturbance, was increased in noisy areas. This was suggestive of a symptom reporting or attribution effect, rather than a real noise effect. The measurement of sleep disturbance is challenging for this research field, as no one physical or psychological measure is accurate or reliable. The equivocal conclusion may also reflect different exposure assessments: some studies use external noise exposure, while others measure noise exposure in the bedroom (Miedema & Vos, 2007). In conclusion, there is evidence that night noise can disturb sleep and affect well-being. However, the field still lacks longitudinal evidence, which would enable the causal association between nighttime noise exposure and the long-term health implications of biological responses and impaired well-being to be examined.
Noise Exposure and Annoyance The most widespread subjective response to noise is annoyance, which may include fear and mild anger, related to a belief that one is being avoidably harmed (Cohen & Weinstein, 1981). An important component of annoyance is the perception of intrusion into personal privacy. Additionally, the associations or personal meaning of sounds may determine whether that person will be annoyed by them (for instance, crying babies or the sounds of other people enjoying a party when you are not) (Gunn, 1987). The interference that noise causes in everyday activities is often associated with annoyance and these disruptions by noise probably precede and lead to annoyance (Taylor, 1984; Hall, Taylor, & Birnie, 1985). In both traffic and aircraft noise studies, noise levels have been found to be associated with annoyance in a dose–response relationship (Griffiths & Langdon, 1968; Schultz, 1978; Miedema & Vos, 1998). Annoyance is also dependent on the context in which the noise is heard. Overall, it seems that conversation, watching television, or listening to the radio (all involving speech communication) are the activities most disturbed by aircraft noise (Hall et al., 1985), while traffic noise, if present at night, is most disturbing for sleep. Levels of annoyance from aircraft noise may be influenced by major aircraft-related events, such as air crashes. The air disaster of October 1992 in southeast Amsterdam increased levels of annoyance in the local area, which was maximal shortly after flights were resumed at Schiphol airport. At the same time there was no evidence of an increase in psychological distress measured by the General Health Questionnaire (Reijneveld, 1994). Annoyance is generally transient and is not a very severe psychological symptom. However, in the context of noise causing arousal, the question arises as to whether prolonged annoyance could be an intervening step between noise and psychiatric disorder or noise and a potentially psychosomatic illness such as hypertension. Noise annoyance is associated not only with noise level, but also with reported symptoms and psychiatric disorder (Tarnopolsky & Morton-Williams, 1980). In the West London survey of 6,000 residents living in areas of differing aircraft noise exposure around Heathrow airport, although there was a strong link between noise and annoyance, and those who were highly annoyed showed the greatest number of symptoms, symptoms were not more common in high- rather than low-noise areas (Tarnopolsky et al., 1980). This paradox has been explained by the “vulnerability hypothesis” (Tarnopolsky et al., 1980). According to this explanation, noise is not directly pathogenic, but rather sorts individuals into annoyance categories according to their vulnerability to stress. Tarnopolsky et al. (1978) found that noise and minor psychiatric disorder were the strongest predictors of annoyance and that psychiatric morbidity led to annoyance, rather than vice versa. The mediating hypothesis of noise annoyance being an intermediate step between noise exposure and ill health is not well supported by evidence; at any particular level of exposure, there is wide individual variation in the degree of annoyance that is expressed. Noise sensitivity and attitudes to the source of the noise explain a large amount of the individual variance in annoyance, irrespective of noise level (Evans & Tafalla, 1987; (p. 384) Job, 1988). Several studies have found that people with existing psychiatric morbidity or long-term physical illness may be more disturbed and annoyed by noise and potentially more sensitive to any noise-related effects.
Noise Sensitivity and Vulnerability to Psychiatric Disorder Noise sensitivity, based on attitudes toward noise in general (Anderson, 1971; Stansfeld, 1992), is an intervening variable that explains much of the variance between noise exposure and individual annoyance responses (Griffiths & Langdon, 1968; Weinstein, 1978; Fields, 1984). Individuals who are noise-sensitive are also likely to be sensitive
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Noise to other aspects of the environment (Broadbent, 1972; Weinstein, 1978; Thomas & Jones, 1982; Stansfeld, Clark, Jenkins, & Tarnopolsky, 1985). This raises the question as to whether noise-sensitive individuals are simply those who complain more about their environment. There is an association between noise sensitivity and neuroticism (Thomas & Jones, 1982; Öhrström, Bjorkman, & Rylander, 1988; Jelinkova, 1998; Belojevic & Jakovljevic, 1997; Smith, 2003), although it has not been found in all studies (Broadbent, 1972). Weinstein (1980) hypothesized that noise sensitivity is part of a “critical–uncritical dimension,” showing the same association as noise sensitivity to measures of noise, privacy, air pollution, and neighborhood reactions. In his view the most critical subjects are not uniformly negative about their environment, but more discriminating than the uncritical group, who comment uniformly on their environment. Noise sensitivity has also been related to current psychiatric disorder (Bennett, 1945; Tarnopolsky & MortonWilliams, 1980; Iwata, 1984). Stansfeld et al. (1985) found that high noise sensitivity was associated with phobic disorders and neurotic depression, measured by the Present State Examination (Wing, Cooper, & Sartorius, 1974). Similar to this association with phobic symptoms, noise sensitivity has also been linked to a coping style based on avoidance, which may have adverse health consequences (Pulles, Biesiot, & Stewart, 1990) and a tendency to report health complaints rather than take a more active coping approach to noise (Lercher & Kofler, 1996). Noise sensitivity may be partly secondary to psychiatric disorder: depressed patients followed up over four months became less noise-sensitive as they recovered (Stansfeld, 1992). “Objective” psychophysiological laboratory investigation of reactions to noise in a subsample of depressed patients found that noise-sensitive people tended to have higher levels of tonic physiological arousal, more phobic and defense/startle responses, and slower habituation to noise (Stansfeld, 1992). Thus, noise-sensitive people attend more to noises, discriminate more between noises, find noises more threatening and out of their control, and adapt to noises more slowly than people who are less sensitive. Noise sensitivity may be an indicator of vulnerability to minor psychiatric disorder, although not necessarily psychiatric disorder caused by noise (Stansfeld, 1992). In the analysis of a subset of noise-sensitive women, compared with less noise-sensitive women in the West London survey, aircraft noise exposure did not predict psychiatric disorder in the sensitive women (Stansfeld et al., 1985). In the Caerphilly study, noise sensitivity predicted psychological distress at follow-up after adjusting for baseline psychological distress, but did not interact with the noise level, suggesting that noise sensitivity does not specifically moderate the effect of noise on psychological distress (Stansfeld et al., 1993). However, in further analyses, a statistically significant association between road traffic noise exposure and psychological distress, measured by the General Health Questionnaire, was found in noise-sensitive men but not in men of low noise sensitivity (Stansfeld, Matsui, Gallacher, & Babisch, 2002). In the original analyses, after adjusting for trait anxiety at baseline, the effect of noise sensitivity was no longer statistically significant, suggesting that much of the association between noise sensitivity and psychological distress may be accounted for by the confounding association with trait anxiety. Constitutionally anxious people may be both more aware of threatening aspects of their environment and more prone to future psychiatric disorder. In a UK community study, associations were examined between noise exposure, noise sensitivity, subjective symptoms, and sleep disturbance in a random sample of 543 adults (Smith, Hayward, & Rich, 2000). Perceived noise exposure was related to subjective health, but this association became nonsignificant after adjustment for negative affectivity. In a similar way, adjustment for negative affectivity eliminated the association between noise sensitivity and subjective health. Negative affectivity is strongly associated with neuroticism and it is likely they are both tapping the same underlying trait. Thus, it was suggested that noise sensitivity was merely a proxy measure of negative affectivity or neuroticism.
(p. 385) Potential Mechanisms of Noise Effects There is no universally agreed mechanism for the effects of noise on mental health. One research area where there is a sound underlying theory is the effects of noise on cognitive performance, where the laboratory evidence of effects is fairly robust (Smith & Broadbent, 1992). Noise exposure impairs aspects of human functioning, such as performance and sleep (Loeb, 1986) that are important in maintaining normal functioning. In general, it seems that noise exposure increases arousal and decreases attention through distraction (Broadbent, 1953), increases the need for focusing, or avoiding attention to irrelevant stimuli (Cohen & Spacapan, 1978), as well as altering choice of task strategy (Smith & Broadbent, 1981). The mechanism for the effects of noise on health is generally
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Noise conceptualized as fitting the stress-diathesis model, in which noise exposure increases arousal, and chronic exposure leads to chronic physiological change and subsequent health effects (McEwen, 1998). It is not clear, though, whether this model is a complete explanation for mental health effects. Individuals’ perception of their degree of control over noise may also influence whether it impairs memory (Willner & Neiva, 1986), while perception of lack of control over environmental conditions may be an important mediator of health effects. Further, active coping with noise may be sufficient to mitigate any ill effects (Van Kamp, 1990). Perception of control is also related to better health in other domains, such as the workplace. A more sophisticated model of the effects of noise on health (Biesiot, Pulles, & Stewart, 1989; Passchier-Vermeer, 1993) incorporates the interaction between the person and their environment. In this model, the person readjusts his or her behavior in noisy conditions to reduce exposure. An important addition is the inclusion of both the appraisal of noise (in terms of danger, loss of quality, meaning of the noise, challenges for environmental control, etc.) and coping (the ability to alter behavior to deal with the stressor). This model emphasizes that dealing with noise is an active, not a passive process. It is possible that adaptation to noise is achieved only with a cost to health. For example, Evans et al. (2000) found that maintaining task performance in noisy offices was associated with additional physiological effort and hormonal response. Neuroimaging studies may also provide information on the mechanisms of the effects of noise on mental health because they are increasingly revealing the localization of brain responses to environmental stimuli. This is complicated in studies of sound because MRI scanners are traditionally very noisy and this may bias the response to specific stimuli. However, there is considerable scope for a better understanding of the mechanisms of noise effects on psychiatric disorder through understanding which brain areas are involved in perceptions of adverse sound. Studies of acute noise exposure (100–110dB, wide band frequency for 30 minutes) in rhesus monkeys showed impaired performance of a spatial memory task dependent on the prefrontal cortex (Arnsten & GoldmanRakic, 1998). No deficits were found in noise-exposed monkeys for a visual pattern discrimination task, which might be expected if this effect was due to decreased motivation or motor performance. The authors concluded that acute mild noise stress produces deficits resembling prefrontal cortex lesions, and that this implied a reversion in stressful situations to more instinctual behavior regulated by subcortical rather than higher structures. This may have survival value, but may be maladaptive in human society where higher functions are necessary for behavioral regulation. Treatment with clonidine and naloxone, which decrease stress-induced dopamine release, reduced these noise-induced effects on the prefrontal cortex in the rhesus monkeys, suggesting that noise stress elicits excessive dopamine release, which may be responsible for these deficits. Another mechanism through which noise may influence mental health is through its effects on social behavior. This has not been extensively researched but there are interesting experimental case studies indicating that people are less helpful to people exhibiting disabled behavior in the street if they are also simultaneously exposed to noise (Page, 1977). Noise may affect social performance: (1) as a stressor causing unwanted aversive changes in affective state; (2) by masking speech and impairing communication; and (3) by distracting attention from relevant cues in the immediate social environment (Jones, Chapman, & Auburn, 1981). It may be that people whose performance strategies are already limited for other reasons (e.g., through high anxiety) and who are faced with multiple tasks may be more vulnerable to the masking and distracting effects of noise.
Conclusions The evidence for the effects of environmental noise on health is strongest for annoyance, sleep, hypertension, and performance with effects on cognitive performance in children (Stansfeld, Haines, & Brown, 2000; Babisch, 2006). The effects of noise are strongest for those outcomes that can be classified under well-being or “quality of life” rather than illness. What they lack in severity is made up for in numbers of people affected, as these responses are very widespread. Current evidence does seem to suggest that environmental noise exposure, especially at higher levels, is related to mental health symptoms and possibly raised anxiety and consumption of sedative medication, but there is little evidence that it has more serious effects although this may partly be due to a lack of sufficiently methodologically robust studies to test this possibility. Existing studies may be confounded either by prior selection of subjects out of (or into) noisy areas as a result of noise exposure, or by confounding between noise exposure, socioeconomic deprivation, and psychiatric disorder. It is also possible that people underestimate or minimize the effects of noise on health through optimism bias (Hatfield & Job, 1998) and that this may be particularly protective
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Noise for mental health. It is also difficult to identify the pathways through which noise exposure affects mental health. Part of the problem is that the interaction between people, noise, and ill health is a complex one. Humans are not usually passive recipients of noise exposure and can develop coping strategies to reduce its impact. Perception of control over the noise source may reduce the perceived threat of noise and the belief that it can be harmful. It may also be that noise is more harmful to health in situations where several stressors interact.
Future Directions Undoubtedly, there is a need for further research, including better measurement of noise exposure and health outcomes. Ideally, there should be longitudinal studies investigating the association between environmental noise and psychiatric disorder. Careful assessment of socioeconomic differences between areas of high and low exposure is also needed. In many studies, it is not clear whether noise effects on health are a component part of the effects of social disadvantage on health or whether the effects of noise on health are confounded by social disadvantage, in which case noise exposure is merely an indicator of social disadvantage, and is not on the causal pathway. Field studies suggest that the effects of multiple stressors have greater combined effects than simply summing individual stressors (Rutter, 1979). It might be the case that noise will show more effects on health in individuals already exposed to other stressors. These might include other physical stressors (e.g., air pollution, poor housing conditions), psychosocial stressors (e.g., crowding, social isolation, fear of crime, lack of control over the environment), and adverse material conditions (low income, unemployment). There may be either additive or multiplicative interactions with noise exposure. So far, few studies have attempted to examine the effects of multiple environmental stressors (Cohen, Evans, Stokols, & Kranz, 1976). This needs to be combined with measurement of the appraisal of noise sources and evaluation of coping mechanisms (Lercher & Kofler, 1996). It would also be interesting to combine mental health measures and hormonal measures to assess psychological and physiological responses to stress concurrently. Ultimately, evidence of the mental health effects of noise exposure will be more persuasive if accompanied by measurable physiological changes.
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Charlotte Clark Charlotte Clark Centre for Psychiatry Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry London, UK
Rosanna Crombie Rosanna Crombie Centre for Psychiatry Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry London, UK
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Response to Environmental Disasters
Oxford Handbooks Online Response to Environmental Disasters Michael K. Lindell The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0021
Abstract and Keywords Popular accounts of people’s responses to disasters routinely report panic and psychological disorientation among disaster victims, but these reactions are quite rare. Instead, most people respond to crises by making the best decisions they can to protect persons and property, given their limited knowledge about the hazards they face and the situation that is unfolding, and their limited resources of time, money, and protective facilities and equipment. Current research is beginning to examine the timing and sequence of disaster response actions and the characteristics of warnings, environmental cues, and social cues that influence people’s perceptions of the threat, stakeholders, and alternative protective actions and, ultimately, their responses to a disaster. In addition, research on long-term hazard adjustments has generally found significant effects of three types of core perceptions (environmental threats, stakeholders, and alternative protective actions). This research also suggests the effects of hazard proximity, hazard experience, and hazard education programs on hazard adjustment adoption are mediated by the core perceptions. Keywords: disaster myths, disaster response, hazard adjustment, response time distributions, evacuation logistics, risk perception, stakeholder characteristics, hazard adjustment attributes
Introduction According to widespread belief, disaster victims typically act irrationally by fleeing in panic when disasters threaten (Drabek, 1999; Tierney, Lindell, & Perry, 2001). Following impact, they are thought to be incapable of protecting themselves or others, so a few “exceptional” individuals must step forward to lead the masses of frightened and passive victims to safety (Wenger, James, & Faupel, 1980). This rather bleak view of human nature is propagated by the mass media—sometimes in movies, other times in (second- or third-hand) hearsay passed on by reporters, and occasionally by disaster victims themselves (Fischer, 2008). These disaster myths are not just erroneous; they can hamper the effectiveness of emergency planning by misdirecting the allocation of resources and the dissemination of information (Tierney et al., 2001). For example, expectations of panic often become authorities’ justification for giving the public incomplete information about an environmental threat or withholding all information. Such attempts at information management are particularly troubling because people are more reluctant to comply with recommended protective actions when they are provided with inadequate warning messages. To manage emergencies effectively, public authorities, the news media, and the public need accurate information about how people respond during disasters. This chapter addresses that need by focusing on people’s behavioral responses to rapid onset environmental threats. The focus on behavioral response means problem-focused coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), rather than psychological impacts (p. 392) (see Norris et al., 2002; Norris, Friedman, & Watson, 2002). The focus on rapid onset (seconds to weeks) excludes phenomena such as drought, desertification, and global climate change that evolve over years to centuries. The emphasis on environmental threats focuses on geophysical, meteorological,
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Response to Environmental Disasters and hydrological hazards and excludes food and pharmaceutical contamination and contagious diseases because these have significantly different exposure paths. It also excludes broader issues in emergency management (Lindell, Prater, & Perry, 2006) and disaster research (Lindell, 2011) An individual’s probability of surviving a disaster depends upon the characteristics of the event, person, and situational context. Event characteristics include a hazard’s speed of onset, intensity, and scope and duration of impact (CDRSS, 2006). Personal characteristics are defined most directly by people’s hazard-relevant knowledge/beliefs as well as their physical (e.g., strength), psychomotor (e.g., vision and hearing), and cognitive (e.g., verbal, quantitative, and spatial) abilities, and personality characteristics. The situational context in which a person responds to a threatening event has physical, technological, social, economic, political, and temporal components. The physical context is defined by people’s proximity to hazard sources and safe locations, whereas the technological context is defined by the quality of systems for hazard detection and warning dissemination as well as the availability of vehicles for evacuation and accessibility of protective structures, such as storm shelters. The social context is defined by people’s demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, age, ethnicity) as well as those of their peers (friends, relatives, neighbors, and coworkers). The economic context includes people’s financial assets (money, stocks, bonds, and other instruments) as well as the value of their property (e.g., homes and vehicles). The political context is defined broadly by governmental structure and more specifically by the hazard mitigation, disaster preparedness, emergency response, and disaster recovery programs that have been implemented (Lindell et al., 2006). Finally, the temporal context is defined by the variation of people’s exposure to hazards and their access to resources at different times of day, days of the week, and months of the year. Ultimately, however, people’s survival depends upon the effectiveness of the protective actions they choose from among the feasible alternatives that are available to them when a disaster strikes. The process by which people take protective actions is summarized by the Protective Action Decision Model (PADM; Lindell & Perry, 2004, 2012), which provides a framework for organizing the presentation of research results. The PADM is based upon the findings of more than five decades of hazards and disasters research (Barton, 1969; Drabek, 1986; Dynes, 1970; Fritz, 1961; Janis & Mann, 1977; Lindell & Perry, 1992; Mileti, Drabek, & Haas, 1975; Perry, Lindell, & Greene, 1981; Tierney et al., 2001) but contains elements of psychological models such as the classic six component communication model of source-channel-message-receiver-effect-feedback (Lasswell, 1948; McGuire, 1969, 1985; O’Keefe, 2002; Petty & Wegener, 1999) and models of attitude-behavior relationships (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2010). According to the PADM (Figure 21.1), people act on their perceptions of (a) environmental cues, such as sights or sounds that indicate the onset of a threat, (b) social cues, such as observations of others responding in a way that indicates there is a threat, and (c) information received from social sources about hazards and protective actions. To act on environmental cues, social cues, or social information, people must be exposed to, heed, and properly interpret the environmental or social cues or receive, heed, and understand social warnings. Information extracted from these sources leads to three core perceptions—perceptions of stakeholders (sources of information and assistance), environmental threats, and alternative protective actions. Disasters are unfamiliar situations, so confusing and conflicting information usually prevents people from relying on habitual responses (Wood & Neal, 2007). Instead, they try to integrate situational information with their preexisting mental models (which are based on personal experience and pre-impact risk communication) to decide how and when to respond. People’s primary responses are to seek additional information, take protective response, and engage in emotion-focused coping. Depending on the effects of situational facilitators and impediments, people’s behavioral intentions will result in specific behavioral responses that successfully protect them from the hazard.
Figure 21.1 The Protective Action Decision Model. Source: Adapted from Lindell & Perry (2012).
The next section addresses immediate disaster response, beginning with events having instantaneous onset
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Response to Environmental Disasters (earthquakes), then turning to events with rapid onset (tornadoes), and finally addressing events with slower onset (hurricanes). These are not the only hazards that have been studied, but they are the most extensively studied and provide a representative sample of the issues that have been studied. The second section addresses preimpact actions—hazard mitigation (actions taken to (p. 393) provide passive protection when a disaster strikes), emergency response preparedness (actions taken to support active response when a disaster strikes), and disaster recovery preparedness (hazard insurance purchase). The third section addresses needs for future research.
Immediate Disaster Response Actions
Earthquakes There is no technology available that provides forewarning of local earthquakes, so ambiguous environmental cues such as rumbling noise or ground shaking are typically the only indications of the need for initiating protective action. The sudden onset of ambiguous environmental cues is a central theme in Alexander’s (1990) report of his own experience in the November 23, 1980, Naples earthquake and oral histories of 18 students from a local technical institute. Most of the students had no previous experience with earthquakes, so they relied on older relatives and companions to interpret the shaking for them. Many of those who were indoors tried to escape as soon as the shaking subsided. One student reported a stampede for the exits from a theater and Alexander himself observed people engaged in apparently aimless running from place to place in a major piazza. Others left their homes to search for friends and relatives and many sought safety in the homes of relatives outside the impact area. Arnold, Durkin, Eisner, and Whitaker (1982) reported a high level of adaptive response by occupants of an office building during the 1979 Imperial Valley, California earthquake. Most people’s first reaction to the shaking was to get under a desk (36%) or stand in a doorway (15%), but many others stayed where they were (37%) and a few went to the main corridor (3%) or left the building immediately (2%). When the shaking stopped, 56% left the building immediately and, although there was crowding at the stairwells, there was no stampede. Most respondents attributed their decision to evacuate to their own assessment of the situation (50%), but others mentioned recommendations by coworkers (26%) or floor monitors (25%), or observations of others leaving (16%). Ohta and Ohashi’s (1985) report of data from six Japanese earthquakes categorized earthquake response into three time periods: during the shaking, during the approximately 10 minutes immediately after the shaking stopped, and the days to weeks after the earthquake. They plotted the percentage of respondents reporting different psychological and behavioral reactions as a function of seismic intensity, concluding that psychological reactions increased and behavioral performance decreased exponentially with shaking intensity. The three major activities in all six earthquakes were escaping from danger, obtaining information about the situation, and resuming normal activities. The researchers developed a behavioral typology similar in purpose to that of Canter, Breaux, and Sime (1980) and used it to analyze housewives’ behavior during one earthquake. Most of the women’s behavior was significantly influenced by the activities in which they were engaged at the onset of the temblor, as well as their environmental and social (p. 394) context. For example, those who were preparing dinner focused on turning off the gas burners to prevent fires and those with small children went to protect them before taking further action. Goltz, Russell, and Bourque’s (1992) study of the Whittier Narrows, California earthquake revealed that about 40% of the people in buildings at the time took cover in a doorway, in a hall, or under furniture. However, 20% remained where they were when the shaking started or left the building (9% of those at home and 20% of those at work). Forty-six percent of those in cars pulled over and stopped but 43% continued driving. The researchers reported that individual differences in response were associated with a number of variables; females and those who were more fearful of the earthquake were more likely to take cover. Moreover, the presence of other adults inhibited protective action whereas the presence of children enhanced it. Higher education, higher income, earthquake preparedness, and earthquake experience combined with level of fear to enhance the levels of taking cover. Bourque, Russell, and Goltz (1993) elaborated on these findings in their study of the Loma Prieta earthquake in California. Seventy-two percent of their respondents froze in place or sought protection, but responses were contingent upon location. Many of those at home had children, so the typical response (42%) in that location was to try to protect them. Bourque et al. reported that only 6% of those in buildings went outside and those in cars
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Response to Environmental Disasters tended to pull over rather than continue driving (38% vs. 13% in their largest sample). The authors reported significant variations in response associated with demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, age, education, and ethnicity), fear, earthquake experience, location, and social context at the time the earthquake struck. There were significant variations in media contact at the time of the earthquake, with those at home being approximately equally likely to have the television on (50%) or no media contact (45%), whereas those in transit were approximately equally likely to have radio on (43%) or no media contact (53%). There was no media contact for most of those at work or school (82%) or in public places (88%). The earthquake caused a loss of power or damaged radios/TV sets for 65% of those with media contact and 65% of these attempted to restore media contact. Sixty-five percent of those who did not have media contact at the time of the earthquake tried to establish it. Rahimi (1993) reported that physically disabled people are also quite capable of adaptive behavior. This study reported interviews of 33 individuals about their behavior during the Loma Prieta earthquake, 82% of whom had a moderate or severe disability. He found that 30% of them moved immediately to safer locations within their residences and an additional 27% held onto something to avoid falling. Twenty-four percent of the respondents stayed put, mostly because the shaking was not very intense in their area or they were already in safe locations. Nine percent seem to have been immobilized by fear but another 9% observed the situation calmly. In summary, the literature on behavioral response to earthquakes is sparse, but the findings of these few studies do confirm the diversity of event, person, and situational contexts as well as the importance of these contexts in determining people’s responses. As one would expect, the likelihood of protective response increases as earthquake intensity increases (Ohta & Ohashi, 1985) and, contrary to the myth of widespread panic, most people respond adaptively even in the most severe shaking. Indeed, even many of those with physical disabilities respond as adaptively as they can. However, some people do respond inappropriately and some even model the nonadaptive behavior of others in their vicinity (Alexander, 1990). Moreover, people’s responses are affected by their social context in other ways, especially by the desire to protect children (Goltz et al., 1992). Unfortunately, there is limited information about people’s emotional reactions, the effects emotions have on people’s behavior during shaking, or people’s behavior immediately after the shaking stops. Research on the effects of event characteristics is limited to one study addressing earthquake intensity, and most studies of personal characteristics have been limited to demographic (sex, age, education, income, ethnicity marital status, and tenure) rather than psychological (hazard-relevant knowledge/beliefs; physical, psychomotor, or cognitive abilities; and personality) characteristics. There has been limited study of people’s physical and social context, but not the technological, economic, political, and temporal components of their response context. Clearly, much more research is needed to develop a satisfactory scientific understanding of people’s immediate behavioral responses to earthquakes.
Tornadoes Unlike earthquakes, tornadoes can frequently be detected and warnings disseminated before impact. However, there are times when tornadoes are either not detected or the warning system is unable to (p. 395) provide sufficient forewarning before impact. For example, Carter, Millson, and Allen (1989) described the impact of a tornado in a community where most respondents had access to television (51%), radio (85%), or telephone (64%), and many (45%) had monitored radio or television during the hour before the tornado struck but the storm disrupted electric power so people were unable to receive warnings from these media. Thus, 25% of the respondents reported no forewarning, 66% reported less than one minute, and the remainder reported less than five minutes. Only 10% of the respondents had tornado experience but 75% knew the recommended locations for sheltering. Despite this knowledge, only 27% sheltered in one of these locations and only 22% hid under something or covered themselves with a mattress. In other cases, the barrier to warning dissemination is linguistic rather than technological. Aguirre (1988) reported a tornado in a primarily Hispanic community. Fifteen minutes after the National Weather Service (NWS) issued a tornado warning, local English-language TV stations and a local radio station transmitted warnings but the popular Spanish-language cable TV channel (Univision) did not. The tornado struck 35 to 40 minutes after the NWS warning and 20 minutes after the first radio/TV broadcasts, but most people received warnings only a few minutes before impact, so they remained in the structures where they were located. Aguirre argued that residents’ preference for Spanish-language programming, an inadequate translation of the English word “warning” into the Spanish word “aviso” (which does not carry the same sense of urgency), and the location of many people in the community
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Response to Environmental Disasters center (a wide-span building type that is structurally vulnerable to high wind) all contributed to 29 deaths. In many cases, tornadoes are preceded by severe weather, which serves as an environmental cue for people to monitor radio and TV for NWS warnings. Hammer and Schmidlin (2002) reported that for a tornado touching ground for 87 minutes, only 5% of their sample had less than 5 minutes of forewarning, 17% had 5 to 15 minutes, 20% had 15 to 30 minutes, and 57% had greater than 30 minutes. Similarly, Legates and Biddle (1999) reported that few residents had no warning at all (2%) or less than 1 minute of forewarning (5%). Many residents had 2 to 5 minutes (22%) or 6 to 10 minutes (11%), and most (40%) had more than 10 minutes. Sirens are advantageous for speeding the dissemination of tornado warnings if people understand that this signal means to go indoors and turn on a radio or TV for emergency information. Accordingly, Liu et al. (1996) reported that 88% of those in an area with sirens received a warning and most of these received their warnings from a siren (62%) or radio/television (34%). By contrast, only a minority (29%) of those in an area without sirens received a warning and 73% of these received their warnings from radio or TV. The significance of news media access can also be seen in Schmidlin and King’s (1995) finding that 45% of their sample of tornado survivors received warnings from social sources, 52% had only environmental cues to warn them, and 10% had no warning before impact. Significantly, 70% of those who were watching TV before tornado impact survived whereas only 25% of those who were not watching TV at the time survived. Overall, the Brown, Archer, Kruger, and Mallonee (2002) study of the response to an F5 tornado is typical of others in finding that the most common means of warning was television (80%), followed by sirens (21%), and commercial radio (17%). Many people received more than one warning and only 4% received no warning. Even when people have received specific verbal warnings (as opposed to the general alerts provided by mechanical sirens), these are often imprecise regarding the projected impact locations (Simmons & Sutter, 2007), so people try to confirm the warnings with observations of environmental cues. Tiefenbacher, Monfredo, Shuey, and Cecora (2001) reported that 54% of their respondents tried to confirm the threat visually before initiating protective action. Among those seeking visual confirmation, 23% searched the sky for less than a minute, an additional 62% searched for 1 to 5 minutes, and some looked for 30 minutes or more. Regardless of how much forewarning is provided, there is substantial variation in people’s warning response. One major problem facing risk-area residents when they must decide how to respond to a tornado warning is that they cannot be sure how intense a tornado will be. In the strongest tornadoes (Enhanced Fujitsu Category 5 tornadoes have wind speeds exceeding 200 mph), only those in an underground storm shelter or a safe room (FEMA, 2008) are likely to survive. However, few households have such shelters and, in many cases, people must go outdoors to reach their own or a neighbor’s storm shelter. Those who lack such shelters altogether are advised to seek protection in a basement but many houses in the southern United States don’t have them. In such cases, people should shelter in rooms (p. 396) with no exterior walls—such as a hallway, bathroom, or closet. Moreover, mobile homes can be destroyed by even relatively weak tornadoes, so their occupants are advised to abandon these structures when they receive a tornado warning (Hammer & Schmidlin, 2001). Unfortunately, few mobile home communities have adequate community storm shelters. In addition, the majority of mobile homes are sited individually, so the occupants are unlikely to be able to afford the entire cost of a storm shelter. Consequently, the NWS advises people to abandon these structures and walk or drive to the nearest storm shelter, basement, or sturdy building (NWS, 2012). Hammer and Schmidlin (2002) reported that only 53% of those who received a warning remained home when the tornado struck. These people sheltered in a bathroom (39%), closet (37%), hallway (10%), or other rooms (14%). The other 47% of the respondents evacuated their homes. Of these, 47% left on foot and 53% left by vehicle. Almost all of those who traveled by foot evacuated to storm shelters (95%) and the rest sheltered in friends’ or relatives’ houses (5%). Many who evacuated in vehicles sheltered in their own or neighbors’ storm shelters (37%), a friend’s or relative’s house (20%), or highway overpasses (37%). The remainder sought safe locations outside the tornado path (35%). There has been little research on factors influencing people’s protective-action decisions in tornadoes. The Balluz et al. (2000) study of a tornado swarm in Arkansas found that 46% of their respondents responded to warnings by seeking shelter. People’s warning responses were related to being in the forecast tornado path (OR = 14.9), hearing a siren (OR = 9.2), having a higher level of education (OR = 4.2), and having a pre-event action plan (OR
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Response to Environmental Disasters = 3.7). People were almost three times as likely to shelter in aboveground locations (63%) as in basements (22%) but this choice of shelter location was dictated largely by the limited number of houses that had basements. Despite the paucity of evidence on which factors influence people’s protective-action decisions, there is evidence that such protective-action decisions can be relatively stable from one tornado to another. In their study of the 1999 and 2003 Moore, Oklahoma, tornadoes, Comstock and Mallonee (2005) found that 51% of those who experienced both tornadoes took the same action on both occasions, whereas 27% took more protective action and 22% took less protective action in the second tornado than in the first. Reasons for taking greater protective action in the second tornado were better access to safe locations (43%), more knowledge about personal protection (21%), more or better-quality warnings (12%), more time to implement protective action (5%), and better instructions from the mass media (3%). Reasons for taking less protection in the second tornado included having less time to implement protective action (52%), receiving fewer or lower-quality warnings (28%), perceiving the 2003 tornado as a less severe threat (14%), and having inadequate access to safe locations (12%). In summary, the literature on behavioral response to tornadoes is more voluminous than that on earthquakes and it also confirms the diversity of event, person, and situational contexts as well as the importance of these contexts in determining people’s responses. Contrary to the myth of widespread panic, most people respond adaptively even in the most severe storms. However, some people fail to comply with the recommendations of the NWS (Carter et al., 1989) and some take actions that are completely contrary to those recommendations (Hammer & Schmidlin, 2002). The availability of technology for detecting tornadoes and disseminating warnings is extremely important because it can provide significantly more forewarning than the observation of environmental cues. However, this tornado warning technology is not universally available (Aguirre, 1988; Carter et al., 1989). Moreover, warnings are often less useful than desired because predictions of tornado location and intensity are uncertain (Simmons & Sutter, 2007). Thus, the wording of warnings has a significant effect on the likelihood that people will attempt to confirm a warning, thus delaying protective action and—in some cases—exposing people to greater risk as they search the sky for environmental cues (Tiefenbacher et al., 2001). In addition, forewarning creates an opportunity for people to move to locations that are safer than the ones where they received a warning. Unfortunately, attempts to seek safer locations may expose people to greater danger if they are caught by the storm as they are evacuating by foot or by car (Hammer & Schmidlin, 2002). In addition, weather forecasters have expressed concern that repeated false alarms over time will cause people to disregard future warnings. The limited amount of individual-level data available suggests that this concern might be overstated (Comstock & Mallonee, 2005) but aggregate-level data using the storm as the unit of observation and analysis suggests that there is a significant false alarm effect (Simmons & Sutter, 2011). (p. 397) As is the case with earthquakes, there is limited information about people’s emotional reactions, the effects emotions have on behavior as a storm approaches, and about people’s behavior immediately after a storm strikes. Research on the effects of event characteristics on individual behavior is limited to one study addressing proximity to the forecast tornado path, and few studies of personal characteristics have even addressed people’s demographic (sex, age, education, income, ethnicity marital status, and tenure) let alone psychological (hazardrelevant knowledge/beliefs; physical, psychomotor, or cognitive abilities; and personality) characteristics. There has been limited study of people’s technological context, but not the physical, social, economic, political, and temporal components of their response context. As is the case with earthquakes, much more research is needed to develop a satisfactory scientific understanding of people’s immediate behavioral responses to tornadoes.
Hurricanes Like tornadoes, hurricanes can have high wind speeds, but their hydrological threats from storm surge and inland flooding make evacuation necessary and their days of forewarning make evacuation feasible. However, uncertainty about a hurricane’s track, combined with its great size (some hurricanes are 300 miles in diameter), means that hundreds of miles of coastline are at risk. Uncertainties about hurricane landfall, intensity, and size are compounded by the 30 to 40 hours that some coastal cities need to evacuate. Thus, local authorities must make evacuation decisions so far in advance of landfall that the chance of being struck is less than 25% (Lindell & Prater, 2007a).
Evacuation Decisions
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Response to Environmental Disasters There is variation in evacuation warning compliance rates across jurisdictions for a given hurricane and from one hurricane to another (Baker, 1991). For example, Hurricane Georges produced an evacuation rate of 72% in the Lower Keys, 58% in the Middle Keys, and 42% in the Upper Keys (Dash & Morrow, 2001). Location on a barrier island also is important; Dash and Morrow reported only a 13% evacuation rate from mainland Miami–Dade County but a 44% evacuation rate from Miami Beach. Rates of spontaneous evacuation (departures from inland areas that authorities consider safe) are generally low but have been reported to be high in some cases. During Hurricane Rita, a substantial percentage of the Harris County (Houston, Texas, area) population evacuated areas that were outside the hurricane evacuation zone (Chiu et al., 2008, reported 41%; Lindell & Prater, 2008, reported 47%; Stein, Duenñas-Osorio, & Subramanian, 2010, reported 47%). However, that high level of response appears to have been situation specific because there was only a 9% evacuation rate from the same area three years later in response to Hurricane Ike (Huang et al., in press).
Response-Time Distributions Baker (2000) summarized the results of his extensive series of hurricane evacuation studies as indicating that it is rare for more than 15% of evacuees to leave before local officials issue a warning, that people prefer to leave during daylight hours, and that residents of inland areas leave later than those closer to the coast. Most recent studies are consistent with these conclusions. For example, Dow and Cutter (2002) reported that 5% of their respondents evacuated before an evacuation order was issued, 61% left on the day of the evacuation order, and 31% evacuated the day after the evacuation order. However, other studies have reported early evacuation rates can be as high as two-thirds of the risk area population for Category 5 hurricanes (Lindell, Lu, & Prater, 2005; Lindell & Prater, 2008). Other researchers have reported cumulative departure time distributions as part of their efforts to predict the timing of individual households’ departures (Dixit, Pande, Radwan, & Abdel-Aty, 2008; Fu & Wilmot, 2004, 2006; Fu, Wilmot, Zhang, & Baker, 2007; Wilmot & Mei, 2004). The major reason for assessing these distributions is to provide empirically based trip generation time distributions as alternatives to the assumed trip generation time distributions that Lindell and Perry (1992) and Lindell and Prater (2007b) criticized as inadequate input to mathematical evacuation models. Although it might seem that the variables predicting the decision to evacuate would also predict departure timing, the available evidence indicates that this assumption is incorrect. Lindell et al. (2005) found that 13 of 19 variables significantly predicted evacuation decision but only one variable (reliance on information from local authorities) significantly predicted departure timing. Similarly, Huang et al. (in press) found that 12 of 16 variables significantly predicted evacuation decision but only four variables significantly predicted departure timing and all four of those had correlations of r ≤.10. (p. 398) Warning-Time Distributions There have been some significant advances in estimating warning time distributions since the first studies reported data from four floods and the eruption of Mount St. Helens (Lindell & Perry, 1987) and two hazardous materials accidents (Sorensen & Rogers, 1989). Rogers and Sorensen (1988) proposed a model of warnings as a process comprising two components: (1) the official (“broadcast”) component and (2) the informal (“contagion”) component. Unlike an official warning network, which is organized and planned in advance, an informal warning network emerges during the incident from proximity (neighbors), kin (relatives), and other social ties (friends and coworkers). Informal warning networks can account for a significant proportion of all first warnings (Drabek, 1986; Lindell & Perry, 1987). Sorenson (1991) attempted to identify predictors of household warning reception times in the Nanticoke Pennsylvania chemical incident (1987) but there does not seem to have been any subsequent research on this topic.
Preparation Time Distributions The time needed to prepare to evacuate consists of two components, psychological preparation (seeking and processing additional information until people are certain evacuation is necessary) and logistical preparation (uniting household members, protecting property, and packing clothes and other materials needed while away from home). Psychological preparation is a part of milling, the process of seeking confirmation that a danger exists, obtaining further information about the threat and alternative protective actions, and relaying warnings to peers (Drabek, 1986). The broad outlines of this process are understood (Gladwin, Gladwin, & Peacock, 2001; Gladwin &
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Response to Environmental Disasters Peacock, 1997), but the information needed to accurately forecast a risk-area population’s preparation time distribution is only beginning to become available. Kang, Lindell, and Prater (2007) examined data from a group of 51 people who had replied to surveys conducted two years apart. The first survey asked Texas coastal residents to report the expected amount of time they would need to perform six evacuation preparation tasks (Lindell et al., 2001) and the second survey asked them to report the actual amount of time taken to perform those tasks before evacuating from Hurricane Lili (Lindell et al., 2005). The results showed that individuals’ expected preparation times significantly predicted their later reports of actual preparation times, especially the tasks that were performed on other occasions such as preparing for other road trips.
Antecedents of Evacuation Decisions Information Sources and Message Content Environmental cues rarely serve as a stimulus for protective response to hurricanes because it is generally too late to evacuate by the time these cues are available. However, there is an effect of social cues such as peers’ visible preparations to evacuate (Baker, 1991; Horney et al., 2010a, 2010b) or businesses closing (Baker, 1991, 2000; Lindell et al., 2005; Lindell & Prater, 2008). Nonetheless, people are likely to receive a substantial amount of information about an approaching hurricane from a variety of sources, such as local authorities, local and national news media, and peers (Dash & Gladwin, 2007; Lindell, Prater, & Peacock, 2007). Risk area residents receive evacuation warnings from the electronic news media well in advance of hurricane landfall because they monitor these sources frequently as storms approach. For example, Dow and Cutter (2000) found 58% of their respondents reported leaving news media channels on all day when a hurricane is within 2 to 3 days of striking their area. Although people receive information from authorities less frequently than from other sources (Lindell et al. 2005), Baker (1991) noted that information and orders from public officials strongly affect household evacuation. In particular, households are more likely to evacuate if they receive threat assessments such as National Hurricane Center watches and warnings or if they receive state or local officials’ voluntary or mandatory evacuation orders. These conclusions have been supported by more recent studies on Hurricanes Andrew (Gladwin et al., 2001; Gladwin & Peacock, 1997; Wilmot & Mei, 2004), Bonnie (Whitehead, 2005), Bret (Zhang, Prater, & Lindell, 2004), Lili (Lindell et al., 2005), Katrina (Lindell & Prater, 2008), Rita (Chiu et al., 2008; Lindell & Prater, 2008; Stein et al., 2010), and Ike (Huang et al., in press). In general, people are most likely to evacuate if a credible source provides a message describing a threat with sufficient specificity for recipients to develop a high degree of certainty that they are personally at risk from an immediate and severe threat to themselves and their loved ones (including pets). In addition, evacuation rates are highest when the message provides guidance regarding a protective action and indicates sources of additional information (Mileti & Peek, 2000; Mileti & Sorensen, 1987). Sources of additional information are important for those (p. 399) who lack a means of transportation, have mobility limitations, own a pet or livestock, and have other impediments to evacuation. Moreover, mandatory evacuation orders elicit greater compliance than voluntary evacuation orders, which in turn generate greater evacuation rates than when there is no official evacuation order (Whitehead et al., 2000).
Threat Perceptions Evacuation is significantly affected by perceptions of hurricane threat, which can be divided into three categories: perceptions of storm characteristics, expected community impacts, and expected personal impacts. The National Hurricane Center and news media provide continuing information about an approaching storm’s characteristics, so a storm’s size (Whitehead et al., 2000), intensity (Lindell & Prater, 2008; Whitehead, 2005; Whitehead et al., 2000), and predicted landfall location (Dow & Cutter, 2000; Lindell & Prater, 2008) are important predictors of evacuation. Storm characteristics provide people with the information needed to draw inferences about the impacts on their communities, but it is important to distinguish between expected community impacts and expected personal impacts because people’s optimistic bias (Weinstein, 1989) or comparative optimism (Klar & Ayal, 2004) may lead them to believe that they will escape the community impacts. That is, people are unlikely to respond unless they personalize the risk (Mileti & Sorensen, 1989). Consistent with this distinction, hurricane research indicates that people are much more likely to evacuate if they believe their home site is likely to be damaged by wind or storm
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Response to Environmental Disasters surge (Baker, 1991), if they or their families are at risk of death or serious injury, or there is a significant risk of damage or destruction to their homes (Baker, 1991; Dash & Morrow, 2001; Gladwin et al., 2001; Lindell et al., 2005; Lindell & Prater, 2008; Riad, Norris, & Ruback, 1999; Whitehead et al., 2000).
Protective-Action Perceptions Data on perceptions of protective actions are relatively sparse. However, some people have concerns about being involved in a traffic accident during a mass evacuation or the costs of gas, food, and lodging while away from home (Baker, 1991; Lindell et al., 2005; Whitehead, 2003). Nonetheless, Gladwin et al. (2001) argued that evacuation expenses and traffic accidents were not the factors that concerned people most. Instead, they concluded that people consider whether there is a specific evacuation destination that will accept all household members—including any disabled members (Van Willigen, Edwards, Edwards, & Hessee, 2002) or pets (Heath, Kass, Beck, & Glickman, 2001), whether they have enough cash or credit to stay in commercial facilities if accommodations with friends or relatives are unavailable, and whether evacuation routes have adequate capacity to avoid traffic jams (Huang et al., in press; Lindell & Prater, 2008).
Antecedents of Situational Perceptions Hazard Experience Many studies have proposed that previous hurricane experience would increase the likelihood of evacuation because people want to avoid a storm’s negative personal impacts. However, not everyone who reports having been through a hurricane has experienced major personal impacts (Lindell & Perry, 2004). In particular, Baker (1991) called attention to the problem of “false experience” among people who believe that because they have survived strong wind speeds from a given storm, they have survived the strongest wind speeds from that storm even though their houses might have been subjected only to much slower wind speeds on the outer edge of a hurricane. As a result of this misconception, some people overestimate their homes’ ability to withstand a major hurricane and, thus, are less likely to evacuate. There is also conflicting evidence about the degree to which people’s evacuation decisions are affected by their experience with a false alarm or, equivalently, an “unnecessary” evacuation (Baker, 1991; Dow & Cutter, 1998, 2000; Huang et al., in press). In general, people who evacuate for a hurricane that subsequently misses their community would nevertheless evacuate when another storm threatened. In one study where there was a statistically significant negative effect of “unnecessary” evacuation experience on evacuation decisions, the effect was small in comparison to the positive effects of official warnings and expected personal impacts (Huang et al., in press).
Hazard Proximity Coastal proximity is an important indicator of a home’s elevation above mean sea level (which generally increases with distance from the coast). Thus, coastal proximity is an indicator of danger and a predictor of evacuation (Baker, 1991). In particular, barrier islands or open coastlines with elevations less than 3 meters (10 feet) above mean sea level are high-risk sites, having evacuation rates of (p. 400) about 83%. Low-risk sites are located on the relatively protected mainland, over 3.5–5 m (15–20 ft) in elevation and generally had evacuation rates of about 37% (Baker, 1991). Other researchers have found that households living close to coastal rivers and lakes are also likely to evacuate (Gladwin & Peacock, 1997; Lindell et al., 2005; Wilmot & Mei, 2004). Misjudgments of coastal proximity appear to influence warning compliance and unnecessary (“shadow”) evacuation because many people misinterpret risk-area maps and thus are unable to determine whether an evacuation warning applies to them (Arlikatti et al., 2006; Zhang et al., 2004).
Demographic Characteristics Many studies report a significant relation of female gender to hurricane evacuation (Bateman & Edwards, 2002; Fothergill, 1996; Gladwin et al., 2001; Lindell et al., 2005; Riad et al., 1999; Whitehead, 2005; Whitehead et al., 2000). However, Baker’s (1991) review concluded that the results for other demographic characteristics are mixed, which is consistent with more recent studies (Fothergill, Maestes & Darlington, 1999; Fothergill & Peek, 2004; Lindell & Perry, 2004; Phillips & Morrow, 2007) and the warning response literature more generally
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Response to Environmental Disasters (Sorensen, 2000).
Hurricane Evacuation Logistics Researchers’ focus on evacuation decisions, and to a lesser extent evacuation departure times, has generally resulted in a neglect of evacuation logistics, which can be defined as the activities and associated resources needed to reach a safe location and remain there until it is safe to return (Lindell, Kang, & Prater, 2011). Nonetheless, there is a significant amount of research on the types of facilities in which people stay while awaiting the opportunity to return home. Mileti, Sorensen, and O’Brien (1992) summarized the findings of 23 studies indicating that, on average, 15% of evacuees go to public shelters, but the percentages ranged from essentially zero to 43%—with higher percentages occurring when the evacuation involves cities, hurricanes, nighttime departures, ethnic minorities, the poor, older evacuees, and well-publicized shelter availability. These estimates are consistent with Baker’s (2000) summary of hurricane evacuation studies and more recent research. For example, Whitehead (2003) reported 70% staying with peers, 16% in hotels/motels, and 6% in public shelters, whereas Lindell et al. (2011) reported 54% staying with peers, 29% in hotels/motels, and 3% in public shelters. Other aspects of evacuation logistics have been examined only sporadically and the data have been reported in a variety of ways. For example, Perry et al. (1981, p. 126) reported that only 58% of evacuees had a specific plan that identified a safe route to a safe destination, which was important because possession of a plan increased the likelihood of evacuation. This study also reported that 74% of the evacuating households used their own vehicles, 13% caught rides with relatives or friends, and 13% used official transportation. Dow and Cutter (2002) found that 25% of evacuating households took two or more cars, which is consistent with reports of 1.7 vehicles per household (vph) by Dash and Morrow (2001), 1.5 vph (Siebeneck & Cova, 2008), 1.6 vph (Lindell et al., 2011), and 1.4 vph (Wu, Lindell, & Prater, 2012). Baker (2000) reported that hurricane evacuees take 65–75% of the registered vehicles, 5% take trailers or recreational vehicles, and only about 5% of evacuating households require assistance—most of whom obtain rides with peers. Dow and Cutter (2002) reported that when choosing evacuation routes, the majority of their respondents carried road maps but just half of them used these maps to determine their evacuation routes. Instead, they relied heavily on the interstate highways with which they were most familiar. Recent studies have reported that hurricane evacuees have traveled an average of 178 miles (Whitehead, 2003), 198 miles (Siebeneck & Cova, 2008) 193 miles (Lindell et al., 2011), and 199 miles for Hurricane Rita and 266 miles for Hurricane Katrina (Wu et al., 2012). There is little data on evacuation duration other than the reports that evacuees from minimally damaged areas stayed away for an average of 2.3 days after Hurricane Lili (Lindell et al., 2011) and 4.3 days after Hurricane Rita (Wu et al., 2012). However evacuation durations were significantly longer in severely damaged areas after Hurricane Rita (13.8 days, Wu et al., 2012) and Katrina (33.1 days, Wu et al., 2012). Whitehead (2003) reported that direct evacuation costs varied with shelter type; evacuees who stayed in hotels spent an average of $381 during their evacuations, those who stayed in the homes of friends or family spent an average of $123, and those who went to public shelters spent an average of $121. Others have broken down the costs by category of expenditure: transportation($68, Lindell et al., 2011; $341, Wu et al., 2012), food ($65, Lindell et al., 2011; $333, Wu et al., 2012), and (p. 401) lodging ($47, Lindell et al., 2011; $405, Wu et al., 2012), yielding an average total cost ranging from $205 (Lindell et al., 2011) to $1137 (Wu et al., 2012). The differences among studies in evacuation expenses are clearly due to the differences among hurricanes in their size (geographical area affected) and intensity and, thus, the distance and duration of the evacuations they stimulate.
Evacuation Reentry Stallings (1991) contrasted the process of reentry into one community affected by a flood with four communities affected by toxic or radiological threats. He noted that in the latter cases, evacuees are likely to believe that the evacuation zone is more dangerous than authorities’ assessments indicate. Interestingly, Dash and Morrow’s (2001) study of reentry to the Florida Keys after Hurricane Georges found the reverse effect; evacuees were frustrated that authorities considered the Overseas Highway to be unsafe and delayed access for up to two days. More recently, Siebeneck and Cova’s (2008) study of evacuees’ compliance with the Hurricane Rita return-entry plan found that only 54% of evacuees received information about the date they would be allowed to return home and only 20% were aware of a state Department of Transportation plan indicating the sequence of reentry dates
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Response to Environmental Disasters for different areas. Their data show that nearly half of the evacuees returned to their homes before the dates in the Department of Transportation plan.
Summary The literature on behavioral response to hurricanes, which is more voluminous than that on earthquakes and tornadoes, further confirms the diversity of event, person, and situational contexts as well as the importance of these contexts in determining people’s responses. Because hurricanes consistently have many days of forewarning, there appear to have been no concerns expressed about widespread panic. However, there is concern that some people fail to comply with the recommendations to evacuate (Baker, 1991; Dash & Gladwin, 2007) and, conversely, some high rates of evacuation from inland locations that authorities consider to be safe (Stein et al., 2010). The availability of technology for detecting hurricanes and disseminating warnings is extremely important because it is usually too late to evacuate by the time environmental cues are available. Although hurricanes’ substantial forewarning makes it likely that almost all of those at risk know about the threat, hurricane warnings share the limitations of tornado warnings: predictions of hurricane landfall location and intensity are uncertain. The wording of hurricane warnings has a significant effect on the likelihood that people will attempt to confirm an initial warning by other means—in this case, looking for businesses closing and neighbors evacuating. Hurricane evacuations can experience major problems when a large area is affected, because most people wait until local authorities issue a warning, so the number of evacuating vehicles can substantially exceed the capacity of the evacuation route system and cause evacuation trips to take 5–10 times as long as normal (Lindell et al., 2011). As is the case with tornadoes, weather forecasters have expressed concern that repeated false alarms over time will cause people to disregard future warnings. However, the available evidence suggests that this concern is overstated—quite possibly because even the most hurricane-prone areas receive warnings much less frequently than the most tornado-prone areas (Baker, 1991; Dow & Cutter, 1999, 2000). Hurricane evacuation research has progressed to the point of examining response time distributions and the variables that determine response time but there has been limited progress in this area to date. In addition, research is beginning to examine evacuation logistics (Lindell et al., 2011) and the return-entry process much more systematically (Siebeneck & Cova, 2008). There has been no research on people’s emotional reactions to hurricane warnings, probably because of the comparatively lower sense of urgency in most hurricane evacuations. Research on the effects of event characteristics on hurricane evacuation is limited because this requires meta-analysis across studies (although see Baker, 1991, for an example). Most hurricane studies have addressed people’s demographic characteristics and some have addressed physical disabilities (Van Willigen et al., 2002) and other impediments such as pet ownership (Heath et al., 2001). There has been limited study of people’s technological (e.g., vehicle access, Kang et al., 2007; Lindell et al., 2011) and temporal context (morning departures are most common, Baker, 1991; Lindell & Prater, 2008), but there has been little study of the economic and political components of their response context. In general, hurricane response is better understood than earthquake and tornado response, but much more research is needed to develop a more complete scientific understanding of people’s evacuation decision timing, evacuation logistics, and the return-entry process.
(p. 402) Pre-Impact Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Preparedness Actions
Types of Actions Pre-impact hazard adjustments—“those actions that intentionally or unintentionally reduce risk from extreme events in the natural environment” (Lindell et al., 1997, p. 328)—are commonly categorized as hazard mitigation, emergency preparedness, and recovery preparedness (CDRSS, 2006; Lindell et al., 2006). However, empirical research has found that household hazard adjustments do not match these categories. For example, Russell, Goltz, and Bourque (1995) defined hazard adjustments in terms of three factors—basic survival, planning, and hazard mitigation—whereas Norris, Smith, and Kaniasty (1999) classified items into advance planning, basic supplies, and hazard alertness and Lindell, Arlikatti, and Prater (2009) identified two factors—direct action and capacity building. Other studies have focused on individual hazard adjustments such as hazard insurance (Blanchard-Boehm, Berry, & Showalter, 2001; Palm, 1995) or hurricane shutters (Peacock, 2003). Finally, some studies simply asked whether the respondents had “done anything” about their hazard vulnerability (Blanchard-
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Response to Environmental Disasters Boehm, 1998; Blanchard-Boehm & Cook, 2004; Weinstein, Lyon, Rothman, & Cuite, 2000). Despite these differences, all studies agree that the level of hazard adjustment is modest. The average number of adjustments reported was 8 of 16 (Lindell & Prater, 2000), 14 of 36 (Whitney, Lindell, & Nguyen, 2004), and 4 of 7 for fire, 3 of 7 for earthquake, and 2.6 of 7 for volcano (Perry & Lindell, 2008). However, there is substantial variation among riskarea residents in their levels of hazard adjustment adoption and significant variation among hazard adjustments in their popularity. For example, 90% of respondents reported having wrenches to operate utility shutoff valves and switches but only about 7% had joined a community organization dealing with earthquake emergency preparedness (Lindell & Prater, 2000).
Antecedents of Hazard Adjustment Adoption Risk Perception Lindell and Perry’s (2000) review of 23 earthquake studies concluded that risk perception generally, but not always, has significant correlations with hazard adjustment adoption. Lindell’s (in press) more recent review of research on hazard adjustment adoption confirmed this conclusion. Consistent with research on immediate disaster response actions, research on hazard adjustment adoption generally shows that these actions are significantly related to risk perception when it is defined as expected personal impacts. For example, Preston et al. (1983) reported a significant correlation between flood risk perception (measured by intensity, frequency, and health and economic impacts) and home modifications, whereas Laska (1990) found a significant correlation between expected flood damage in the next five years and a coping index. Kim and Kang (2010) found that hurricane risk to both self and other community members predicted information-seeking and general preparedness. Lindell and Hwang (2008) reported significant correlations of expected property damage, personal injuries, and health effects from floods and wind with flood adjustments, wind adjustments, and flood insurance purchase. Perry (1990) found a significant correlation between risk perception and hazard adjustment at Mt. Shasta and Perry and Lindell (1990) reported significant correlations of expected flood impact severity and ash impact severity with multi-item preparedness scales for these two volcano threats at Mount St. Helens. Sattler, Kaiser, and Hittner (2000) found that risk perception was significantly related to possession of hurricane emergency supplies and Peacock (2003) reported positive correlations of risk perception with hurricane shutter installation and envelope protection (reinforcing a house’s doors and walls). Other studies have found mixed evidence for effects of risk perception on hazard adjustment adoption. BlanchardBoehm et al. (2001) found that expected personal damage, but not expected community damage, was positively correlated with flood insurance purchase. This finding was similar to that of Weinstein et al. (2000), who reported significant correlations with “doing anything” about tornado threat for expectations of personal injury and damage but not others’ injury and damage. Basolo et al. (2009) reported that ratings of dread risk, but not likelihood of occurrence or fatal consequence, were correlated with one of four hazard adjustments (development of a family hurricane emergency plan) at their New Orleans site. Finally, Mileti and Darlington (1997), Lindell and Whitney (2000), and Lindell and Prater (2000) found nonsignificant correlations of expected personal consequences with hazard adjustment adoption. Moreover, Perry and Lindell (2008) reported nonsignificant correlations of perceived risk to persons and property with multi-item preparedness scales for wildfire, earthquake, and volcano preparedness. Some research indicates that the recency and frequency of reminders about a hazard are also (p. 403) important aspects of risk perception that are distinctly different from beliefs about the probability and severity of an event and its personal consequences. Perry and Lindell (1990) reported that hazard salience—measured in terms of the degree to which respondents thought about the Mount St. Helens volcano threat rarely, periodically, or often—was significantly related to hazard adjustment adoption. Later, Lindell (1994) found that frequency of thought and discussion about a hazard was related to the prospect of severe personal consequences from a hazard. Based on this work, Lindell and Whitney (2000) and Lindell and Prater (2000) proposed that the frequency of thought, discussion, and passive information receipt about a hazard serves as a reminder for people to take actions that will reduce their hazard vulnerability. Their data showed that this construct, hazard intrusiveness, was indeed significantly correlated with seismic hazard adjustment adoption. At about the same time, Weinstein et al. (2000) independently studied a construct they labeled preoccupation—defined by frequent thoughts, vigilance, intrusive thoughts, and talk frequency—was significantly related to “doing anything” about hazard vulnerability after being
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Response to Environmental Disasters struck by a tornado.
Stakeholder Characteristics The adoption of hazard adjustments takes place in a social context involving many different stakeholders, which Drabek (1986) categorized as authorities, news media, and peers. Interrelationships among these stakeholders can be defined by their reward, coercive, legitimate, referent, expert, and information power over each other’s actions (French & Raven, 1959; Raven, 1965). Reward and coercive power require continuing surveillance to ensure that rewards are received only for compliance and that punishment will follow noncompliance (Raven, 1993). Although it is possible for government to provide incentives for household hazard adjustment adoption (Ge, Peacock, & Lindell, 2011), this is not common, so most households adopt hazard adjustments voluntarily. Consequently, there is a need to examine the effects of the other bases of power. French and Raven’s conception of expert (i.e., understanding of cause-and-effect relationships in the environment) and information (i.e., knowledge about states of the environment) power suggests assessing perceptions of stakeholders’ hazard knowledge. Moreover, French and Raven’s conception of referent power is defined by a person’s sense of shared identity with another (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993), which is related to trust in that person—especially their willingness to communicate information accurately. Finally, French and Raven (1959) defined legitimate power by the rights and responsibilities associated with each role in a social network that, in the hazards context, can be interpreted as perceived protection responsibility. The proposition that perception of personal protection responsibility leads to a higher level of hazard adjustment adoption is supported by findings on preparedness for tornadoes (Mulilis & Duval, 1997; Mulilis, Duval, & Rogers, 2003); earthquakes (Arlikatti et al., 2007; Lindell & Whitney, 2000); wildfires, earthquakes, and volcanoes (Perry & Lindell, 2008); and earthquakes and hurricanes (Basolo et al., 2009), although the latter study found a statistically significant effect only for development of family hurricane plans. Moreover, Laska (1990) reported a nonsignificant correlation of personal protection responsibility with a flood hazard coping scale. Lindell and Whitney (2000) reported that hazard adjustment adoption was significantly related to family and personal earthquake knowledge in addition to personal protection responsibility. Similarly, Arlikatti et al. (2007) found that local officials’, employers’, peers’, and family/self seismic knowledge were correlated with hazard adjustment adoption, as were employer, peer, and family trust, and employer, peer, and family/self protection responsibility. Arlikatti et al. (2007) also examined whether perceived stakeholder characteristics are directly or indirectly related to households’ adoption of seismic hazard adjustments. A direct effect occurs if a stakeholder characteristic influences hazard adjustment adoption through what is described by Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) as the effect of the subjective norm, by Petty and Cacioppo (1986) as the peripheral route to persuasion, and by Chaiken (1987) as heuristic processing. An indirect effect occurs if perceived stakeholder characteristics change people’s risk perceptions and this change, in turn, affects their adoption of hazard adjustments. Arlikatti et al. (2007) reported that perceived stakeholder characteristics appears to affect hazard adjustment adoption both directly (via the peripheral route) and indirectly (via the central route).
Hazard Adjustment Attributes The identity of perceived hazard adjustment characteristics can be surmised from a variety of studies on the adoption of seismic hazard adjustments (p. 404) (Lindell, in press; Lindell & Perry, 2000). The most important attributes are hazard-related (efficacy in protecting persons, efficacy in protecting property, and utility for other purposes) and resource-related (cost, knowledge and skill requirements, time and effort requirements, specialized tool and equipment requirements, and required social cooperation). The significance of these attributes has generally been supported by recent research predicting the adoption of a variety of different hazard adjustments. Specifically, the significance of efficacy in protecting persons and property is supported by findings from Blanchard-Boehm (1998) regarding effectiveness, Norris et al. (1999) and Rüstemli and Karanci (1999) regarding personal control, Weinstein et al. (2000) regarding damage control and injury control, and Turner, Nigg, and HellerPaz (1986) regarding fatalism—the belief that there are no effective hazard adjustments. The significance of resource-related attributes is supported by the findings of Mulilis et al. (2003) regarding difficulty and BlanchardBoehm et al. (2001) regarding cost. However, there are negative findings as well. Weinstein et al. (2000) reported
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Response to Environmental Disasters that two measures of perceived control—damage control and injury control—had nonsignificant correlations with “doing something” about tornado hazard and Blanchard-Boehm et al. (2001) found that the cost of past hazard adjustments was not significantly correlated with insurance purchase. Systematic assessments of these hazard adjustment attributes have found that hazard-related attributes were significantly correlated with adoption intention and actual adjustment. However, contrary to expectations, the resource-related attributes had nonsignificant correlations with adoption intention or actual adjustment (Lindell & Whitney, 2000). These findings were later replicated in a study of households in three Southern California cities and three western Washington cities (Lindell & Prater, 2002). This study also found evidence of the construct validity of the hazard adjustment attributes. Specifically, all three hazard-related attributes had large and significant correlations with each other and the four resource-related attributes also had large and significant correlations with each other. However, the resource-related attributes had much smaller correlations with the hazard-related attributes, and 6 of the 24 correlations were not even statistically significant. Moreover, all three hazard-related attributes had large and statistically significant positive correlations with adoption intention, as well as statistically significant correlations with actual adjustment—although the latter correlations were much smaller than those with adoption intention. The resource-related attributes generally had negative correlations with both adoption intention and actual adjustment, but these were small and nonsignificant. More recently, Terpstra and Lindell (in press) replicated these findings in a study of a different hazard (flood rather than earthquake) in a different country (the Netherlands rather than the United States). Further analyses have shown that the three hazard-related and four resource-related attributes strongly differentiated among the hazard adjustments, as indicated by significant differences among hazard adjustments in respondents’ mean ratings on each attribute (Lindell et al., 2009). These results suggest that the attributes were meaningful to the respondents and, moreover, that it is reasonable to distinguish between hazard-related and resource-related attributes. Moreover, the reanalyses explained previous reports of low correlations between the resource-related attributes and adjustment adoption (Lindell & Prater, 2002; Lindell & Whitney, 2000). The variation in the ratings of the resource-related attributes (an average of 38.8% of the scale range) is much smaller than the variation in the ratings of the hazard-related attributes (an average of 65.0% of the scale range), which is consistent with the well-known principle that variance restriction can attenuate correlations (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994).
Antecedents of Core Perceptions Researchers have sought to link perceptions of the threat, stakeholders, and protective actions to some of the same variables that are linked to disaster response. These are hazard education (which is equivalent to hazard warnings but takes place long before disaster impact), hazard experience, hazard proximity, and demographic characteristics.
Hazard Education One goal of hazard education programs is to provide risk-area residents with vicarious experience that substitutes for personal experience (i.e., casualties and damage) in promoting the adoption of hazard adjustments. However, few studies have evaluated the effects of risk communication programs for natural hazards (Lindell et al., 1997), and most of those have focused on earthquake hazard. For instance, Faupel et al. (1992) found modest effects of disaster education on disaster planning and preparedness. Mileti and Fitzpatrick (1992, 1993) and Mileti and Darlington (1997) reported that earthquake risk communication programs (p. 405) in California had affected residents’ risk perceptions. In turn, elevated risk perceptions resulted in increased information-seeking behaviors, especially when people had received multiple risk information messages and knew others who had engaged in protective behavior. Similarly, Karanci, Aksit, and Dirik (2005) conducted hazard awareness training that significantly affected participants’ expectations of a disaster in their community, as well as disaster worry, expected loss, the feasibility of mitigation, efficacy of disaster preparedness, and whether they had implemented any preparedness actions. Preparedness was higher among males, those with higher levels of education, renters, and those with higher levels of disaster worry. Mulilis and Lippa (1990) conducted a field experiment in which they constructed earthquake awareness brochures that systematically varied information about an earthquake’s probability of occurrence, its severity, the efficacy of
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Response to Environmental Disasters a recommended seismic adjustment, and the receiver’s self-efficacy. The researchers found that the information in the brochures induced immediate changes in the receivers’ perceptions of probability, severity, outcome efficacy, and self-efficacy. However, these impacts were not sustained over the five to nine weeks between the administration of an immediate post-test and a delayed post-test, and there were inconclusive changes in the level of hazard adjustment adoption. Whitney et al. (2004) conducted a laboratory experiment that investigated the effects of an experimental earthquake education program on people’s beliefs in accurate and erroneous earthquake-related beliefs and their adoption of seismic hazard adjustments. The program produced a significant increase in hazard adjustment. Moreover, compared to an “earthquake facts” format, an “earthquake myths versus facts” format was slightly more useful for dispelling erroneous beliefs. In a study of risk communication with schoolchildren, Ronan and Johnston (2001) reported that participation in a hazard education program increased primary and intermediate students’ hazard knowledge and hazard adjustment. The program also significantly changed students’ perceptions of the future likelihood of occurrence for four of the eight hazards, but changed their perceptions of the future likelihood of injury for only one of the eight, and had no effect on hazard-related fear, parent fear, or emotional coping ability. Ronan and Johnston’s (2003) later quasi-experiment found that a program involving hazard education plus guidance on hazard adjustments coupled with parent-child discussion increased hazard knowledge and hazard adjustments more than a program of hazard education alone. Both treatments produced significant reductions in hazard-related fears and children’s perceptions of parental distress, but did not change perceived emotional coping. Formal hazard education programs are not the only way to provide people with vicarious (rather than personal) hazard experience. Indigenous knowledge arises from the historical experience of groups that have continuously settled a hazard-prone area who provide informal cultural transmission of information about the hazard and protective actions. The practical value of indigenous knowledge is illustrated by the actions of the Simeulue people of Indonesia, who responded to an earthquake and recession of seawater by evacuating into the mountains to avoid an imminent tsunami (Gaillard et al., 2008). They learned this lesson from their ancestors’ experience in a 1907 tsunami that also was preceded by the recession of the seawater. By contrast, the people of Kajhu on the main island of Sumatra had had no such experience and, thus, no cultural transmission of knowledge about tsunamis’ environmental cues. Consequently, 70% of them became aware of the oncoming tsunami only when they saw or heard it or saw people running or heard their shouts. Only 3% of those in Kajhu noticed the sea withdrawal in comparison to 37% of those in Simeulue.
Personal Hazard Experience As is the case with disaster response, studies of hazard adjustment adoption have defined hazard experience in a variety of ways—having been in a tornado (Mulilis et al., 2003), the number of earthquakes experienced (Russell et al., 1995), amount of previous earthquake losses (Jackson, 1981), and experience of earthquake losses by oneself or close others (Turner et al., 1986). Despite the use of varying operationalizations, most studies prior to 1999 found that earthquake experience is significantly correlated with the adoption of hazard adjustments (Lindell & Perry, 2000). This conclusion is supported by more recent research reporting that hazard experience, defined as past damage, is significantly correlated with a variety of measures of hazard adjustment adoption (Baumann & Sims, 1978; Blanchard-Boehm, 1998; Blanchard-Boehm & Cook, 2004; Blanchard-Boehm et al., 2001; Browne & Hoyt, 2000; Faupel, Kelley, & Petee, 1992; Heller et al., 2005; Laska, 1990; Lindell & Hwang; 2008; Lindell & Prater, 2000; Norris et al., 1999; Peacock, 2003; Perry & Lindell, 1990; Perry & Lindell, 2008; Sattler et al., 2000). In addition, other studies have reported correlations of hazard adjustment with other aspects of experience, such as shaking intensity, physical injury, emotional injury, and financial injury (Nguyen et al., 2006) and injury to self, family, or peers (Lindell & Prater, 2000). Some studies have found mixed results, with Blanchard-Boehm and Cook (2004) reporting that being in a tornado path and seeing a tornado were not significantly correlated with having “done anything” about tornado hazard, and Laska (1990) reporting that scores on a coping index were uncorrelated with flood frequency. Norris et al. (1999) found nonsignificant correlations of past disaster experience with advance planning, Peacock (2003) reported a nonsignificant correlation of hurricane experience with envelope protection, and Faupel et al. (1992) reported a nonsignificant correlation of past experience with household planning. Weinstein et al. (2000) found that “doing anything” about tornado hazard was significantly correlated with having recent reminders, engaging in volunteer acts, and having contacts with victims, but not with having watched the impact or experiencing problems
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Response to Environmental Disasters later. Perry and Lindell (2008) reported that earthquake preparedness was nonsignificantly related to health impacts and Basolo et al. (2009) found nonsignificant correlations of hazard experience with all four indexes: family plan, basic supplies, mitigation, and shutting off of utilities.
Hazard Proximity There is mixed evidence regarding the correlations of hazard proximity with hazard adjustment. Farley, Barlow, Finkelstein, and Riley (1993) reported that adoption of adjustments was correlated with proximity to the Central United States’ New Madrid earthquake fault and Lindell and Hwang (2008) found that proximity to inland flood and coastal hurricane hazards was significantly related to the adoption of both flood and wind adjustments. More recently, Peacock (2003) found that both hurricane shutter installation and envelope protection were significantly related to location in a coastal county but not location in an evacuation zone. With respect to hazard proximity and insurance purchases, Montz (1982), Gares (2002), and Lindell and Hwang (2008) reported significant correlations but Palm, Hodgson, Blanchard, and Lyons (1990) and Mileti and Darlington (1997) found no association of hazard adjustment adoption with proximity to an earthquake fault.
Demographic Characteristics As is the case for immediate disaster response actions, there are mixed findings on the relationships of demographic variables with hazard adjustment adoption (Lindell, in press). Gender has a roughly equal number of positive and nonsignificant results, education and income have more nonsignificant than positive results, and age and ethnicity have more nonsignificant results than positive results and even some negative correlations. Marital status, children in the home, and—especially—homeownership and community tenure have too few results to even classify reliably.
Conclusions Past research on hazards and disasters has documented that people respond adaptively, not in panic or shock, to different types of disasters. In addition, researchers have identified many variables that influence people’s disaster responses. These include warnings, environmental cues, and social cues that, in turn, influence people’s core perceptions of the situation—perceptions of the threat, stakeholders, and alternative protective actions. Research has also documented the effects of hazard proximity and hazard experience on disaster response and hazard adjustment adoption and is beginning to provide evidence that these effects are mediated by the core perceptions. Research on hurricane response is beginning to expand beyond the immediate protective-action decision to examine the timing of responses such as evacuation preparation, the logistics of evacuation to a safe location, and the process of reentry to evacuated areas after authorities announce it is safe to return. Studies have consistently shown that there is only a modest level of household hazard adjustment but have found that the variables affecting hazard adjustment are similar to those affecting immediate disaster response. These include hazard education, hazard experience, and hazard proximity that, in turn, influence people’s core perceptions of the situation—perceptions of the threat, stakeholders, and alternative protective actions. Research continues to show that demographic variables are inconsistent predictors of disaster response and hazard adjustment but some demographic variables do have consistent correlations with antecedents of these behaviors. The most reliable of these correlations is between female gender and risk perception. One weakness of research on both (p. 407) disaster warnings and hazard education programs has been a failure to develop and measure specific characteristics of disaster warning messages and hazard education programs. Proposed characteristics have included message specificity, consistency, certainty, clarity, accuracy, and sufficiency (Mileti & Peek, 2000; Mileti & Sorensen, 1987) and message comprehension, agreement, dose-response consistency, hazard-response consistency, uniformity, audience evaluation, and types of communication failures (Weinstein & Sandman, 1993). However, there are few studies in which specific messages or entire hazard education programs have used these or other measures and sought to correlate them with people’s perceptions of the threat, stakeholders, or alternative protective actions.
Future Directions
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Response to Environmental Disasters There are needs for further research in four major areas: developing and assessing typologies of disaster response and hazard adjustment actions, developing and assessing measures of core perceptions, developing and assessing measures of antecedent variables, and methodological improvements in research on disaster response and hazard adjustment actions.
Theoretical Directions Typologies of Disaster Response and Hazard Adjustment Behaviors Most research on earthquake and tornadoes has focused on characterizing the frequency with which people engage in different disaster responses, but the types of responses that have been reported vary from one study to another. Consequently, there is a need to develop a behavior typology that lists all of the behaviors that have been reported for each hazard. Such a typology not only would facilitate comparisons across studies within a given hazard, but also would facilitate comparisons across hazards. Similarly, there is a need to adopt a consistent typology of pre-impact hazard adjustments, develop standardized scales for measuring these adjustments, and assess the psychometric adequacy of these scales (e.g., Mulilis & Lippa, 1990). Future studies also should systematically develop and test scales measuring information-seeking activities (Mileti & Darlington, 1997; Mileti & Fitzpatrick, 1993). These information-seeking scales should distinguish between information about a hazard and information about hazard adjustments.
Measures of Core Perceptions Researchers need to systematically examine and reconcile the names, definitions, and measures of key constructs such as the variable that has variously been labeled hazard salience, hazard intrusiveness, preoccupation, and rumination. There is a similar level of ambiguity regarding the personality characteristics of fatalism and internal/external fate control versus perceptions of injury control and damage control (or, alternatively, protection of persons and protection of property). Personality characteristics are, by their very nature, attributes of persons, whereas protection of persons and protection of property are attributes of objects or actions. It is not entirely clear how these constructs are related to each other or whether injury control and damage control are attributes of persons or objects/actions (Terpstra & Lindell, in press). Measures of risk perception are similarly problematic because they have been measured in at least five distinctly different ways. First, risk perception has been measured using a number of dimensions that have been found to tap two underlying factors—the degree to which risks are known to those exposed and the degree to which those risks are dread (Fishchhoff et al., 1978). Second, risk perception has been measured in terms of hazard agent characteristics such as speed of onset, and scope and duration of impact (Lindell, 1994). Third, risk perception has been defined as respondents’ perceived probability that an event such as an earthquake will occur in their communities (Preston et al., 1983). Fourth, risk perception has been measured as respondents’ perceived probabilities that they will experience specific personal consequences such as death, injury, property damage, or disruption to their work, school, or daily activities (Lindell & Prater, 2000). Fifth, risk perception has been measured as respondents’ emotional reactions such as concern, fear, or dread of a specific hazard (Dooley, Catalano, Mishra, & Sexner, 1992; Rüstemli & Karanci, 1999). With few exceptions, past studies have used only one of these measures at a time, so studies are needed in which two or more types of measures are used to determine how they are interrelated. Second, most studies report a positive correlation of risk perception with hazard adjustment adoption but there are some cases with mixed positive or even nonsignificant results. Thus, one objective for future research is to explain why risk perception is not always significantly correlated with hazard adjustment adoption. One possibility is that the inconsistent results are due to variations in the operationalization of this variable. This cannot be the entire explanation because the available research shows that some notably different measures of risk perception have significant correlations with hazard adjustment adoption. Weinstein and Nicolich (1993) have provided another explanation—as people with high levels of risk perception adopt more hazard adjustments, their risk perception decreases. To rule out this possibility, future studies should be conducted that are longitudinal or, if they are crosssectional, should include self-reports of behavioral intentions as well as actual behavior. It is also important to examine the possibility that judgments of the probability and severity of personal
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Response to Environmental Disasters consequences have failed to accurately capture risk-area residents’ cognitive representations of environmental hazards. Turner et al. (1986) and Whitney et al. (2004) found that many risk-area residents hold erroneous beliefs about earthquake hazard. Further research is needed to examine the correlations of these erroneous beliefs with other risk perception measures, such as hazard characteristics, community impacts, expected personal impacts, and emotional reactions such as concern, fear, and dread. Such studies should also examine the correlations among hazard characteristics, community impacts, expected personal impacts, concern, emotional reactions, and hazard adjustment adoption. Hazard intrusiveness appears to be an extremely promising variable because the cases in which it has been used yielded positive results. Here, too, the conclusion must be regarded as tentative because it was tested so few times. Nonetheless, hazard intrusiveness is likely to play an important role in the hazard adjustment process because long-term threats lack the specific deadline associated with imminent threats. As a consequence, procrastination can allow more immediate concerns of daily living (e.g., expenses for food, clothes, and transportation) to receive a greater priority than adjustments to environmental hazards unless frequent reminders cause those hazards to remain high on the household agenda. There is only limited research on perceptions of hazard adjustment attributes and almost none on perceptions of disaster response actions. The available research on this topic indicates that hazard-related attributes are consistently related to hazard adjustment adoption but resource-related are not. This result might be due to the limited set of hazard adjustments that have been examined to date, so more research is needed that examines hazard adjustments with a broader range of resource requirements. Stakeholder perceptions also have some positive results but the support for this finding is also weak because so few studies have included these variables. Research should be conducted on a variety of hazards to examine riskarea residents’ perceptions of stakeholders’ expertise, trustworthiness, and protection responsibility.
Measures of Antecedent Variables Message characteristics such as information quality (specificity, consistency, and source certainty) and information reinforcement (number of warnings) are believed to have a significant impact on disaster response and hazard adjustment adoption (Mileti & Peek, 2000). However, few of these characteristics have been explicitly examined in field studies. Thus, there is a need for researchers to develop objective measures of these message characteristics, or at least reliable rating scales, and to examine the extent to which these message characteristics affect disaster response and hazard adjustment adoption and whether there are others. Hazard experience is frequently a significant predictor of hazard adjustment adoption but the inconsistencies in findings might be generated by variations in the ways in which this variable is measured (Baker, 1991), so it needs to be more carefully conceptualized and consistently measured. There is also a need to ask how hazard experience affects hazard adjustment adoption because of support for the hypothesis that the effect of hazard experience on hazard adjustment adoption is mediated by risk perception (Lindell & Hwang, 2008) but other evidence contradicts the hypothesis (Lindell & Prater, 2000). Finally, demographic variables continue to have inconsistent correlations with disaster response and hazard adjustment. These findings are consistent with previous conclusions by Baker (1991) and Lindell and Perry (2000). As is the case with hazard experience, the weak results for demographic variables might be attributable to having causal effects on variables early in the causal process such as hazard proximity, as proposed in the social vulnerability literature (Wisner, Blaikie, Cannon, & Davis, 2004). Thus, demographic variables deserve continued examination to determine whether they affect hazard adjustment adoption indirectly through variables such as perception of threat, stakeholders, and hazard adjustment attributes rather than directly.
Methodological Directions The vast majority of empirical studies on disaster response and hazard adjustment adoption have been conducted in developed counties, although there are some exceptions such as research on indigenous knowledge that have frequently been reported in (p. 409) the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research. Moreover, there is a need for additional studies of disaster response and hazard adjustment adoption by ethnic minorities (Eisenman, Glik, Maranon, & Gonzales, 2009) and those with physical and mental disabilities (Rahimi, 1993).
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Response to Environmental Disasters A continuing problem is researchers’ failure to report the intercorrelations among all the variables that were measured. The unavailability of such correlations impedes the replacement of narrative literature reviews, such as this one, with meta-analyses (Borenstein, Hedges, Higgins, & Rothstein, 2009) that can assess the magnitude of the effects of independent variables on hazard adjustment and the intercorrelations of the independent variables with each other. Failure to report correlations among variables has been problematic when reporting the results of regression analyses because many studies have reported only the results of stepwise regressions that identify the most parsimonious set of predictor variables. Stepwise regression analyses can produce extremely misleading results when, for example, two independent variables are correlated with each other but one has a slightly higher correlation with the dependent variable. The stepwise regression algorithm will generally only allow the variable with the slightly higher correlation to enter the equation—even if that correlation is trivially higher—perhaps because of sampling fluctuations. The stepwise regression analysis will indicate that one of the independent variables is an important predictor and the other is not when, in fact, both variables are approximately equally important predictors. In addition, research analyses that test single stage–single equation models cannot assess the validity of mediation models, such as the hazard proximity → hazard experience → risk perception → hazard adjustment model discussed above. Multistage-multiequation models are needed, as are longitudinal designs. If hazards researchers adopt these changes in research designs, data analyses, and reporting practices, future reviews will be able to extract much more valuable information from the studies that are published.
Acknowledgments This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants SES0527699, SES-0838654, CMM0826401, CMM-1138612, and CMM-1129998. None of the conclusions expressed here necessarily reflects views other than those of the author.
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Environmental Injustice, Collaborative Action, and the Inclusionary Shift
Oxford Handbooks Online Environmental Injustice, Collaborative Action, and the Inclusionary Shift Susan Opotow The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology, Forensic Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0022
Abstract and Keywords Psychologists’ environmental work fosters protection of the natural world (e.g., forests, animals, ecosystems) and opposes environmental degradation. Utilizing research on seven activist environmental collaboratives that addressed long-standing environmental and health challenges, this chapter examines moral exclusion in environmental degradation that has disproportionately burdened low-income communities of color for many decades. Research on these projects identifies strategies, activities, and successes of environmental justice collaborations can effect a shift from moral exclusion to moral inclusion. A study of their work, which includes education, research, and outreach, offers a nuanced and activity-based understanding of processes that can foster moral inclusion. Keywords: scope of justice, moral exclusion, moral inclusion, minority populations, environmental justice, environmentalism, environmental racism, scope of justice, pollution, ecosystem degradation, hazardous facilities, toxic wastes, activism, coalitions, participatory research, fair trade
Introduction In April 2011, Benjamin Chavis Jr. (2011) proposed a Black American Earth Day: A “Black American Earth Day” should be a day of solidarity with all people, but in particular with other people of color, who like Black Americans are disproportionately exposed to environmental injustices and life-threatening pollutions and toxic hazards. These dangerous problems are local, statewide, regional, national and international. In Harlem, South Central Los Angeles, Southside Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, New Orleans, and in just about every other place in America where we reside, we find ourselves disproportionately with high rates of asthma and other respiratory diseases, multiple forms of cancer, and other sicknesses that are directly related to harmful exposure to environmental hazards in the air that we breathe, as well as in the water and food that we consume. Chavis, credited with coining the term “environmental racism,” cowrote a landmark study commissioned by the United Church of Christ a quarter century before that documented the disproportionate siting of waste facilities in communities of color (Chavis & Lee, 1987). The study emerged from increasing concern about landfill sitings adjacent to black communities. In late 1970s two communities, one Texas and one in North Carolina, mounted challenges to these decisions (Bullard, 1983; Bullard & Johnson, 2000; US General Accounting Office, 1983; also see Cole & Foster, 2001). In psychology, environmentalism is often associated with the protection of of the natural world (e.g., native forests, endangered animals and plants, and threatened ecosystems) (e.g., Opotow & Clayton, 1994), but another focus concerns environmental costs of modern technology (Oskamp, 2000; Zelezny & Schultz, 2000) and asks who bears these costs. This line of research, called environmental (p. 415) racism, injustice, inequality, or inequity,
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Environmental Injustice, Collaborative Action, and the Inclusionary Shift concerns environmental harms, degradation, and disbenefits that afflict particular groups. It positions social justice and human rights as closely linked to access to clean water, air, and soil (cf., Opotow & Weiss, 2000; Syme & Nancarrow, this volume) because, without a healthy environment, basic human rights and freedoms cannot be achieved (cf., Laituri & Kirby, 1994; Pulido, 1991). Psychologists and other researchers concerned with the environment have often been part of multidisciplinary collaborations that combine research, practice, and advocacy to foster the well-being of individuals, communities, and ecosystems (Opotow & Gieseking, 2011). This chapter examines moral exclusion as it plays out in environmental degradation, focusing on how polluting practices have disproportionately burdened low-income communities of color for many decades. It describes scope of justice theory, current environmental issues, and, utilizing Pulido’s (2000) work, on environmental racism, discusses how environmental justice connects with moral exclusion and inclusion. The second section describes research on collaborative efforts that have addressed environmental and health challenges of poor and minority communities. The final section discusses how collaborative alliances can redress environmental injustice, widen the scope of justice to foster the well-being of communities.
The Scope of Justice The scope of justice is a construct that calls our attention to implicit beliefs about fairness. Morton Deutsch (1985) has described justice as applicable only in “social relations or social systems in which there is perceived to be at least a minimal degree of actual, normatively expected or potential cooperation” (p. 37). Working from his idea that a narrow scope of justice will result in a narrow set of situations in which one’s thinking and behavior will be governed by considerations of justice, my research has examined social psychological contexts in which the scope of justice has changed. To facilitate this research, I modify the scope of justice and developed a Scope of Justice Scale (Opotow, 1987, 1993, 1996) that consists of three attitudes indicating that someone or something is within one’s scope of justice or is morally included: (1) the belief that considerations of fairness apply to a person, group, or place; (2) the willingness to allocate a share of community resources to protect that person, group, or place; and (3) the willingness to make sacrifices to foster their well-being. The scale suggests that considering what is fair for others and enacting it through resource allocations—even when doing so may incur costs to oneself —is consistent with inclusionary attitudes. In contrast, people or places outside the scope of justice can be viewed as morally excluded and viewed as nonentities and unworthy of rights, resources, sacrifices (Opotow, 1990). Those outside the scope of justice are vulnerable to exploitation and harm. Exclusionary behavior is evident when individuals or groups lack public goods such as clean air and water, quality education, health care, housing, and worker enforced safety codes. Excluded places can be exploited for their resources or serve as dumps for residential or industrial waste. Because moral exclusion is normalized as “the way things are” or “the way they ought to be,” people, groups, or places outside the scope of justice may be harmed without provoking sense of outrage or calls for redress because such harms may seem natural and inevitable. Exclusion from the scope of justice is relevant for a wide variety of environmental issues including the protection of animals, fragile habitats, ecosystems, or commons. I have studied the social psychological antecedents of extending justice concerns to endangered or disliked animals (Opotow, 1987, 1993, 1994), ranchers’ views of listing the Preble’s Meadow Jumping Mouse as an endangered species (Opotow & Brook, 2003; US Department of the Interior, 1988), and how people living in Namibia’s arid Kunene region view the conservation of nature and charismatic megafauna (i.e., large mammals with widespread appeal, such as elephants, lions, leopards, and cheetahs; Chang & Opotow, 2009). I situate my research within the Lewinian tradition that is attentive to the interaction between people and their environment (Lewin, 1935, 1936) and draw inspiration from Lewin’s post– World War II research on minority rights, civic participation, and democratic processes. Lewin viewed the communities in which people live and work and the issues people faced in their communities as a laboratory for studying participatory democracy (Cherry & Borshuk, 1998; Lewin, 1997/1939). In the next section I am attentive to people and the environment, focusing on polluted sites and the people who live in or near them. Both can seem inconsequential to people living in more secure, pristine places.
Environmental Degradation
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Environmental Injustice, Collaborative Action, and the Inclusionary Shift Susan Clayton and Gene Myers (2009) alert psychologists to environmental threats that people experience globally and locally as the result of human activities that adversely affect ecological systems. (p. 416) Their concern is consistent with a large-scale study of the earth’s ecosystems commissioned in 2001 by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. The UN report, Ecosystems and human well-being (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Board, 2005), described the increasing demand for resources (i.e., food, freshwater, timber, fiber, and fuel) throughout the world. Human activities in the past 50 years have changed the earth’s ecosystems in ways that have fostered human well-being and economic development. These changes have resulted in more extensive and rapid ecosystem degradation than any prior period in human history. Habitat destruction to meet human needs and for economic gain has resulted in the irreparable loss of diverse life forms on earth. As a consequence of ongoing environmental degradation, the UN report predicts that there will be diminished ecosystem benefits for future generations, and reparative actions, if instituted immediately, can reverse some but not all ecosystem changes. Irreversible ecosystem changes will disproportionately affect vulnerable groups resulting in increasing poverty, hunger, child and maternal mortality, disease, and gender disparities. The UN report emphasizes the close relationship between the well-being of the physical and human environment. The United States, like the rest of the world, struggles with environmental degradation. While some kinds of pollution are widespread, others are concentrated and disproportionately affect people living near contaminated sites such as power plants, landfills, and brownfields. Decades of research have documented the disproportionate siting of such facilities near low-income communities of color (e.g., Chavis & Lee, 1987; Williams & Collins, 1999). Research on aggregate, long-term effects of segregation and discrimination on health over the life course describes how societal policies can undermine health by isolating people into particular neighborhoods that reinforce economic segregation and limit access to key resources such as schools, jobs, medical care, parks, stores, and healthpromoting activities (Ruel & Robert, 2009). Isolated and low income communities exposed to industrial waste in their water, air, and soil have been labeled “sacrifice zones,” “fence-line,” or “throwaway” communities. Such communities sit on or next to some of the most toxic sites in America (Bullard, 2011; Lerner, 2010). Siting toxic and hazardous facilities in communities of color has a long history. As one example, Eno Road, a tiny black community in Dickson County, Tennessee, abuts a landfill containing toxic chemicals that have polluted its water. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert (2006) described Eno Road as a quiet rustic area with an interesting history. Hundreds of acres of land along the road were acquired by blacks in the post-slavery period. Only recently freed, they were proud of being landowners. The Holts have lived in the community for many decades. Blacks make up just 4.5 percent of the Dickson County population, and they have always been clustered in the vicinity of Eno Road. This has been a great convenience for the whites, who have run the local governments. For six decades, the Eno Road community has been designated as the place for whites to dump their garbage. (p. 19) This community was founded after the Civil War when slavery was abolished. People who had been enslaved wanted to own land to be self-employed and be able to earn a living in the South’s agrarian society (Foner, 1990). But it was common practice for white landowners to refuse to sell land to black Americans. When land did become available from state governments, it was often encumbered by promissory titles and, later, repossessed by the state or former white owners (Bleser, 1969). Research on family genealogies by Henry Louis Gates (2007) has indicated a strong correlation between land ownership by families after the Civil War and achievement of their decendents today (Browne-Marshall, 2007). Siting hazardous waste adjacent to land that had been acquired and retained by black families against all odds after the Civil War and during Jim Crow (see Blumenthal, 2006) violates the ideal, land of opportunity, that America holds dear. Environmental injustice became a newsworthy topic when President Bill Clinton signed Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations, Executive Order 12898 (1994) 24 years after the first Earth Day in 1970. The executive order was a victory after decades of legal and community opposition to environmental injustice (see Paben, 2011). The executive order directed federal agencies to address the “disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects on minority populations and lowincome populations” and to coordinate their activities as they developed a comprehensive environmental justice strategy. Although Executive Order 12898 generated hope for significant change, six years later, almost half (46%)
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Environmental Injustice, Collaborative Action, and the Inclusionary Shift of the housing units designated for poor residents in Dallas, Texas (p. 417) were situated within a mile of factories cited by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for toxic emissions (Bullard, 2005). Some communities have prevailed in environmental injustice lawsuits. For example, in 2001 a black community adjacent to a Monsanto facility in Alabama contaminated with polychlorinated byphenyls won a $42.8 million out-ofcourt settlement in a class action suit. In 2002 in Louisiana, a minority community located between two Shell Oil facilities secured a $5 million community redevelopment fund and a buyout that allowed residents to relocate (Bullard, 2005). But in spite of these cases in which polluting companies have acknowledged damage they have inflicted and have compensated communities for long-term exposure to toxins, environmental injustice has persisted. To mark the 20th anniversary of Chavis and Lee’s 1987 report, the United Church of Christ commissioned a new study, Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty, 1987–2007: Grassroots Struggles to Dismantle Environmental Racism (Bullard, Mohai, Saha, & Wright, 2007) the study utilized 2000 census data, a national database of commercial hazardous waste facilities, and geographic information systems to conduct a national assessment of racial and socioeconomic disparities and the location of waste sites. It reviewed the current state of environmental racism in the United States and examined racial disparities by region, state, and metropolitan area. The study found that: more than 5 million people of color, including 2.5 million Latinos, 1.8 million African Americans, 600,000 Asians and Pacific Islanders, and 60,000 Native Americans, live in “host neighborhoods” within 3 kilometers of one or more commercial hazardous waste facilities; 56% of people living in host neighborhoods adjacent to the nation’s 413 commercial hazardous waste facilities were people of color; and poverty rates in such neighborhoods were 1.5 times greater than in communities further from such facilities. This study revealed that 20 years after Chavis & Lee’s initial report in 1987, significant socioeconomic disparities in exposure to hazardous environmental sites remained. It recommended corrective legislative and executive measures at the local, state, and federal levels; industry adoption of clean production processes; and distribution of health information and regular health monitoring for host neighborhood residents and facility workers. Environmental racism remains a challenge in many low-income communities of color today. For example in 2010 a the weekly newspaper, Washington Informer, reported that “four of five residents in California’s most polluted neighborhoods are minorities, but it’s the elders among them who face the greatest risks” (Nahmyo, 2010). It noted that across the United States, seniors live in “cancer alleys” near polluting factories, some now closed, in which these seniors worked decades ago. In poor, predominantly minority neighborhoods, the lack of good health care along with long-term exposure to air pollution have resulted in a disproportionate incidence of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. In this example of environmental injustice, we see what Fine and Ruglis (2009) call “circuits of dispossession,” the negative consequences that move from one sphere of society to another with a “façade of naturalness” (p. 20). Their analysis extends Harvey’s (2004) work on the privatization of public goods, which he describes as “accumulation by dispossession [and] is about dispossessing somebody of their assets or their rights.” This occurs when common property is taken out of the public sphere by privatizing it. Water is an example: “Traditionally, everybody had had access to water, and [when] it gets privatized, you have to pay for it” (Harvey, 2004). To borrow from Fine and Ruglis (2009), disadvantage courses from the economic sphere in unemployment and underemployment, poverty, and facility siting, to the social sphere in housing segregation, and to the health sphere and into bodies, blood, and lungs as communities are dispossessed of clean water, air, and land, precious resources that support healthy life. Instead, both private and public sectors appropriate environmental resources and produce environmental pollution that concentrates in bodies and communities over time. Thus poor communities of color bear the costs of profit and well-being elsewhere. This is moral exclusion in action as harms are invisible, normalized, and cumulative that are concentrated in particular people and places.
Environmental Racism Laura Pulido (2000) describes environmental racism from a structural and geographic perspective and argues that environmental racism is “the product of relationships between distinct places, including industrial zones, affluent suburbs, working-class suburbs, and downtown areas, all of which are racialized” (p. 13). Rather than view racism as a specific malicious act, Pulido situates racism within structural factors that perpetuate environmental
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Environmental Injustice, Collaborative Action, and the Inclusionary Shift inequalities. Drawing on research on residential segregation (Massey & Denton, 1993) and employment patterns (Kirschenman & Neckerman, 1991), (p. 418) Pulido locates racism in systems that support white privilege as “an organizing principle in social and cultural relations” (Lipsitz, 1995, p. 369). In her research she asks, “How did whites distance themselves from industrial pollution and nonwhites?” (p. 14). She situates her answer in three related practices: racialized environments, anti-racist affirmations, and unwillingness to act or tolerate inconvenience to racial and environmental justice. She has argued that racism does not emerge only from discriminatory attitudes or behavior but also, and with more lasting influence, from social and cultural systems that offer white people a set of environmental benefits they come to expect and are protected by custom and law (cf., Harris, 2005). Pulido’s work directs our attention to the spatiality of racism, “distinct geographies of exposure” (p. 33) in the relationship between industrial and residential zones. This spatiality has a history. As whites abandoned zones abutting environmental hazards, these zones were increasingly occupied by racial and ethnic minorities. The seemingly natural “upward” movement of whites away from inner cities to suburbs did not seem to be a racist act. Cumulatively and over time, zoning laws and urban development policies were codified and contributed to de facto segregation. The racial history underlying such siting decisions is informative. In the 1920s during Jim Crow, a period when residential segregation was a norm that was violently enforced (Woodward, 1966), zoning laws in Los Angeles promoted the concentration of industrial activity in poorer, nonwhite areas and the development of whites-only housing developments (Pulido, 2000). This encouraged white residents of Los Angeles to move from the inner city and into suburban communities (cf. Sharpe & Wallock, 1994). In this, Pulido has argued, we can see white privilege as people exploited the benefits of whiteness while denying that their motives for residential change were motivated by racism. Pulido’s analysis clarifies that exclusionary practices, laws, and policies imposed the costs of public and commercial polluting activities on black Americans and cast the disadvantage they experienced— disadvantage that was unwanted by those who fled polluted zones—as nonracist, acceptable, and natural. Environmental racism, therefore, resulted from millions of choices made by countless individuals over time that, in the aggregate, constitute “a racial formation, and are a response to conditions deliberately created by the state and capital” (Pulido, 2000, p. 25). In the next section I describe studies of seven grassroots environmental initiatives that were formed to denaturalize environmental racism and the exclusionary status quo. These initiatives were collaborative efforts that sought a shift from environmental injustice to environmentally sound, health-promoting policies. These cases offer insight into initiatives and activities that can address long-standing exclusionary practices to foster inclusionary change.
Collaborations to Redress Environmental Injustice Environmental conflicts are best addressed at the local level, as this is where they matter most (Syme, Kals, Nancarrow, & Montada, 2000). Local people want to resolve the environmental issues they face, and their knowledge of the particulars of their community, both physically and socially, can inform environmentally sensitive and sound policy (cf., Chang & Opotow, 2009). By acting together and exercising their rights, community groups can seek to end their disproportionate exposure to environmental toxins. When multi-group collaborations mobilize stakeholders and engage allies to collectively protests long-standing environmental pollution, they can obtain access to legal and political power that they may not have had before (Smith & Pangsapa, 2008). Using PsycINFO, a psychological database, to search for environmental justice initiatives, I identified seven studies that examined community mobilization efforts to redress long-standing pollution. Each described environmental problems faced by a community, how the community addressed these problems, and effects of their efforts. The first study describes environmental coalitions formed to address pollution; the rest describe initiatives mounted by of community-based coalitions. Together, these cases offer insight into the de-normalization of moral exclusion to foster inclusionary change.
Study 1: Environmental Justice and Social Movements Groups Tamara Mix’s (2011) research focused on coalitions between two kinds of organizations. The first, environmental justice groups, seek to end racial biases in environmental practices, laws, and enforcement (cf. Schlosberg, 1999).
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Environmental Injustice, Collaborative Action, and the Inclusionary Shift The second, social movement organizations, seek to advance specific social issues (e.g., peace, ethical treatment of animals, and civil rights; cf. Shaffer, 2000). Environmental justice groups tend to be grassroots, working class, and live and/or work close to hazardous environments, while people involved in social movement organizations tend to have more (p. 419) schooling and live and work in more secure and less polluted circumstances. Based on interviews and focus groups with a sample of community-based, grassroots environmental justice activists across the United States, Mix notes that there are three kinds of coalitions: (1) two-organization coalitions, (2) multi-stakeholder coalitions formed to address a galvanizing issue, and (3) multi-issue, multi-organization coalitions in which environmental justice groups work with social movement organizations to address a broad range of concerns. Mix’s research respondents described the challenges of collaborative work, which include group competition over scarce resources, suspicions that one group will co-opt the other’s agenda, and the costs of labor-intensive work such as outreach and education. Respondents also described the benefits of collaborative work: enhanced understanding of local and community experiences and concerns, the opportunity to share resources, and the ability to speak with a strong voice that can hold those in power accountable for environmental injustice and enlist them in change. Building such coalitions can be difficult, she found, because environmental justice and social movements groups differ in a number of ways including ethnicity/race, social class, and exposure to pollutants. In spite of these difficulties, Mix describes coalition-building as important because of its potential to increase awareness about environmental justice and to effect positive change. This typology of organizational coalitions makes a practical contribution to research on social contexts. Thomas Pettigrew (1997) has argued that experimental psychology “has yet to formulate a taxonomy of situations or to specify a consistent means of measuring and comparing situations” (p. 424). By differentiating among various kinds of coalitions, Mix offers researcher a tool to study the coalitional work that can address chronic environmental injustice. Descriptions of coalitions that follow utilize her typology, starting with simpler and moving to more complex coalitions.
Study 2: Environmental Awareness and Theater of the Oppressed Communities Organized Against Asthma & Lead (COAAL) in Houston, Texas is a project designed to bring together health experts and community members. Instituted by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Environmental Justice Project at the University of Texas Medical Branch, the project works with local communities on the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast to address the “tangled power dynamics overarching environmental justice” (Sullivan et al., 2008, p. 167). To advocate for environmental changes that would improve community health, COOAL created a series of two-organization coalitions with several fence-line communities (cf. Mix, 2011). COAAL draws on the work of Brazilian theater director, writer, and politician Augusto Boal (1931–2009), who developed Theater of the Oppressed in the 1960s (Cohen-Cruz & Schutzman, 2006). Theater of the Oppressed is a theatrical method that seeks to foster personal growth via dramaturgical experiences that encourage spontaneity in image-making and improvisation. COAAL utilizes Boal’s methods to deepen environmental and health knowledge and develop community support networks in Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast fence-line communities that share a boundary with such pollution point sources as hazardous waste sites and petrochemical and power plants. The project asked participants to examine hidden, unexamined issues and influences such as local histories and power dynamics. Through the participation of toxicological, epidemiological, and medical experts the project encouraged participants to expand their knowledge about environmental issues and their expressive abilities in order to increase the community’s capacity for advocacy.
Studies 3–5: Community-Based Participatory Research and Pollution Drawing from psychological work on health and community capacity-building (cf. Freudenberg, 2004), Minkler, Breckwich-Vasquez, Tajik, and Petersen (2008) examined several community-based participatory research in projects that addressed community health problems and sought policy changes to address them. Minkler and her colleagues utilized such qualitative methods as site visits, interviews, and focus groups) along with a multi-site case study approach (Yin, 2009) to examine two-organization and multi-stakeholder coalitions (cf. Mix, 2011) that formed around galvanizing, local environmental issues. I describe three of their studies in which community residents worked with university researchers, lawyers, and other organizations to address a specific environmental
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Environmental Injustice, Collaborative Action, and the Inclusionary Shift concern, assess its prevalence, and seek redress.
Study 3: Air Pollution and Asthma in Harlem To study the high rates of asthma, West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT), a community (p. 420) group in Harlem, New York, worked with the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health at the Columbia University School of Public Health (“the center”) (Minkler et al., 2008). Trained by researchers at the center, WE ACT conducted a research project to assess concentrations of fine particulate matter in Harlem’s airshed that result from diesel pollution. High school students participated in the study as project air monitors. Their data indicated that concentrations of fine particulate matter was, in some areas, 200% above the EPA’s maximum level (Kinney et al., 2000). Utilizing these data, WE ACT raised public awareness of this health hazard through media advocacy, legal complaints, and outreach to decision makers. This project and WE ACT were credited with the conversion of New York City buses to clean diesel fuel and the mandating of air quality by the federal EPA in Harlem and at other sites locally and nationally with similar environmental concerns.
Study 4: Toxic Air and Industry in Los Angeles The Southern California Environmental Justice Collaborative is a partnership of several grassroots organizations. It includes a community group, Communities for a Better Environment; researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz, Occidental College, and Brown University; and a small philanthropic organization (Minkler et al., 2008). Taking an epidemiological approach and utilizing data in governmental databases, the collaborative developed a “health riskscape” of South Los Angeles assessing “demographic and geographical distributions of pollution burdens” (Morello-Frosch et al., 2005, p. 379) in the area. Their data indicated that industry tends to locate in areas that are disproportionaly populated by low-income minority communities. This debunked a prevalent assumption that minorities move into areas that are already heavily industrialized and polluted. The collaborative publicized its findings via the media, which focused public attention on regulatory agencies responsible for locally disliked and environmentally polluting siting decisions. The collaborative’s work secured a revision of regional regulations governing maximum lifetime cancer risk and a tightening of emission standards. Over time, both meaures should improve regional health.
Study 5: Lead Contamination in Oklahoma Tribal Efforts Against Lead (TEAL) is a collaboration in the Tar Creek area in northeastern Oklahoma. The area was designated as a Superfund site in 1984 because of acid mine drainage and lead contamination (Minkler et al., 2008). The collaboration included eight tribes and nations, affected nontribal communities, faculty from Emory University, the Universities of New Mexico and Oklahoma, and the Ottawa County Department of Public Health. It focused on a long-standing local concern about the contamination of soil and the high blood levels of lead in Native American children exposed to granular mine tailings (chat) used on roads and in local construction. TEAL arranged to collect data on blood levels of lead before and after an intervention conducted by a lay health adviser. It also collected survey data from caregivers and performed environmental home assessments (Kegler & Malcoe, 2004). Legally, TEAL could not be involved in advocacy for policy change because of federal funding regulations, but members of its community partner, Clan Mothers and Fathers, advocated as citizens on behalf of the communities affected. TEAL is credited with raising awareness of lead exposure within the community and among local decision makers. Their work led to regulations that limited the use of chat and instituted a program of routine lead testing for children by the county health department and the Indian Health Service.
Summary of Studies 3–5: Forming Effective Partnerships Commenting on findings that emerged from the cases they studied, Minkler et al. (2008) identified three factors that facilitate the formation of effective partnerships that can influence public policy: first, project leadership by a strong, autonomous community group that can mobilize the local people; second, effective collaboration among partners; and third, the pooling of complementary resources, including the skills and extended networks of project partners. The researchers also found that an appreciation of the community’s history of environmental burdens and its struggles along with “a shared sense of community, and a commitment to shared values (e.g., environmental justice) underlying the project may be critical to maintain a strong and focused partnership in the
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Environmental Injustice, Collaborative Action, and the Inclusionary Shift face of such tensions” (p. 135). Such collaborations, they found, have the capacity to challenge the normalization and seeming inevitability of ongoing environmental degradation by positioning it as an urgent issue. Surfacing these issues for public scrutiny can mobilize affected communities and enlist the media and engage (p. 421) governmental representatives. I discuss these inclusionary tactics in a later section.
Study 6: Opposing Polluting Industries A community’s successful efforts to prevent the issuing of a permit for a proposed coal-fired electrical power plant in Taylor County, Florida served as a case study for Stokes, Hood, Zokovitch, and Close (2010). Their research analyzed the mobilization and process of opposition in Taylor County in order to create a blueprint that would be useful in future conflicts over the siting of pollution-generating facilities in already burdened communities. The Taylor County community had been designated as the site for a coal-fired power plant in the region. The community had already been disproportionally exposed to pollution from a nearby paper mill that had contaminated local waterways and property. It was also disadvantaged socioeconomically as several measures of well-being indicate. It was in the fourth (i.e., the lowest) quartile in median income, unemployment, and population over age 25 without a high school diploma, and it was in the third (i.e., next to the lowest) quartile of residents with household income below poverty level. When the coal-fired electrical power plant was proposed, the community lacked a coalition that could have effectively opposed the plant, but a partnership emerged that included Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, Wildlaw (a not-for-profit environmental law firm), and a community-based organization called TRUE. Together these organizations formed a new organization, the Taylor County No Coal Coalition, which secured a grant from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry/Association of Minority Professional Health Schools. Stokes et al.’s paper delineates how the coalition addressed the challenges they faced. In summarizing their findings they advised similarly-situated communities to: (1) do your homework – investigate the power plant partnership, ask about alternative technologies; (2) participate – in local decision-making processes, the state certification and siting processes, the federal review and permitting; (3) get involved at the grassroots level – participate in steering committee meetings, county master planning boards, community surveys and analyses, and other local activities; 4) negotiate – argue for an environmentally friendlier and healthier facility with postconstruction options. These steps, they argue, can increase the knowledge of local residents and foster community engagement throughout this complex process.
Study 7: Bananas and Fair Trade Henry Frundt’s (2009) research on a fair trade for bananas describes the development of a system developed to foster environmental justice for agricultural workers and protect the environment. Fair trade is a social movement that uses market-based approaches to assist small producers in developing countries so that they can offer fair compensation to their workers and protect workers’ health as well as the environment. Producers who adhere to established fair trade standards, which are attentive to social, economic, and environmental justice, would be eligible for fair trade certification and higher prices for their bananas. Consumers purchasing fair trade bananas would be assured that they are buying products produced under fair labor conditions for hours worked, compensation, benefits, and protection from environmental hazards such as pesticides. Fair trade was first developed to secure the rights and well-being of banana workers and small producers. It and has since been extended to other products including chocolate, tea, coffee, sugar, and wine. Using Mix’s typology (2011), fair trade is a multi-issue, multi-organization project that depends on a broad collaboration of local banana workers and producers and consumers living in distant, affluent countries who are willing to pay a premium for banana production that takes into account workers’ needs and rights. The goals of fair trade are inclusionary and achieving them requires cooperation among proximate and distal partners. The history and challenges of achieving fair trade to benefit banana workers in Latin America is the subject of Frundt’s research. He describes how fair trade was designed for small producers, but bigger producers, seeing
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Environmental Injustice, Collaborative Action, and the Inclusionary Shift potential for market share, sought fair trade designation too. But when some of the claimed environmental and labor enhancements proved illusory, there was a tightening of standards and rules to close loopholes. As one example, the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides (i.e., to prevent worker exposure) and recycling and the disposal of banana wastes (i.e., to prevent environmental degradation) utilized by some producers did not always conform to best practices, sometimes because of the practicalities of farming and sometimes because of producer shortcuts to evade fair trade standards. Fair trade can foster significant positive change. Frundt argued that when it can maintain high employment and environmental standards and when it is sustainable, it can bring about significant change in the status quo. Such change would mean that more people would be able to work for sufficient (p. 422) pay. As a result, the health needs of workers’ families could be met, their children could attend school, the natural environment in which workers live and work would be vibrant, and workers’ community and cultural life would be strengthened, not only in the present, but for future generations as well. Achieving these goals would substantially increase the well-being of banana workers, many of whom are members of such disenfranchised groups as indigenous people, women, and immigrants who are vulnerable to negative economic and environmental change.
Bettering the Environment: From Moral Exclusion to Moral Inclusion The cases I have described offer details on the specifics of collaborative work intended to foster inclusionary change. Activist coalitions educate the community, the media, public agencies, officials, legislators, and the courts to set higher standards for environmental health and safety that can foster well-being and environmental justice. The work described in these cases begins at the local level but, in some cases, has effected policy change and protective laws at state and national levels. Specifying local activities that yield inclusionary effects is important. Unlike moral exclusion, which can take hold as a discriminatory ethos gains momentum quickly, moral inclusion tends to occur over a long period (Opotow, 2008). Sustainable inclusionary change need to occur in several societal spheres—legal, social, political, and economic—and at micro and macro levels of analysis (Opotow, 2006). Thus, a focus on the activities of local groups offers insight into contexts in which inclusionary change can take root. Vygotsky’s (1978) construct, zone of proximal development, is relevant to the community and collaborative activities described in these cases. In such zones, Vygotksy has argued, people are positioned to foster each others’ development and learning. Through taking in information (internalization) and producing information (externalization), people, such as those working in environmental coalitions, revise their understandings, norms, and standards (Lektorsky, 1999). Activities in such contexts have the potential to transform how people view themselves and their communities (Muñoz Proto & Opotow, 2012). Activity theory, developed early in the 20th century in political philosophy and Russian psychology, draws on the work of Vygotsky, Luria, and Leont’ev. It bridges two main approaches in psychology: one looks at individuals and their development, attitudes, and actions; the other concerns societal structures that influence human behavior. Activity theory connects these two strands by examining how individuals influence societal structures (Engeström, 1999). This emphasis on activity, agency, and influence is particularly relevant for contexts in which social injustice is pervasive.
Collaboration and Environmental Inclusion Utilizing the Scope of Justice Scale (Opotow, 1987, 1993, 1996) as a conceptual guide, the next sections discuss the activities these case describe to precipitate change and widen the scope of justice. I especially focus on: 1) applying considerations of fairness to affected communities and their residents; 2) allocating resources to benefit formerly marginalized and polluted communities; and 3) bettering such communities even when doing so requires sacrifices and changes in the status quo.
Considerations of Fairness Extending fairness to others is a core goal of activist environmental collaboratives. In these cases, “considerations of fairness” concerns justice, rights, respect, entitlement, and deserving. Environmentally burdened communites and their allies speak of unfairness as lack of protection from harm, lack of parity with other communities, and lack of access to environmental and health data. The sense that fairness was violated is important because it is
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Environmental Injustice, Collaborative Action, and the Inclusionary Shift motiviating. It can inspire efforts to change extant laws, rules, and practices so that they are more fair and protective, and so that communities that have been morally excluded can be part of environmental decisions that affect them. Perceptions of unfairness can forge connections among disparate stakeholders and give rise to creative, collaborative initiatives. Considerations of fairness, therefore, is an influential construct because it speaks to the engagement of environmental activists, the larger public, and decision makers in issues that were previously accepted, excused, or ignored.
Allocation of Resources Collaborative efforts to foster environmental justice begins with resources. In these seven cases key resources included law, empirical data, education, and partnerships. Environmental coalitions utilized extant law to challenge polluting practices and to advocate for new laws that would protect people and places. Making the case that fairness has been violated depends on marshaling and disseminating evidence. These cases indicate that doing so is a key activity of environmental justice collaborations. To support their advocacy work, coalitions collected data from individuals (e.g., blood levels of lead), (p. 423) environmental assessments of homes, mapping of polluted sites in the region, and measurements of pollutants in commons (e.g., air quality). They also utilized existing environmental and health data. Data then served as the basis for educational and advocacy efforts and were disseminated to the community, to decision makers, and to the public via the media. Education was also a key resource because it broadened community knowledge of health risks associated with environmental pollution, garnering support for advocacy. Educational programs included experiential learning (e.g., theatrical improvisation) and community lectures by health experts. High school students who collected data on air quality in Harlem contributed information to the project as well as fostered their own learning. Minkler et al. (2008) noted that partnerships among groups were a key resource for change, but Mix (2011) warned of the potential for conflict as stakeholders within collaborations compete for resources. Mix observed that coalition-building and coordinated action can be labor-intensive, but coordinated action can also be efficient when resouces are shared. Cooperation, therefore, is a key resource in these coalitions that connect people across occupations and socioeconomic backgrounds. Cooperation can benefit from and be challenged by the ways that partners differ from each other (e.g., socioeconomic status, education level, and environmental exposure; cf., Minkler et al., 2008). The efficacy of coalitions clearly depended on their ability to cooperate. As Deutsch (1973) describes, cooperation is fostered by an emphasis on harmony, mutual interests, similarities, trust, honest communication, and norms that favor power sharing and persuasion over coercion. These characteristics of cooperation suggest that moral inclusion begins as a stance toward others within a collaboration and can then ripple out into the proximate and distal parties in the larger society.
Willingness to Sacrifice Willingness to sacrifice in these seven cases focused on concrete and psychological costs of change, including cleaning up and retrofitting facilities with newer, cleaner technology. In her discussion of white privilege, Pulido (2000) argued that white privilege was asserted in an unwillingness to endure the inconvenience to foster equality. This suggests that the willingness to share and sacrifice to foster others’ well-being is a key component of moral inclusion at the individual and collective levels. Redistributing the costs of pollution so that they do not fall on one sector of society inevitably requires a reallocation of resources as well as change in the structures that distribute disadvantage and privilege. Willingness to sacrifice is akin to, willingness to proenvironmental commitments, identified as a core variable by Leo Montada and Elisabeth Kals (2000) in their model of proenviromnental commitment. Willingness to make proenvironmental commitments, they argued, can be achieved through a variety of actions “ranging from personal renunciations, to political protest against others’ polluting activities, and to public claims for prohibitive laws” (p. 169). Their research indicated that the willingness to foster the well-being of other people and the natural world is key to proenvironmental change (also see Liu & Silbey, 2011). Thus, the willing to act on behalf of others, even when it entails sacrifice is an important component of moral inclusion.
Conclusion: Inclusionary Change over Time My work on the moral inclusion in the extended postwar period (e.g., Opotow, 2008) indicates that inclusionary
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Environmental Injustice, Collaborative Action, and the Inclusionary Shift changes that challenges the status quo do not come quickly or in a neat, linear progression. It can take generations for a society to change in ways that widen the applicability of justice. Periods of inclusionary progress can be followed by periods of exclusion. Activist work to foster environmental justice is not only a collaborative project across groups, but it is also a collaborative project over time. The projects described in this chapter have required years and, in some cases, decades of work. Inclusionary efforts therefore require sustained commitment. Change occurs in fits and starts, and efforts that bear fruit (e.g., new rules, laws, or executive orders) and hailed as victories can later be undermined or overturned. Thus, Wildlaw, a 25-year-old not-for-profit environmentalist law firm that participated in Stokes et al.’s (2010) study of the Taylor County No Coal Coalition, ceased operations in May 2011 for lack of funding (Vaughn, 2011). Wildlaw’s accomplishments had included protecting 24 million acres of public lands and environmental justice work that involved more than 250 environmental and community groups of all sizes. In its 25 years, Wildlaw worked on behalf of more than 35,000 people living in low-income, underrepresented communities in the South to advocate for the inclusion of their voice in managing the environment that affects their lives. Wildlaw’s Alabama office fought for poor communities of color that were repeatedly burdened (p. 424) by environmental dumping. In November 2010, six months before the Wildlaw Alabama office closed, organizing coordinator Barbara Evans wrote Gwendolyn Keyes Fleming, the EPA’s District 4 administrator: In 1996 the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) permitted a huge regional landfill to be constructed on the then newly designated United States Civil Rights Trail in Lowndes County, Alabama, along the road where the 1965 Voting Rights March took place. The site would have negatively impacted a historic African American community, and was seen as disrespectful, as well as a violation of the President’s Executive Order. A lawsuit proved that the State of Alabama and ADEM had not followed the law with their state solid waste disposal plan but after the technicalities were modified, the plan was approved….Perry County, Alabama, was not so fortunate. The Arrowhead Landfill may not be on a historic highway, but it is yards from homes where African American people live. A lawsuit failed to stop that dump. Now it is home to the coal ash from the Kingston, Tennessee spill. EPA Region 4 staff came to Perry County last year. I attended the meeting, where Region 4 staff stood by the side of Perry County Commissioner Albert Turner, Jr., to convince the people of Uniontown, Alabama that coal ash was safe. Commissioner Turner, with Region 4 staff’s blessing, would not allow people to ask questions if they did not live in the county, including District Attorney for the county, Michael Jackson. The so called public hearing was a sham. Earlier this month I traveled to Knoxville, Tennessee, where I testified before the EPA and asked them to rule coal ash a hazardous material that is not fit for a household garbage landfill. I implored them to send the toxic coal ash to a landfill that houses hazardous and toxic waste rather than dumping it in a landfill so close to a community. I have been working with the people who live right across the street from the dump in Uniontown. They are afraid. The coal ash is everywhere, and the risk to health and safety is high. (Evans, 2010) This letter, so poignant and vivid in is details, documents the persistence of moral exclusion as directly injurious and as and structural injustice. Ms. Evans’ letter, a recent rather than an historical document, speaks to the importance of the linkage between research and advocacy to reveal and oppose injustice that has become routine, established, and seemingly inevitable. Ms. Evans efforts are in the tradition of liberation psychologist Ignacio Martin-Baró (1997) who asked psychologists to focus on the social forces that harm people…[and on] “the existence of particular communities, groups of people who have for too long been marginalized and neglected by those in power” (Ouellette, 2008, p. 4). Researchers concerned with environmental and related social issues utilize participatory methods in collaborative work with communities that critically examine historical and structural injustice (cf. Torre, Fine, Stoudt, & Fox, 2012). Such research draws inspiration from Kurt Lewin, Ignacio Martin-Baró, and the commitment to collaborative fieldwork that has animated environmental psychology since its founding in the 1970s (Proshansky, 1987; Richards, 2000). Fostering inclusionary policies and commitments is, in itself, an important goal. When such collaborative work is effective at local levels, it can inform larger scale and sustained efforts that are urgently needed to protect the earth’s degraded ecosystems if humankind is to thrive.
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Environmental Injustice, Collaborative Action, and the Inclusionary Shift Future Directions for Research 1. Many grassroots, activist coalitions depend on the tireless work of women. Understanding women’s role in environmental justice initiatives would contribute to the literature on gender and justice in environmental contexts and offer insight into the gendered dynamics of such collaborations. 2. The poignant 2010 letter from Ms. Evans to District 4 EPA suggests that there are times and places where environmental data and efforts get a hearing and other times and places where they do not. An analysis of specific times and places where such pleas are heard by decision makers and where they are ignored could offer insight into contextual factors that allow pleas for change to gain traction. Clearly each case has its own socio-political history, decision-making structures, economic resources, and so on. Consistent with Pettigrew’s (1997) call for a typology of situations, these are data that could be helpful in identifying characteristics of contexts that are responsive to social justice claims. Multi-case comparisons could also focus on an analysis of the justice discourses that have advanced such cases as well as those that have not. 3. Research on activist environmental collaborations can be studied as organizational (p. 425) behavior in informal and egalitarian contexts. Organizational studies of activist groups would contribute to a literature on collaborations that are small-scale, time-limited, and include actors from public and private sectors. These collaborations have some similarities to small group studies (e.g., church groups, home owners, or food cooperatives) but differ in significant ways. Such research, conducted from a psychological perspective, could identify how and when groups come together and persist in their work to effect inclusionary change. 4. Some social justice issues are taken up by the media and the public while others are not. It would be important for justice research to focus on the kinds of injustice that have become mundane, invisible, and rarely in the public eye. This research can address the impediments to gaining traction in the larger society. Unfortunately, examples are numerous. 5. In activist environmental collaborations, the parties (community groups, law firms, universities, departments of medicine) vary on virtually all dimensions (size, resources, etc.). In this context, it could be productive to study partners’ goals, where they overlap and where they differ, and when congruent and incongruent goals are synergistic and when they generate discord.
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Environmental Injustice, Collaborative Action, and the Inclusionary Shift Perspectives, 108(3), 213–218. (p. 426) Kirschenman, J., & Neckerman, K. (1991). We’d love to hire them, but…The meaning of race for employers. In C. Jenks & P. Peterson (Eds.), The urban underclass (pp. 203–232). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Laituri, M., & Kirby, A. (1994). Finding fairness in America’s cities? The search for environmental equity in everyday life. Journal of Social Issues, 50(3), 121–139. Lektorsky, A. V. (1999). Activity theory in a new era. In Y. Engeström, R. Miettinen, & R. Punamäki (Eds.), Perspectives on activity theory (pp. 65–69). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lerner, S. (2010). Sacrifice zones: The front lines of toxic chemical exposure in the United States. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lewin, K. (1997). Field theory and experiment in social psychology (1939). In K. Lewin, Resolving social conflicts (pp. 262–278). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Lewin, K. (1936). Principles of topological psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill. Lewin, K. (1935). Dynamic theory of personality. New York: McGraw-Hill. Lipsitz, G. (1995). The possessive investment in whiteness: Racialized social democracy and the “white” problem in American studies. American Quarterly, 47(3), 369–388. Liu, J. H., & Sibley, C. G. (2011). Hope for the future? Understanding self-sacrifice in the face of global warming among young citizens of the world. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 11(1). Martin-Baró, I. (1994). Writings for a liberation psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Massey, D., & Denton, N. (1993). American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Board. (2005). Ecosystems and human well-being: Synthesis. Washington, DC: Island Press. Retrieved from www.millenniumassessment.org/documents/document.356.aspx.pdf. Minkler, M., Vasquez, V. B., Tajik, M., & Petersen, D. (2008). Promoting environmental justice through communitybased participatory research: The role of community and partnership capacity. Health Education & Behavior, 35(1), 119–137. Mix, T. L. (2011). Rally the people: Building local-environmental justice grassroots coalitions and enhancing social capital. Sociological Inquiry, 81(2), 174–194. Montada, L., & Kals, E. (2000). Political implications of psychological research on ecological justice and proenvironmental behaviour. International Journal of Psychology, 35(2), 168–176. Muñoz Proto, C., & Opotow, S. (2012). Studying the World March for Peace and Nonviolence: Marching to resist injustice, acting to foster peace. In M. Deutsch & P. Coleman (Eds.), Psychology’s contributions to the study and practice of sustainable peace. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Nahmyo, T. (2010, June). More Americans grow old in toxic environments. Washington Informer, p. 1, 5. Opotow, S. (2008). Conflict and justice after the American Civil War: Inclusion and exclusion in the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. In K. A. Hegtvedt & J. Clay-Warner (Eds.), Advances in group processes: Special issue on justice (Vol. 25, pp. 55–85). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Opotow, S. (2006). Rationalities and levels of analysis in complex social issues: The examples of school overcrowding and poverty. Social Justice Research, 19(1), 135–150. Opotow, S. (1996). Is justice finite? The case of environmental inclusion. In L. Montada & M. Lerner (Eds.), Social justice in human relations: Current societal concerns about justice (Vol. 3, pp. 213–230). New York: Plenum Press.
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature
Oxford Handbooks Online Therapeutic Uses of Nature Keith C. Russell The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology, Health Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0023
Abstract and Keywords It has been proposed that our growing separation from nature is a driving force behind a multitude of physical, psychological, and emotional ailments pervasive in modern-day society. This chapter provides an overview of the therapeutic use of nature. The history of this use, including the rise of the camping movement, is reviewed to provide the foundation for modern day programs and practice. A theoretical framework of the wilderness experience illustrates how various factors present in nature-based experiences work to restore mental fatigue and revitalize mind, body, and spirit. A review of wilderness therapy programs provides a practical example of how wilderness experiences are integrated with clinical treatment models to effectuate change in adolescents and young adults. The chapter concludes by describing emerging programs and other therapeutic uses of nature, including nature-based programs for cancer survivors and returning veterans, and rites of passage programs for people seeking renewed perspectives on their lives. Keywords: nature, therapy, wilderness experience, restoration, treatment, adolescents, ecopsychology
Introduction We live in an increasingly urbanized and fast-paced world, dominated by rapid advances in technology that seem to move us further and further from the natural systems that sustain us. The philosophy of ecopsychology, introduced almost 20 years ago by Roszak, Gomes, and Kanner (1995), suggests that this growing separation from nature is the driving force behind a multitude of physical, psychological, and emotional ailments pervasive in modern-day society. The first step in helping us reestablish our relationship to nature, and to help unlock what has been referred to as our “ecological identity,” is to develop a deeper awareness of our interdependence with nature. This need to reestablish our connection to nature has been discussed for hundreds of years by the likes of John Muir, in his famous essays on the Sierra and the value of parks to mental and spiritual well-being. Paul Shepard (1982) posited that our whole society may have indeed gone mad due to our separation from nature, and addressed the consequences of this separation in stating that modern humans seem to have “a readiness to strike back at a natural world that we dimly perceive as having failed us” (p. 23). When Richard Louv (2003) published his now famous book Last Child in the Woods, an alarm was again sounded and an international movement began to save our children from “nature deficit disorder.” A practical and instrumental effort in the process of reconnecting our minds, bodies, and spirits to the natural world are the intentional programs and practices that utilize nature for therapeutic purposes. The very idea of a therapeutic “use” of nature implies a dualistic way of thinking that is inherently problematic. The dualism is manifest by implying (p. 429) that as one begins to enter into and use nature, he or she invariably leaves community, culture, and place behind. Indeed, the archetypal heroes’ journey posed by Campbell (1968) involves the hero receiving a call to adventure, a calling that takes her into a strange and wonderful “other world.” This mysterious,
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature unknown, and dangerous world is often characterized by vast oceans, deep forests, and magical mountaintops. The hero’s journey continues with the crossing of the first threshold, leaving the known rules, order, and limits of her world behind, to ultimately achieve the goal of the quest. The journey is not complete until a return crossing of the threshold occurs, where the challenge is to integrate the wisdom learned on the journey into the known world. The duality and metaphorical role that nature plays in the hero’s journey shows how firmly entrenched this dualistic way of knowing, and using, nature is in our Western industrialized consciousness. This inherent split between subject (human, mind, body) and object (nature, wilderness, ecology) is exactly what ecopsychology has sought to reconcile since being introduced more than 25 years ago by Roszak (1992) in his call for an “ecological self.” In fact, Amel, Manning, and Scott (2009) spoke of the project of ecopsychology as one that seeks to “reconnect psychology and ecology largely by reestablishing the self as inextricable from nature” (p. 14). Evidence of this project can be seen in certain practices and programs that seek to reconnect people to nature, themselves, and others through the therapeutic use of nature.
History The movement to view natural landscapes in the United States as beneficial as opposed to adversarial to humankind emerged in the late 19th Century with the publication of the Significance of the American Frontier by Fredrick Jackson Turner (see Nash, 1982). Writers and philosophers such as Henry David Thoreau and John Muir awoke the American conscience to the therapeutic value that wilderness afforded, especially juxtaposed to the steady advance of the industrial revolution during this period. Consequently, several programs and movements emerged during this time period reflecting this awakening that when integrated, form the theoretical and practical foundations of the current therapeutic use of nature by individuals, programs, organizations, and institutions. They are: (a) early camping and therapeutic camping approaches developed in the late 1800s and early 1900s; (b) early wilderness experience and rites of passage programs, such as Outward Bound, which emerged in the 1960s; (c) early primitive skill programs developed by Larry Dean Olsen in the late 1960s; and (d) early adjudicated programs that worked with juvenile delinquents and were an alternative to traditional incarceration. The seminal work on the origins of the therapeutic camping movement written by Will White in Chapter 2 of the text Adventure Therapy (in Gass, Gillis, & Russell, 2012) provides an in-depth exploration of this rich history. The earliest forms of the therapeutic use of nature are found in the organized camping movement that originated in the late 1800s in the eastern United States. The first summer camps were developed by educators from boarding schools looking for unique ways to fill the summer months of primarily upper-class youth from Boston and New York City. McNeil (1957) described the evolution of the therapeutic camping movement as a direct reaction to the physical and moral declines of youth growing up during the industrial revolution. The Gunnery School (1861) and Camp Chocorua (1881) are widely believed to be the first camps in the United States that had an intentional therapeutic component for youth (White, 2010). Frederick Gunn established the Gunnery School, which involved outdoor living in a camp setting, to develop character and “re-create the romanticized view of a soldier’s life [the camp originated during the Civil War] of camping under the stars” (Eells, 1986, p. 5). In August 1861, Gunn and his wife took the whole school on a two-week hiking and camping trip. Camp Chocorua was founded to help the male campers develop independence and responsibility and get away from the cultural comforts of growing up in an upper class household (Eells, 1986, p.7). The campers cooked all of their own meals over an open fire and learned basic outdoor skills, including basic camp skills, swimming, and canoeing. With these camps as the foundation, the late 19th century saw an explosion of camps for youth in the United States and around the world. These early camps helped form the foundation of the first modern-day camps designed specifically to address behaviorally and emotionally challenged youth. An interesting and accidental discovery by staff at a mental health hospital in New York also occurred during the early part of the 20th century. As portrayed by Caplan (1974), staff at the Manhattan State Hospital East had to quarantine 40 mental health patients during the summer because of fear that tuberculosis would spread throughout the hospital. Due to a lack of space, patients were placed in tents by a nearby river and assumed their normal routines. The hospital staff noticed significant improvements in both their medical condition and their mental health symptoms. The experiment was (p. 430) so successful that administrators began to move the other nontuberculosis patients into the tents to reap the benefits of this remarkable discovery. Many patients were discharged from the hospital as they were pronounced cured of their “insanity.” When fall arrived, patients were moved back inside, at which time staff noted a marked deterioration of their symptoms and well-being. A small
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature group that remained outside in a winterized tent continued to show improvement in their mental and physical health, prompting a brief trend of hospitals using “tent treatment” approaches based on these reports which first appeared in the American Journal of Insanity. Recognizing the therapeutic value of camping, alternative camps began to emerge during this period to intentionally address the physical, social, and emotional needs of troubled youth. Camp Ramapo, founded in 1922, was the first camp developed specifically for emotionally challenged young people. The purpose of the camp was to socialize troubled children through a structured curriculum implemented in a natural setting by staff, which included psychiatric social workers working with counselors. This natural setting, which included group living and extended unstructured time with staff, helped to socialize the boys and develop important outdoor recreational skills aimed at improving their physical health. This period also saw the development of Camp Wawokiye-1926, Camp Wediko-1935, and the University of Michigan Fresh Air Camp-1944. Morse (1957), founder of the Fresh Air Camp, provided early justification for why camps would be effective for “maladjusted youth,” especially when compared to other residential institutions of the era, in highlighting that nature provided structure that was not controlling or artificial and that the camp environment was relaxed and did not require the use of extensive punishment. Camp Ahmek (1929) was also founded during this time and is one of the more well-known camps of this era. The camp curriculum reflected a youth development approach with two major goals: recuperate and socialize the behavior of the young campers (Davis-Berman & Berman, 1994b). These goals were accomplished by having campers live and function in small groups, in natural settings, away from the distractions of burgeoning urban and industrial centers in the East. Camp Ahmek helped lead to the creation of later programs, such as the Dallas Salesmanship Club, founded by Campbell Loughmiller in 1946. Loughmiller (1965), in the famous book Wilderness Road, argued that the outdoors contained real threats and natural consequences that helped teach campers personal and social responsibility, that were reasoned to naturally transfer to their everyday lives. The use of natural consequences as a therapeutic tool afforded by living and traveling in wilderness environments and the subsequent development of responsibility and self-efficacy to this day remain a key benefit in the therapeutic use of nature by modern-day programs such as Outward Bound. During the same period that therapeutic camping emerged in the United States, a separate and distinct influence on the therapeutic use of nature emerged in the United Kingdom, developed by the German educator Kurt Hahn. Kurt Hahn’s ideas on educating young men were manifest in the creation Outward Bound (OB), founded in 1941 in Aberdovey, Wales. The program included a month-long wilderness expedition designed to train young men, especially sailors, to develop resiliency and learn to work together as a small group to overcome self-perceived limitations (Minor & Bolt, 1981). In a speech delivered to the Outward Bound Trust in 1960, Hahn outlined “five social diseases” that OB specifically targeted, that later formed the theoretical framework for how OB uniquely addressed the developmental needs of young people of this era. They were: (1) the decline in fitness due to the modern methods of locomotion; (2) the decline in initiative, due to the widespread disease of spectatoritis; (3) the decline in care and skill, due to the weakened tradition of craftsmanship; (4) the decline in self-discipline, due to the ever-present availability of tranquilizers and stimulants; and (5) the decline of compassion (Hahn, 1960). Outward Bound first arrived in the United States in 1962 with the establishment of Colorado Outward Bound and now operates in 58 countries and serves over 300,000 participants a year (Outward Bound USA, 2011). The classic 28-day OB course included small-boat training, athletics, map and compass skills, rescue training, expeditions at sea and on land, as well as service to local communities. The “Hahnian” approach to education “was not only experience- and value-centered and was centered on learning by doing. The experience as not aimed at the learning of academic content and cognitive skills, but rather the development of character and maturity (Kimball & Bacon, 1993, p. 13). Stephen Bacon’s The Conscious Use of Metaphor (1983) was the first attempt to systematically articulate how metaphor was manifest in wilderness experiences to illustrate how lessons learned through the experience related (p. 431) to participants’ personal lives. Bacon’s work suggests that there exists natural archetypal metaphors that are directly attributable to the wilderness experience and that OB instructors can help participants interpret the meaning of the experience through facilitated conversation and discussion. This important book and the growing recognition and research interest in Outward Bound and its reported benefits to participants led to several practical, educational and clinical adaptations of the OB model to a variety of populations, including youth involved in the corrections system and young people in treatment for substance abuse.
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature One such program was developed by OB in 1966 as a pilot project for adjudicated youth for the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services. In the first study to evaluate the effects of OB on participants, Kelly and Baer (1969) showed that the OB program was effective when compared to a control group, concluding that 20% of the OB participants had reoffended compared to 37% of the control group. The results of the study generated intense interest in using Outward Bound as an intervention for adjudicated youth, causing OB to expand these offerings. Adaptations of the OB model to clinical populations included the collaboration between the Dartmouth Medical School and Hurricane Island Outward Bound, where people in outpatient treatment participated in adventure-based outings, such as cross-country skiing, canoeing, and rock climbing (Stich, 1983). The OB experience was also integrated with adolescent substance abuse treatment in a collaboration with the Beech Hill Hospital in Dublin, New Hampshire (McPeake, Kennedy, Grossman, & Beaulieu, 1990). The program included a 3- day clinical assessment phase of the individuals’ substance use history and mental health diagnoses, a 22-day wilderness expedition phase, and a culminating 48-hour solo. In many ways, the history and evolution of the first individuals, programs, and institutions portray a story of discovery, experimentation, and documentation of the noticeable therapeutic and other health-related benefits of spending time in nature. Several reviews of literature and meta-analyses have examined the benefits and expected outcomes of Outward Bound and other related wilderness-based programs (Chalquist, 2009; Hattie et al., 1997; Russell, 2008; Wilson & Lipsey, 2000). The earliest and most often cited meta-analyses of outdoor-based adventure programs is Hattie, Marsh, and Neill’s (1997) work that found 151 unique samples within 96 studies involving over 12,000 participants (p. 51). The studies were published between 1968 and 1994 and involved nature-based adventure programs that were on average 24 days in length and involved participants who were on average 22 years old. An overall effect size on “learning” of 0.34 was concluded along several dimensions, including leadership, academic, independence, assertiveness, emotional stability, social comparison, time management, and flexibility. The greatest effects were related to self-control, and were found to be long-lasting when compared to other educational programs. Despite these positive findings, the authors noted a lack of dependable measures used in many studies, inadequate research designs and controls to make a causal inference, and a general difficulty of comparing one study to the next because of differing program design and duration. Also missing from the discussion is a critical analysis of the role that nature plays, referring to the naturebased adventure experience as a gestalt, and that “most studies assume that the whole of the experience is greater than the sum of its parts” (p. 73). Wilson and Lipsey (2000) reviewed 28 studies involving over 3,000 youth and found moderately positive overall results, and support for the value of wilderness programs as an intervention for delinquent youth. They noted that programs that involved a physical activity component and a demonstrated therapeutic approach showed the largest effect sizes. Programs that were six weeks in length and included a therapeutic intervention woven into the experience were reasoned “to help participants to process the challenging experiences and draw implications for their own behavior with more success” (p. 11). A more recent review of literature in the journal Ecopsychology took a slightly different approach in analyzing the literature on what was termed “ecotherapy research” (Chalquist, 2009). This review of literature focused specifically on the role of nature in promoting healing, and used outdoor restoration as one theme. Within this theme, several studies were reported that supported the notion that programs in the outdoors were restorative. This included Greenway’s (1995) study of college students that reported sense of balance and relief from everyday stressors resulting from a wilderness experience that rekindled a sense of belonging and connection with the world at large. Though researchers have noted methodological shortcomings in many of the studies on therapeutic programs based in nature and their reported effects, evidence does suggest that these programs work across a variety of outcome dimensions, including (p. 432) development of the self and a development of a sense of community within the participants along with a renewed appreciation of nature. With the growing interest in this research area, more researchers are interested in conducting this research, evidenced by a wide variety of disciplines and journals reported in the literature (Thompson, 2009). As the evolution continued, adaptations were made to more specific populations with more troubling problems, especially for youth. Much of the programmatic structure and models used during this time of program and knowledge expansion exist today in the literally hundreds of programs that use nature intentionally for therapeutic purposes. Prior to reviewing the types and models of programs that are currently operating in the United States and internationally, it is important to review a proposed theoretical framework that seeks to explain and model how and
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature why spending time in nature is inherently therapeutic. Much of the foundation for this theory is culled from the history and experience of those individuals and programs presented in the previous section. In addition, the theoretical framework also integrates the work of Albert Bandura, and environmental psychologists such as Rachel and Stephen Kaplan of the University of Michigan’s Environmental Psychology Lab and their work on attention restoration theory.
Theoretical Framework for Understanding the Therapeutic Use of Nature The model presented herein is a concurrent model, where the factors present in nature-based experiences are reasoned to be acting in concert and in varying degrees, based on the context of the experiences. The term “wilderness experience” will be used to focus the model on a nature-based context that assumes a prolonged experience in an environment that has characteristics consistent with naturalness and solitude, and where nature is relatively uninfluenced by humans. Though it varies and there is debate, scholars such as Greenway (1995) have suggested that to enter wilderness “psychologically” and leave culture behind completely, experiences should be at least seven days in length. This concurrent model was developed in contrast to stage-based models, which model the experiences in mechanistic terms, where participants pass through specific stages to achieve desired outcomes (Bacon & Kimball, 1989; Davis-Berman & Berman, 1994a; Powch, 1994). These stage-based models are sequential and discrete and may not accurately capture the dynamic and interrelated nature of the therapeutic factors inherent in a concurrent model. Several critiques of stage-based models have been put forth in the educational and psychology literature, with similar arguments being made against their ability to explain the phenomena in question. First of all, implicit within stage models is the idea that individuals progress through graduated levels in a discrete and hierarchal fashion (Sutton, 2001). To view stages of, for example, a psychotherapy process in isolation from one another provides an inaccurate conceptualization of the psychotherapy Gestalt (Waehler & Lenox, 1994). Similarly, stage models suggest that processes occurring in one stage would be absent in all others (Littrell, 2002). This adds to a false sense of disconnect between various points on a continuum. Lastly, presenting a stage-based conceptualization of a process precludes the cyclical nature of the process (Davidson, 1998). In other words, it is quite possible that individuals may revisit or “skip ahead” to points along a continuum. A concurrent model of the therapeutic factors associated with wilderness experiences process was developed to address the limitations noted above (the model was first presented in Russell, 2003). Table 22.1 presents a brief overview of the factors believed to be operating within the context of a wilderness experience. Though there are a plethora of factors that may add to the success of any group therapeutic process (e.g., group cohesion, universality), the remainder of this section will focus on those factors unique to, or particularly active in, wilderness and nature-based experiences. The model will be illustrated using the perspective of adolescents as participants, as most (but certainly not all) therapeutic wilderness programs operating in the United States and Canada cater to adolescents and their personal, social, and emotional development. The model certainly can also be applied to adults and other more specific demographics as well. Four factors are proposed to be operating within the wilderness experience concurrent model. The first factor, nature, refers to elements of the natural world that are inherently therapeutic regardless of the activity or social environment. The second factor, active self, consists of activities or processes within wilderness that facilitate learning and personal growth. The third factor of the milieu is social group and refers to variables associated with developing a strong sense of community through intense and sustained social interaction. The fourth factor, activity reflection, suggests the adventure-based activities themselves provide meaning and context for individual and group learning and are used to (p. 433)
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature
Table 22.1 Factors Reasoned to Compose the Concurrent Model of Wilderness Experience Category
Time of Peak Intensity
Proposition
Nature
Beginning
The wilderness environment, acting alone, can be seen as a restorative environment for youth who have high levels of anxiety and are stressed from mental fatigue caused by too much direct attention.
Active Self
MiddleLate
By combining the effects of actively accomplishing physically demanding tasks designed to increase in difficulty and scope while allowing opportunities for immediate feedback and success, the wilderness works as a therapeutic medium to foster an enhanced sense of the self.
Social Group
Late
Research has shown that wilderness experiences conducted in small group settings over extended periods of time help break down preconceived stereotypes and self-doubt, allowing youth to experience a unique and intense feeling of community and belongingness.
Activity Reflection
Variable
The adventure-based activities themselves provide meaning and context for individual and group learning and are used to aid direct and indirect transfer of learning back to also youths’ daily lives.
aid direct and indirect transfer of learning back to participant’s daily lives. These four therapeutic factors can be viewed as interrelated and mutually influential, present throughout the experience and varying in intensity according to the temporal progression of the trip.
Nature This construct refers to the inherent characteristics of natural areas, including wilderness, that promote the health and well-being of individuals through simply being in nature. The term “wilderness” is inherently ethnocentric and is in essence a social construction first defined by scholars of European descent. For example, Oelschlaeger (1991) suggested that the concept of wilderness is often defined using dialectic method, in that its very definition is juxtaposed to civilization, which is characterized as an “overpopulated, industrialized, anxiety-ridden, polluted and often violent world” (p. 5). Indeed, our disconnection to the natural world produces the very symptoms that returning to nature alleviates, be they anxiety or depression. Therefore, the nature factor of the model is reasoned to act independently to produce physical, psychological, and emotional benefits to individuals. Though wilderness has long been supposed to induce positive psychological effects (Greenway, 1995), research in the past two decades has attempted to provide an empirical foundation to arguments that have for the most part been philosophical and theoretical. Attention restoration theory, developed by Kaplan and Kaplan (1989) and colleagues at the University of Michigan, elucidates several factors that support how and why nature is psychologically and physically restorative. Our constant connection to technology and our fast-paced urbanized lives all contribute to prolonged mental fatigue, which produces a variety of other psychological symptoms, including anxiety, depression, and frustration, that many psychologists agree cannot be solely attributed to intrapsychic and intrafamilial dynamics (Chalquist, 2009). The constructs supporting attention restoration theory that Kaplan and Kaplan (1989) specified that are related to the nature construct are the notions of being away and of soft fascination. Being away suggests that when we are distanced physically and psychologically from our daily lives, and thus sources of stress, our psyche is allowed to recover from the cognitive overload. Kaplan and Kaplan claimed that natural settings provide one of the best opportunities for being away, as they are dissimilar from our stressful daily environments. Considerable evidence exists that wilderness experiences produce restorative effects (see Kaplan, 1995; Chalquist, 2009; Thompson, 2009, for excellent theoretical and empirical support of this notion). Research has also shown that people
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature specifically use natural areas to escape their daily lives and civilization (Driver & Tocher, 1970), and report restoration (p. 434) from spending time in wilderness from a variety of stressors, including noise (Lucas, 1963), crowding (Lime & Cushwa, 1969), the city (Hendee, Catton, Marlow, & Brockman, 1968), predictability (Catton, 1969), role overload (Knopf, 1972), and social restriction (Etzkorn, 1965). Kaplan and Kaplan’s (1989) notion of soft fascination is another factor that works to restore mental fatigue. When individuals experience soft fascination in natural environments, they are cognitively engaged by the visual and auditory beauty of nature, yet they also have the ability to engage in reflective thought. Billowing clouds, colorful sunsets, and sparkling creeks capture attention and fascinate, but do not necessitate or demand our full attention, thus actively engaging the mind while also allowing one to meditate, reflect, or simply let his or her thoughts wander. In our daily lives, we use directed attention nearly nonstop, as we focus on getting ready in the morning, drive to work navigating traffic, and then immediately start our multitasking at work. In nature, these near constant demands on directed attention are diminished, allowing for psychological restoration to occur. In nature, our attention is captured by an interesting and aesthetically pleasing environment that does not require a high degree of cognitive processing. When the mind begins to rest, the body also begins to relax. Greenway (1995) called this process the “wilderness effect,” where we psychologically shift from our complex and hurried lives to a way of being that involves deeper sleep, more vivid dreams, and reduced anxiety. Thus, soft fascination allows for release from stressors that cause mental fatigue, easing away from cognitive strain and relaxing. In a recent review of research, Chalquist (2009) reviewed several studies on the restorative effects of nature and concluded that “participants’ encounters with the natural world brought a sense of balance and relief from everyday stressors and also rekindled a sense of belonging and connection with the world at large” (p. 68). In one such study, by Hartig, Jammer, Davis, and Gärling (2003), 112 young adults reported lower blood pressure when walking in nature areas when compared to urban settings, and their anger decreased and positive feelings and attention increased. In such studies, participants have rated natural environments, as opposed to urban environments or even television watching, as being preferable in achieving a sense of restoration and relaxation. Reports from qualitative work also suggest that participants find the natural environment to contain these elements of being away and fascination. Consider the following excerpt from an at-risk student in a federal work and educational program as he was acclimating to a week-long wilderness experience: I realized that time is really no necessity when your in the wilderness. I can’t believe how relaxed I am here I just feel so free. [Two of us] got up early in the morning and took a hike up to the top of the hill I seen some land before but I never saw anything like it the sky was blue as my bandana. (Quoted in original grammar and text from student journal; Russell, Hendee, & Cooke, 1998, p. 33) Nature, and especially wilderness, with its sense of being away and soft fascination, forms the first factor in the wilderness experience theoretical framework.
Active Self The active self (AS) factor of the framework consists of therapeutic variables arising solely from personal interaction with the natural environment. In other words, this factor exemplifies those variables that contribute to the change process and arise from acting in and through the environment. The two main constituents reasoned to compose the AS factor are (a) physical fitness and physical well-being, and (b) tasks associated with wilderness living. The first construct, physical fitness and well-being, borrows heavily from health psychology and related fields, disciplines that have long observed that physical health is related to mental health. Studies have consistently shown that routine physical exercise is associated with healthier self-images in both adults and adolescents (Boyd & Hrycaiko, 1997; DiLorenzo et al., 1999; Kirkcaldy, 2002; Van de Vliet, 1999). Such observations have also been made in wilderness-based literature, suggesting that wilderness and adventure-type activities may indeed provide measurable physiological benefits (Bunting et al., 2000; Knopf, 1983). During the wilderness experience, participants are eating nutritious foods on a scheduled basis and exercising regularly. In many programs, participants are hiking 8 to 12 miles per day and are allotted about 3,000 to 5,000 calories daily. Hiking, gathering food and firewood, and setting up shelter are all examples of the physical activities that must be performed within the wilderness. As participants continue these activities, greater control is gained over physical functioning, and research has shown that individuals facilitate the integration of these experiences and feelings because wilderness experiences encourage introspection, which results in a more coherent sense of (p. 435)
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature self (Walker, Hull, & Roggenbuck, 1998). Overall, then, there is compelling evidence to imply that the effects of healthy lifestyle routines may be physically and psychologically beneficial to individuals. Wilderness living, by the virtues of what it entails, seems an excellent method of capitalizing on these physical- and mental-health relationships. In addition to benefits gained through physical activity, AS also works to promote self-concept through specific tasks inherent in outdoor living, such as finding shelter and making food. In wilderness programs, skill acquisition begins by learning the “basics,” such as how to pack a backpack and read a compass. Participants are soon able to complete long and arduous hikes, start their own fires, and cook meals for the group from materials gathered from the land. Exhaustive literature reviews show that completing these challenging tasks is associated with benefits for various aspects of self-concept such as self-esteem, self-efficacy, and locus of control (see Hattie et al., 1997). As with the nature construct, evidence of the active self construct is also reinforced through qualitative research. The following observation was made by Golins (1978) in one of the first studies attempting to ascertain how wilderness programs might affect self-concept: The outdoors always presents itself in a very physical, straightforward way. There are mountains to climb, rivers to run, bogs to wade through. As an adolescent delinquent whose principal mode of expression is an action-oriented one and whose thinking process is mostly concrete, the possible activities in the outdoors are limitless to fulfill his developmental capability. He just stands a better chance of excelling here. (p. 27) The following statement also captures the essence of the active self factor in one participant’s response to the physical aspect of the process taken from Russell and Phillips-Miller (2002): “Hiking, I mean that just boosted my self confidence even more. It was hell at the time but I mean, towards the end I really got used to it and started to enjoy it” (p. 173).
Social Group Social learning theory (SLT) forms the basis of the social group factor. The main premise of social learning theory (Bandura, 1977) or social cognitive theory, as it is referred to today (Bandura, 1986), is that many of our behaviors originate through watching others, a principle referred to as observational learning. Wilderness experiences involve intense small-group environments where each individual is personally responsible for the success of the group while also relying on other members of the group to thrive. Because of this, the communal living environment provides a unique platform for social learning interactions to occur. Research suggests that being in wilderness settings contributes to the dissolution of status barriers, thus enhancing candid interactions and sharing among group members (Hendee & Brown, 1987). The mechanism promoting this genuine interaction – social learning processes – derives from the necessities associated with wilderness living. During day-to-day activities, participants need to work together to get tasks accomplished, from cooking dinner to setting up tarps to conducting process groups. These task-oriented goals facilitate social learning by encouraging communication among parties and sharing learned knowledge. Students often have to collaborate on jobs to meet basic needs. Performance of these activities leads observational learning and, at the same time, mutual collaboration is promoted. In this way, communication between all participants – even those who may be at odds with each other – is facilitated. In addition to member-to-member interactions, SLT principles also underlie the dynamics of leader-to-member interactions. Wilderness program leaders are selected on the basis of their quality characteristics, such as clear focus in life, desire to enhance self-growth and knowledge, and ability to communicate well and with a wide variety of people (Priest & Gass, 1997). Leaders embody many of the abilities and attributes that young people view as desirable and are often perceived as being role models (Cooley, 1998). Leaders, then, have skill sets and abilities attractive to adolescents, and are close enough to students’ ages for students to be able to identify with them. Studies assessing SLT show that people are more likely to emulate behavior when the initiator of the behavior is viewed as being similar to the observer and having desirable qualities (Bandura, 1986). Naturally, the behavior that leaders strive to model is positive; they encourage appropriate exploration of personal issues, demonstrate stewardship, and show respect for students and fellow group leaders. Thus, wilderness experiences provide an environment where participants can identify with positive role models who are purposively demonstrating healthy social skills and fostering empathetic communication.
Activity Reflection
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature In each wilderness experience program, a series of outdoor activities guides the process. These activities (p. 436) are designed to teach a variety of technical skills while allowing participants to experience success through challenge, adventure, and reflection. Activities may include backpacking, canoeing, rock climbing and rappelling, mountaineering, sea kayaking, ocean sailing, dog mushing, river rafting, and solo experiences. Wilderness programs utilize activities for a variety of reasons, especially in programs that have therapy and personal growth as primary goals. Some of these reasons include outdoor activity for self-development, to enhance motivation to change previous behaviors, to reflect on and use as metaphor in more directed individual and group sessions, and as specific tools for insight into a personal or interpersonal issue. Russell and Gillis (2010) quoted one program director as stating, “The emphasis of our experiential approach is to help participants make effective and appropriate choices, as we relate and re-create the experiences in a variety of experiential settings in order to help them gain experience, insight and understanding” (p. 52). In this way, activity, experience, and the subsequent personal and interpersonal learning that occur are revisited and utilized to help make more abstract and tangential concepts, ideas, and understandings, which are often difficult for adolescents to relate to, more real. The key to the use of these experiences and activities is the reflection on the activities before, during, and after the experience. Careful facilitation yields enhanced learning for participants, and research has shown that participating in these experiences develops resiliency (Neill & Dias, 2001), self-competence (Hattie et al., 1997), enhanced perception of self (White, Caulkins, & Russell, 2006), and a host of other physical, emotional, and psychological benefits for participants well after the experience is complete that are applied to contexts and settings in their daily lives.
Conclusion The model attempts to provide an overview of what is believed to be occurring in most wilderness experiences most of the time. It is an attempt to describe an eclectic and dynamic environment and experience in a way that is cogent and testable. Though there are certainly other factors not included in the model, the ones outlined here are those that are unique to, or especially active in, group-based nature experiences. The theoretical framework can be used to increase our understanding of how people experience nature in general, and how programs may use nature and wilderness experiences in particular. It is hoped that the model can aid in the development of a common language and understanding among those interested in the therapeutic use of nature. Future research using this model could test the theoretical constructs (Kerlinger & Lee, 2000) through the use of existing measurement tools associated with each construct (e.g., attention restoration theory, self-efficacy, group therapeutic alliance) or through qualitative analysis, which could involve observation or individual and groupbased interviews to explore how these factors relate to individual and group experience.
Programs That Use Nature as a Therapeutic Tool The therapeutic use of nature to develop human potential is widespread and has been the subject of research since philosophers and writers first began to espouse the benefits of nature more than 200 years ago. This section focuses on the types of programs operating in the United States and internationally that deliberately take people into nature for therapeutic purposes. Various definitions and terms used to define these nature-based programs are reviewed and a typology is presented that classifies them based on variables such as clientele, aims of the program, and how and to what degree wilderness was used to facilitate outcomes. The typology of programs was developed by researchers at the Wilderness Research Center at the University of Idaho1 in the late 1990s as a component of a larger research agenda that explored the use of wilderness for personal growth, education, and therapy. Next, the wilderness therapy, as a specific intervention for adolescents and young adults, is reviewed to examine how clinical treatment models have been integrated with wilderness experiences. The relative effectiveness of wilderness therapy and the current controversies surrounding client treatment and government oversight of these programs will also be discussed. Finally, the section will conclude with a discussion of current trends in international program development, and emerging programs presented as case studies that serve young adults struggling with chemical dependency, disabled veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and cancer survivors. Friese, Hendee, and Kinziger (1998) summarized much of the research that sought to identify how many and what types of wilderness experience programs (WEPs) were operating in the United States at this time. Their search yielded over 700 such programs and noted a wide range of methods used to develop human (p. 437) potential utilizing activities in wilderness and natural environments. These have been referred to in the
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature literature as wilderness experience programs, outdoor adventures, wilderness therapy, wilderness adventure therapy, wilderness, outdoor experiential programs, outdoor leadership, and vision quests. At the time, the authors predicted that the growth in these programs was projected to continue into the near future, and by many estimates, this has occurred (Russell, 2008). A typology was developed to describe the programs identified in their survey. A key factor used to define WEPS was the primary aim of the programs, which help frame the scope of how programs use wilderness and nature as a therapeutic tool. The primary aim is the intended outcome of program participation for clientele, and three target categories were noted: (a) healing, (b) education, and (c) personal growth. For example, participant recovery from an addiction describes the intended outcome of participating in a healing program. Some WEPs, such as the National Outdoor Leadership School and the School of Lost Borders, offer educational programs that train participants to be WEP trip leaders. Some WEPs offer focused programming covering all three primary aims, such as Outward Bound. For example, Pacific Crest Outward Bound (1995) offered a healing WEP for teenagers “who have motivational and behavioral problems” (p. 48); professional development wilderness programs to develop “individual leadership skills and providing an opportunity for personal reflection and renewal” (p. 40); and programs that use “themes of leadership, judgment and community” to teach wilderness leadership skills (p. 36). The primary aims – education, healing, and personal growth – of WEPs are described below. The descriptions include the author’s description and statements from specific program promotional material.
Education The aim of educational WEPs is the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and experiences to change behavior, and to increase and enhance understanding, enjoyment, appreciation and/or preservation or protection of wilderness. Educational WEPs may have academic, vocational, research, or personal educational interest (learning for the sake of learning) purposes. For example, an education WEP may teach leadership skills, be included in academic degree programs, or encompass field research and field-based data collection efforts that span several weeks in backcountry environments.
Healing WEPs with a primary aim of healing are designed to provide therapy, assistance, or recovery for participants suffering from addiction, abuse, illness, and/or socially unacceptable behavior. Illness could be mental, physical, and/or emotional. One such healing program is Catherine Freer Wilderness Therapy Expedition, where students learn to recognize and deal with their behavioral and emotional problems throughout the trek. Their therapists and wilderness guides help students confront their denials and manipulations, see their behavioral problems from an objective perspective, and work to change their attitudes and ways of handling interpersonal issues and relationships in their lives.
Personal Growth The primary aim of personal growth WEPs is the expanded fulfillment of participant’s capabilities and potential. These programs focus on participant empowerment, spiritual renewal, increasing motivation, self-esteem, selfawareness, self-confidence, teamwork, problem-solving, and/or social skills. The most well-known personal growth WEP is Outward Bound, founded in Wales by the innovative German educator Kurt Hahn, reviewed earlier.
Therapeutic Use of Nature for Youth and Adolescents The healing WEPs noted above most directly relate to the therapeutic use of nature, and have been the subject of increased study and scrutiny as they have grown in both the number of programs operating and the number of clients served. In 2000, and again in 2008, this author surveyed existing wilderness therapy programs in the United States and Canada to gain an understanding of a treatment modality that intentionally integrated wilderness experiences with clinical treatment models. These programs subscribe to a multimodal treatment model within the context of wilderness environments and backcountry travel to facilitate progress toward individualized treatment goals. The approach incorporates the use of evidenced-based clinical practices including client assessment, individual and group psychotherapy conducted by independently licensed clinicians, and the development of
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature individual treatment and aftercare plans. To date, these studies offer the most comprehensive look at an expanding and at times controversial industry that directly uses nature to work with troubled youth and their families. Issues with program (p. 438) operation that have surfaced through government investigation follow a description of the industry that provides an overview of the types of programs in operation and a description of the clients served by this intervention. To identify programs, three national associations were contacted, via e-mail and phone call, and a list of programs fitting this description was generated (associations contacted were the National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs, National Association of Therapeutic Wilderness Camps, and Association of Experiential Education). In addition, Internet searches were conducted to identify programs that included keywords, such as wilderness treatment, outdoor behavioral health care, and wilderness program for youth. From these sources, a list was developed and checked against three criteria: (a) Did the program claim to offer therapeutic services to help change problem behavior of adolescents? (b) Was a wilderness expedition a significant component of the therapeutic process (defined as two weeks or more while client is in treatment)? and (c) Were identified marketed program components consistent with definitions and references found to therapeutic programs noted in the literature?
Program Models A total of 124 programs were identified as meeting the criteria of a wilderness therapy program, and 65 responded to a survey asking them to describe their treatment services and organizational structure. Table 22.2, which includes associated definitions, shows that expedition (35.4%) and residential (26.2%) programs were the most represented program models. The integrated expedition program was the third most represented model, with 11 programs identifying themselves as offering shorter, rotational wilderness expeditions of up to five to seven days, supplemented with two to three days of residential and school-based curricula. Three programs (5%) were operating in Canadian provinces. The majority of programs were private nonprofit (40%) organizations, with approximately one-third being private corporate (33.8%). Only five programs (8%) were operated by the government, which were all in the correctional domain working with adjudicated youth, while two indicated “other” types of organizational sponsorships.
Licensure and Accreditation When programs were asked whether the states in which they operated had standards specific to wilderness therapy programs, 84% indicated yes, while 16% said no (n = 55 and 10, respectively). Minnesota and Montana do not currently have specific licensing standards, while Idaho, Colorado, and Oregon have passed legislation in past years, with licensing guidelines specific to wilderness therapy program
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature
Table 22.2 Frequency and Percentage of Programs Who Self-Reported Reflecting One of Seven OBH Models, Including Respective Definitions Frequency Base Camp Outdoor base camp supplemented by wilderness expeditions
Percent
9
13.8
Expedition Program is conducted primarily in wilderness on expeditions
23
35.4
Residential Residential treatment supplemented by wilderness expeditions
17
26.2
Outpatient Outpatient treatment supplemented by wilderness expeditions
2
3.1
School Therapeutic school supplemented by wilderness expeditions
2
3.1
Integrated Expedition Short expeditions (4–6 days), then return to residential (2–3 days)
11
Multiple
1
Total
65
16.9
1.5 100.0
(p. 439) Table 22.3 Type of Family Involvement and Its Significance to Programming Question
Significant N (%)
Insignificant N (%)
Average Importance
Family Sessions
53 (84.1%)
10 (15.9%)
3.19
Individual Parent Sessions
50 (79.4%)
13 (20.6%)
2.97
Psycho-Educational Family Groups
45 (71.4%)
18 (28.6%)
2.81
Parent/Family Support Groups
43 (68.3%)
20 (31.7%)
2.56
Parent Seminars
31 (50.8%)
32 (49.2%)
1.98
Online Support Services
24 (38.1%)
39 (61.9%%)
1.51
Note: Average importance is based on a scale of 1 = very insignificant to 4 = very significant. operation. Because extended wilderness expeditions are a significant component of each program, traditional residential treatment guidelines (for example, maintaining a licensed psychologist, medical doctor, and/or registered nurse on expedition) are challenging to apply in wilderness settings, and need to be retrofitted while still maintaining safety and oversight that protects youth and families. Coinciding with the percentages of states that have licensing, all 55 programs that operated in a state with program licensing standards in place were indeed licensed; 10 respondents stated they were not licensed. Half the respondents (n = 33) (50.8%) were nationally accredited by an organization such as the Joint Commission or the Council on Accreditation, both of which have also implemented national accreditation standards that are specific to OBH programs (for more information see Joint Commission, 2007; COA, 2007). For those that responded yes to accreditation, 11 (33%) were accredited by the Joint Commission and 10 (30%) by the Council on
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature Accreditation. These standards are considered more rigorous than state standards and require, for example, that programs routinely monitor outcomes and have certain ratios of licensed staff to clients. A similar percentage (n = 10; 30%) of respondents indicated they were accredited by a national accreditation agency that specializes in standards specific to outdoor or camping programs, such as the Association for Experiential Education or the American Camping Association. These standards specify risk-management strategies and leader/guide credentials for outdoor education programs. Two programs were accredited by Canadian provincial government agencies. When asked whether their program currently had licensed mental health professionals on staff that work through individual treatment plans with clients, 88% (n = 57) said yes, while 12% (n = 8) said they did not. This finding suggests that though a program may have viewed itself as a wilderness therapy provider, it did not at that time necessarily have a licensed mental health professional on staff.
Family Involvement in Treatment Several questions on the survey asked programs to describe the methods and the degree to which they work directly with the families while the youth is in treatment. The types of family involvement included: (a) individual parent sessions, (b) family sessions, (c) psycho-educational groups, (d) support groups, (e) seminars, and (f) online support services. Respondents indicated the relative degree of significance each of these types of family programming played in their overall treatment approach. Most programs utilize family sessions, individual parent sessions, and psycho-educational groups, and these types of involvement are more important in programming than resources such as online support services for parents or face-to-face parent “seminars.” Over three-quarters of all programs said that the three intervention types were significant aspects of the treatment process. When asked on average how much contact time each program had with parents, a wide range was reported. Over 50% of all respondents reported 15 hours or less of contact time, 30% between 15 and 30 hours of contact time, and 20% greater than 30 hours.
Wilderness Therapy Client Characteristics According to questions asked on the characteristics of clientele, descriptive statistics show that the typical client appears to be a male Caucasian adolescent from a middle socioeconomic class. The average gender percentages were 65% male and 35% female, with an age range of 12–17 years old. Over (p. 440) 60% of programs (n = 36) indicated they worked with youth ages 18 and over. Trends in client characteristics have remained stable in wilderness therapy programs for over a decade. The most significant clinical issue for which clients were being treated was substance abuse. ADHD was mentioned second most frequently, with conduct disorder third. Respondents were also asked to estimate the relative percentage of their clients who had tried other types of counseling services prior to entering wilderness therapy. A total of 59 of the 63 programs (94%) indicated that more than 70% of their clients had tried some other form of counseling or mental health services prior to admission. This information is culled from intake assessments completed by each program, and is reasoned to be an accurate representation of past mental health service utilization.
Wilderness Therapy Program Outcomes Several issues have been raised in the literature regarding the relative effectiveness of wilderness therapy interventions. First, little research using rigorous research designs that include randomized assignment and control groups has been conducted. Several barriers to implementing these research designs are noted by authors in the literature, including the ethics of no treatment options, cost, difficulty in having parents and other custodial authorities agree to such a process, and the myriad pre-treatment factors that can confound results. Second, little or no treatment differences between control and groups in the few studies that do use appropriate designs have been noted, making it difficult to draw conclusions between groups. Lastly, because no two programs are alike, it is difficult to make comparisons from one setting to the next. More research is needed that includes more rigorous research designs to determine whether wilderness therapy programs are efficacious, especially when compared to other forms of residential treatment. Despite these shortcomings, research on wilderness therapy programs indicates that the intervention can yield positive treatment outcomes (see Clark, 2003; Russell 2003, 2005, 2008). For example, Clark found that a 21-day wilderness therapy program facilitated positive change in adolescents with clinically elevated Millon Adolescent
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature Clinical Inventory (MACI) personality scores, and noted that short-term interventions rarely indicate these types of outcomes. Russell (2008) evaluated six programs and found that adolescents, at a six-month follow-up assessment, had significantly reduced their substance use in the period following the intervention. The results showed significant reductions in frequency of use across the range of mental health diagnoses and aftercare types used following treatment. Recent research on programs indicates a growing interest in examining how the treatment modality works for different types of clients and the treatment factors that are reasoned to effectuate change in participants. For example, Lambie et al. (2000) examined the use of wilderness therapy for the treatment of adolescent sex offenders; Orren (2003) found that the treatment group did not differ from the control group on self-concept or internalizing/externalizing behaviors, and that African-American treatment group participants actually reported lower self-concept scores after the wilderness intervention. Hagan (2003) assessed treatment outcomes using the Youth-Outcome Questionnaire and found that adolescent self-reports indicated no significant improvement from wilderness treatment, whereas parents and counselors indicated significant improvement. Martinez (2002) examined self-esteem and locus of control and their relation to group affiliation and noted positive changes as a result of treatment. In a comparison study of a residential and wilderness program, Edgmon (2002) found increased self-confidence, increased communication, and an increased closeness with family for wilderness therapy program participants. Follow-up tests revealed no significant difference between treatment and control group in family relations, school success, and job/work success. Webb (2001) also conducted interviews with clinicians in programs and found that the client can more easily transfer learning when parents are actively involved in the program, and that clinicians have significant desire to increase family therapy and follow-up programs that include family-based outpatient counseling in the communities in which youth and families reside. Interventions may include weekly or biweekly sessions. In summary, these studies reflect an increasing interest and sophistication in research design and methods evaluating and assessing process and outcomes in wilderness therapy. Worth noting, however, is the observation that many of these studies published as dissertations are not published in refereed journals because the authors move into nonacademic careers. This has seemingly been a consistent trend in research on wilderness therapy since the seminal studies on the effects of Outward Bound were first reported in the 1960s through the 1970s (Burton, 1981; Kelly & Baer, 1969). (p. 441)
Wilderness Therapy Program Controversy
On October 10, 2007, Kutz & O’Connell (2007) in the GAO report (GAO-08–146T) Residential Treatment Programs: Concerns Regarding Abuse and Death in Certain Programs for Troubled Youth, examined 10 closed cases where a teenager had died while enrolled in a private residential treatment program. Specifically, the report found that untrained staff, the lack of adequate nourishment, and reckless or negligent operating practices were the primary causes of the tragic incidents. The screening, training, and hiring of field staff, or wilderness leaders, is a critical issue and requires attention to better determine how best to train leaders who spend the majority of their time living and traveling with clients in remote backcountry environments. More troubling is the reference in the report of “tough love” practices, as it suggests a philosophical approach that appears to be contradictory to existing state standards of best practice as well as previous research and evaluation on wilderness therapy program practice. In examining the Utah state standards (2007) as a benchmark, wilderness therapy programs are required to provide: (a) six quarts of water per day for each client, (b) a detailed menu of food preparation that must equal 3,000 calories per day, (c) fruits and vegetables at least twice a week, and (d) daily offered multiple vitamin supplements, and “food shall not be withheld from a consumer for any reason” (R501–8-8, p. 8). There are also provisions for calorific increases as energy expenditure increases. Russell (2006) empirically examined wilderness therapy program guiding principles and concluded that “in direct contrast to boot camps, consequences of client actions while on the trail were not met with harsh and cruel punishment in the form of marathon hikes and food deprivation, but are facilitated through natural consequences and often mediated in a group context” (p. 63). These findings, as well as others consistently reported in the literature (see Clark, 2003; Edgmon, 2002; Hagan, 2003; Lambie, 2000; McNamara, 2002), do not report practice consistent with withholding food from clients, especially to the point of serious illness, injury, or death. It is also clear to note that those programs that do utilize these practices are in violation of basic standards of practice, and
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature are unethical and cruel in their treatment of youth and should be not be in operation. Negligent program practices noted by the GAO report included: (a) program operation in unfamiliar and dangerous territory and not carrying necessary emergency medical supplies or radios/satellite phones; (b) issue of detoxification and transition time from home into a wilderness environment; and (c) programs that were operating without state licenses, or that chose to disregard state health and safety standards. This factor in essence incorporates the previous two issues, as well as the overriding issue of what to do about any treatment program, be it private, state, or federally operated, that simply chooses to operate outside the realm of state and national accreditation standards. Wilderness therapy protocol on emergency operation procedures, which includes the use of satellite phones and other resources to notify emergency personnel and perform wilderness evacuations, is well documented and rather exhaustive in its detail (see State Standards of Utah for overview). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to delve further into this issue, but it is noted that it requires attention to continually examine what programs are doing to reduce the risks associated with backcountry travel. The issue of detoxification prior to admittance into wilderness therapy programs does not appear to be included in existing state standards. The complexity and seriousness of drug-use trends, both prescription and illegal, when compounded with issues such as altitude, heat, and physical activity, are important issues to discuss and monitor to identify best practices.
Conclusion In addition to wilderness experience programs and wilderness therapy, other therapeutic uses of nature exist and seem to be continually emerging. One example is that of programs that take paying customers into the wilderness to fast and engage in solo activities for several days to gain clarity on their lives (Foster, 1998). The Wilderness Guides Council (2011) involves hundreds of wilderness guides and seeks to reconstitute in a modern framework ancient rites of passage experiences for young and old clients. Another example is the integration of Outward Bound experiences to treat and support veterans returning from service who exhibit signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (Ewert et al. 2010). Finally, young adult cancer survivors are experiencing nature through river trips and other adventure excursions that include multi-day river trips that focus on recovery, resiliency, and rebuilding lives torn apart by cancer (Survive to Thrive, 2010). The therapeutic use of nature inspires a paradox. Our disconnection from nature and natural processes is seemingly spiraling out of control as technology continues its steady march toward infiltrating every aspect of our lives. As this process (p. 442) continues to unfold, the need to uncover and reconnect with our ecological identity will be paramount. It is indeed unfortunate that the wilderness-based experiences are being primarily employed as a treatment and intervention for youth rather than as a rites of passage, as they were used for centuries by myriad cultures the world over. It may be that by using these experiences as a celebration of the transition from youth to adulthood as opposed to a treatment, the journeys associated with wilderness experiences would be therapeutic instead of therapy. Spending time in nature to harness its therapeutic benefits could be used as an important rite-of-passage experience for any individual involved in a transition, especially youth. The more we need and use nature to heal us, the more we impact these natural wonders. The very factors that make nature therapeutic, including its extent, its opportunities for solitude, and its ability to inspire awe and wonder, will need to be watched over with great care. If not, we risk losing a source for healing that has defined and been part of our human consciousness for millions of years.
Future Directions • What has the historical use of nature for therapeutic purposes taught us about our modern-day programs? • How important will nature be for youth who are growing up in an increasingly technological world? • How do we reconcile the paradox that as we continue to use nature therapeutically, we may be effectively altering the very factors that make it therapeutic? • Is there a proxy environment that can mimic the therapeutic benefits of spending time in nature? • What are best practices for wilderness therapy programs? • What outcomes may be realized from these wilderness therapy programs that are less likely to occur in more formal treatment programs?
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature
• Should we restore rite-of-passage experiences in nature for youth to celebrate transition into adulthood? • What other likely trends in programming will emerge in the therapeutic use of nature?
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature Davis-Berman, J. S., & Berman, D. (1994b). Wilderness therapy: Foundations, theories, and research. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing. (p. 443) DiLorenzo, T. M., Bargman, E. P., Stucky-Ropp, R., Brassington, G. S., Frensch, P. A., & LaFontaine, T. (1999). Long-term effects of aerobic exercise on psychological outcomes. Preventive Medicine: An International Journal Devoted to Practice & Theory, 28(1), 75–85. Driver, B., & Tocher, S. R. (1970). Toward a behavioral interpretation of recreation, with implications for planning. In B. L. Driver (Ed.), Elements of outdoor recreation planning (pp. 7–91). Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International. Edgmon, K. J. (2002). Therapeutic benefits of a wilderness therapy program and a therapeutic community program for troubled adolescents. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences & Engineering, 62(10), 4781. Eells. E. (1986). History of organized camping: The first 100 years. Bloomington, IN: American Camping Association. Etzkorn, K. R. (1965). The social meaning of a form of public recreation. Sociology and Social Research, 49, 76–81. Ewert, A., Van Puymbroeck, M., Frankle, J., & Overholt, J. (2010). Adventure education and the returning military veteran: What do we know? Abstracts: Symposium for Experiential Education Research, Association for Experiential Education. Retrieved from www.aee.org/files/en/user/cms/2010_SEER_Program_FINAL.pdf. Foster, S. (1998). Rites of passage in the wilderness: A therapeutic source of cultural and environmental recovery. In Proceedings, 6th World Wilderness Congress (Vol. 1, pp. 105–107). (A. Watson, G. H. Aplet, & J. C. Hendee, Comps.). (RMRS-P-4). Ogden, UT: USDA Forest Service. Rocky Mountain Research Station. Friese, G., Hendee, J. C., & Kinziger, M. (1998). The wilderness experience program industry in the United States: Characteristics and dynamics. Journal of Experiential Education, 21(1), 40–45. Gass, M., Gillis, H.L., & Russell, K. C. (2012). Adventure therapy: Theory, research and practice. New York: Routledge Mental Health. Golins, G. L. (1978). How delinquents succeed through adventure-based education. Journal of Experiential Education, 1(2), 26–30. Greenway, R. (1995). The wilderness effect and ecopsychology. In T. Roszak, M. Gomes, & A. Kanner (Eds.), Ecopsychology (pp. 122–135). San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books. Hagan, J. D. (2003). An alternative therapy for the behaviorally challenged youth: The efficacy of wilderness therapy programs. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences & Engineering, 63(7), 3473. Hahn, K. (1960, July 20). Outward Bound: Address at the annual meeting of the Outward Bound Trust. Hartig, E., Jamner, L., Davis, D., & Gärling, T. (2003). Tracking restoration in natural and urban field settings. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 23, 109–123. Hattie, J., Marsh, H. W., Neill, J. T., & Richards, G. E. (1997). Adventure education and Outward Bound: Out-of-class experiences that make a lasting difference. Review of Educational Research, 67(1), 43–87. Hendee, J., Catton, C., Marlow, L. D., & Brockman, C. F. (1968). Wilderness users in the Pacific Northwest: Their characteristics, values, and management preferences. Portland, OR: US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Experiment Station. Hendee, J. C., & Brown, M. H. (1987, October 18). How wilderness experience programs work for personal growth, therapy, and education: An explanatory model. Paper presented at the 4th World Wilderness Congress, Estes Park, CO. Kaplan, R., & Kaplan, S. (1989). Experience of nature. New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature Kaplan, S. (1995). The restorative benefits of nature: Towards an integrative framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15, 169–182. Kelly, F., & Baer, D. (1969). Jesness inventory and self-concept measures for delinquents before and after participation in Outward Bound. Psychological Reports, 25, 719–724. Kerlinger, F. N., & Lee, H. B. (2000). Foundations of behavioral research (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Kimball, R. & Bacon, S. (1993). The wilderness challenge model. In M. Gass (Ed.), Adventure therapy: Therapeutic applications of adventure programming (pp. 11–41). Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing. Kirkcaldy, B. D., Shephard, R. J., & Siefen, R. G. (2002). The relationship between physical activity and self-image and problem behaviour among adolescents. Social Psychiatry & Psychiatric Epidemiology, 37(11), 544–550. Knopf, R. C. (1972). Motivational demand of recreation behavior. (Master’s thesis). University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Knopf, R. C. (1983). Recreational needs and behavior in natural settings. In I. Altman & J. F. Wohlwill (Eds.), Behavior and the natural environment (pp. 205–240). New York: Plenum. Lambie, I., Hickling, L., Seymour, F., Simmonds, L., Robson, M., & Houlahan, C. (2000). Using wilderness therapy in treating adolescent sexual offenders. Journal of Sexual Aggression, 5(2), 99–117. Lime, W., & Cushwa, C. T. (1969). Wildlife aesthetics and autocampers in the Superior National Forest. St. Paul, MN: North Central Forest Experiment Station. Littrell, J. H., & Girvin, H. (2002). Stages of change: A critique. Behavior Modification, 23(2), 223–273. Loughmiller, C. (1965). Wilderness road. Austin, TX: Hogg Foundation for Mental Health. Louv, R. (2003). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature deficit disorder. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books. Lucas, R. C. (1963). The importance of fishing as an attraction and activity in the Quetico-Superior area. St. Paul, MN: US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, North Central Forest Experiment Station. Martinez, M. C. (2002). A wilderness therapy program for a diverse group of at-risk adolescent boys. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation)/ Alliant International University, San Francisco, CA. Mcnamara, D. N. (2002). Adventure-based programming: Analysis of therapeutic benefits with children of abuse and neglect. Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities & Social Sciences, 62(7), 2353. McNeil, E. B. (1957). The background of therapeutic camping. Journal of Social Issues, 13, 3–14. doi: 10.1111/j.1540–4560.1957.tb01372.x McPeake, J. D., Kennedy, B., Grossman, J., & Beaulieu, L. (1990). Innovative adolescent chemical dependency treatment and its outcome: A model based on Outward Bound programming. Journal of Adolescent Chemical Dependency, 2(1), 29–57. Minor, J., & Bolt, J. (1981). Outward Bound USA: Crew not passengers. Seattle, WA: Mountaineer Books. Morse, W. C. (1957). An interdisciplinary therapeutic camp. Journal of Social Issues, 13(1), 15–22. (p. 444) Nash, R. (1982). Wilderness and the American mind (3rd ed). New Haven CT: Yale University Press. Neill, J. T., & Dias, K. L. (2001). Adventure education and resilience: The double-edged sword. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 1(2), 35–42. Oelschlaeger, M. (1991). The meaning of wilderness. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature Orren, P. M. (2003). The effects of brief wilderness programs in relation to adolescents participants’ ethnicity. (Doctoral dissertation). Alliant International University, San Francisco, CA. Powch, I. G. (1994). Wilderness therapy: What makes it empowering for women? Women & Therapy, 15(3–4), 11– 27. Priest, S., & Gass, M. A. (1997). Effective leadership in adventure programming. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Roszak, T., Gomes, M. E., & Kanner, A. D. (1995). Ecopsychology: Restoring the earth, healing the mind. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books. Russell, K. C., Hendee, J., & Cooke, S. (1998). The potential social and economic contributions of Wilderness Discovery as an adjunct to the Federal Job Corps program. International Journal of Wilderness, 4(3), 32–38. Russell, K. C. (2003a). A nation-wide survey of outdoor behavioral healthcare programs for adolescents with problem behaviors. Journal of Experiential Education, 25(3), 322–331. Russell, K. C. (2003b). Assessing treatment outcomes in outdoor behavioral healthcare using the Youth Outcome Questionnaire. Child and Youth Care Forum, 32(6), 355–381. Russell, K. C. (2005). Two years later: A qualitative assessment of youth well-being and the role of aftercare in outdoor behavioral healthcare treatment. Child and Youth Care Forum, 34(3), 209–239. Russell, K. C. (2006b). Brat camps, boot camps, or …? Exploring wilderness therapy program theory. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 6(1), 51–67. Russell, K. C. (2008). Adolescence substance use treatment: Service delivery, research on effectiveness, and emerging treatment alternatives. In J. Roth & A. Finch (Eds.), Approaches to substance abuse and addiction in educational communities. New York: Haworth Press. Russell, K. C., & Gillis, H. L. (2010). Activity-based experiential psychotherapy and in the residential treatment of adolescents. Journal of Therapeutic Schools and Programs, 3(1), 45–67. Russell, K. C., & Phillips-Miller, D. (2002). Perspectives on the wilderness therapy process and its relation to outcome. Child and Youth Care Forum, 31(6), 415–437. Shepard, P. (1982). Nature and madness. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books. Stich, T. (1983). Experiential therapy for psychiatric patients. Journal of Experiential Education, 3, 23–30. Survive to Thrive (2010). Core values. Retrieved from www.youngadultcancer.ca/survivethrive/p/core_values. Sutton, S. (2001). Back to the drawing board? A review of applications of the transtheoretical model to substance use. Addiction, 96(1), 175–186. Thompson, M. (2009). Reviewing ecopsychology research: Exploring five databases and considering the future. Ecopsychology, 1(1), 32–37. Utah Division of Administrative Rules. (2007). Outdoor youth program licensing standards. Retrieved from www.rules.utah.gov/publicat/code/r501/r501–08.htm. Van de Vliet, P., Van Coppenolle, H., & Knapen, J. (1999). Physical measures, perceived physical ability, and body acceptance of adult psychiatric patients. Adapted Physical Activity Quarterly, 16(2), 113–125. Waehler, C. A., & Lenox, R. A. (1994). A concurrent (versus stage) model for conceptualizing and representing the counseling process. Journal of Counseling and Development, 73, 17–22. Webb, L. (2001). Therapists’ perceptions of wilderness therapy for adolescents. (Dissertation), California State University, Long Beach, CA.
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Therapeutic Uses of Nature White, W. (2010). The history and evolution of wilderness therapy as an intervention for youth. (Doctoral dissertation). Portsmouth, NH: Franklin Pierce University. White, D. D., Caulkins, M., & Russell, K. C. (2006). The role of physical exercise in wilderness therapy for troubled adolescent women. Journal of Experiential Education, 29(1), 18–37. Wilderness Guides Council. (2011). History of the Wilderness Guides Council. Retrieved from www.wildernessguidescouncil.org/about-the-wgc/our-history. Wilson, S. J., & Lipsey, M. W. (2000). Wilderness challenge programs for delinquent youth: A meta-analysis of outcome evaluations. Evaluation and Program Planning, 23(1), 1–12.
Notes: (1.) The author of this publication was a research assistant, research associate, and the associate director of the Wilderness Research Center from 1995 to 2003 and was involved in much of the research and report writing on a major research agenda examining the use of wilderness for personal growth, education, and therapy. Keith C. Russell Keith C. Russell Department of Physical Education, Health and Recreation Western Washington University Bellingham, WA
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Restorative Environments
Oxford Handbooks Online Restorative Environments Henk Staats The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology, Health Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0024
Abstract and Keywords Restorative environment research is flourishing. Widespread appreciation of the concept has been spurred by two influential theories and has led to a substantive body of research. This chapter gives an overview of what has happened in this area. It begins with a description of the two theories, attention restoration theory and the psychoevolutionary theory of stress reduction, their content, similarities, and differences, and then reports on the research done in a number of environmental domains: nature, both wild and managed, the home, the workplace, museums and religious environments, hospitals, other health care settings, and favorite places. The following paragraphs then discuss central concepts in restorative environment research: perceived restorativeness and its determinants, new approaches to visual analysis of environmental scenes, and the social context of restoration. The chapter closes with a look into the future, to new methods, expansion of theoretical approaches, and applications. Keywords: restoration, attention fatigue, stress, nature, self-regulation, social context, health
Introduction Restorative environments have become a very important topic in environmental psychology. Books, the main journals, and the conferences of the discipline all increasingly report on research about restorative environments.1 This chapter tries to take stock of what has happened in this area. We will start with a description of the main theories that have been developed, after providing a context of theories that have preceded these or bear important relationships. We pay explicit attention to the similarities and differences of the theories. Then we look at environments where restorative experiences tend to take place, with an important but not exclusive role for natural environments. Other outdoor and indoor environments will be discussed that may provide opportunities for restoration. Where, and depending on what circumstances, environments provide restoration is the leading question. In this review of environments for restoration we will encounter questions regarding theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues that will be addressed in the next paragraphs. Specifically we will look at the concept of perceived restorativeness, its psycho-environmental characteristics, and the instruments developed to measure restorative quality. We then will pay attention to new ways of analyzing the visual experience of environments that attempt to explain their restorative quality and to the social aspects of restoration. The final paragraph will be on priorities for future research, and potential applications that are promising and so far untested.
Theories on Restoration: Predecessors Restoration implies discretionary time, time that is spent freely. Therefore, the theories developed in leisure and
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Restorative Environments recreation research provide a backdrop (p. 446) for the specific theories on restoration as we know them. Relevant earlier work in leisure research speaks about the different motivations for leisure, making distinctions between leisure that is intrinsic, that is, chosen for the activity itself, and leisure in which compensation is sought for earlier experiences: fatigue from work, overstimulation, and other states (see, e.g., Manfredo, Driver, & Tarrant, 1996; Witt & Bishop, 2009). Kelly (1978) provided an estimate of the relative importance of these different motivations, suggesting that 30% of leisure behavior is chosen to recover from earlier experiences. When evaluating this estimate, one should bear in mind that a figure like this takes into account only the leisure that stands apart from behavior in other life domains, such as work and the household, and does not take into account experiences of micro-restoration, the short breaks that periodically take place while engaged in other activities. In all it shows that restoration is a societally important phenomenon. A second group of theories that bear importance to the concept of restorative environments comes from earlier work in experimental aesthetics and environmental psychology. Very influential is the work by Berlyne (e.g., 1960, 1974) on the relation between stimulus characteristics and pleasure. Berlyne stated that the experience of pleasure is derived from the arousal potential of stimulation and this relationship has the shape of an inverted U: an intermediate degree of arousal potential creates the strongest experience of pleasure. Berlyne distinguished three characteristics of stimulation: psychophysical, collative and categorical2 characteristics that are each capable of creating the inverted-U relationship with pleasure. The psychophysical dimension refers to intensity of stimulation: the loudness of sounds, the brightness of light. Collative properties of stimulation refer to the spatial or temporal distribution of perceptual elements: complexity and incongruity as spatial, and novelty and newness as temporal collative properties of stimulation. Thirdly, characteristics signifying the environmental category refer to the inborn or learned value of stimuli for survival. Important for the present discussion is the application of the theory to the experience of urban and natural environments. Wohlwill (1983) used Berlyne’s framework to describe why nature is generally appreciated: he stated that the lower arousal potential of nature, compared to that of urban environments, is caused by lower psychophysical intensity of stimulation—lower sound levels, colors that are less intense—and lower complexity— less contrast, more continuity, more gradual transitions in shapes and succession of stimuli, and slower movement. Apart from these stimulus characteristics that favor relaxation, Wohlwill mentioned that natural environments may have high value as a category. Given that the human species lived in natural environments for most of its evolution, it seems likely that people have a preference for environments that appear to have good characteristics for survival. A final distinction between urban and natural environments points explicitly at the social characteristics of the two environments: due to the relative absence of other human beings, a natural environment is characterized by the absence of feedback, or inferred feedback, the feeling of not being evaluated by other people, which allows for relaxation. The notion of evolutionary influences on the appreciation and restorative qualities is an issue that we encounter in currently viable theories of psychological restoration, described in the next paragraph.
Current Theories on Psychological Restoration: Attention Restoration Theory and Ulrich’s PsychoEvolutionary Framework There is a narrow choice of theories that have been developed to understand processes of psychological restoration in which the sociophysical environment plays a pivotal role. In fact only two are generally used. The first is attention restoration theory (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989; Kaplan, 1995). The second is the psycho-evolutionary model developed by Ulrich (1983, 1991).
Attention Restoration Theory In the beginning of the 1970s Rachel and Stephen Kaplan, from the School of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan, started a 12-year research project on the experiences of people who went on a hike in a wilderness area for more than a week, spending part of that time alone. Participants kept diaries, which provided a unique database of experiences of being in the great outdoors (Kaplan & Talbot, 1983; Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989). Analyses of these diary notes provided the basis for the notion of a restorative environment, defined as an environment that is beneficial in restoring mental resources that were spent in previous activities. These notions developed into an influential theory, named attention restoration theory (ART). ART has the capacity to direct attention as a central
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Restorative Environments concept. Building on the classical work of William James (1892), ART proposes that attention has two modes, voluntary or (p. 447) directed, and involuntary or spontaneous. Directed attention implies that the individual concentrates on a task, situation, or behavior and wards off other stimulation competing for attention. This enables him/her to succeed at the task at hand. Directed attention is a scarce resource. Similar to other energy models of psychological functioning (Baumeister, 2002), ART assumes that the capacity to direct attention diminishes with use, because it requires effort to inhibit distractions in order to direct attention. As the capacity to direct attention diminishes, a person may commit errors on tasks, show less sensitivity to others, become irritable or impulsive, and otherwise show signs of attentional fatigue. Entering a situation that does not require directed attention permits a fatigued person to rest the inhibitory mechanism on which directed attention depends, and this allows for restoration of the capacity to direct attention. This would be reflected in more effective functioning, sometimes with enhanced subjective well-being (Hammitt, 2004; Hartig, 2007).
Psycho-Environmental Conditions for Restorative Experiences As described in ART (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989; Kaplan, 1995), restoration proceeds to the degree that four qualities characterize the person-environment exchange. First, the person has a sense of being away. Psychologically, if not geographically, the person gains distance from unwanted distractions and routines that impose demands for directed attention. Second, the person is effortlessly engaged by interesting environmental contents and processes, such as exploration. This fascination promotes rest for the inhibitory mechanism behind directed attention. It is thought to be prolonged when the environment allows a sense of extent, itself attributed to coherence in the experience of the environment (e.g., the environment is perceived as structured and orderly rather than confusing) and the scope for continued exploration. As a motivational context in which being away, fascination, and extent can occur, compatibility refers to the correspondence between what the person wants to do and what the environment allows or necessitates. Of these four components, it is thought that fascination plays the key role, with the other three enhancing or sustaining fascination.
Different Kinds of Fascination According to ART, fascination—effortless attention—comes in two ways. One is hard fascination, the kind of fascination that is raised by intense stimulation that captivates the senses, precluding thinking about anything else. Kaplan (1995) mentioned auto racing, Kaplan and Berman (2010) additionally mentioned watching athletic events, violence, sex, and intense competition. Herzog, Black, Fountaine, and Knotts (1997) used examples of sports/entertainment settings, such as a bowling alley, Jet Skiers, a nightclub, and found that these qualified as settings for hard fascination. Hard fascination supposedly has the potential to allow partial, shallow recovery. Soft fascination, on the other hand, is a state that can be evoked by stimuli with moderate intensity that are aesthetically pleasing (Herzog et al., 1997; Kaplan, 1995). Due to these qualities, it leaves room for reflection, a “deeper” state of psychological restoration. The opportunity to reflect on priorities, worries, personal problems, and possible solutions may solve the tension that these kinds of unfinished business evoke. Soft fascination seems to be evoked especially, but not only, by natural settings that please the eye but do not captivate the mind.
Phases in the Restoration Process Already implied in the previous paragraph is the sequence of phases in the restoration process. Elaborating on the concept of restoration, Kaplan and Kaplan (1989, pp. 196–197) proposed four successive stages that a restorative experience might pass through. Starting with “clearing the head” of cognitive clutter, such as distracting thoughts, a person can continue into recovery of directed attention capacity. With the “cognitive quiet” gained in these initial stages of restoration, the person is better prepared to consider “matters on one’s mind” that otherwise would remain unheard. Finally, the restorative experience, if not disrupted, can entail reflection on one’s life, priorities, possibilities, actions, and goals.
Psycho-Evolutionary Theory of Stress Reduction The second theory that is regularly employed to explain the process of psychological restoration induced by environments has been developed by Roger Ulrich and his colleagues. The initial formulation of the theory (1983 ) states that the appreciation of a scene, particularly a natural scene, succeeds in a number of phases, starting with a very quick, affective response to the gross configurational properties of the scene, that is, the dominant
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Restorative Environments landscape elements, such as trees, plains, mountains, water; presence or absence of a focal point; degree of depth in the scene; surface texture; a deflected vista; and (p. 448) the absence of threat. The affect has a clear physiological basis: after exposure to simulations of natural environments or urban environments following a stressor, measures employed to assess physiological changes report effects in the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system indicative of recovery of stress that are faster for natural environments (Ulrich, Dimberg, & Driver, 1990; Ulrich et al., 1991). This initial affective response may lead to further scrutiny of its implications for well-being, and drive behavior. Ulrich (1983) argued that natural environments with the characteristics that lead to high preference can bring about psycho-physiological changes that increase well-being, especially for stressed or anxious individuals, meaning that these environments have restoration potential. This initial version of a “tentative perspective” (p. 116) of psycho-physiological restoration is followed by theoretical and empirical papers, that elaborate this notion of the restorative power of natural landscapes. It is placed in the context of an evolutionary perspective (Ulrich, 1993), on the argument that for the survival of the human race it has been beneficial to be attracted to natural landscapes that seem fertile, and therefore promise food and water, have depth, allow locomotion, and are absent of danger. Empirical papers demonstrate that post-operative recovery proceeds faster and more easily for patients who have a view of nature compared to patients who have a view of a brick wall (1984 ), that mildly stressed student participants show more beneficial changes in anxiety and positive affect after viewing slides of natural compared to urban settings (Ulrich, 1979), and that physiological indices also point at beneficial changes after viewing nature scenes relative to viewing urban scenes (Ulrich, 1981), especially after having been severely stressed (Ulrich et al., 1991; Van den Berg, Koole, & Van der Wulp, 2003). Effects of nature are discerned in different settings that are in line with these findings: effects of nature posters in offices (Kweon, Ulrich, Walker, & Tassinary, 2008), roadside vegetation for automobile drivers (Parsons et al., 1998), and hospital waiting rooms (Ulrich, Simons, & Miles, 2006).
Similarities and Differences Between the Two Theories The two frameworks developed to understand restorative experiences seem to have many differences, while the similarities are less obvious. Both similarities and differences are described below, followed by a paragraph that describes how the two, although different, can be related.
Looking At Similarities We note two related issues: the emphasis on a possible evolutionary basis for nature as a restorative environment, and the kind of natural environments that seem to be highly restorative.
An Evolutionary Basis Both theories are proponents of the biophilia hypothesis, the idea that love of nature is in our genes (Wilson & Kellert, 1993). This is described in several publications by both leading authors. – Ulrich (1993) argued that the human species survived through learning which natural settings and elements were favorable and which were not. Biophilia and biophobia are therefore expressions of the same dependence of people on nature. Those natural settings that were favorable for survival are the ones that receive high preference ratings in contemporary research. That seems especially true for savanna-like settings or settings with calm water bodies. The contrast in preference scores with those of urban environments is, according to this perspective, due to the fact that urban environments do not exhibit the characteristics that, during evolution, suggested the satisfaction of basic needs of food, shelter, and protection from threatening species. The perspective of restoration after having been exposed to stressful circumstances is seen by Ulrich (1993, p. 108) as an extension of preference in ordinary circumstances, because people who are under stress benefit even more from the characteristics of these highly favored natural environments. These are thought to be adaptive because quick recovery will bring a person back to a state in which he can defend himself and, in general, be more alert and energetic. From a different line of research comes the finding that positive mood change, as brought about by exposure to unthreatening natural environments, enhances creativity and higher order problem-solving, which Ulrich (1993) also considered important for survival. – The framework of ART is also strongly based on the evolutionary significance of nature as the environment
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Restorative Environments that leads to restoration. Kaplan (1995) argued that environmental qualities that determine restoration refer to the qualities that originally favored survival and that may explain why natural environments and processes have high restorative value. In earlier phases of evolution it was beneficial for survival to be vigilant and led by fascination, (p. 449) not focus intensely and for a long time on one specific phenomenon, because the wild environment would make such a person vulnerable for surprises. In Kaplan’s words (1995 , p. 170), “It is only in the modern world that the split between the important and the interesting has become extreme.”
Physical Characteristics of Restorative Natural Environments The two theories seem to agree on the kind of natural environments that have strong restorative qualities. As mentioned above, Ulrich (1983) emphasized that natural environments that are highly restorative should be unthreatening, and have structured complexity (p. 98) by the presence of homogeneous textures, grouping of natural elements, a focal point that draws the observer’s attention, a degree of depth in the scene that allows anticipation of potential threats, and relatively even surface texture that allows accurate estimation of distance and easy locomotion. A second kind of landscape that he considered highly restorative is that of large, calm water bodies (Ulrich, 1993). The four components of restorative environments in ART indirectly refer to physical properties of nature. The exact physical characteristics of natural environments that are restorative may not be that critical in ART as long as the experiences that are evoked match the four qualities described. Nevertheless, it seems that Kaplan draws on earlier work that specifies needs, time frames, and cognitive qualities of the landscape in the Landscape Preference Matrix (Kaplan, 1987; Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989). The landscapes predicted to be highly preferred are those that combine coherence with complexity (i.e., visual richness), and possibilities for orientation with implied richness upon entering the scene.
Describing the Differences Differentiating between the theories seems easier: differences regard the main antecedent states and processes, and correspondingly the main dependent variables. In addition, there seem to be differences in the temporal course of the processes of restoration. Regarding the antecedent state, ART posits attentional fatigue as caused by cognitive processing: having been obliged to attend to information that is crucial for a task leads to fatigue. Kaplan (1995) stated that the task leading to fatigue does not have to be experienced as unpleasant: it is merely the demand on voluntary attention that causes fatigue. This contrasts with psycho-evolutionary theory that focuses on negative affect and stress as the state from which to restore. The processes involved differ correspondingly: in ART the taking over of spontaneous attention to rest the directed attention mechanism, in psycho-evolutionary theory the blocking of negative feelings and thoughts by pleasant experiences that gradually diminish feelings of stress.
Integration Integrating attention restoration theory and Ulrich’s psycho-evolutionary approach is done both at a theoretical level as in a pragmatic sense in many studies applying the theories to assess restorative effects of different environments. On a theoretical level Kaplan (1995) made clear that attention fatigue and stress are different phenomena that may however appear simultaneously or in close succession. He mentioned three ways in which the two may be related. One possibility is that attention fatigue impairs performance, which may give rise to stress; a second possibility is that a stressful situation may cause a decrease in attentional capacity due to the effort to keep stress under control, for example, when a person experiences pain that puts demands on inhibitory control to drive safely. A third option is the actual co-occurrence of stress and attentional fatigue when an aversive stimulus, for example, listening to the description of a traumatic experience (Kaplan, 1995, p. 178), both causes stress and demands attention. On an empirical level researchers, not wanting to miss possible effects of the situations they study, include both affective and cognitive measures to study the effects of antecedent conditions and potential restorative conditions (e.g., Berman, Jonides, & Kaplan, 2008; Johansson, Hartig, & Staats, 2011).
Environments for Restoration In this section we want to give an overview of what environments have been investigated regarding their restorative effects and what the results were. The preceding paragraphs have described restoration as a process that is induced by natural environments. In itself, exposure to nature is not a prerequisite for restoration. Although
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Restorative Environments the majority of studies have been executed to see what natural environments can do to restore whatever human capability needs restoration, it does not necessarily only appear in nature. Moreover, there are so many ways that nature has been presented in the extant research that a further distinction of nature presentations seems relevant. Below we organize the work in two main categories: the first is different manifestations of nature, and the second consists of other environments. (p. 450)
Nature as a Restorer
In the literature we find research in the following categories: wild nature, managed nature, urban nature, flowers, and water, and these can be experienced in reality, or be represented through media such as video, photographs, virtual reality, imagination, and even soundscapes. We will shortly discuss findings from these environmental categories,
Wild Nature The first study that provided the ideas for restorative environments and attention fatigue took place in relatively wild areas. The participants in the Outdoor Survival Program experienced wilderness circumstances for more than a week and eventually felt better because of that, providing the inspiration for ART (Kaplan & Talbot, 1983; Talbot & Kaplan, 1986). Experiences of this duration have rarely been investigated systematically from a restoration perspective. Hartig et al. (1991, Study One) is the exception in that this study also looked at recreationists who spent a considerable amount of time in nature and afterward improved their performance on a cognitive, attentiondemanding task. A recent study looking at restorative effects in a wilderness area corroborated findings regarding both stress reduction and mental rejuvenation (Cole & Hall, 2010). This seems to support the idea that wilderness is a restorative environment but the self-selection of participants in these studies raises questions about the generality of these long-term findings. Wilderness appears to raise other sentiments as well, such as fear and disgust (Bixler & Floyd, 1997), making people apprehensive of going to wild lands. Fear for wild nature can have many sources, such as getting lost, confrontation with wild animals or people with bad intentions, bad weather, and insects and snakes, and these fears are quite common. Andrews and Gatersleben (2010), applying prospect-refuge theory (Appleton, 1975), showed that one source of fear is the spatial organization of the landscape in that low levels of prospect, refuge, and escape increase fear. Herzog and Rector (2009) showed that a person ominously present in the setting destroys the restorative qualities that were originally present. Koole and Van den Berg (2005) showed how wild landscapes are more associated with thoughts of death than cultivated landscapes and that preference ratings of wilderness decrease when mortality is made salient, contrary to the preference scores of rural and urban landscapes. Although the last three studies report findings in terms of preference or perceived restorativeness, it seems likely that landscapes that evoke fear and thoughts of death will not be restorative. It might be hypothesized that, for wilderness environments, situational and personal characteristics may be responsible for differences in restorative effects, more so than for other natural environments. Familiarity, acquired through long-term exposure (Talbot & Kaplan, 1984), or through childhood experience (Chen-Hsuan Cheng & Monroe, 2012), need for structure (Van den Berg & Winsum-Westra, 2010), or specific professional expertise qualify as factors that may explain the difference. Given its selective appeal, it is therefore possible that the results of simulation studies are less predictive for wilderness environments than for other environments.
Managed Nature Landscapes that are experienced as natural, because they predominantly consist of natural elements but are clearly designed and maintained for human purposes, are evaluated differently than wild, unmanaged nature. Under the heading of managed nature, several subcategories exist, notably areas that are protected, properly maintained, and usually made accessible by the creation of paths and signage: recreation areas, containing spaces and facilities designed for play and picnicking, and rural areas whose primary function is agricultural. Because the transition from managed natural areas outside town to urban parks is a gradual one, they are also included in this paragraph. A number of studies that looked at activities, walking mostly, in natural areas report that these experiences have restorative effects (e.g., Berman et al., 2008; Hartig et al., 1991, Study 2; Hartig et al.,
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Restorative Environments 2003; Hull & Michael, 1995; Johanson, Hartig, & Staats, 2011). A study comparing the effects of walks through parks that were tended or wild, due to different degrees of maintenance (Martens, Gutscher, & Bauer, 2011), showed that the tended park walk more strongly increased positive affect and decreased negative affect compared to a wild park. The authors’ explanation of the stronger effect of tended nature walk mentioned, among others, sadness because of the deadwood in the wild forest walk, an explanation that might be related to the mortality salience explanation offered by Koole et al. (2005). Other studies looked at views on nature, in realistic situations, or as simulations of nature. Views of nature have been studied as roadside views from a car, views from home, and views from a hospital room. In a study by Cackowski and Nasar (2003), the view on surroundings from a car interior were (p. 451) simulated and changes in anger and frustration were measured after induction of a stress-inducing task. Frustration appeared to decrease more after exposure to more natural views as compared to more built views as measured by the time participants were willing to spend at trying to solve unsolvable anagrams. Another study on roadside environments using video simulations (Parsons et al., 1998) found that the more natural-looking environments, a golf course and a forest, reduced stress more, and led to better performance on an attention-demanding post-test than roadsides showing urban or mixed (natural-urban) scenes. Interestingly, the golf course seemed to give the best results overall, in line with a (hypothesized) preference for managed natural environments. Views that were actually from a window in one’s home or simulated as such have been investigated for their effects. The benefits of experiencing nature from real windows was investigated by Tennessen and Cimprich (1995), who found that students with a more natural view from their dormitory room were better at attention-demanding tasks as compared to those looking out at a built environment. Kaplan (2001) demonstrated that different measures of well-being were related to the naturalness of the immediate surroundings. Even when controlling for variability of activities performed outside, a factor not included in the Tennessen and Cimprich study, relationships existed between naturalness and two measures of well-being. A research program that focused on effects of the immediate surroundings of high-rise apartments in Chicago found that vicinity of nature increased attention span and reduced aggression (Kuo, 2001; Kuo & Sullivan, 2001; Taylor, Kuo, & Sullivan, 2002). These studies benefitted from random allocation of the apartments to residents, creating a true experimental design in a real-life research situation where residents lived in apartments that were identical apart from the amount of green surrounding the apartment buildings. Simulations of views have been investigated many times. Some noteworthy examples are studies looking at changes in affect after a stress induction (Ulrich et al., 1991, Van den Berg et al., 2003), attentional performance (Berto, 2005), and studies looking at preference for natural versus urban environments after a mental fatigue induction (Hartig & Staats, 2006; Staats & Hartig, 2004). The studies looking at affect change after exposure to a stressor consistently report that affect improves more when participants are exposed to nature views as compared to urban views. An elaborate study showed that physiological changes (heart period, pulse transit time, skin conductance) were congruent with the self-report affect measures (Ulrich et al., 1991). No behavioral instructions were given to participants, other than to relax (Ulrich et al., 1991, p. 212). Studies of affect change that also incorporate physiological measures and that look at the effectiveness of different presentation media consistently find that both self-report and physiological measures indicating relaxation follow similar patterns when natural stimuli are experienced in the field or mediated (Kjellgren & Buhrkall, 2010). Different degrees of immersion (De Kort, Meinders, Sponselee, & IJsselsteijn, 2006) may provide different intensities of the recovery process. In the studies looking at preference for natural versus urban environments after a mental fatigue induction, participants were instructed to imagine themselves walking for an hour through the urban or natural environment simulated by a series of slides. On all of the scenes a path was visible, making clear that it was relatively tended nature that was shown. The main outcome of the studies is that the preference for natural environments over urban environments increases when mentally fatigued. This effect was originally found in scenario studies (Staats, Kieviet, & Hartig, 2003; Staats & Hartig, 2004) but proved to exist in a study with a real fatigue induction (Hartig & Staats, 2006). The studies show that the sensitivity for environmental characteristics that can reduce mental fatigue is reflected in the overall preference for an environment. Studies of views on natural or other scenes from settings other than the home or a laboratory situation have one major predecessor, the seminal study by Ulrich (1984) of views from hospital rooms. In an archival study of patients recovering from gallbladder surgery, Ulrich found major differences as a function of the window view these patients had in their recovery rooms. Patients looking out at trees had shorter recovery time, used less painkillers
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Restorative Environments and anti-anxiety drugs, and were in better moods as reported by nurses, than patients looking out at a brick wall. The strength of the effect and the potential importance of these findings, both for medical and for economic reasons, have been major drivers of research on restorative environments in general and currently for “healing environments” and hospital design in particular (e.g., Largo-Wight, 2011; Ulrich, 2006). A somewhat neglected topic in restorative environment research is the effect of water completely or partly occupying the scene investigated for (p. 452) restorative effects. Only a couple of studies have paid systematic attention to the presence of water in scenes intended to effect restoration or at least assess the degree of perceived restorativeness. White et al. (2010) compared scenes that consisted of built, green, and water elements in fixed proportions and found that different measures, including perceived restorativeness, increased when the proportion of water in the scene increased. Interesting, and in line with a second study that looked at water elements (Karmanov & Hamel, 2008), is that urban scenes with water elements scored almost as well on change in affect indicative of restoration as green scenes, potentially qualifying outcomes of the earlier studies that so uniformly showed that nature has superior restorative qualities. This issue is clearly not resolved yet.
Other Environments Baum (1991, in Hull & Michael, 1995, p. 2) stated, “It is likely that recreation opportunities which are readily available in our everyday environment provide more benefits than relaxing or recreation in the [natural setting].” This is a simple yet important observation, emphasizing that most leisure behavior takes place in and around the home, possibly in the workplace, and often in the context and short intervals that obligatory activities allow. That in itself is enough reason to look at what other settings can provide. And ironically, Ulrich’s (1984) most influential paper on views from hospital rooms ends with the statement that future research should look at what other types of views (than of trees or a brick wall) may accomplish: “Perhaps to a chronically understimulated patient, a built view such as a lively street might be more stimulating and hence more therapeutic than any natural views” (p. 421). Understimulation seems a somewhat forgotten phenomenon in restoration research, while it is undoubtedly a potential stress factor and a state that people are motivated to escape from, just as the overstimulation processes leading to stress and mental fatigue. So there are different reasons to look at restorative effects of other environments, springing both from the need for restoration that is easily available, and from the need for other environments than what the low-stimulation natural environment generally offers. These two conditions together open up a huge number of possible situations that have been investigated for their restorative effects, mentioned as such or in other terms. Discussed here is a number with obvious importance in daily life that explicitly used the restorative framework: the home, workplace, museums, houses of worship, hospitals, and—although stemming from a different kind of categorization—favorite places.
Home The home is probably the place that qualifies most prominently as a restorative environment. However, there are several obstacles reported in the literature. One is that the home also is a location for regular paid and unpaid work (e.g., Ahrentzen, 1990; Hartig, Johansson, & Kylin, 2003). As such, the home is a place that can be strongly associated with chores, unfinished tasks, and maintenance demands (Saxby & Repetti, 2010). If so, being at home is ambiguous for restoration. This ambiguity can be resolved in research by specifying spatial, social, behavioral, and temporal circumstances within the home that are conducive or not conducive to restoration (Ahrentzen, 1990; Repetti, 1989). Repetti, for example, showed that air traffic controllers more effectively buffered the effects of stress at the workplace when their spouses allowed them to withdraw socially at home. A similar finding (Staats, Van Gemerden, & Hartig, 2010) is that mentally fatigued people considered performing undemanding leisure activities at home more attractive while alone than with a good friend compared to people who were rested. Another explanation for the home not always being restorative is that the home environment tends to become dominated by media-oriented activities that reduce privacy and calm (Ward Thompson, 2002). Privacy, beneficial for restoration, is in turn also influenced by spatial characteristics of the home (see, e.g., Evans, 1996).
Workplace The workplace can have restorative characteristics that alleviate the demands imposed by the work itself. Restorative potential may not only reduce stress and improve well-being, it may even directly improve the quality of the work done, given its potential effect on cognitive capabilities. Research that explicitly mentions restorative
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Restorative Environments aspects of the workplace has mainly looked at natural elements: window views with and without nature, alternatives for views like photographs and paintings, and indoor plants. Views of nature from office windows have been compared with other views (Shin, 2007) and appeared to have beneficial effects on stress reduction and job satisfaction. Bringslimark, Hartig, and Patil (2011) have compared offices with and without windows and found that offices workers without windows brought plants and pictures of nature (p. 453) into the office much more often than workers with windows, while controlling for office decorations that were meant for personalization and controlling for type of office. This seems to point to a need for contact with nature that indoor plants can satisfy to some extent. This need may stem from the need for restoration (Bringslimark, Hartig, & Patil, 2009), as also suggested by an experiment that showed that participants in offices with plants improved their performance on an attention-demanding task over trials while participants in the same office without plants did not (Raanaas et al., 2011).
Museums and Spiritual Environments There are places designed for services that are intellectual or spiritual, and these may fulfill a need for restoration. Museums may function as a restorative environment, and religious buildings as well. A study in an art museum showed that a visit could be restorative but only for those experienced with museum environments, that is, people accustomed to the facilities, floor plans, communication style, and behavioral codes that apply (Kaplan, Bardwell, & Slakter, 1993). Others may feel uncomfortable when inexperience inhibits their ability to “work the system” (Hood, 1993, p. 713). Places that can be restorative for their spiritual function are churches or monasteries, or more generally, houses of worship. A study on the functions of monasteries (Ouelette, Kaplan, & Kaplan, 2005) showed that a stay in a monastery was partly motivated by restorative needs, and that visitors felt rested, clearheaded, competent, and alert at the end of their stay (Ouelette et al., 2005, p.181), experiences indicating attentional recovery. The effect of a stay in a monastery is of course experienced only by the select group who is attracted to such a setting and is able to afford and arrange such a stay. These practical restraints do not apply to churches and it seems that a visit of a church or, more generally, a house of worship, is partly driven by the same set of motives and has partly the same cluster of outcomes: people visiting a church go there to experience spirituality and a feeling of being away, which contribute to the ability to focus, feelings of peace, and effective functioning, which are easily interpreted as signs of recovery (Herzog, Ouelette, Rolens, & Koenigs, 2010). Other results of both the monastery and the houses of worship study extend the focus of ART, according to the authors.
Hospitals and Rehabilitation Centers Hospitals and rehabilitation centers are places where restoration is sorely needed, and some attempts documented by research have been made to increase the restorative quality (e.g., Whitehouse et al., 2001), apart from the view (Ulrich, 1984). In reflecting on quality of health care Ulrich (2006) argued vehemently for the crucial role that architecture and interior design play in reducing health risks and stress for patients. Research on factors that create healing environments is still in its early stages (Dijkstra, Pieterse, & Pruyn, 2006). However, one factor figuring in recent research is the capacity of natural elements, interior plants and gardens, for recovery of stress (Dijkstra, Pieterse, & Pruyn, 2008; Hartig & Cooper Marcus, 2006). Positive effects of indoor plants on subjective well-being were found for patients with lung ailments (Raanaas, Patil, & Hartig, 2010) and earlier research already provided suggestions that cancer patients after surgery performed better at attention-demanding tasks after nature walks, compared to a control condition (Cimprich, 1993). In hospital waiting rooms stress of blood donors is reduced by nature shown on television monitors (Ulrich, Simons, & Miles, 2003). Art containing nature elements in hospitals for children, although preferred over other types of art, does not seem to have similar restorative effects as found with adults or in other settings (Eisen et al., 2008).
Favorite Places Unlike the previous categories described above, favorite places are not defined physically or functionally, but places evaluatively different from others. A substantial body of research by Korpela and colleagues goes into the character of the places that are selected and described as favorite. Favorite places are important for selfregulation and reflect place identity (Korpela & Hartig, 1996). Natural places are overrepresented among favorite places, and a prominent finding in qualitative results of research is that restorative experiences are an important part of the value attached to these places (Korpela, Hartig, Kaiser, & Führer, 2001). Favorite places may also enhance experienced health and subjective well-being (Korpela & Ylen, 2007, 2009).
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Restorative Environments Specific Concepts of Interest Restorative environment research touches many areas of psychology. Its concepts, applications, and links with related disciplines raise many questions but also offer many new possibilities. A few of these will be discussed in this paragraph. We will look at perceived restorativeness, the four psycho-environmental determinants of restorative experiences in ART, some visual characteristics of scenes (p. 454) that may relate to restoration and to social aspects of restoration.
Perceived Restorativeness This quality of an environment is the estimation that an individual who is fatigued or stressed will experience restoration in that environment. This concept is heavily used in research: the experience is considered so important that an estimate of restorativeness is the dependent variable in many empirical studies. An issue that is being debated regarding the ratings of restorativeness is whether it is possible to give a valid assessment of this quality by persons who are not in the environment and who may not be in need of restoration. This is common practice. The validity of ratings of restorativeness by persons who rely on memory, on verbal descriptions, or on visual simulations is a question similar to questions raised earlier in the literature, in particular with regard to preference ratings. The main outcome of research addressing this question is that preference ratings of visual simulations—static or dynamic—are strongly (r > .80) correlated with on-site evaluations and with each other (Stamps, 1990, 2010). This issue has not been taken up for restorativeness ratings; however, in my own research (Staats et al., 2003, 2010; Staats & Hartig, 2004) perceived likelihood of restoration was not influenced by manipulations that other dependent variables proved sensitive to. In these studies on mundane leisure situations, participants were asked whether they had difficulties assessing these characteristics, or difficulties imagining themselves in the situations depicted. Neither proved to be the case. Another study (Hartig & Staats, 2006) showed that likelihood of restorativeness ratings for a walk in a forest or an urban setting differed for people attentionally fatigued or not fatigued: fatigued people rated restoration more likely on a forest walk compared to non-fatigued people, and the opposite held for the urban walk. So, there may not yet be a definitive answer to this question. The question is empirical and important, especially given the interest in restorativeness as a characteristic of environments, or situations more generally, and reflected in the efforts spent to develop measures of restorativeness that provide a detailed assessment of characteristics that together constitute restorativeness. The most widely used measure is the Perceived Restorativeness Scale (PRS), developed by Hartig and colleagues (Hartig, Korpela, Evans, & Gärling, 1996). This scale has also been the basis for slightly different (Laumann, Gärling, & Stormark, 2001) and shortened versions (Herzog, Maguire, & Nebel, 2003), and versions for children (Bagot, Kuo, & Allen, 2007; see also Collado & Corraliza, 2011) and zoo attractions (Pals, Steg, Siero, & van der Zee, 2009). The PRS and any of the other scales are based on the characteristics of a restorative environment as developed by Kaplan (1995). The scales provide ratings on being away, extent, fascination, and compatibility. Subdimensions are proposed a priori or found in the factor structure: extent is subdivided in coherence and scope (Hartig et al. 1997; Kaplan, 1995), being away is split into a physical and psychological component (Laumann et al., 2001), novelty is distinguished (Pals et al., 2009), and compatibility is split in four (Kaplan, 2001) or even six subdimensions (Herzog et al., 2010). Despite all these distinctions, correlations among the a priori concepts are high in every study and outcomes of factor analytic procedures suggest that a two-factor or even a one-factor solution would be the most appropriate interpretation. This creates the danger that research on the restorative quality of different environments, obtaining findings for each of the dimensions, essentially shows the same effect on every dimension. On the other hand there is evidence for the restorative function of compatibility (Herzog, Hayes, Applin, & Weatherly, 2010), for the match between fascination and effortless processing (Berto, Baroni, Zainaghi, & Bettella, 2010) and for differential effects of some of the dimensions (Hug et al., 2009). We conclude that explanatory potential for the original concepts and for the concepts stemming from these are mixed, and that the proliferation of concepts seems to stand in the way of the need for a general, parsimonious scale of which the components are valid, independent, and sufficient. Ward and Russell (1981) already pointed out that concepts that reflect environmental meaning can be related because there is semantic similarity, empirical association, or a cause-and-effect structure. More reflection on the interrelations of the concepts will be useful.
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Restorative Environments Fluency and Fractals Explanations for the restorative quality of nature that start from different concepts, and are somewhat opposed to the evolutionary-like explanation of the main theories, are being developed. Two of these are fluency and fractals. Ideas about the fluency of visual stimulation hold that restoration may come from the subjective experience of the ease with which a certain stimulus organization is perceived (Joye & Van den Berg, 2011). The theory of (p. 455) fractals is more formal, stating that natural elements are characterized by the recurring of similar shapes at different scale levels. This recurring pattern is related to judgments of naturalness, which in turn is predictive of preference (Hagerhall, Purcell, & Taylor, 2004). Both related approaches are in their early stages of theory development, but they also relate to older theories on environmental aesthetics that emphasize order, visual richness, coherence, and complexity (see, e.g., Wohlwill, 1976).
Social Context of Restoration People are social animals, and any transaction with the physical world is imbued with social meaning. It can hardly be otherwise with restoration and the judgment of places as restorative environments. On this topic there has been very little research. As we saw above, Wohlwill (1983) already mentioned one social restorative characteristic of nature: the absence of social feedback. This idea has not been the subject of formal hypothesizing and tests. However, it seems to be echoed in the results of recent work on the social stress experienced by city dwellers (Lederbogen et al., 2011). Using fMRI technique, these studies showed that participants who lived or were raised in cities, as compared to participants living/raised in small towns or rural areas, experienced more stress induced by negative feedback while working on a cognitive task. Living in high densities comes at a cost, as already suggested in the early social psychological work on the city (e.g., Milgram, 1970), and the general prediction for people in need of restoration is therefore that they will have a preference for being alone. Three examples of studies that do pay attention to the social context of restoration show that social support can make a situation more restorative and that company, even of people most intimate, can serve multiple functions, conducive or not conducive to restoration. The social support that may facilitate restoration is described by researchers on ego depletion (Baumeister, Faber, & Wallace, 1999). They mention the importance of the “ego cast,” the support provided by familiar others to protect a person from demands that he/she is not capable of handling in a state of depletion. A characteristic of the environment that could create a need for company during restoration is safety. My own research (Staats & Hartig, 2004) showed that the safety needed to access a potentially restorative environment increased the preference for being with a friend, instead of being alone. Other research (Staats et al., 2010) pointed at potentially other motives to be with a friend: participants who considered being fatigued while visiting the city center preferred being with a friend over being alone, in a situation where safety was unlikely to explain this preference. A potential explanation could be the sociability norm, prescribing that one should not be alone in a public setting (Bourdieu, 1979/1984; Lofland, 1998).
Closing Remarks, with an Eye to the Future Looking back at 30 years of research on restorative environments, we see that the theme has received increasing attention. Progress has been made regarding theory, methods, and applications. But still the expectation is that the theme can be widened, deepened, and put to use in more ways than is currently being done. Widening implies looking at connections, with research in work and organizational psychology, where stress is a major research topic, with leisure research that so far seems to develop almost independent of restorative environment research, and with research in public health, that may give openings to epidemiological approaches to study large-scale and long-term effects of restoration and lack of it (see, e.g., Maas et al., 2009). Deepening our research efforts could be undertaken in many ways, for example, by looking more closely at modes of attention, by making use of sophisticated techniques such as neuroimaging (Lederbogen et al., 2011; Tae-Hoon et al., 2010), by further developing the possibilities of virtual environments, and by looking at phenomena that went previously unexplored, like the analysis of olfactory stimulation in relation to the emerging practice of forest bathing (Lee et al., 2011). Also the social psychological conditions for restoration merit much more attention than received until now. Already somewhat advanced is the practice of activities like therapeutic gardening and other programs intended to
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Restorative Environments contribute to patients’ health and well-being, by applying insights from restorative environments research. But it is not only in the clinical practice that insights from restorative environments research can be put to use. People in everyday environments, from the home to the city center, from allotment gardens to natural parks, can benefit from the increased effort and creativity that we invest in our research.
Acknowledgements I thank Silvia Collado and Terry Hartig for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this chapter.
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Notes: (1.) Recently, the 9th Biennial Conference on Environmental Psychology, September 26–28, 2011, in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, had 6 complete sessions involving 30 papers, 12.5% of all contributions, on restorative environments. Also, both Environment and Behavior (Hartig, 2001) and the Journal of Environmental Psychology (Hartig & Staats, 2003) published special issues on restorative environment research. (2.) The original term used by Berlyne is not categorical but ecological. Because of the different meaning of “ecological” in common use, we choose to use a different term that more intuitively grasps the content of the concept. Henk Staats Henk Staats Instituut Psychologie, Sociale en Organisatiepsychologie Leiden University Leiden, The Netherlands
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Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health
Oxford Handbooks Online Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health Barbara B. Brown and Carol M. Werner The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology, Health Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0025
Abstract and Keywords This chapter addresses how objectively rated macro- and micro-level features of the physical environment and residents’ perceptions of the environment support healthy physical activity and eating; these choices in turn relate to environmental health. Environmental qualities such as density, diversity of destinations, and pedestrian-friendly design relate to walking and other activities at both macro- and micro-levels. Perceived walkability sometimes relates to objectively assessed measures but often predicts activity independently as well. Macro environmental factors, such as agricultural practices and food store locations, have important relationships to food availability. Microlevel cues, such as the size of food containers, affect food consumption, often without awareness. Both multiple levels of support and multiple benefits are keys to enabling the macro, micro, and perceptual environments to work in concert to support health. Understanding such systems requires multidisciplinary teams and diverse methodologies. Research is needed at key turning points in life, such as relocation, to make healthier choices easy ones. Keywords: walkability, physical environment, pedestrian-friendly environment, food environment, health, eating, physical activity, walking
Introduction Consider a common US rite of passage. A family lives in town in a small duplex with one bathroom, limited kitchen storage, a one-car garage, and a tiny backyard. The parents save for the American dream of a larger, freestanding house in the suburbs. Federal tax incentives enable a new home purchase on the suburban fringe, where land is cheaper, making larger homes more affordable. The children have their own bedrooms and bathrooms, the kitchen has plenty of storage space, and the backyard is big enough for play and parties. What is less salient in this American dream scenario is that the residential choice sets off a cascade of other “choices” outside of the family’s awareness. They will need to purchase private cars for all driving-age family members who need to leave the neighborhood. Work commutes are time-consuming and stressful, perhaps causing late-arriving parents to give up their traditional after-work dog walk. The children, who used to walk to the park to meet friends, now have no park and enlist parents to drive them to more distant planned events, such as soccer games. Parental chauffeur duties often preclude home-cooked dinner in favor of the quick take-out options from the drive-through fast food restaurant. Frequent trips to small local grocers give way to infrequent trips to the more distant mega-grocer. The family buys a larger car for bulk-buy shopping trips and carpooling children to distant events. They buy groceries for longer shelf life and can store larger amounts—the two-pack refined-flour bread with preservatives, not the single whole-grain loaf they formerly picked up on the walk home from the transit stop. Over (p. 460) the years, the family gradually gains weight and gets insufficient physical activity. This fictional family has adopted habits typical of those in millions of families in the United States and elsewhere. Their subtle alterations in the pattern of family living carry implications for overall health for the family, society, and the planet.
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Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health A growing multidisciplinary research field is now focused on the potential health threats associated with many activities that have been considered markers of the good life in US society, such as moving to new suburban neighborhoods, buying a car for each family member, and having abundant food choices. Historical and ongoing trends document the increasing prevalence of more sedentary lifestyles and more abundant but unhealthy food options. The associated problems of obesity and physical inactivity pose threats to people and the planet. Research also suggests that, like New Year’s resolutions, typical individually focused efforts to reverse obesity and inactivity are largely ineffective. But hope is not lost. Researchers from multiple disciplines now scrutinize how seemingly simple behaviors, such as eating and walking, are in fact complex events involving psychological, social, policy, and physical environmental aspects. Researchers, policymakers, and design professionals ask how we might reconfigure settings to support healthier activity and eating choices. We review how both macro- and micro-scale physical environments and the perceptions of environments relate to walking and eating.
Problems of Obesity and Insufficient Physical Activity Currently most US adults are insufficiently active and overweight or obese. The 2008 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) physical activity goals require ≥ 150 minutes of moderate or ≥75 minutes of vigorous physical activity a week (or an equivalent mix) accrued from bouts of ≥ 10 minutes. Although 51% of adults in a recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey said they met these CDC guidelines for physical activity, only 5% actually achieved these levels when they wore accelerometers that provide objective measures of physical activity duration and intensity (Troiano et al., 2008). Researchers disagree on the exact amounts of physical activity needed to prevent or reverse obesity (Hill, Wyatt, Reed, & Peters, 2003; Katan & Ludwig, 2010; Saris et al., 2003), but there is agreement that low physical activity is often related to obesity risk (Haskell et al., 2007) and has clear dose-response relationships to a variety of other health problems (Haskell, Blair, & Hill, 2009). Obesity rates are also growing in the United States. National surveys in 1990 showed that in most states, 10–14% of adults were obese. In contrast, less than 20 years later in 2008, 20–30% of adults were obese in all but one state (Colorado had 15–19% obesity; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2008). Obesity is defined as ≥ 30 body mass index (BMI), where BMI is defined as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared; overweight is defined as a BMI ≥ 25 and <30. Among US adults, 33.8% are obese and 34.2% are overweight (Flegal, Carroll, Ogden, & Curtin, 2010). As another example, in 1960 the average man was 5’8”, 166 lbs, and 25.1 BMI; by 2000, the average man was 5’9”, 191 lbs, and almost 28 BMI. Women went from 5’3”, 140 lbs, and 24.9 BMI to 5’4”, 164 lbs, and just over 28 BMI (Ogden, Fryar, Carroll, & Flegal, 2004). As obesity rates grow, so do associated health risks for cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers (Manson & Bassuk, 2003). We often combat overweight through individually focused diet and exercise programs, which are largely ineffective and unresponsive to the society-wide scale of the challenge of obesity. A recent meta-analysis of weight loss clinical trials shows that even the highly motivated individuals who enroll in these trials sustain losses of only 3–4 kg (6.6–8.8 lbs) after two years (Catenacci, Hill, & Wyatt, 2009). Any reduction in overweight is good, but this amount would not reverse the obesity epidemic; for example, an obese 5’4” woman is at least 34 lbs overweight and the obese 5’9” man is at least 41 pounds overweight. Furthermore, the authors noted that sustained weight loss often required continuing professional support, such as individual counseling, which is both financially prohibitive and unlikely to be available to most of society. The rapid rise of obesity means that genetic factors could not have evolved quickly enough to account for the sudden change; likewise, rapid society-wide personality changes, such as sudden increases in impulsiveness or low willpower, have not been documented. If diet and exercise regimes have limited effectiveness and neither genes nor individual psychology alone can account for recent trends, then new approaches and assessments of causes are needed. Comparing current lifestyles in the United States with lifestyles a half century ago offers useful insights into obesity trends. (p. 461) Historical Decreases in Physical Activity An analysis of national trends over time by Brownson and colleagues reveals how our lifestyles have gradually become more sedentary (Brownson, Boehmer, & Luke, 2005). They noted that suburban living rose in popularity, from about 22% to about 50% of the population from 1950 to 2000. Suburban neighborhoods often require cars for individuals to get to necessities such as jobs and stores. As of 2001, US households had more vehicles than drivers, with only 9.4% of households car-free. From 1950 to 2000, according to state data reported to the Federal Highway Administration, the daily vehicle miles traveled per person increased by 0.4 miles per year from about 8 to
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Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health 27 miles per day. According to a second source, the National Household Transportation Survey, US adults spent about 55 minutes a day sitting in a vehicle, which precludes healthier activity during that time and pollutes the air. During this same period, we invented even more reasons to sit. Between 1950 and 2000, sedentary occupations increased from 23.3%to about 42.0%, while physically active occupations decreased from 30% to 22.6%; television ownership went from 10% to 98% of households, and household viewing times increased from under 5 to over 7.5 hours per day for those with sets, which entails more sedentary behavior and more household energy use. Consistent with these findings, modern communities that have avoided these lifestyle changes maintain higher levels of activity. One study of Old Order Amish adults, who are living the equivalent of a rural agricultural lifestyle from the late 1800s, found they walk on average 18,425 steps per day for men and 14,196 for women and have low rates (0% for men, 9% for women) of obesity (Bassett, Schneider, & Huntington, 2004). Estimates from other studies suggest 5,900–6,800 steps per day are about average for adults with more modern lifestyles (Tudor-Locke, Johnson, & Katzmarzyk, 2009). Thus, trends toward obesity are consistent with lifestyles of greater sedentariness.
New Focus: Developing Multiple Supports to Encourage Healthy Weight and Physical Activity Given the above evidence of the limited effectiveness of diet and exercise programs and increasing sedentariness, it may be easier to avoid weight and sedentariness problems with two interrelated approaches: healthier behaviors supported by healthier contexts. First, healthier everyday physical activity and eating behaviors might prevent overweight and obesity. Calculations suggest that expending or avoiding about 100 calories or per day— achievable by walking 2,000 more steps per day or drinking 8 fewer ounces of sweetened soda a day—would prevent 90% of US adults from gaining the typical 1–2 pounds per year that, over time, can result in obesity (Catenacci et al., 2009). Walking is a particularly healthy way to achieve this goal, given that a recent review relates walking to lower risk of heart disease and stroke (Boone-Heinonen, Evenson, Taber, & Gordon-Larsen, 2009); even another hour of weekly walking relates to reduced cardiovascular disease risk (Oguma & ShinodaTagawa, 2004). Fewer studies link walking to obesity, but some studies show more walking is associated with healthier BMI both cross-sectionally (Dunton et al., 2009) and over 15 years (Gordon-Larsen et al., 2009). Thus, emphasizing prevention through fundamental but simple changes in daily life may be more effective in the long run than individually focused weight loss programs, although research on this new prevention approach is sparse. Second, healthier physical activity and eating choices can be encouraged with multiple physical, social, and policy supports at varied levels of scale. This shifts the search for causes of obesity and inactivity from an exclusive focus on individual biological or psychological causes to broader patterns of support that can be embedded in society, settings, and daily lives. At both micro- and macro-levels of environments, multiple influences—many out of awareness—have converged to create “obesogenic environments” (Swinburn, Egger, & Raza, 1999; Townshend & Lake, 2009). Researchers from environmental psychology, planning, health, and other fields can work with policy makers and program directors to consider how to reconfigure environments to make healthier choices easier and more natural.
Conceptual Overview of Transactional and Ecological Approaches Research on obesogenic environments is often guided by an ecological (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009; Huang, Drewnowski, Kumanyika, & Glass, 2009; Kumanyika et al., 2008; Sallis et al., 2006) or transactional model (Werner, Brown, & Altman, 2002). Both approaches assume that any target behaviors, such as healthy eating or (p. 462) activity, are complex events embedded within an individual’s milieu, which is composed of physical, sociocultural, policy, and temporal aspects. A central assumption is that people and setting are inseparable and mutually defining. This multifaceted idea means that people interpret, choose, conform to, and create settings. For example, people often bypass stairwells in favor of elevators. But when a stairwell in the CDC headquarters was improved with paint, artwork, music, and signs encouraging stair use, building users increased their rate of using stairs, up to about 9% for some of the interventions (Kerr, Yore, Ham, & Dietz, 2004). Thus, societies can choose to transform former inactive settings to those seen as offering pleasant possibilities for short physical activity bouts throughout the day. Such stairwell renovations are now becoming popular and while adding to health decrease the energy load on buildings. Similarly, food sharing is often important, as people dine together, toast good times, and in other ways make food consumption integral to meaningful social and environmental events. The transactional view acknowledges the complexity of human-setting relations. It suggests that healthier
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Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health choices are more likely to be adopted and sustained if supported by these multiple aspects of an individual’s holistic milieu. The transactional model further assumes that aspects of daily life change over time in response to changing individual desires and societal possibilities. Changing the milieu often creates a cascade of unintended consequences, some positive and some negative, such as the gradual weight and inactivity creep experienced by the family described at the beginning of the chapter. Think about the changing milieu over the past years that normalized what would have been strange behaviors in other decades: consuming16-ounce soft drinks, spending hours watching a screen, or choosing to spend time typing with one’s thumbs onto electronic tablets of various sizes. Ecological and transactional models lead us to scrutinize the complex web of changes that have transformed modern lifestyles—from farm subsidies that support cheap sugared drinks, to bulk shopping stores that save money, to larger homes that offer more food storage and passive entertainment options, to street standards that favor cars over pedestrians, to technological inventions—so that overconsumption and inactivity are the norm, despite their now apparent and undesired consequences. This chapter focuses on three aspects of settings intrinsic to healthy behaviors: macro physical environments, micro physical environments, and psycho-social processes that connect us to environments. We focus on studies of US adults; other reviews pertain more to children (Davison & Lawson, 2006). Although we focus on physical and social environments, we acknowledge more succinctly the political and economic influences that bring about these physical environments. We also avoid extensive treatment of topics included elsewhere in this volume. Ecological and transactional models start with the assumptions that people and settings are mutually defining and inseparable. Thus, behavior is always embedded within the physical environment and environments are intrinsically tied to behavior. Macrophysical environments—such as street forms and the array of walking destinations offered—structure opportunities for eating and physical activity. For example, the presence of mass transit stops supports walking but many cities will not provide transit stops unless housing or business density reaches a certain critical mass over a sufficiently large area. Microphysical environments, such as one’s kitchen cupboard or the path to the transit stop, also structure opportunities but are more dynamic, such as the changing amount of litter or flowers on the block, and are experienced directly by a person on foot, instead of summarizing large areas, such as census tracts. The two levels may work in concert, as when a microlevel feature of a nice bench at the transit stop encourages residents to use the macrolevel feature of the transit system. Or they may work against each other, as when a busy street crossing near the transit stop discourages use of the transit system opportunity. Psycho-social processes can also work with or against the physical context. Residents do not use transit stops if they are unaware of them or frightened by them and research shows that people vary in what they notice and how they interpret environments. Residents who identify as urbanites, for example, may not be bothered by graffiti at the stop, but other residents may react more strongly to such incivilities and avoid the area (Fellonneau, 2004). Transactional models remind researchers to think of behavioral phenomena holistically and to realize that target behaviors, such as walking or eating, are often achieved within the context of multiple settings and goals. Anontransactional, individualistic approach might encourage healthier physical activity by motivating the individual to engage in vigorous physical activity at the gym, something few individuals achieve (Troiano et al., 2008). Amore (p. 463) holistic approach might not start with individual motivation but would instead create a milieu that supported physical activity. Decreasing parking spaces or enhancing bus service may encourage greater walking —even among individuals who are not motivated to walk—because walking is an integral part of transit use. Walking becomes simply one part of everyday activities rather than “exercise,” which is a separate and timeconsuming obligation. Walking opportunities can be designed ubiquitously into the community fabric; walking is easy, affordable, and popular (Siegel, Brackbill, & Heath, 1995; Simpson et al., 2003), and brisk walking constitutes healthy moderate-intensity activity (Ainsworth, 2002). Thus, brisk walking is a good target for holistic approaches that can benefit health and the environment when walking substitutes for driving.
Environmental Supports for Physical Activity: Macro, Micro, and Perceptual Levels Environment and Behavior: Selection or Causation Prior to summarizing research results, it is important to discuss the methodological challenges in this area of
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Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health research. Micro-scale environments can demonstrate causality because they are easy to manipulate and randomly assign—as many clever studies of dinnerware size manipulations attest (Wansink, 2006). But for macrolevel environments, residents cannot be assigned at random to homes and neighborhoods to detect directions of effect. Ecological and transactional models also emphasize dynamic processes and mutual influence, making traditional causal inference challenging. People who enjoy walking may move into walkable neighborhoods, and the processes of walking and enjoying the neighborhood may encourage them to walk even more. A variety of statistical techniques assist in ruling out some alternative explanations in correlational models, such as controls for self-reported selection factors, instrumental variable analyses, and propensity score analyses (Cao, Mokhtarian, & Handy, 2009; Mokhtarian & Cao, 2008). These studies typically find that environments influence travel and walking even after controlling for selection. In fact, a recent meta-analysis shows that statistical controls for selection strengthened those relationships (Ewing & Cervero, 2010), supporting the environment as an influence on physical activity, though not completely eliminating third variables as threats to internal validity. Unless described otherwise, most relationships summarized in this chapter are correlational; even if statistical controls for selection are adopted, there is always the possibility that other factors—not the physical environment—“caused” the observed behavior.
Macro-Environmental Supports for Physical Activity and Healthy Weight Macrolevel environmental measures of features such as street forms or land uses are often related to walking or weight. These analyses, common in disciplines of geography, planning, and public health, involve relating environmental data from geographic information systems (GIS) to evidence on activity or weight. The geographic scales of macrolevel tests vary widely. For example, one study related lower BMI to greater land use diversity within a 1km circle around home (Frank, Andresen, & Schmid, 2004), while another related lower BMI to higher population density across entire states (Vandegrift & Yoked, 2004). Macrolevel measures are often collected for purposes unrelated to walking or eating, such as tracking tax payments or counting individuals. Thus, they are imperfectly related to walkability but have proven useful indicators nonetheless and can be amassed across large areas. The focus of many studies is on the “3D’s” of macro walkability—density, diversity, and pedestrian-friendly design (Cervero & Kockelman, 1997; Transportation Research Board, 2005), and much research demonstrates that walking is more likely in communities designed with these macrolevel supports. High densities and diverse land uses together bring residents within walking distance of many desirable destinations. In the past it would have been counterintuitive to posit that having more roads and intersections around your house would create a more pedestrian-friendly environment. But more road intersections—“intersection density”—makes walks relatively short, direct, and convenient. More recently researchers have expanded the 3D’s to 5D’s, refining land use diversity measures to include specific destinations, such as schools or post offices, and including distance to transit, a destination that especially attracts pedestrian trips (Cervero et al., 2009). This area of research is large and growing, with one study counting 13 past reviews as well as two reviews of reviews (Ewing & Cervero, 2010). Our summary of the 5D’s focuses on the Ewing and Cervero (2010) review of relationships among environment, walking, and transit use because it employs a sophisticated meta-analysis of effect sizes and includes many recent studies. Findings were (p. 464) included in their meta-analysis only when three or more studies existed using the same variables; effects were weighted by sample size. Results were reported as elasticities, the ratio of the percentage change in walkability associated with the percentage change in walking. Thus, elasticities indicate how much change in a target outcome, such as walking, go with 1% changes in the physical environment. When restricted to outcomes dealing with walking or transit use, 10 walkability factors were found in 35 separate results, 15 of which controlled for residential selection to increase confidence in environmental influences. The 10 objectively measured macrolevel walkability factors include: 3 density variables (population densities, job densities, and floor area ratio [FAR]density measures; a FAR of .25 would be a single-story house that takes up ¼ of the land lot while a FAR of 4 might represent a multistory building where the building square footage is four times the lot size, indicating denser development), 3 diversity variables (land use mix, jobs/housing balance, and distance from home to stores); 2 design variables (intersection density and percentage of 4-way intersections), 1 destination access variable (jobs within 1 mile), and 1 distance-to-transit variable (distance to nearest transit stop). Specifically, walking was most strongly related to pedestrian friendliness as indexed by intersection density, where a 1% increase in intersection density relates to a 0.39% increase in likelihood or rate of walking. An alternative
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Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health pedestrian-friendly street-design measure—the percentage of 4-way intersections—was weak and opposite the expected direction (-0.06). They suggest that many 4-way streets may not enhance walkability if the blocks are too long and that intersection density might provide a better measure of the type of fine-grained street network with short blocks that pedestrians prefer. Other variables, where effects were 0.15 or greater, included diversity measures such as proximity to stores (0.25), jobs/housing balance (0.19), and mixed use (0.15). They also included distances to specific destinations, such as jobs within one mile (0.15), and proximity to nearest transit stop (0.15). Density variables were not especially powerful (elasticities ≤ .07). In general, the results suggest that walking is encouraged by a fine-grained street network that links desirable destinations such as jobs, homes, transit stops, and stores. Similar results emerge from other reviews, despite diverse purposes, samples, measures, and analytic strategies across reviews. As an example, it is worth comparing the Ewing and Cervero (2010) meta-analysis to a similar review of the built environment and walking by Saelens and Handy (2008). The latter review synthesized 13 prior reviews from 2002 to 2006 and summarized newer studies published from 2005 to 2006. It used different selection criteria than the meta-analysis, such as including participants’ perceptions of the environment, whereas the metaanalysis was limited to objectively measured environmental features (Saelens & Handy, 2008). Of 170 results for walking and the built environment summarized by Ewing and Cervero (2010), only 3 were included in the Saelens and Handy (2008) review. Comparing the two illustrates both how fast-changing the field is, and how reviews involve different selection criteria. Despite covering different studies, Saelens and Handy’s integration largely supported the macro-environmental features that the Ewing and Cervero meta-analysis identified. Their summary of 13 prior review articles noted that past reviews often identified 8 types of walkability features, including good environmental aesthetics (n = 6 reviews identified this walkability feature), proximity to destinations (n= 5), sidewalks (n = 4), safety (n = 4), walkable neighborhood type or age (n = 3), mixed land use (n = 3), density (n = 3), and street connectivity (n = 3). Thus, their broad summary measures were fairly similar to the Ewing and Cervero meta-analysis results, except that they supported density as a correlate of walking while the meta-analysis did not. The Saelens and Handy review also asserted two important conclusions beyond what the above meta-analysis discovered. First, micro-environmental features of good environmental aesthetics and safety were related to walking, but had not been included in the Ewing and Cervero meta-analysis. These features are often not available in macrolevel databases but can be collected by trained raters’ assessments of environmental attractiveness, trees, interesting streetscapes, and the like. Second, their review of new studies revealed that the environment relates differently to walking for transportation versus leisure purposes. Walking for transportation related to density, distance to destinations, and land use mix, with pedestrian-friendly street connectivity having mixed support. For leisure walking, consistent relationships emerged only for pedestrian-friendly features of sidewalks and other pedestrian infrastructure and good aesthetics. This suggests we walk to get to places when the destinations are nearby, which is what is achieved by density, land use diversity, and proximity to destinations, even if routes are not direct and convenient. (p. 465) We walk for leisure where there are sidewalks and good views that encourage safe access and enjoyment. Both types of walks are especially popular in one’s neighborhood (Giles-Corti et al., 2008; Mathews et al., 2009), suggesting that neighborhood design is a key to supporting more walking. The implication of the above reviews is that it is useful to examine both macro-and micro-environmental measures of walkability, such as aesthetics, which are not readily available in existing databases. Similarly, psycho-social measures, such as the goal of the walk or the social contacts facilitated by the walk, deserve greater research attention. Finally, some evidence suggests that people often live in neighborhoods that are less walkable than desired (Levine & Frank, 2007); enhancing public awareness of walking supports may enable people to demand better neighborhoods and make better choices for both personal and environmental health. We review both microenvironmental walkability features and their perceptions in the next sections.
Micro-Environmental Supports for Physical Activity and Healthy Weight Audits provide rich coverage of the broad concept of activity-friendly or pedestrian-friendly design. Audits allow detailed measures of a wider range of design features, such as distinctive awnings, benches, security bars on
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Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health windows, interesting store fronts, and the like. Audit measures are gathered by trained raters and are intended to assess features of the physical environment that one would encounter directly and that might affect one’s choice to engage in physical activity in that particular place. Thus they measure details of the environment that might figure into choices to walk, bike, play basketball, or engage in other physical activities. In contrast, macrolevel measures of pedestrian-friendly design are often limited to intersection density or street connectivity, two measures that gauge directness and convenience of walking routes. Microlevel features have been found to be distinct from macrolevel features in several ways. First, macrolevel assessments can mask substantial internal variation in microlevel walkability. In the same census tract, for example, we found pathways that were both high and low in walkability according to microlevel measures (Brown, Werner, Amburgey, & Szalay, 2007). In addition, microlevel features can contradict macrolevel indicators. For example, in many traditional urban neighborhoods the “bones” of the neighborhood may be good for walkability: small blocks provide convenient walks from many residences to assorted daily destinations, providing the 3D’s of design, density, and diversity. However, any walk in those areas can provide a less walkable experience because of microlevel conditions, such as lack of repair, graffiti, and evidence of crime and traffic problems (Zhu & Lee, 2008). On the other hand, microlevel features provide opportunities for improving the feel of an area. Many realworld interventions to improve environments have to be done at a small scale due to budget or jurisdictional boundaries; microlevel audits can provide useful information for low-cost and less disruptive intervention targets compared to macrolevel reconstructions. Environmental audits, which had been used for years to assess crime-prone settings (Brown & Altman, 1983; Raudenbush & Sampson, 1999; Taylor, 2001), are fairly new for measuring physical activity potential. The field has not answered questions about which measures best relate to physical activity or how extensively to audit the environment. One particularly challenging issue is how to aggregate data based on blocks or other microgeographic units to characterize walkability over a neighborhood or district. To date, walkability measures are typically available either for macro-units, such as census tracts, or for micro-units, such as a street segment between two intersections. People walk on routes that do not conform to macro- or micro-boundaries but average about 0.62 miles (Agrawal, Schlossberg, & Irvin, 2008). A macro-area, such as a census tract, encompasses many routes, which may offer both good and poor walkability sections. A micro-area, such as a street segment, is too short to encompass many natural walking trips. Thus researchers need tools to characterize multi-block pedestrian routes for these distances, and neither macro- nor microlevels of analysis capture these individual trips. As research technology improves, with GIS systems and GPS units, micro-measures may be aggregated to these natural walking routes, but until then researchers face the dilemma of defining the best level of geographic aggregation in each study. There are many instruments for measuring microlevel features that might support physical activity. Typically data are collected for face blocks—both sides of a street between intersections—or similar geographic units, such as parks (Boarnet et al., 2006; Ewing et al., 2006; Moudon & Lee, 2003; Pikora et al., 2002). A recent review notes that 20 different instruments have been developed, containing from 5 to 712 items (Brownson et al., 2009). (p. 466) Some have been developed by expert opinion, such as the Irvine Minnesota Inventory (IMI; Boarnet et al., 2006), which measures accessibility, traffic, crime, and pleasurability. Others were developed to operationalize urban design concepts such as imageability, enclosure, human scale, transparency, and complexity (Ewing & Handy, 2009). Researchers can choose to use the entire instrument, which can add to comparability across sites, or they can choose to select items, which can allow focused and efficient assessments (see a longer discussion in Werner, Brown, & Gallimore, 2010). Researchers can add items to capture unique but important features at each site, such as ratings for perceived disreputability of people seen on a downtown walk, which predicted pedestrian unfriendliness ratings in one study (Brown et al., 2007). The IMI is the most comprehensive audit measure for neighborhoods, and has evidence of reliability and validity (Boarnet et al., 2006; Brown et al., 2007); we therefore review research according to its conceptualization of walkability. The scale has been validated in two ways. First, when naive students were taken on downtown walks, their spontaneous verbal descriptions of what they liked and disliked on the walk corresponded to objective ratings from the IMI for both high- and low-walkability areas (Brown et al., 2007). Second, studies in Minneapolis and St. Paul showed that some IMI qualities were related to walking or to physical activity, with activity measured by both self-report and objective accelerometer counts (Boarnet, Forsyth, Day, & Oakes, in press).
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Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health Our review of research relating microlevel environmental features to physical activity follows the framework proposed for the IMI, which includes four major categories of walkability: accessibility, crime safety, traffic safety, and pleasurability. To these we have added the quality of the social environment. We first consider research with objective measures of these characteristics and then research that uses participants’ perceptions of these features.
Accessibility Features This measure in the IMI includes features that contribute to ease of pedestrian access to destinations, such as the presence and completeness of sidewalks or bike paths (Day, Boarnet, Alfonzo, & Forsyth, 2006). Accessibility also includes density, measured by density of residential units on the block, and diversity, the number of distinct destinations possible on the block, such as a school or post office. Accessibility likely requires a complex blend of features along routes, including well-used origins and destinations, which are often provided by density and diversity, and good and convenient pathways between the two, which are supported by street connectivity and pedestrian infrastructure. For example, an apartment complex (density) across a busy arterial from a shopping center (diversity) provides poor pedestrian accessibility despite high density and diversity. Currently, research has not tested for the presence of such threshold effects for required combinations of walkability features, although they are recognized anecdotally as important (Calthorpe, 1993). Accessibility has been related to reported walking or active travel for a range of specific features. For example, provision of pedestrian infrastructure such as sidewalks relates to physical activity (Kitamura, Mokhtarian, & Laidet, 1997; Lin & Moudon, 2010; Shay et al., 2009). Similarly, countries with environments that provide more bike paths and cycling infrastructure have 4 to 29 times the cycling trips as the United States (Pucher & Dijkstra, 2003). Walking or physical activity also relates to various measures of density (Besser & Dannenberg, 2005; Gauvin et al., 2005) and land use diversity (Badland & Schofield, 2006; Plaut, 2005) or destinations (Badland & Schofield, 2006; Lin & Moudon, 2010), such as parks (Kaczynski & Henderson, 2007). Diversity and density on one’s block was related to whether a resident would walk to a new light rail stop in the neighborhood (Werner et al., 2010). Similarly, proximity to bus stops also relates to more walking (Targa & Clifton, 2005). However, when examining correlations between accelerometer-measured physical activity and accessibility features, results are mixed. Good sidewalk conditions (present, wide, and well-connected) and crossing aids (stop signs and lights, pedestrian signs and islands) were associated with more accelerometer-measured steps per day in Montgomery County, Maryland (Shay et al., 2009). However, Boarnet et al. (in press) found a number of mixed or counterintuitive relationships in Minneapolis, Minnesota. For example, features that should be related to higher levels of accessibility and physical activity (colored painted crosswalk lines, pedestrian-activated crosswalk signals, and bike paths near residents’ homes) were actually related to lower intensity physical activity as measured by accelerometry. Similarly, trained observers counted more people walking in areas that had sidewalk defects (Suminski et al., 2008). Such contradictory results suggest it will be useful to complement accelerometer measures of (p. 467) activity with GPS measures of where the activity takes place to allow closer examination of environmental features. In terms of micro-accessibility features that encourage activity, one particular way in which density supports activity is that it often includes multistory buildings with stairs. Stairs can offer another opportunity for everyday physical activity. Consistent with this idea, European evidence shows that men (but not women) living above the third floor have 0.88 lower BMIs than men living on the first floor (Shenassa, Frye, Braubach, & Daskalakis, 2008). Lab evidence shows that even short two-minute bouts of stair climbing done regularly will improve cardiovascular health (Boreham et al., 2005). Results such as these have prompted many health campaigns to encourage stair use over elevator/escalator use; although benefits are small, combining these with other daily small increases in physical activity may yield healthy results (Dolan et al., 2006). According to a systematic CDC review, evidence supports the official recommendation to increase physical activity by providing more everyday physical activity opportunities (Kahn et al., 2002).
Crime Safety Features Recent reviews demonstrate that fear of crime is triggered by both environmental incivilities, such as vacant lots and litter, and social incivilities, such as disreputable-looking individuals (Loukaitou-Sideris, 2006; Loukaitou-
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Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health Sideris, Liggett, & Iseki, 2002). Incivilities relate to a range of health problems, such as cardiovascular disease, homicides, and premature mortality (Cohen, Farley, & Mason, 2003). Fear of engaging in outdoor physical activity might provide a causal mechanism connecting environments to health. Similarly, a long history of research on residential territoriality and defensible space provides evidence that indicators of decay may work in many ways to impede healthy neighborhood functioning (Newman, 1972). They may indicate that residents, neighbors, and/or visitors to the neighborhood do not care about its upkeep; that city officials are neglecting basic infrastructure and maintenance support; and that criminals see the neighborhood as vulnerable to crime without repercussions from residents. Any of these dynamics might make residents less likely to spend time outside or walk in the neighborhood, which should reduce actual and/or perceived safety by reducing natural surveillance by residents who might care to prevent crime. Studies in support of the idea that incivilities relate to less walking include a study where a multifaceted crime safety measure (including maintenance/upkeep, lights, and porches) related to walking to work (Craig, Brownson, Cragg, & Dunn, 2002b). Similarly, residents with more IMI-rated crime safety features on their block reported more walking to a new light rail stop in the neighborhood (Werner et al., 2010). Other studies related the presence of incivilities—graffiti, litter, and dog mess—to less physical activity and/or more overweight/obesity (Ellaway, Macintyre, & Bonnefoy, 2005; Stafford et al., 2007). One national study related crime rate to less walking and more obesity at the county level, especially for women (Doyle, Kelly-Schwartz, Schlossberg, & Stockard, 2006). A World Health Organization study of eight European cities found more litter near residents’ homes related to less sports or exercise participation (Shenassa, Liebhaber, & Ezeamama, 2006). Thus, although older research has often focused on relationships between incivilities and crime, newer research reveals that in civilities’ relationships with physical activity are important as well. A review of street lighting showed only 4 of 22 studies of perceived and/or objective street lighting related to walking, which might reflect generally low rates of walking after dark (Foster & Giles-Corti, 2008). Furthermore, when observing walking rates on sidewalks, more walking occurred in areas with more graffiti and litter, perhaps suggesting that graffiti and litter are attracted by high levels of use in some areas and that these features do not always prevent people from walking (Suminski et al., 2008). Exceptions to these findings exist and might be explained in future research by distinguishing required from voluntary physical activity bouts. Required physical activity, such as walking to parking lots from work, will likely occur regardless of the crime safety cues present.
Traffic Safety Features These features, such as traffic volume or pedestrian safety infrastructure, including sidewalks and crosswalks, should allow pedestrians actual and perceived safety from traffic. Indeed, self-reported walking trips related to the presence of street crossing safety features, such as crosswalks (Shay et al., 2009), traffic calming measures, and sidewalks (Lin & Moudon, 2010). Yet in other cases a combined measure of street safety was unrelated to reported walking (Hoehner et al., 2005). Few studies have relied on objective counts of traffic, although this should be a salient traffic safety feature. Areas that provide especially valued walking (p. 468) routes and destinations may attract both pedestrian and car traffic, so it is not surprising that in some studies more pedestrians are observed walking in areas with more traffic (Suminski et al., 2008). Another study showed conflicting results across two communities, leading the authors to suggest that both high automotive traffic volume and speed might be needed before walking is reduced (McGinn et al., 2007). Their suggestion is consistent with a review that argues that people are exposed to fewer traffic crashes in urban areas due to lower speeds as well as microlevel cues on the block, such as narrow streets and street trees, which suggest to drivers the need to slow down (Ewing & Dumbaugh, 2009). Although the United States has only recently tried interventions to create better traffic safety on the street, such as designing in crosswalks or traffic humps in the street to lower traffic speeds, other countries have conducted interventions that increase physical activity on streets. A Dutch city converted a street to a woonerf, or low-trafficspeed street enhanced by pedestrian amenities, such as circuitous routes for cars, low speed limits, and plantings, benches, and play equipment for residents. Results showed that the number of residents seen out on the street increased after the conversion (Eubank-Ahrens, 1987). Similarly traffic-calmed streets show increased pedestrian uses (Morrison, Thomson, & Petticrew, 2004) and a review of 16 studies where traffic calming features were added to streets showed that they reduced the number of traffic injuries (Bunn et al., 2003); if residents are aware of
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Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health enhanced safety, that knowledge may also motivate them to use the streets more. Finally, although this chapter focuses on adults, much research focuses on traffic safety as a special concern for children and their parents (Napier, Brown, Werner, & Gallimore, 2011) and for older individuals (Cunningham & Michael, 2004), who may have sensory or walking-speed limitations that make them more vulnerable to crashes and injuries in traffic. Indeed, one longitudinal study revealed that children who are exposed to more traffic within 150 meters of home from ages 9 to 10 had higher BMIs at age 18 (Jerrett et al., 2010). These concerns have led to programs including Safe Routes to Schools interventions (Boarnet et al., 2005) and livability standards for communities tailored to seniors (Pollack, 1999).
Pleasurability Features Pleasurability features include greenery, nice views, interesting storefronts, and the like, which are implicitly linked to enjoyable human experience of places. Currently a lot of attention is paid to the health and psychological benefits of exposure to nature (see Wells, this volume), so views of trees, green spaces, and natural vistas have been proposed to support walking. One European study has shown that those with more greenery in their neighborhoods are three times as likely to be physically active and 40% less likely to be overweight or obese (Ellaway et al., 2005); an Australian study shows that visually interesting features including beaches relate to more physical activity (Humpel et al., 2004). Other studies show more complex results. In the United States, more neighborhood greenery did not relate to more physical activity, but did relate to lower BMI when greenery was present and neighborhood destinations were accessible (Tilt, Unfried, & Roca, 2007). Other studies focus on a broad range of aesthetic features. When shown a variety of street images for choosing walking routes, streets with people, awnings, and plantings are related to stated preferences for walking along those routes (Zacharias, 2001). Lab studies of individuals running on treadmills showed better moods and healthier blood pressures when viewing pleasant scenes rather than unpleasant scenes (Pretty, Peacock, Sellens, & Griffin, 2005). Field studies, however, often show that walking or physical activity is relatively unrelated to the aesthetics of the near home environment, including studies in Minneapolis, Minnesota (Boarnet et al., in press; Dolan et al., 2006), and Perth, Australia (Giles-Corti & Donovan, 2002a). The Perth finding is difficult to interpret, however, because it does not involve a pure measure of aesthetics. The composite measure combined tree coverage, a traditional measure of aesthetics, with street form, a measure of accessibility. The Perth study considered cul-de-sacs to provide better aesthetics, although more recent research has suggested that low-traffic and poorly connected streets such as cul-de-sacs actually relate to less walking (Ewing & Cervero, 2010). Future studies should examine conditions where good aesthetics do not reduce accessibility. The distinction between walking for leisure or transportation, which differentially relates to the environmental walkability features discussed by Saelens and Handy, may help explain the mixed results for walking and aesthetics. For example, aesthetics have been found to be unrelated to both walking to work (Craig, Brownson, Cragg, & Dunn, 2002a) and transportation walking (Hoehner et al., 2005). (p. 469) Another study also found that more walking was observed in areas with more automotive traffic, sidewalk defects, graffiti, and litter and less desirable property aesthetics (Suminski et al., 2008). However, aesthetics have been found to relate to recreational walking (Hoehner et al., 2005). These conflicting results suggest that people may choose attractive areas when walking for pleasure but that attractiveness features, just like crime cues reviewed earlier, are not so important when people need to get to a particular destination.
Social Environmental Indicators Although Jane Jacobs (1961) long ago claimed that having “eyes on the street” by shopkeepers or pedestrians supported urban vitality and safety, the presence of others often has complex relationships with walking. For example, when taking a guided walk downtown where objective audits had indicated that disreputable-looking people were present, college students rated the area as less walkable and reported less willingness to return to the area on their own. In contrast, on a safer, more developed section of the walk, “people watching” was a favored activity, especially watching children enjoy a fountain (Brown et al., 2007). In other studies, when more people are counted walking in the neighborhood, self-reported transportation walking (Hoehner et al., 2005) and total physical activity (Duncan, Spence, & Mummery, 2005) are higher; these results could reflect the presence of very desirable
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Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health destinations, the effectiveness of social models for walking, or some combination of effects. Few observational studies exist that link social environmental indicators to walking. However, the presence of social companions, such as dogs, may relate to the social quality of walks. A review of dog walking shows that dog walkers were observed to have more interactions than those without dogs on walks (Cutt, Giles-Corti, Knuiman, & Burke, 2007). These microlevel indicators can be perceived in a variety of ways, as discussed below.
Perceived Environments Humans perceive environments in ways that relate to their goals and biases, not by simply registering objective features. Perceptions of accessibility, traffic safety, crime safety, and pleasurability may factor in to decisions to walk. The Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale (NEWS) has often been used to measure the perceptual counterparts of the rated micro-environmental supports for walking. Generally, perceived walkability as assessed by the NEWS relates to self-reported (Cerin, Saelens, Sallis, & Frank, 2006) and objective (Atkinson et al., 2005) physical activity measures. Suggested subscales within the NEWS have not been confirmed through factor analyses, but the individual items appear to measure perceptions related to walkability (Cerin et al., 2009). NEWS perceptions are sometimes related to objectively rated physical environments (Leslie et al., 2005), although several studies suggest that both perceived and objective measures add to our understanding and explain unique variance (Kondo et al., 2009; for grocers, Lin & Moudon, 2010; McGinn et al., 2007).
Perceived Accessibility Some research has found that perceived access to good walking conditions in the neighborhood converge with the macro-environmental supports of density, diverse destinations, and pedestrian-friendly design to support activity (Leslie et al., 2005). Consistent with physical evidence of accessibility, walking has related to the perceived access to sidewalks (Giles-Corti & Donovan, 2002b) and perceived convenience of walking in the neighborhood (Ball, Bauman, Leslie, & Owen, 2001). An 11-country study showed that perceived accessibility of sidewalks, transit stops, shops, bike facilities, and low-cost recreational facilities was related to more physical activity (Sallis et al., 2009). Other research compares physical features with residents’ perceptions of these features and relates these to physical activity. One study found good relationships between objective measures of diverse land uses, such as parks, transit stops, and schools and perceptions of their existence within walking distance; these results were stronger for more physically active individuals, suggesting that those active in the neighborhood were more accurate in their perceptions of what was in the neighborhood (Adams et al., 2009). Another study showed that adults living in objectively walkable neighborhoods, but who perceived them to be less walkable than did their neighbors, were more overweight and walked less in the neighborhood (Gebel, Bauman, & Owen, 2009). Yet another study found weak relationships between perceived and objective availability of physical activity places near home, suggesting that both are important to include in future research (Ball et al., 2008).
Perceived Crime Safety A literature review showed that people report they prefer to walk where they perceive they are (p. 470) safe from crime (Humpel, Owen, & Leslie, 2002). In a study of multiple neighborhoods, a perceived lack of neighborhood safety predicted inactivity, even though often there were attractive destinations nearby, such as parks and natural areas (Giles-Corti & Donovan, 2002a). A similar finding emerged from survey data from five states in the United States that showed relationships between physical inactivity and low perceived safety (Weinstein et al., 1999). However, no relationship between activity and crime was found in a meta-analysis, which involved at least five studies of three different safety perceptions (of crime, unattended dogs, or poor lighting; Duncan et al., 2005). Yet another study did find less obesity among a national sample of young mothers who lived in neighborhoods that they perceived to be safer from crime (Burdette, Wadden, & Whitaker, 2006).
Perceived Traffic Safety Perceived traffic safety as a support to walking has been most thoroughly studied for children’s walks, where it is often a significant predictor, especially if parent perceptions are assessed (Napier et al., 2011). However, even among adult residents, a recent meta-analysis demonstrates a link between perceived traffic problems and lower
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Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health physical activity (Duncan et al., 2005); this link had been found to be a modest one, with many null results, in an earlier review (Humpel, Owen, & Leslie, 2002). Furthermore, when residents believe cars speed too much through their neighborhoods, they are less likely to succeed at walking intervention programs, suggesting these perceptions are barriers to walking (King et al., 2006). With respect to perceived and rated environments among adults, sometimes perceptions of traffic have little relationship to objective measures (Adams et al., 2009). One review notes that those who use active transportation more in the neighborhood perceive more traffic; the authors suggested that active transportation users are more familiar with traffic nuisances, but it may also be that more attractive destinations attract both more cars and more active transportation users (Panter & Jones, 2010), a suggestion consistent with the pattern of results found for objectively measured traffic as well.
Perceived Pleasurability Perceived pleasantness or neighborhood aesthetics are related to more physical activity (Ball et al., 2001; Brownson et al., 2001; Giles-Corti & Donovan, 2002b; King et al., 2006; McCormack et al., 2004) or more transportation-related physical activity (Troped et al., 2003). Related research shows obesity is related to poor aesthetics (Boehmer et al., 2007). Features of pleasing aesthetics that are related to activity can include more complex scenery (Craig, Brownson, Cragg, & Dunn, 2002). An Australian study found that higher income neighborhood residents walked more for transportation than residents from lower income neighborhoods and this relationship was mediated by high-income neighborhood residents perceiving better aesthetics and greenery (Cerin, Leslie, & Owen, 2009). In an experimental study of guided walks in low- and high-walkability city areas, participants noted that features such as trees and flowers felt “inviting,” which suggests that the environments are not just pretty but seen as appropriate places to go and to see others enjoying the environment (Duvall, 2011).
Perceived Social Environment Perceptions that one’s social environment supports physical activity relates to more physical activity. Many forms of support have been investigated, from belief that family or friends approve of physical activity to providing support by actually engaging in physical activity together. A review found eight studies in which people engaged in more exercise if they perceived support for walking from family or friends (Trost et al., 2002). Although support does not universally relate to more physical activity (Nies & Kershaw, 2002), effective social support may work in other cases by providing norms, a sense of obligation, or more pleasurable occasions. As in the objective environmental supports for physical activity, some research has found it important to distinguish between leisure and transportation physical activity. A study that did make this distinction found both friend and family supports related to leisure, but not transportation-related, physical activity (Troped et al., 2003). The relationships between perceptions of neighborhood social qualities and walking or weight are especially of interest to researchers, given that much activity occurs in the neighborhood context. It could be that walking exposes one to neighbors and that resulting neighborly contacts or sense of community might encourage more regular walking. Alternatively, neighborly contacts during a walk could interfere with physical activity. Studies have yielded mixed results in this area. For example, walkable neighborhoods were related to more (p. 471) interaction with neighbors, but not a greater sense of community in one study (Brown & Cropper, 2001), but the opposite in another (du Toit, Cerin, Leslie, & Owen, 2007). Another found that leisure walking but not transportation walking related to sense of community with neighbors (Lund, 2002). In a study from Atlanta, Georgia, that controlled for a wide range of other variables, both leisurely (but not brisk) walking and seeing one’s neighbors when walking related to higher sense of community (Wood, Frank, & Giles-Corti, 2010). A study of Australian women found more leisure walks in the neighborhood for those who engaged in a broad range of social activities, but not for those who simply knew more neighbors (Ball et al., 2010). Another study of older Australian women found greater sense of neighborhood related to more physical activity for women (Young, Russell, & Powers, 2004). Thus, for this topic, results differ widely by measures used, for both the measures of the social environment and measures of physical activity. Even fewer studies relate perceived social environment of the neighborhood to BMI, but one study in Los Angeles did show that collective efficacy, defined as a combination of social cohesion and informal social control, related to more weight problems among adolescents (Cohen, Finch, Bower, & Sastry, 2006). No studies have linked
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Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health neighborhood walks and neighborliness to environmental protection, but one can imagine that neighborhood walks might entail less resource use than other ways to spend time and might expose walkers to neighborhood norms regarding gardening and other environmental activities.
Summary In sum, early research that related physical environment features with physical activity focused on the macrolevel, with GIS and census evidence of high population density, high diversity, and walkable design being related to leisure and transportation walking. This work has recently been complemented by a small but growing number of studies with microlevel measures of these same qualities and by survey measures of perceptions of walkability. Within each of these, we reviewed studies on accessibility (density, diverse destinations, and pedestrian-friendly design), crime safety, traffic safety, and pleasurability (green spaces, architecture, decor). Despite great variety in measures of the environment and measures of physical activity (sometimes health or obesity measures, sometimes leisure walking, transportation walking or other physical activity), research generally supports the idea that objectively assessed micro-environmental and perceived features of the environment are related to physical activity. In every subcategory, there were studies that both supported and failed to support relationships between environmental characteristics and physical activity. The strongest relationships tended to be between physical activity and accessibility (possibly because infrastructure is essential for walking and biking), and between physical activity and social relationships as well as with pleasurability. Relations between physical activity and crime safety or traffic safety were obtained, though not so consistently, possibly because people learn how to negotiate their sometimes unsafe walking routes. A distinction that may prove useful to retain is the one between walking for pleasure and walking for instrumental purposes, such as shopping or transit use. In the next section we examine the relationship between food environments and healthy eating.
Food Environments Environmental and conservation psychologists often focus on food choices as embedded within the larger context of concerns about ecology and nature, and tend not to address overeating. Studies have described how shoppers at cooperative grocers are motivated by low prices and healthy food (Sommer, 1998), and home gardeners are motivated more by time spent outdoors, observing nature, and relaxation than by the concern for healthy food (Clayton, 2007). Other studies focus on how micro-setting qualities relate to food choices, such as how we select restaurants from their facades (Cherulnik, 1991), how classical music increases our restaurant spending (North, Shilcock, & Hargreaves, 2003), or how well-placed signs speed up fast-food line orders (Foster et al., 1988). The study of how food environments might relate to healthy or unhealthy food choices is a relatively new and fastgrowing area of research. One review suggests there is less consistency for the food environment–to-obesity relationship than for the physical activity–to-obesity relationship (Black & Macinko, 2008). This may reflect a variety of differences between the two fields. First, while physical activity can be objectively measured with pedometers, there is no pedometer to measure food consumption, and self-reports are often unreliable (Long et al., 2009). Second, although in the United States it is common to achieve physical activity in certain places, such as neighborhoods, gyms, and playgrounds, there is not comparable academic understanding of the geography of food consumption. Food is ubiquitous. It is (p. 472) eaten several times a day in an increasing number of settings (Wansink & Sobal, 2007). Even public schools install vending machines that carry highly caloric food and gas stations offer hot food. Finally, people engage in few unhealthy physical activities but exploit plenty of unhealthy food choices. Under this combination of circumstances, it is difficult to track food-related settings, choices within those settings, and consumption. Recent studies test novel measurement methods, such as cell phone photographs of food consumed in field settings (Martin et al., 2008); future development of this research to track both exposure to food opportunities and food consumption choices is needed. As with supports for walking, both macro- and micro-aspects of food environments are important, as discussed below.
Macro–Food Environments In the United States, post-1950 practices drastically changed food availability and salience. Governmental subsidies for farms concentrated production of a few crops, such as corn and soybeans, grown in large monoculture fields, treated with petrochemicals, which may prove unsustainable. Government policies do not support organic production of a variety of healthy foods, such as fruits and vegetables. Indeed, one calculation
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Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health showed that even if every US resident wanted to eat according to healthy dietary guidelines, US farms do not produce enough fruits and vegetables to supply them (Jackson et al., 2009). Advertising adds to the allure of unhealthy foods. Brownson and colleagues noted that food advertisers spend $50 per person in the United States compared to $1.50 per person spent by the Food and Drug Administration to advertise nutrition standards; children in the United States are targeted by the $10 billion–$12 billion a year spent on snack and drink advertisements on children’s television (Brownson, Haire-Joshu, & Luke, 2006). Thus, at the macrolevel the United States offers governmental incentives for an oversupply of heavily marketed food choices that contribute to obesity. Societal lifestyle changes also contribute to less healthy diets. As women moved into the workforce and incomes rose, households were more likely to eat out or purchase ready-to-eat foods. Currently, about half of food expenditures are from eating out—double the percentage from 1955, according to a recent review (Story, Kaphingst, Robinson-O’Brien, & Glanz, 2008). Both fast-food and full-service restaurants serve foods that are high in fat and often less healthy than home-cooked meals. A combination of such changes in society has yielded striking changes in the nature of the community food environment. Over the past 30 years in the United States, the number of grocery stores has declined but the number of environmental opportunities for foods that are high in fat and calories have proliferated. As grocers declined, prepared food outlets doubled (Chou, Grossman, & Saffer, 2002). One study showed that a 10% increase in the number of restaurants per capita in a state is associated with a 9% increase of obesity (Chou et al., 2002). Another estimate shows that a McDonald’s fast food restaurant is within about 1.5 miles of the average American (Block, Scribner, & DeSalvo, 2004). More than 90% of schools offer “competitive” food choices that do not adhere to healthy guidelines and contain high levels of fat and calories (Story et al., 2008). In the United States, lowincome areas also have more fast food outlets (Powell, Chaloupka, & Bao, 2007), especially in low-income AfricanAmerican neighborhoods (Block et al., 2004). Fast food outlets often serve overly large portions and energy-dense foods, which may explain the frequent statistical correlations found between eating at fast food places and greater weight (Jeffery, Baxter, McGuire, & Linde, 2006). In addition, smaller convenience or corner stores offer fewer healthy foods than supermarkets (Larson, Story, & Nelson, 2009). A growing area of research examines relationships between access to food outlets and resident health. US adults with better access to supermarkets or grocery stores often have lower BMIs (Black & Macinko, 2010; Inagami, Cohen, Brown, & Asch, 2009; Larson et al., 2009; Lopez, 2007; Powell et al., 2007; Rundle et al., 2009), although some studies have found opposite (Wang et al., 2007) or no relationship (Raja et al., 2010). Living in a neighborhood with many fast food outlets related to higher BMI in a national sample (Mehta & Chang, 2008); one study found this was especially true for residents with no cars (Inagami et al., 2009). A recent review notes that nearby fast food outlets have mixed results with obesity but may relate to decreased fruit and vegetable intake (Fraser, Edwards, Cade, & Clarke, 2010). For example, both white (Morland, Wing, & Roux, 2002) and black Americans reported more fruit and vegetable intake if their census tract contained a supermarket (Morland et al., 2002; Zenk et al., 2005). Pregnant women had better quality diets if they lived closer to a supermarket (Laraia, Siega-Riz, Kaufman, & Jones, 2004). The mixed results in this area of research suggest the need for future studies to address how food outlet proximity relates (p. 473) to one’s choices of food and food outlets (Sallis & Glanz, 2009). New studies are becoming more comprehensive by analyzing both healthy eating and activity opportunities in neighborhoods. For example, combined access to grocers, restaurants, fitness facilities, and commercial land uses was related to lower obesity rates in New York City across four years (Black & Macinko, 2010). Similarly, in Salt Lake County, lower BMIs were associated with a combination of macrolevel walkability indicators (older neighborhoods and neighborhoods where a greater proportion of residents walk to work, which indicates mixed land uses) and the presence of multiple food choices in the neighborhood (Zick et al., 2009). Finally, a Portland study showed weight gains among older adults who lived in areas with many fast food restaurants and who frequently chose fast food meals, but weight losses over time among those who lived in more walkable areas and chose vigorous activity (Li et al., 2009). More research is needed to focus on the combined roles of food and physical activity environments in relationship to weight and physical activity. In sum, food has become a more salient part of our environment and provides more unhealthy temptations than ever; these trends have been supported by governmental policies, marketplace decisions, and family and lifestyle changes.
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Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health Micro–Food Environments One would think that in a society obsessed with food and dieting, US residents would be especially sensitive to the temptations of food in our everyday environments. Wansink and Sobal’s extensive research on the psychology of food environments shows that we are in fact especially responsive to food cues in the environment and that these cues are ubiquitous, but that we are often unaware of how our eating relates to the food environment (Wansink, 2010; Wansink & Sobal, 2007). For example, individuals, even trained nutritionists, do not realize that they dish out and consume larger quantities of calories when provided with larger bowls and spoons than with smaller ones (Wansink, van Ittersum, & Painter, 2006). The empirically demonstrated micro-environmental supports for more eating are numerous and include food storage spaces, food within reach, food in larger rather than smaller bowls, drinks in wider rather than taller drinking glasses, and drinks served without rather than with straws (Wansink & Sobal, 2007). Wansink and Sobal identified a variety of psychological qualities that mediate the relationship between foodscapes and consumption. Humans are poor judges of consumption amounts, which might be especially risky for overeating in food-abundant environments. Humans also develop norms for consumption amounts from environmental and social cues. Thus, we eat more when dinner companions eat more, or when the environment provides us with a wider variety of choices, such as holiday buffets or bowls of multicolored candies. The micro-environment of food may suggest that overeating is normal. Consider the upward trend in portion sizes. Portion sizes that are served in grocery containers and restaurants in the United States have all crept up. Studies have shown that ready-to-eat foods are packaged in portions that are two to five times larger than they were decades ago and now constitute one-third of our calorie intake (Brownson et al., 2006). Returning to the example of soft drink consumption, calculations show that the United States went from an annual per capita average of 90 eight-ounce servings of soda in 1942 to 600 annual servings per capita in 2000 (Vartanian, Schwartz, & Brownell, 2007). Fast food restaurants have also grown in number and offered larger servings over time. The health consequences of McDonald’s restaurants selling 100 billion beef burgers compared to vegetarian burgers is striking: 1.2 billion pounds of more total fat and 1 billion pounds less of fiber (Spencer, Frank, & McIntosh, 2005). For environmental and conservation psychologists, the additional consumption is concerning for its influence on the planet as well. Greenhouse gas emissions related to producing beef for the yearly average US resident’s consumption is the same as driving a car 1,800 miles. Producing a pound of beef emits the same greenhouse gas amounts as producing 57 pounds of potatoes; this is just one illustration of the fact that vegetarian diets generally have lower greenhouse gas consequences (Fiala, 2009). These additional calories are facilitated by the physical environment—supersized drinks would be more difficult to think of as normal if manufacturers did not provide supersized cups. In an analysis of online sales of dinner plates, US-made plate sizes crept up over time by 22%, from 9.62 inches in 1900 to 11.75 inches in 2010. Even depictions of the plate sizes in paintings of the Last Supper increased 69% from the year 1000 to the year 2000 (Wansink, 2010). The evolution of housing in the United States suggests more space is devoted to kitchens and food storage and more kitchens are open plan (Hasell & Peatross, 1990; Wilson & Boehland, 2005). Large open-plan kitchens allow (p. 474) more visibility of food, as well as greater proximity, if people spend more time in these larger kitchens. Furthermore, a field experiment showed that stockpiling of convenience foods in kitchens triggers their consumption (Chandon & Wansink, 2002). Due to the results of these studies, Wansink and Sobal suggested that researchers should start thinking about the power of kitchenscapes, tablescapes, platescapes, and foodscapes to encourage overeating (Sobal & Wansink, 2007). There is limited evidence from one review that providing cues for healthier choices, such as point-of-purchase nutrition education displays, enhances healthier choices; these effects seem more prevalent in university and worksite settings rather than grocers where many options are available (Seymour et al., 2004). Wansink felt that nutrition education alone will not help reverse the trend of overeating, given that people consistently deny that they are influenced by environmental cues—we believe we eat when we are hungry and stop when we are full. Similarly, the low effectiveness of individual diets suggests limits to self-regulation of eating unless there is a more supportive food environment (Wansink, 2010). Wansink instead suggested that providing “mindless” environmental changes can help with slow but steady avoidance of extra calories. In support of these ideas are the results of an online challenge he conducted. He provided volunteers with three monthly tips for weight loss, from a pool of 173 tips that had been associated with at least 12% less consumption in laboratory studies. Of all of these, the advice
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Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health to eat from smaller-than-average 10-inch plates was the most effective, with those using this strategy reporting 1.93 pounds lost in a month. If the environment can mindlessly lead us to overconsume, Wansink suggests we reengineer our environments so they mindlessly support less consumption (Wansink, 2010).
Conclusion Our review has shown the importance of macro- and micro-physical environmental supports and barriers to healthy eating and activity. Macro-environments, from the layout of streets to the provision of food outlets in a community, make healthier choices more or less difficult. Micro-environmental cues, from trees shading one’s walk to the plate size at the dinner table, also have subtle effects on everyday behaviors, such as walking and eating. Finally, the perception of environmental supports for activity and eating plays a distinct role in explaining our eating and activity, demonstrating that perceptions have influences beyond those accounted for by objective measures of the environment. In addition, the research shows that humans have a tendency to be influenced by environmental supports and cues but often refuse to acknowledge those influences, whether the influences relate to more physical activity (Kondo et al., 2009; McGinn et al., 2007) or more food consumption (Wansink, 2010). Thus future studies can benefit by attending to all three types of social and environmental supports for healthy behavior and by recognizing that people often deny environmental influences. Our review also demonstrates the utility of a transactional model, which assumes that relationships between environments and behaviors of eating and physical activity are multilevel, with influences at a variety of levels of scale. Consistent with a transactional view, the chapter has underscored the importance of tracking changes over time in understanding how US residents have become less active and more overweight. Further, because the influences are multiple and embedded within various sectors of society, reversing unhealthy behaviors requires understanding where those unhealthy behaviors occur and how to change those settings. In sum, this review has shown that from the scale of the plate to the scale of the community, over the past 50 years our physical environment has enabled us to eat more and walk less. This combination is consistent with the observed increase in obesity and decrease of physical activity. These trends are so strong and alarming that they have led to the controversial calculation that obesity-related health problems will end the 200 years of life span increases seen in the United States (Olshansky et al., 2005). The United States has succeeded in other great public health challenges, such as reducing tobacco use, by reducing the attractiveness of tobacco by altering how it is treated physically, socially, and economically, and legally across a wide variety of settings (Green et al., 2006). Thus it is possible the United States will succeed in a similarly holistic focus on creating healthier eating and physical activity supports. Future growth projections make the challenge of creating health-supportive environments an urgent one. Nationally, about half the homes and businesses needed by 2030 have not yet been built (Nelson, 2004). If these new places are designed to encourage physical activity and healthy eating, they will benefit both planetary and personal health.
(p. 475) Future Directions
Investigate “Upstream” Choices in Relationship to Health We suggest it is important to focus on “upstream” choices, such as housing, that may have multiple “downstream” consequences for healthy living. Gardner and Stern made this argument for energy-saving behavior. They argued that it was more important to foster a one-time high energy-savings behavior than a regular but low energy-savings behavior. Thus, buying a car with 30.7 versus 20 miles per gallon reduces energy use by 13.7% but turning off the lights each time one leaves a room reduces energy use by only 4.5% (Gardner & Stern, 2008). The more impactful and permanent actions, such as insulating one’s home, deserve more attention than the smaller daily actions, such as turning off the lights. Researchers should put their energy where it will have the most impact. Let’s apply this upstream approach to our opening example of the family pursuing the American dream. If the family chose to buy in an older pre-WWII first-ring suburban or downtown neighborhood, they might gain walkableneighborhood features: small lots that allow density; mixtures of housing types that satisfy all ages and incomes; stores and services within walking distance; good transit service; and streets laid in pedestrian-friendly grid-like patterns. These community designs were the norm in many US areas prior to the 1950s, when cars were not such
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Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health ubiquitous and powerful drivers of neighborhood design. According to a 10-study review (Saelens, Sallis, & Frank, 2003), residents of more walkable neighborhoods take almost two more weekly walking trips than residents of less walkable neighborhoods (3.1 vs. 1.4 trips). This additional walking amount could reduce typical annual weight gains by half. Further, one estimate (Higgins & Higgins, 2005) shows that if we were to walk or bike for an hour a day instead of using cars, we would not only lose weight but also save 10.9% of US carbon dioxide emissions from the year 1990 (the year serving as the baseline for greenhouse gas reduction targets). Similarly, a diet book author claimed that when he purchased an old home he realized the cabinets were too small for modern large plates; his resulting “nine-inch plate” diet may not have been noticed as an option without exposure to the older home (Bogusky & Porter, 2008). These older neighborhoods have often not received the investments of new suburban areas, despite their good walkable forms, and have deteriorated and are less attractive to home buyers (Hanlon, 2008). New federal initiatives seek to refocus investments in areas where more active transportation and less car dependence is the norm, which might remove barriers to choosing these neighborhoods (Been, 2010). In contrast, the hypothetical family’s choice of a postwar suburban house puts them in a more sprawling neighborhood that poses challenges to walking and weight control. These neighborhoods offer low-density housing, zoning that often separates housing from necessities such as jobs or shopping, and circuitous street patterns, such as cul-de-sacs (Calthorpe, 1993). Residents of more sprawling areas report less leisure walking and higher weight (Ewing et al., 2003); residents living in diverse land-use neighborhoods have lower weight (Mobley et al., 2006). In addition to providing few walkable destinations, suburban neighborhoods also involve longer commutes than neighborhoods close to urban centers. The longer commutes, in addition to creating known problems of pollution and cost, also have been linked to higher BMI. One study found that for every extra hour of time in a car, residents face a 6% increase in the likelihood of obesity (Frank et al., 2004). It is possible that the upstream choice of health-supportive housing creates a cascade of behavior changes that may become habitual and, in combination, relate to healthier physical activity and eating. When housing choices provide walking opportunities—up the stairs, to the transit stop, or the corner store—then the healthy choice may become what we have termed “stealth exercise,” or healthy exertion that is not really noticed or recalled as exercise (Brown & Werner, 2008). When healthy activity is simply a by-product of doing other things, then even individuals who are not committed to planned exercise can benefit. The proximal environment also exposes individuals to the normative behavior of others; perhaps seeing others patronize nearby healthy food outlets or neighbors walking will influence individuals, even without awareness, a pattern suggested by research in our review above. Other researchers have also suggested that relocation can involve an opportune time to change behavior. One study found that when newcomers to a neighborhood are told of transit options and provided a free ticket, they are more likely to adopt transit-riding habits (Bamberg, 2006). Similarly, compared to students directed to a standard “how to purchase a parking pass” site, incoming students were less likely to purchase a parking pass if they received a postcard encouraging them to select a home near (p. 476) light rail so they could use light rail for commuting to campus (Mazur, Werner, & Brown, 2010). In future research it would be useful to examine more closely how the American dream of housing both supports and thwarts healthy possibilities and how these choices can garner more attention from prospective residents. There are many consumer-oriented websites for choosing housing, but most focus on interest rates, square footage, and other commodity aspects of the housing, leaving out important health aspects. Perhaps prospective residents can be encouraged to make walkability evaluations a routine part of their housing choices. Simple investigation of online tools such as the popular Walk Score, which measures some macrolevel walkability features, might enable prospective residents to make health supportiveness an explicit criteria for housing location (Carr, Dunsiger, & Marcus, 2010). For psychologists, the challenge might be to understand residents’ hesitancy to make housing decisions based on expanded criteria, especially given the tendency to want “more” in housing (Devlin, 2010). Older housing close to downtown holds many advantages for the environment and potentially for individual health; psychologists could play a key role in understanding and recommending ways to overcome the barriers to relocating to potentially healthier neighborhoods.
Evaluate Natural Environmental Interventions Due to the difficulty of manipulating physical environments and reaching internally valid conclusions about causal relationships, it will be important for researchers to take advantage of natural community interventions when they happen. Australian researchers are studying large numbers of residents before and after they move to more
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Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health walkably designed neighborhoods (Giles-Corti et al., 2008). Small-scale studies have been accomplished elsewhere, such as those tracking low-income women moving to new urbanist housing (Wells & Yang, 2008), those receiving new rail stops in the neighborhood (Brown & Werner, 2009), those receiving new bike paths (Cohen et al., 2008), and those living in new urbanist designed communities (Rodriguez, Khattak, & Evenson, 2006). New policies also merit evaluation, such as those that entail restaurant menus with calorie information (Roberto et al., 2010), a moratorium on fast food restaurants in low-income neighborhoods (Sturm & Cohen, 2009), school walking and biking route improvements (Boarnet et al., 2005), or health impact assessment requirements for new development (Thomson, Petticrew, & Douglas, 2003).
Explore Multiple Levels of Support for and Benefits of Healthy Behavior One tenet of a transactional approach with likely appeal to environmental and conservation psychologists is the idea that a behavior is more likely if supported at multiple levels and if it provides multiple benefits (Werner et al., 2002). Environmental and conservation psychologists may be especially drawn to research on how healthier eating and activity choices for individuals are also good for the planet (Frank et al., 2010). When multiple supports, from policy to social norms to micro- and macro-environmental setting designs support healthy walking and activity, in many instances they will support healthy environments as well. Researchers may want to highlight how supports for physical activity and healthy eating work for or against the goals of ecological/environmental wellbeing. Consider two environmental interventions to increase a person’s physical activity: an electronic TV game or a convenient bus stop. Physical activity may be achieved by both, but playing the TV game just benefits the individual, the electric company, and the gamemaker. Using the bus stop benefits the individual through the additional walking and clearly benefits the environment if it substitutes for car use. Research suggests that few people will adopt transit use just for environmental or health motivations (Elmore-Yalch, 1998). To enable riders to see the bus trip as an attractive option, psychologists can figure out how to make bus use in general less stigmatizing (Weitz, 2008); the route planned to be perceived as more predictable, efficient, and less stressful (Wener, Evans, & Boately, 2005); or the benefits of found time for work more recognized and appreciated (Brown, Werner, & Kim, 2003). Other motivations might include potential restorative experiences along the walk and patriotic motives to reduce dependence on foreign oil, but these and other motives have yet to be explored. Another tenet of a transactional approach is that a behavior is more likely if supported at multiple levels (Werner et al., 2002). Thus, understanding attitudes alone is unlikely to enhance bus ridership. Instead, healthy behavior will need to be supported at many levels, which will require understanding of policy and design changes. For example, working with a (p. 477) university to purchase unlimited passes can enhance ridership (Brown, Hess, & Shoup, 2001), as can more attention to route service frequency (Taylor, Miller, Iseki, & Fink, 2009) and amenities such as bus stop shelters provided for the comfort of riders (Project for Public Spaces, 1999), and the like.
Adopt a Flexible Range of Team Science Research Techniques As noted in our review, research techniques of the past cannot capture the ecology of physical activity and eating. For example, audits of neighborhood feature can show walkability and accelerometers can show how active residents are, but they cannot tie the physical activity to the neighborhood. The combination of accelerometer and GPS is needed to fill this gap. An early study, for example, shows how children’s walks to school are fairly direct, with one-third of the travel minutes to school reaching moderate to vigorous physical activity intensity, compared to a surprisingly low 10% of their minutes on a playground (Cooper et al., 2010). As yet, no measures provide the same objective features to enhance insights into food environments and eating. In the future, we expect improved technology will enable us to better define the natural ecology of physical activity and eating episodes. Qualitative assessments of individuals’ experiences with everyday physical activity, such as tape-recording experiences on guided walks, might allow more insight into the pleasures or barriers to healthy behavior. As noted above, resident perceptions and objective audits of environments may not agree; indeed extensive literature on perceived and objectively assessed incivilities show complicated relationships with each other and with outcomes of interest, such as crime (Brown, Perkins, & Brown, 2004; Sampson & Raudenbush, 2004) shows how crime is influenced by both objective and subjective factors and similar dynamics are likely to be in play for objectively rated and perceived food and physical activity environments. Psychologists can investigate how places are seen
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Healthy Physical Activity and Eating: Environmental Supports for Health as walkable or not, regardless of the physical setting. Researchers can have participants report experiences with walking routes or other physical activity environments and/or eating environments and occasions throughout the day using prompted self-reports via experience sampling methodology (Brown, 1992), or use guided walks (Brown et al., 2007) or tours to inquire about the pleasures or displeasures of the activity (“go-along” interviews; Carpiano, 2009). Other methods might include participant photography to simply record eating patterns or to reflect upon eating or physical activity places (photo voice; McIntyre, 2003). Finally, community-oriented maps can be created by aggregating many individuals’ contributions that include both physiological monitoring and reflective annotation, a technique called emotional cartography (Nold, 2009). To take advantage of the full range of expertise in the area of eating and physical activity, it is important to take advantage of multidisciplinary teams. For example, few psychologists focus on the 5D’s of walkability although an increasing number of psychologists are interested in environments for walking or other physical activity. Few psychologists use technology to photograph eating episodes or map neighborhoods. And few work in conjunction with state health departments or city transit agencies to implement and evaluate natural community interventions that are relevant to eating and physical activity. We suggest that multidisciplinary research teams are the future of this type of work.
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Carol M. Werner Carol M. Werner Department of Psychology University of Utah Salt Lake City, UT
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications
Oxford Handbooks Online Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications Joanne Vining and Melinda S. Merrick The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0026
Abstract and Keywords Meaningful emotional experiences in nature are common occurrences, but are often overlooked in the study of human-nature interactions. A subset of these experiences, which we identify as environmental epiphanies, or experiences that shift the fundamental self-nature relationship, can have profound impacts on environmental values, attitudes, and behavior. In this chapter, we explore the concept of environmental epiphanies in the context of previous empirical research, practical applications, and potential for future research. We describe findings from an initial study of this phenomenon, suggesting links to existing literature as well as places to begin future studies. We specifically highlight land management applications and contend that results from environmental epiphany studies could have widespread practical applications as well as improve our current understanding of humannature interactions. Keywords: environmental epiphanies, environmentally responsible behavior, environmental values, emotional experiences in nature, humannature interactions
Introduction It just seemed I understood sort of my place in the universe and that I am connected intimately to everything around me. And this whole sense of self and worry and anxiety related to being separate is really an illusion because there is no distinction. There’s just sort of, I am part of everything and there’s no need to be concerned about. So, that’s basically a description of this life-altering epiphany. —Participant interview (Merrick, 2008) Experiencing an epiphany, an “aha” moment, or a moment of intense clarity seems to be common to many people, though occurring only infrequently for each individual. One can observe anecdotal and empirical evidence of epiphany-like experiences in both ancient and modern writing on the subject. From religious texts, such as the Bible’s description of the conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus (as described in Keltner & Haidt, 2003), to more modern stories, such as Ballard’s (2011) collection of over 50 epiphany stories from people of various backgrounds, it is obvious that many people have experienced epiphanies and that these experiences have changed their lives in very meaningful ways (see also Jauregui, 2007; Miller & C’de Baca, 2001). Environmental epiphanies, that is, epiphanies that involve the human-nature relationship, probably occur even more rarely. However, in our experience talking with members of the public, professionals, and academic groups, most people have an immediate grasp of what it means to experience an environmental epiphany. We don’t know the exact frequency with which humans have epiphanies or environmental epiphanies, but we know anecdotally that these experiences have left marked impressions and resulted in drastic behavioral shifts. (p. 486) Study of
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications the environmental epiphany phenomenon has great potential to uncover previously unknown links regarding the human place in nature, and more specifically in terms of long-term behavioral change. In this chapter we will explore the topic of environmental epiphanies—experiences in which one’s perception of the essential meaning of his/her relationship to nature shifts in a meaningful manner (definition from Merrick, 2008).
Why Study Environmental Epiphanies? The relationship between humans and the natural world is an integral component in the struggle to attain environmental sustainability. It is necessary to understand human perceptions of themselves and nature in order to comprehend and address the complex issues underlying the current environmental situation. Significant and meaningful environmental experiences contribute to the perception of one’s relationship with nature, which can have widespread implications for subsequent beliefs and actions. In this chapter, we explore the concept of environmental epiphanies, one type of significant environmental experience, from a conservation psychology perspective. Our purposes for this chapter are to ground this concept within existing theoretical foundations, to explore the potential of studying such experiences, and to provide practical applications for land management and conservation psychology. There are at least three reasons to study environmental epiphanies. First, epiphanies are interesting and important aspects of human experience that have received little attention from empirical social science. As we shall see below, psychologists have only recently begun conducting empirical studies of emotion, and much of the attention thus far has been on negative emotions, such as anger and fear. Even though there has been a very recent focus on positive emotions, the psychological community has not yet fully tackled the emotions of awe and wonder that are so prevalent in epiphanies. A second reason for studying environmental epiphanies is that they may have important behavioral and cognitive outcomes. For example, an environmental epiphany that includes a sense of oneness with nature may facilitate a positive change in environmental attitudes and behavior. Empirical data (Merrick, 2008) show that there are some important relationships between environmental epiphanies and outcomes, such as heightened levels of environmental awareness and long-term changes in environmentally responsible behavior. If social scientists can show that environmental epiphanies have important social and environmental outcomes, it will be important to determine how to facilitate such experiences. A third reason for studying environmental epiphanies is that they may have important resource management implications. Brandenburg and Carroll (1995) argued that “the emotional symbolic, and widely perceived intrinsic values” (p. 382) linked to elements of natural environments are often ignored because of the historical importance of the economic value of resources. Schroeder (2002) echoed these sentiments, stating that planners and managers need to be aware of special places (places with high levels of aesthetic and emotional values) to more effectively treat such places in a way that is consistent with users’ values. We view these (and other similar) observations as problem statements that serve to motivate and guide our contention that the study of epiphany-like experiences is greatly needed. In this chapter we will first examine theoretical foundations of epiphany experiences, followed by a literature review of studies of related experiences. We will then report on a study we conducted that pertained to environmental epiphanies directly. We will finish the chapter with a discussion of management implications and future directions for research on environmental epiphanies and similar experiences.
Introduction to Our Initial Study of Environmental Epiphanies Throughout this chapter, we refer to an exploratory study we conducted to further develop the concept of environmental epiphanies. Although we do not provide a detailed description of results until later in the chapter, we provide an outline of the methodology here for the reader’s reference. For a description of the methods, analyses, and results of the full study, please refer to Merrick (2008).
Purposes and Description Our purposes for this study were to identify common elements of environmental epiphanies through in-depth
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications interviews with people who had purportedly experienced environmental epiphanies. We aimed to explore common trends in the interview transcripts using qualitative content analysis with a grounded theory approach. Within this initial data set, we conducted two studies; one explored descriptive data, the development of an environmental epiphany typology, and the comparison (p. 487) of these types across categorical data, such as age, gender, and location. The second study focused on the content analysis of participants’ descriptions of their epiphany experiences, exploring common characteristics and comparing them across epiphany types. We then applied the results from both studies to develop a working typology of environmental epiphanies.
Participants Participants self-selected in response to posters and advertisements soliciting experiences of environmental epiphanies. The sample comprised 34 adults from three geographical locations. Six were from a small semi-urban community in the Southeastern United States; 12 were from a midsized Midwestern US college town; and 16 were from a large metropolitan US urban area. The mean age of participants was 42 with a range from 19 to 72. Female participants were 65% of the sample, while males were 35%. Participants were mostly white (88%), with Asian (6%) and Hispanic (6%) populations represented. All participants had completed at least some college-level education, with 41% having earned a college degree and 35% having earned an advanced degree.
Procedures Merrick interviewed all participants using a semi-structured interview protocol. This protocol was a derivation of the protocol used by Miller & C’de Baca (2001) in their study of insights and epiphanies and was used by permission. Items involving the environmental and place-based elements of epiphanies were added to the existing protocol for the purposes of this study. Participants answered items within the following categories: epiphany description, time, beginning, experience, ending/aftereffects, general perspectives, other environmental epiphanies, and conclusion. Merrick conducted and audio recorded all interviews in private settings, most of which were conference rooms at academic or public facilities. The entire interview process lasted anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours, with most lasting roughly one hour. We transcribed each interview (N = 34) verbatim and initially reviewed each conversation as its own unit of analysis. We assigned a descriptive title to each environmental epiphany to assist in referring to the stories throughout the analysis and reporting process. All components of the interviews were entered into the QSR N6 qualitative data software program, with the categorical items (hand recorded at the time of the interviews) entered into SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) as well. We used the process of content analysis to understand and interpret the results of these interviews. This process involved both independent and collaborative systematic and repeated reviewing of the transcripts by both investigators. Throughout this process, we identified emerging, repeated, and meaningful themes within and across participant transcripts. We used the grounded theory method of analysis, which gives importance to the issues and themes that the participants value instead of applying preexisting themes that might reflect our own ideas of important content. Although this is a subjective undertaking, care was taken to ensure that our interpretations of the transcripts were valid and consistent. One additional external coder (in addition to the two authors) reviewed the relevant portions of the transcripts, and a coding scheme that reflected our collective interpretations was devised. We made an effort to incorporate participants’ own language as much as possible into our coding scheme, while maintaining the meaningfulness and personal nature of many of these stories.
Theoretical Foundations
The Importance of Emotion Emotion is a vital part of human thought processes and decision-making practices. Some recent theorists would view it as an inescapable part of our thinking. In our review of epiphany-like research in the context of established fields of study, such as place attachment, we found that a common element of these meaningful experiences is the intense emotionality of the event. In the early years of the development of psychology as a discipline, psychologists such as William James
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications recognized the significance of emotion in human mental processes. This changed gradually as the field turned to what were considered to be more quantifiable and objective measures of mental processes. Even then, many psychologists acknowledged that emotion was an important aspect of human experience, but were at a loss as to how to study it with reliability and validity. Tomkins (1969), for example, observed that decision-making has a significant emotional component, in addition to the logical component that is more frequently highlighted. To further develop a theoretical basis for environmental epiphanies, the historical and contemporary relevance of emotion needs to be considered. Emotion is a psychological element that has permeated conceptualizations of the human psyche (p. 488) since the dawn of the disciplines of psychology and philosophy. William James (as cited in Solomon, 2000) was one of the first to explicitly ask, “What is an emotion?” in his 1884 essay in Mind. James was perhaps the first psychologist to discuss emotion as an essential and motivational element of human perception, thought, and behavior. He envisioned emotion as stemming from physiological components, such as increased heart rate, in response to stimuli. He believed that our perceptions of these physiological attributes are what we experience as emotions. According to James, emotion is a process that begins with a stimulus to which the nervous system reacts. One’s perceptions of that reaction and feelings about those perceptions are experienced as emotions. Therefore, the action and perceptions precede the emotional component (James, 1884). This theory was drastically different from any other that had been offered at the time and one that has only recently been treated seriously (e.g., Zajonc, 1980; LeDoux, 1996). In contrast to James’s formulation of the relationship between emotion and cognition, many 20th-century theorists and researchers believed that emotion was secondary to, and caused by, cognition. The view that emotion was an entity that occurred separate from cognition and behavior and inferior to cognition was also common. Emotional processes such as those that are present in many environmental epiphanies (or epiphanies more generally) were denigrated and considered too “fuzzy” and irrational to study rigorously. Even though emotion was often dismissed as an illegitimate component of rational thought throughout history, many prominent philosophers and psychologists gave consideration to the role of emotions in the human experience. For example, although Aristotle devalued emotions as non-rational entities, there was a strong emotional component to Plato’s writings on ethical concerns (Solomon, 2000). This type of contradictory thought on emotions is evident from others, such as Descartes, who have written about the place of emotions. For a comprehensive historical account of emotion in the history of philosophy, see Solomon (2000). Up until the late 20th century, most attention to emotion from psychological researchers was conceptual. Empirical studies began in the 1970s and have expanded rapidly since the 1980s. Much of what has dominated the modern psychological perspective on emotion is the evolutionary psychological approach. This theory approaches the study of the human mind as it functions to solve adaptive and evolutionary problems. Evolutionary psychologists view the mind as a complex structure of components, which are all integrated into an overarching cognitive architecture. When humans are adapting to a situation or environment (i.e., human behavior), there are many processes that require coordination. According to this theory, emotion is one “superordinate program” that coordinates several of these mental components to appropriately respond to the situation at hand (Cosmides & Tooby, 2000). In essence, according to Cosmides and Tooby (2000), evolutionary psychology offers a theory that emotions act as the control mechanisms for almost everything concerning responses to stimuli. This theoretical approach does not allow the separation of emotion and cognition because cognition describes the brain’s activities, and emotion is directing the cognitive activities. This and other cognition-emotion theories provide ample reason to explore the emotional component of human experience. Contrary to the historical belief that emotion is disruptive to rational decision-making practices, researchers have found emotion to be a highly influential and adaptive component of everyday thought processes, memory, and decision-making practices (Cosmides & Tooby, 2000; Isen, 2000; LeDoux, 1996). Researchers who examine environmental decision-making have consistently demonstrated that emotions not only play a role in environmental decisions, but also serve as a motivational and guiding principle of environmental perception and actions (Vining 1987; Vining & Schroeder, 1989a, 1989b; Vining & Tyler, 1999). Emotions that occur during epiphanies may be powerful motivating factors that spur individuals to become more environmentally aware and involved. The role played by emotion in environmental perception and decision-making was first investigated systematically
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications by Vining (1987) in the early 1980s. At that time, the existence of emotion in environmental decision-making was disparaged, dismissed, and even forbidden by land and resource managers and planners. Vining and colleagues (Kennedy & Vining, 2007; Vining, 1987, 1992a, 1992b) showed that negative emotions were associated with decisions to preserve environments, especially when conflict and scarcity were involved. They also demonstrated that emotions are common parts of thought processes for both managers and the public (Kennedy & Vining, 2007; Vining, 1992a). Overall, these studies showed that emotion is a common and even adaptive part of human relationships with the environment. With emotion taking on a new role (p. 489) in decision-making, the way was paved for studying the relationships between environmental issues and human perception and decision-making. Epiphany-like experiences are often associated with positive emotions (Merrick, 2008). Interestingly, Isen (2000) proposed that positive affect alters the way in which people retrieve memories, experience everyday thought processes, and process problem-solving strategies. Similar to Cosmides and Tooby (2000), she theorized that emotion is a structure in which cognitive components of the mind are organized. In her studies and review of the literature, she found that positive emotion promotes creativity, exploration, cognitive flexibility, organizations of thoughts, and the motivation to maintain a positively oriented state. The positive emotions associated with environmental epiphanies, therefore, may enable cognitive changes that enhance the human-nature relationship. Fortunately, over the past couple of decades, a comprehensive multidisciplinary literature has emerged concerning emotion (e.g., Davidson, Scherer, & Goldsmith, 2003; Lewis, Haviland-Jones, & Barrett, 2008) that attempts to examine emotion from a variety of perspectives and disciplinary research efforts. In this emergent literature, scholars cross-examine various theories of emotion in an effort to legitimize the vital role of emotion in human experience. The study of emotional experiences such as environmental epiphanies can contribute to the growing understanding of emotion and its complex interactions with other psychological factors. Emotions show up regularly in the data sets from which we are drawing examples for this chapter (epiphanies: Miller & C’de Baca, 2001; environmental epiphanies: Merrick, 2008) and are almost always positive. Miller and C’de Baca (2001) found evidence of positivity in their exploration of what they called quantum changes in human experience, and integrated it into their working typology. Over 85% of our participants’ environmental epiphanies were associated with positive emotions. Examples of positive emotions found in our study were awe and wonder, peacefulness, empowerment, gratitude, curiosity, and excitement. One of our participants reported the following: I just stopped on the trail at that point. Actually, no, I walked a little bit farther just looking at the sun, the light, the golden sparkles, it just seemed to be sparkling, and stopped just awed just looking at the beauty. … I was into just feeling the beauty when all of a sudden I felt a whole lot more. Another participant expressed both awe and connectedness in droplets of water as he experienced a new reality: And it seemed to me, almost instantaneous, there was this realization about my own personal life, I guess in watching this waterfall and these water droplets. And what occurred to me…I guess maybe it was subconscious coming to my conscious in this moment of aha or realization…was that the little droplet was much like myself. Well, this was a significant enough realization that there was an emotional reaction to it and I guess, therefore, an epiphany perhaps. Miller and C’de Baca (2001) reported the following statement, which is full of powerful positive emotions: It’s just such an overwhelming experience. It’s like giving birth. You never really forget. In essence, I was giving birth to myself. I felt an energy which is still there. I think once you experience these things they almost become part of the genetic makeup of your body so you can get back into it, like a dancer can get back into pliés. You’re never the same after you’ve experienced it. (p. 75) Another environmental epiphany participant reported happiness in the following comment: And the first thing I’ve noticed in my neighborhood were [sic] the laughter of the children and that was… that was something. It was just some innocent smile, these children were giggling. And I’ve heard these giggles of these neighborhood kids so many number of times, but I didn’t realize how precious life was. And they are going about their business and they’re just laughing and giggling. A sense of peace and belonging, accompanied with positive emotion was reported by individuals from both of the
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications data sets. From Merrick (2008): And then I had…I just…I guess I would call it a shift in consciousness almost. I mean, that means different things to people, but for me it was a shift and it was feeling. I felt…it’s like my heart opened way up like I’ve never experienced. And I felt what I’m seeing is what world peace would feel like for our earth. It’s like the trees were part of it, the sunlight, these beings and I just…I started crying. I stood there…I really don’t know how long. Wasn’t real real long, but it just made me cry because of the beauty and that there is a potential for absolute peace and harmony. (p. 490) One of Miller and C’de Baca’s (2001) participants also reported finding peace. Now I’m very comfortable knowing that whatever happens in the future I will be with God eternally, and it’s real peaceful to think about that. I don’t want to rush it, but I have no fear of death. I guess security is the word. (p.129) Negative emotional experiences were reported by a few participants in each of the data sets. For example, one of our participants reported a near-drowning experience. It should be noted, however, that while this participant was experiencing fear at the time of the event, she remembered her experience and associated her epiphany with a positive outcome, a newfound respect for the power of natural forces. It was really fun to feel overpowered by the ocean. And finally at one point, I realized I needed to go back in because I started to feel weak. And that’s when I realized that if I didn’t go in and like try really hard, I was going to die out there…that it would be possible. So that was my epiphany.
The Need For and Potential of Environmental Epiphany Studies The need to conduct more studies of experiences such as environmental epiphanies within the greater area of human-nature experiences is essential in our understanding of the nature-self relationship. Although initial evidence indicates that the definition of environmental epiphanies is inherently understood by many (Merrick, 2008), the phenomenon has received very little empirical attention. Anecdotal evidence, however, is plentiful and can be found in popular literature as well as the theoretical musings of researchers. Evidence can also be found in existing data. In fact, our interest in epiphanies originally arose as we regularly analyzed research participants’ descriptions of epiphanies in responses to empirical studies of other topics. In our initial attempt to explore some of these issues, we found evidence of the phenomenon of environmental epiphanies in many disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, education, recreation, environmental studies, and biology. We also found elements of epiphanies present in studies on phenomena such as peak aesthetic experiences, experiences of awe and wonder, exceptional human experiences, flow experiences, insight experiences, quantum shifts, experiences of the sacred, synchronicity, transcendent experiences, diminutive experiences, and moments of savoring. Although we found many similarities between these experiences and environmental epiphanies, we were unable to locate a proper place within any of these concepts for the experience that so many discussed as being a fundamental shift in their understanding of the nature-self relationship. We therefore thought it was important to coin a new term, environmental epiphany, that fully described the experiences that had such a profound effect on so many of our study participants. We believe that the potential of empirical research on the various elements of the experience of environmental epiphanies can have a profound impact on our understanding of the human-nature relationship. We introduce some possible applications below but contend that future results can inform our understanding of everything from landscape preferences to environmentally responsible behavior.
Applications Environmental management is one significant example of where the findings of environmental epiphany research could be integrated into practical applications. The role of emotion in environmental management and decisionmaking has been explored by Vining and her colleagues (Vining, 1987, 1992a; Vining & Schroeder, 1989a, 1989b; Vining & Tyler, 1999; Kennedy & Vining, 2007). Vining’s (1992a) findings indicated that land managers not only
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications experience different emotions than those of the public, but they are often unable to predict or manage the emotions of the public. Overall, public emotions were more negative than those of the managers, and managers predicted that public emotions would be more like their own, that is, more positive. This disconnect occurs despite the fact that many managers indicate that epiphany-like experiences drove their decisions to become land managers. Since our research indicates that people who experience environmental epiphanies in hindsight recall mostly positive emotions associated with those experiences, it would be interesting to explore the emotional components of manager and user epiphany experiences. Findings could improve managers’ understanding of the public’s emotions toward land management issues as well as the issue of managing the special places in which epiphanies have occurred (both for managers and the public). (p. 491) Spiritual dimensions of environmental epiphanies, as well as more mundane experiences with the natural world, are important considerations for managers as well. We have led a number of workshops for land managers regarding the emotional components of management, in which many managers have confessed that they don’t know how to manage land that holds emotional and spiritual meaning for its users. Several have indicated that they themselves have wondered how spirituality related to natural environments can be translated into management and policy for these lands. Studies of environmental epiphanies, with accompanying emotions, may provide an empirical justification for specific land management practices, such as preservation of special places and access of public land to diverse populations. The study of environmental epiphanies may also have implications for environmental educators. Our research shows that environmental epiphanies are often place-based and tend to occur when people are engaged in activities beyond the everyday. Similarly, evidence from the education literature shows that experiential, placebased learning is often a more effective environmental education strategy than traditional classroom techniques (Uzzell, Rutland, & Whistance, 1995). It follows that the experiences of place-based environmental education and environmental epiphanies may share many characteristics. In addition, “aha” moments are very much related to how one learns new information. Studying these moments of insight can help us to better understand the “aha” moment as opposed to incremental learning, where pieces of knowledge are learned stepwise through time. If the “aha” moment is the instant that one is able to comprehend a complex idea once a critical amount of information is studied, environmental educators would greatly benefit from knowledge as to how to better promote and foster this type of learning. The educational component of natural environments was also a theme that emerged in our participants’ discussions of their epiphanies. Many described discovering the wonders of nature, observing intricate natural processes that create an ecological environment, and realizing nature is a vital part of their lives. Some participants, as the quotation below indicates, had new insights regarding formal education as well. But this trip was enough to sort of trigger something in me that somehow, sort of inexplicably, brought me new clarity on things in my own life, particularly regarding my education. And then also, it definitely changed my relationship to nature in that it reminded me how important nature just was to me as an experience. This suggests that people in the general populations may be more open to outdoor educational opportunities than previously thought. It also emphasizes the importance of place-based analyses. In addition, findings from epiphany studies can inform environmental educators to integrate and encourage the discovery of nature through more balanced educational programming. The study of environmental epiphanies is not limited to land management and environmental education applications. Results from future studies can also inform our concepts of place attachment, experiential components of spiritual experiences, and motivational aspects of environmentally responsible behavior. We encourage researchers from multiple disciplines to embrace the study of environmental epiphanies as a way to create better linkages and a greater understanding of human experiences.
Review of Literature
Psychological Approaches to Epiphany-Like Experiences
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications In our review of the literature on this topic, we gathered descriptions, theories, and frameworks from a number of disciplines. However, the majority of literature concerning epiphany-like experiences emerged from the discipline of psychology. The writings of James (1902) and Maslow (1964) were probably the most influential in the present understanding of transformative experiences in general, but were largely theoretical rather than empirical in nature. Several modern scholars have continued to study the phenomenon of epiphany-like experiences from various psychological perspectives (e.g., Kaplan & Talbot, 1983; Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre, 1989; Keltner & Haidt, 2003; Miller & C’de Baca, 2001; Williams & Harvey, 2001). In his review of perspectives on the values of natural environments, Schroeder (1996) examined various psychological approaches to the study of the human relationship with the natural environment. He discussed how various subdisciplines, such as Jungian psychology, phenomenological psychology, and experiential psychology, can inform our understandings of the hard-to-define values that characterize human-nature relationships. Although Schroeder’s work (1991 , 1996, 2002) emphasized spirituality associated with natural environments, (p. 492) and the positive emotions therein, he did not specifically address environmental epiphanies. However, many of his findings regarding human experiences in nature have similar elements to our concept of environmental epiphanies. Although the discipline of psychology has taken the lead in the empirical study of epiphany-like experiences, it has become obvious that researchers from several other disciplines, such as recreation and tourism, have much more than a glancing interest and curiosity about such experiences. Researchers from several disciplines as well as interdisciplinarians continue to explore transformational experiences in relation to a variety of contexts. Therefore, we recommend that studies of epiphany-like experiences be approached from an interdisciplinary perspective. The study of environmental epiphanies is well placed within the field of conservation psychology, which embraces applied interdisciplinary research.
Empirical Studies of Epiphany-Like Experiences Although the literary and anecdotal accounts of the importance of meaningful and spiritual experiences regarding nature are abundant, there are only a small number of empirical studies that explore these aspects of the humannature experience (Schroeder, 1991). Kals, Schumacher, and Montada (1999) contended that although the effects of emotional experiences in nature and connections to nature are widely discussed, they have rarely been explored theoretically or empirically. Consequently, although these emotional experiences have played a central role in people’s perceptions of natural environments, little empirical attention has been given to the details and intricacies of the processes that contribute to epiphany-like experiences. There is, however, growing evidence that meaningful, transformative experiences such as epiphanies act as an inherent (and often assumed) part of human-nature interactions. Several scholars have provided typologies of such experiences that inevitably contain epiphany-like elements. One of the first scholars to study epiphany-like experiences was William James. James was interested in the transformative events of religious and social leaders, and his work can be considered empirical in a qualitative approach, as well as theoretical. In his Varieties of Religious Experiences (1902 ), he identified human experiences that seem to be closely related to the conception of environmental epiphanies. James referred to these experiences as mystical; however, he outlined several gradations of these types of experience that did not necessarily have foundations in religion. James (1902) identified four characteristics of mystical experiences. The first is ineffability, or an inability to adequately express the experience in words. He states that to properly understand such experiences, one must have undergone the experience oneself, and that the communication of such experiences to outsiders is difficult. Another characteristic is the noetic quality of the experience, in which the experiencer attains new states of knowledge, insight, significance, and ultimate truth. James states that these first two elements are minimum requirements for an experience to be classified as mystical. Two additional characteristics are often present: experiences are often transient, or short-lived, as well as passive, meaning that one has a sense that another power is at play. His writings on this subject are filled with passages that suggest these states of consciousness are dominated by intense emotional experiences. James’s (1902) typology of mystical experiences included several gradations within the categories, starting with a simple realization, something that is known for quite some time and suddenly realized or seen in a different way, which creates a more holistic understanding. James noted that these simple realizations can be brought on by
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications words, light, odors, music, and passages. He also defined other types of mystical experiences that grow in intensity, such as déjà-vu, experiences of awe, mystical consciousness, and chemically altered states of consciousness. The most intense type of mystical experience, according to James, is religious mysticism. Within this typology of mystical experiences, James described a dreamy state that is very similar to the experience of the emotion of awe as described by Keltner and Haidt (2003) in their comprehensive exploration of awe. James also described the sense of awe as seeing the meaning in everything and grasping to develop an understanding of the truths behind the meanings. He provides examples of each type of mystical experience taken from an extensive collection of these accounts from several sources (James, 1902). Although James (1902) did not study environmental epiphanies directly, he stated that “certain aspects of nature seem to have a peculiar power of awakening such mystical moods.…Most of the striking cases I have collected have occurred out of doors” (p. 355). This is similar to modern conceptions of the spiritual aspects of nature. For example, Schroeder (1991) identified the emphasis on natural environments with respect to the spiritual experiences he examined. (p. 493) As discussed and corroborated by research compiled in Miller & C’de Baca’s (2001) book, Pahnke (1963) completed an extensive literature review of various typologies of mystical experiences. As a result, he identified several overarching characteristics of mystical experiences that include, exemplify, and expound upon James’s original list. These characteristics included unity (both within oneself and with external objects); transcendence of time and space (loss of time and space orientation); deeply felt positive mood (intense positive emotions, such as joy and peace); sense of sacredness (deep sense of special value); objectivity and reality (knowing without a doubt the experience is meaningful and real); paradoxicality (defying logic); alleged ineffability (unable to capture with words); transiency (short-lived); and persisting positive changes in attitudes and behavior (profound and meaningful personal change). This extensive identification of characteristics illustrates the importance of emotions, especially positive affect, that permeate many accounts of such experiences. They also speak to the potential of these types of experiences to motivate substantial and persistent changes in environmental attitudes and behavior, one of the main goals of conservation psychology as a field (Saunders, 2003). Many previously examined epiphany-like experiences have been referred to as “peak experiences.” Abraham Maslow (1964) is well known for his identification of 25 characteristics of peak experiences, which included such elements as experiencing the universe as a whole, loss of ego, self-actualization, humility, sense of sacredness, and gratitude. His original peak-experience participants (Maslow, 1962) were professionals, college students, and others of various backgrounds. He initially conducted 80 interviews, analyzed written responses from 190 college students, and integrated 50 unsolicited letters regarding people’s peak experiences. They were all responding to an item similar to those used in our epiphany research and other epiphany-like research, which asked the participant to recount “the most wonderful experience or experiences of your life; happiest moments, ecstatic moments, moments of rapture,” and so on (p. 67). He then asked participants to describe how these moments made them feel and how the experiences made them different people. In outlining the many characteristics of these experiences, Maslow (1964) reported such emotions as “wonder, awe, reverence, humility, surrender, and even worship before the greatness of the experience” (p. 65). Maslow not only highlighted the emotional aspects of peak experiences, but also suggested that peak experiences (and therefore emotion) are directly related to the development of B-values (being values), such as truth, beauty, wholeness, and aliveness. Thus, Maslow’s conception of peak experiences is characterized by the union of emotional intensity, experience, and the development of values. Maslow (1962) also found peak experiences to be acute identity experiences, indicating that those who have such experiences subsequently shift their personal identities to become more integrated, engaged, and essentially better versions of their previous selves. Since Maslow found peak experiences to be related to identity development, it would follow that environmental epiphany experiences would be related to one’s environmental identity, which is defined as one’s perception of his or her connection to the natural environment (Clayton, 2003). Contemporary scholars have continued the study of emotionally intense epiphany-like experiences. In their study of epiphanies and sudden insights, Miller and C’de Baca (2001) confirmed and contributed to the typologies posited by James (1902) and Pahnke (1963). They distinguished between two types of changes that humans encounter,
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications similar to the distinction between the incremental gaining of knowledge and the sudden “aha” moment. They described type 1 changes as incremental and routine, and type 2 changes as instantaneous or sudden. In their quest to obtain information from those who had experienced type 2 change, they were featured in a local newspaper article, where potential participants were recruited by a broad definition of type 2 change. To their surprise, 89 people initially made contact, resulting in a study of 55 people who had experienced a type 2 change. They defined type 2 change as “quantum change,” an out-of-the-ordinary, transformative experience (Miller & C’de Baca, 2001). Miller and C’de Baca (2001) identified four elements of quantum change: vividness, surprise, benevolence, and endurance. They specifically highlighted the importance of emotion within the description of the vividness characteristic. They emphasized the profound emotional experiences that accompanied quantum change and stated that the experiences are “often deeply moving” and tend to lessen “chronic negative emotions” (p. 14) by creating a sense of peace. Their participants often reported a feeling that a weight or burden had been lifted after such experiences. There is also evidence that the emotions experienced during quantum changes are often positive, as defined by the benevolence category. They described such experiences to (p. 494) be vivid in that they were very distinct and unique occurrences that were often not sought after by participants and therefore were surprising. Most of their participants’ experiences were benevolent with positive outcomes, and enduring with lasting effects on participants. Miller and C’de Baca (2001) further distinguished two types of quantum change: insights and epiphanies. Insights tended to reveal new perspectives and realizations, greater understanding, and were not completely outside the realm of normal experiences. Epiphanies tended to be more extraordinary, often had mystical elements, and were more overwhelming and absorbing for participants. Studying the methodology and results of this innovative and important work has provided us with many tools in which to better conceptualize environmental epiphanies. Regarding experiences in nature, we have found empirical work involving aesthetic conceptions of nature. Although the aesthetic experience seems to have different characteristics than epiphany or transformative experiences, work done in this area can provide important insights regarding epiphany-like experiences. Chenoweth and Gobster (1990) explored the concept of aesthetic experiences in nature and identified four components of aesthetic experiences from their review of the aesthetic experience literature. They categorized the most commonly found elements of aesthetic experiences by their nature (how participants subjectively viewed their experiences), ecology (temporal and spatial), the object of the experience, and the subjective value of the experience (psychological components). Using these four components, they analyzed the journal entries of 25 college students who had documented the details of their outdoor aesthetic experiences for a couple of months, resulting in a total number of 135 aesthetic outdoor experiences. Chenoweth and Gobster’s (1990) results showed that students’ experiences of aesthetics in outdoor environments were quite diverse. The most common themes were that participants found the experiences to be memorable, pleasant, and surprising (not sought out by the participant). Their results echo many themes that have emerged elsewhere in our literature review, such as feelings of union (Pahnke, 1963; Maslow, 1964; Williams & Harvey, 2001) and a newly perceived awareness (Kaplan & Talbot, 1983). Chenoweth & Gobster (1990) also specifically discussed the role of emotion as affecting one’s aesthetic experiences in natural environments. They demonstrated the importance of emotions in their findings by integrating emotion within their content analysis as well as reporting that their data showed “frequent” (p. 6) emotional content. Their findings also showed that in 77% of their cases, participants’ self-reported mood was elevated after the experience occurred. The aesthetic appreciation of an outdoor environment has a significant connection to how people experience that place. After studying people’s special places for a number of years, Schroeder (2002) reported the results of a 15year longitudinal study concerning participants’ conceptions of special places in six different natural areas. Participants were recruited in a number of ways (e.g., meeting announcements, local newspapers) and were selfselected. Through analysis of open-ended questionnaires in which participants wrote about each place and their personal reactions (thoughts, feelings, etc.) to the place, Schroeder identified several meaningful categories of special places. These included environmental features, the psychological experience of the participants in their special places, and how special places were managed. He also identified several psychological elements of
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications special places, including naturalness, remoteness, gratitude, and the emotions of awe, sense of wonder, and magic. He also reported the ineffable quality we have seen in other typologies of epiphany-like experiences (James, 1902; Pahnke, 1963), as well as components of spirituality. Schroeder’s comprehensive work on the connection between users’ psychological attachments to place and land management practices has been a significant influence on our development of the concept of the importance of environmental epiphanies. Special places are not necessarily completely wild and in many cases are heavily managed areas. However, it is also useful to review people’s conceptions of wilderness and the types of experiences that occur in such environments. Kaplan and Talbot (1983) conducted a longitudinal study of the wilderness experiences of participants in the Outdoor Challenge Program in Michigan. Participants were exposed to a variety of outdoor activities, with both group and individual components. In their analysis of participant questionnaires and journal entries, Kaplan and Talbot (1983) found several instances of the experiences of emotions such as awe and wonder as well as wilderness having a spiritual meaning for participants. They found that individuals who had been exposed to wilderness experiences had improved selfesteem, a higher interest in natural processes, and a greater (p. 495) likelihood of self-realization and awareness. Their participants tended to recall the positive aspects of their wilderness experiences rather than the negative ones. Another significant finding was the lasting effects of these experiences. Participants developed new ways of perceiving their surroundings, which translated to their everyday lives after their wilderness experiences. Kaplan and Talbot (1983) suggested that their results support the potential of such experiences to have long-term shifts in the self-nature relationship. Through their many years of exploring the phenomenon of wilderness experiences, Kaplan and Talbot (1983) were able to suggest themes for restorative environments. These themes were being away, fascination, coherence, and compatibility. Being away involved the participants getting away from their everyday environments. Fascination occurred throughout participants’ wilderness experiences. However, they found that coherence (both pattern and distance) was more likely to be experienced by participants as time in wilderness environments increased. Compatibility, often associated with an awe-like connection to the surrounding environment, accompanied the experiences of participants who had spent the most time in wilderness settings. Kaplan and Talbot (1983) therefore suggested that there is a psychological progression that people experience related to the duration of time spent in wilderness environments. Similarly, Williams and Harvey (2001) explored transcendent experiences in forested environments. The results of their literature review of the subject uncovered many of the same elements that are present in our review. Their main list of characteristics of transcendent-like experiences included strong positive affect, empowerment, unity, absorption, and timelessness. They partly justified their study and corroborated our literature findings by stating that those who have significantly explored transcendent experiences have identified the importance of the natural environment. They suggested three approaches to understanding transcendent experiences in natural environments. The psychodynamic approach deals with the participants’ mental structures; the sense of place approach involves the interactions between people and place; and the third approach concerns the involvement between the participant and the activity in which they are engaged while in these types of environments. In their study of the written responses of 131 participants who had transcendent-like experiences in Australian forested environments, Williams and Harvey (2001) identified several types of experiences, two of which they characterized as transcendent. These findings indicated that those who had highly transcendent experiences in forests described either a diminutive experience or a deep flow experience, similar to that described by Csikszentmihalyi (1990). Diminutive experiences were found to be novel, fascinating, and humbling, while deep flow experiences were absorbing and less novel, but more relaxing. Williams and Harvey (2001) also found a cluster of experiences that they considered to be nontranscendent since they scored lower on all of their defining characteristics (fascination, compatibility, novelty, and transcendence). The remaining types of experiences were aesthetic experiences and restorative experiences. Their findings have major implications for future research, including the evidence that transcendent experiences have many features including those discussed above, and that their participants’ experiences were largely dependent on how they were interacting with their surrounding space. They concluded with the recommendation that studies such as these would benefit from the sense of place approach.
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications The examples of studies of epiphany-like experiences discussed above are those that we found to be most closely aligned with our concept of environmental epiphanies. We will explore the application of some of these typologies in the summary of our environmental epiphany study below. Although this is not an exhaustive list of studies involving transformative moments, one theme that consistently emerged in our search was the lack of empirical analysis of this group of experiences. However, in our interactions with the academic, public, and professional communities regarding this concept, we found widespread interest, enthusiasm, and relatedness. To us, this observation, coupled with our examination of the literature, provide evidence that the concept of environmental epiphanies is an important and interesting one to both those who have a connection to the environmental studies field and those who do not. It therefore seems like a valid concept to explore in much more detail.
Approaches from Place Attachment and Environmental Meaning Before we discuss the specific study of environmental epiphanies, it is worthwhile to briefly explore some insights from some of the most emergent themes of our review of epiphany-like studies: place (p. 496) attachment, sense of place, and environmental meaning (e.g., Williams & Harvey, 2001). In general, place attachment researchers have suggested that the meaning of a specific place is uniquely experienced and dependent upon many factors, including past experiences, memories, landscape attributes, symbolic representations, and psychological orientations. Bott, Cantrill, and Myers (2003) contended that the term “place” represents “humans’ subjective experiences and meanings of the locations they inhabit” (p. 100). Cantrill and Senecah (2001) approached the concept of place through Miles’ Law, which states that “where you stand depends on where you sit and where we sit is framed by the psychological schema we have for that place called ‘home’” (p. 186). Low (1992) defined place attachment as “the symbolic relationship formed by people giving culturally shared emotional/affective meanings to a particular space or piece of land that provides the basis for the individual’s and group’s understanding of and relation to the environment” (p. 165). Much of the place attachment literature suggests that meaning is constructed by those attached to or experiencing the place. There are several studies of place that may inform a conceptual basis for the environmental epiphany phenomenon . Given the importance of place concepts to the development of the environmental epiphany concept, it can be useful to examine the difference between the conception of place and one’s surrounding space. Bott, Cantrill, and Myers (2003) specifically defined place as “an environment organized from the subjects’ viewpoint, and linked to affect” (p. 104). They distinguished the concept of place from space, which they defined as having more of a cognitive foundation, such as the development of a cognitive map. The idea that the experience of place is emotionally driven has also been proposed and demonstrated by several others (e.g., Low, 1992; Mazumdar & Mazumdar, 1993; Mitchell et al., 1993; Schroeder, 2002). Several scholars have proposed typologies of place and place attachment. Mazumdar and Mazumdar (1993) examined the religious component of place attachment in terms of the emotional and spiritual experiences of place. They included attachment to natural landscapes in their three categories of attachment to sacred spaces, along with attachment to sacred cities and attachment to architecture. The attachment to natural landscapes involved the perception of sacredness related to natural entities, such as rivers, trees, and mountains. They argued that “in such places believers experience a sense of continuity with the past and renew their commitment to the future” (p. 233). This sense of the sacred is a theme that has emerged in many of the typologies and results of epiphany-like studies (e.g., Pahnke, 1963) as well as the place attachment literature. Although it is too early to make claims regarding the spiritual or sacred component of environmental epiphany experiences, there seems to be enough evidence to suggest that this may be a frequent, if not defining, characteristic of environmental epiphanies. Bott, Cantrill, and Myers (2003) located the concept of place within three main groupings, including the built versus natural environments, explanatory versus normative views, and humanistic versus social scientific perspectives of place. Related to their view of the built versus natural environments of place, they argued that all places that are significant to the participant are meaningful to study. They described place as a holistic phenomenon that cannot be separated into individual components and argued that the study of place in built and natural environments may illuminate the paradoxical perception that “nature” is defined as free of human interference (see also Vining, Merrick, & Price, 2008).
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications With particular reference to natural environments, place can further be categorized by the ways in which people experience these environments in terms of recreation and enjoyment. Mitchell et al. (1993) offered a typology for visitor-environment relationships in their study of special places in the Chiwawa River drainage area in Washington state. They categorized these relationships by the degree to which visitors were attached to specific places. They discovered that visitors were either attached or user oriented. Those with the most attachment to place had a deep emotional bond with the place and described the place as being an entity in and of itself. Schroeder (2002) reported similar findings regarding the strong emotional attachment to special places. Some of his participants described their special places “as a ‘jewel’ or ‘treasure’ or as a ‘heaven’ or ‘paradise’” (p. 12), all emotion-laden descriptors. These various ways of organizing the concept of place further illustrate that this concept often has drastically different meanings for different people depending on the particular circumstances surrounding the experience of place. This demonstrates that a concept such as place must be one in which meaning is constantly transforming and being reconstructed. For example, certain places might hold more significance after one has had an (p. 497) emotionally intense experience in that place. We also see evidence of the reconstruction of place when environmental threats are suddenly present. In these cases, the perception of risk, which inherently includes many psychological factors, dictates the conception of place. The experience of place attachment and environmental meaning is one that encompasses the study of several psychological factors, including emotion, perception, behavior, and values—all of which are vital to the study of environmental epiphanies as well.
Studying Environmental Epiphanies
Defining Environmental Epiphanies Even though environmental experiences are unique to each person and encompass a broad spectrum of interpretations, it is necessary to define the terms of empirical research to make it practically feasible. By creating a working definition of environmental epiphanies that is based on the extant literature and our own data, we have attempted to generate a communication tool for fellow scholars and potential participants to use regarding this subset of environmental experience. Although environmental experience itself is a worthy subject of study, we felt as though we needed to narrow the concept to these particular types of intense, vivid, and unforgettable experiences that we refer to as environmental epiphanies. We developed this concept primarily by the analysis of extensive existing data sets that dealt with human-nature interactions. We routinely conduct content analyses of narrative data, mostly regarding environmental decisionmaking practices. Through years of analyses, we regularly identified passages in which people described environmental experiences accompanied by intense emotions, such as awe and wonder. We interpreted some of these participants’ narratives as having hints of magical wonderment, spiritual enlightenment, and selfactualization. These participants seemed to have experienced a shift in the way they perceived themselves in relation to nature or natural environments. We began to talk to others about their experiences of wonder and magic in relation to environmental experiences and read about related experiences from several disciplinary backgrounds. What we found was that these general types of experiences were referred to in many different ways (e.g., peak, flow, epiphanies, sudden insights, aesthetic, transformative, transcendent) but shared several similar characteristics. Scholars have been formally discussing (many times anecdotally) this phenomenon for over 100 years (see James, 1902), and probably much longer in terms of religious and spiritual experiences in nature (e.g., Cristancho & Vining, 2004; Keltner & Haidt, 2003). In essence, we applied our empirical observations within this general group of transformative experiences to the concept of human-nature experiences and devised the concept of environmental epiphanies. For the purposes of collecting data and recruiting research participants, we chose to communicate the conception of environmental epiphanies as a very general definition to allow for further clarification by the study participants. The following was our working definition. Environmental epiphany: An experience in which one’s perception of the essential meaning of their
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications relationship to nature shifts in a meaningful manner. Notice that our definition does not include the words “environment” or “epiphany.” We selected the term “nature” because previous research (e.g., Vining, Merrick, & Price, 2008) has shown that people’s perceptions of the nature-self relationship may have implications regarding environmental attitudes and behavior (see also Schultz et al., 2004). We believed that the term “environment” could be defined too broadly by participants, which would result in analyzing a broader group of experiences than those that focused on the nature-self relationship. However, this definition should be interpreted as a working definition of the concept, to be further defined by empirical work. The limits of language, meaning, and understanding across various populations and cultural backgrounds are struggles that all researchers must face when relying upon language to communicate complicated concepts. It is quite possible that the participants’ concepts of environmental epiphanies in terms of environmental meaning may be different than that of the researchers. Despite previous studies that highlighted the role of emotion in epiphany-like experiences, we did not want to limit the definition by including the emotional element. We did not wish to exclude potential participants who were not aware of (or who may not have experienced) emotional elements related to their epiphany experiences. Also, we wanted to avoid imposing our own concepts of the definition before collecting a large amount of data on this concept. At this stage in the development of environmental epiphanies, we recommend that studies are designed to encourage and support the participants’ discoveries of their own meanings and interpretations of their environmental experiences. (p. 498)
The Study of Environmental Epiphanies: Initial Data
The methodology for our study of environmental epiphanies can be found in the introductory section of this chapter. We outline some of our main findings below.
Descriptive Results Participants’ average age at the time of the environmental epiphany was 32 with a range of 3 to 67. The 10-year gap between the mean age at the time of the epiphany (32) and the mean age at the time of the interview (42) suggests that these experiences were memorable and had long-lasting impressions. Although the age range is wide, almost half of the experiences occurred in the teens and 20s. A little over 32% of epiphanies were reported during the 30s and 40s, while almost 15% occurred in the 50s and 60s. Environmental epiphanies were reported to occur at all times of day, with 29.4% of participants reporting their epiphanies lasted as long as they were in their epiphany environment or engaged in their epiphany activity. Outside of these enduring epiphanies, the most frequent time of day that epiphanies occurred was in the morning (23.5%), with 11.8% occurring in the afternoon, 8.8% occurring in the evening, and only one occurring at night. Several participants (11.8%) reported their experiences as occurring in the daytime, with no more specific memory of the time of day. Over half (52.9%) occurred in the summer, with the next most frequent time of year being the fall at 20.6%. It was very difficult for participants to articulate the duration of their experiences. The most frequently reported situation (29.4%) was one in which the epiphany lasted as long as the participant was in the epiphany place or engaged in the particular activity that elicited the epiphany. However, a third of epiphany experiences (32.3%) lasted five minutes or less. The duration of experiences ranged from a fleeting moment, often referred to as an “aha” moment, to longer than an hour. A majority of participants (73.5%) were in locations or engaged in activities that were unusual for them, with 26.5% of participants reporting that they were engaged in routine activities or located in routine environments. Most participants (70.6%) were not attempting to have an experience such as an environmental epiphany. However, 26.5% said that they were making an attempt to have this type of experience. Over half of participants (61.8%) reported that the onset of their experience was sudden and nearly three-quarters of participants were surprised by their experience. Participants’ descriptions of the ending of their experiences were almost exactly the opposite of the onset of their experiences in terms of suddenness. The majority (61.8%) of participants reported experiencing a gradual ending, while 38.2% reported a sudden ending. The role of others was significant in 41.1% of the stories, but the majority of participants (58.8%) reported having a solitary experience.
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications Over 85% of experiences occurred in the United States, mostly within preserved areas such as national or state parks, recreation areas, and other natural or restored wilderness areas. Seven environmental epiphanies occurred in the participants’ home environments with four occurring indoors and three occurring outdoors in home yards or neighborhoods. Five occurred outside of the United States while participants were visiting or living abroad. Over 70% of participants stated that the significance of the epiphany place changed after their experiences, with that particular place becoming more meaningful or special. Over three-fourths of participants reported having changed their environmental values, attitudes, or behavior as a result of their environmental epiphanies. Examples of these changes included spending more time in outdoor venues, recycling more, and using less environmentally destructive chemicals. These changes and others (education, career, relationships, spiritual) were reported by most (four-fifths) participants as being persistent and lasting until the time of the interview. When asked about environmental epiphanies outside of the experience participants were reporting for the study, only 10 participants had experienced previous environmental epiphanies while over half reported experiencing at least one since their reported experience. Since the term “environmental epiphany” had not been previously used, we asked participants if they would characterize their experience as an “environmental epiphany” and most (76.5%) agreed that the term accurately described their experience.
Epiphany Types One main result of the content analysis of participants’ epiphany descriptions was the development of a typology of environmental epiphanies, which included five discrete types of environmental epiphanies: aesthetic, intellectual, realization, awakening, and connectedness. The aesthetic experiences were characterized by vivid and awestruck (p. 499) descriptions of place in which participants were recognizing the beauty and aesthetic value of nature and natural places, as the following quotation illustrates: So, it was almost…I felt like I was…in fact, I wrote down in my journal…going through a sculpture garden out here…the natural creativity of those [referring to glaciers]. There was a perfect little circle in one of them. How do you explain that? We were just surrounded by them and then the snow-covered peaks and the dark green of the forest coming right down to the water made it just a magical trip. Intellectual epiphanies were experiences in which participants were exposed to new information (in these cases, readings) that allowed them to adjust the way they viewed nature and their relationship with nature. And it was just the most eye-opening life-changing book that I’ve ever read. It just…to realize that there were pesticides being used that would persist on the earth for way beyond my lifetime and do horrible things, killing indiscriminately. Realization epiphanies were the most frequent in this data set. They were characterized are the realization of a concept to which participants had been previously exposed. Many participants described these experiences as the difference between knowing something and realizing something, two qualitatively different concepts to participants. Realization epiphanies included stories that described a new awareness, an awareness of a different option(s), a change in perspective, and overcoming the challenges of nature, as the following quotation illustrates. This particular participant was discussing the challenge of climbing a mountain in Alaska: And then that, just that feeling of satisfaction when you get the top. And that for sure propelled my feelings for the rest of it and just kept adding on. And by the end, it was like, this is nothing, let’s climb something higher. A slightly different and more intense type of epiphany was an awakening experience, in which participants described feelings of an awakening, clarity, new vividness, a shift of consciousness, an awareness of the way things should be, and nature as therapeutic and restorative. Many of these experiences were defined as lifechanging, life-affirming, or turning points. And we were just miles and miles away, but I could see the Acropolis, just crystal clear and there was like a beam of light coming down on it. And this experience really had nothing to do with the Acropolis; it had to do with the quality of the light and the air. And I was just so overcome, you know, I was crying. And I just
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications thought, you know, this is how it should be every day. And that our air and our mountains and our views and everything just should be there for us always. And that struck my heart so hard that I…this wasn’t a radical change in my plans, but it made me decide with a very profound commitment to pursue a career in environment science. Finally, connectedness epiphanies were distinguished by feelings of immense connectedness, including descriptions of the self as part of something, a unification or connection with a larger whole or entity, interconnectedness, and a universal connectedness. In these experiences, participants described complete perceptual shifts in their relationships with nature, a higher power, or the universe. Connectedness epiphanies tended to be very intense and accompanied with positive emotions. And that was probably the first time I had ever experienced the powerful impact of something I have a hard time putting into words…but just kind of this identity…not just with the physical nature of the world, but with everything…of a union beyond myself that wasn’t necessarily called god, but there’s an identity with what people identify as god. And that nature…what is. Just felt very free and very…once again, my experience was a union with everything that is, not just the water, not just the surroundings, but everything that is. It should be noted that many participant descriptions included aspects of more than one of these types of epiphanies, but it was clear through our analysis which type captured each experience most accurately. In some cases, participant transcripts illustrated both a primary type of environmental epiphany that tended to be at the forefront of their stories, as well as a secondary type that served as a backdrop or an additional component of their experiences.
Thematic Trends in Epiphany Descriptions Our content analysis of epiphany descriptions also allowed us to develop a hierarchical theme-based system of coding categories that emerged from participants’ narratives. We first integrated the primary (p. 500) types of environmental epiphanies into the coding scheme. The other main categories of epiphany descriptions were emotion, travel, physical activities, objects of interest, connection to other people, spiritual issues, environmental issues, nature and place-based issues, and consequences of the experience. Under each of these first-degree categories, several subcategories emerged from the transcripts, which are too numerous to list here. For a detailed coding scheme and discussion, please refer to Merrick (2008). Each of these first-degree categories is briefly described below.
Emotions Most participants (85.2%) reported having positive emotions during their epiphanies, while only 20.5% reported having negative emotions. There were fewer positive emotions reported by intellectual participants than the other types. Aesthetic, realization, and connectedness participants reported the highest levels of positive emotions. The most frequently reported positive emotion was enjoyment and appreciation of beauty. The emotions of awe/fascination and peacefulness were also frequently reported. I was just so happy and I guess it made me realize that without areas like that.…I mean, I had always had a respect for nature. Negative emotions were not experienced by aesthetic and intellectual participants and had lower incidences than positive emotions within the remaining epiphany types. Most participants who described experiencing negative emotions described them in comparison to the largely positive emotions that they experienced during the actual epiphany. The most frequently occurring negative emotions were being upset, sadness, or trauma. Many participants (65%) described their emotional state throughout their epiphany stories. Aesthetic and awakening participants discussed an emotional context more than participants who experienced other primary types of epiphanies. In this category, participants most frequently discussed being in a state of psychological distress before their epiphany occurred. Thirty-eight percent of participants described being in a state of psychological distress related to mortality issues, separation issues, or negative life circumstances before the epiphany occurred. In addition, about one-fifth of participants described experiencing an emotional release or outpouring of emotion during the actual epiphany experience. A couple of participants discussed the magical
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications elements of their experiences and the difficulty of expressing such phenomena.
Travel Two-thirds of participants described some type of journey or travel related to their epiphanies. Subcategories within this coding category included being away, separation from the everyday, escape, novel experience, novel places, adventure, and experiencing different cultures. About half of the participants who discussed travel spoke in terms of experiencing a novel place or activity, such as in the following quotation: I’ve always been interested in nature and just being outdoors since I was younger, but I think that the point when I really had an epiphany about it…I think I was 16 and I was in Alaska on a backpacking trip.
Physical Activities During the course of describing their environmental epiphanies, most participants described their physical (bodily) activities or sensations, generally in regard to activities in which they were engaged at the time of the epiphany. About 70% of participants reported participating in recreational activities at some point surroundings their experiences. Two-thirds of the participants who discussed recreational activities were walking, hiking, or jogging; 30% were camping. Realization and awakening participants tended to be more likely to engage in recreational activities surrounding their environmental epiphanies.
Objects of Interest Many participants’ experiences centered on one or more objects of interest. These objects seemed to serve as focal points, objects that were fascinating or inspiring to participants, or objects that propelled the experience in some manner. These objects included nature objects (e.g., the sun, trees, water, mountains, glaciers), non-human living beings (animals, insects), built objects, and celestial objects (see Merrick, 2008, for an exhaustive list). Over 80% of participants described objects of interest that we categorized as objects within nature.
Connection to Other People In the course of describing their experiences, almost 60% of participants discussed connection to other people in some capacity. Subcategories within this theme included being unified by a common experience, motivated by other(s) or an esteemed person, (p. 501) community awareness or responsibility toward others, connection with significant others or family members, and seeking others with the same values.
Discussions of Spiritual, Environmental, Nature, and Place-Based Issues A little over one-third of total participants discussed spirituality in their initial epiphany descriptions. Discussions of spiritual issues included themes such as God speaking through nature, nature as religion, sacredness in nature, and experiencing a higher power through nature. I felt like I could reach out and touch God. I felt like I was enveloped or surrounded by God. Half of all participants mentioned environmental issues in their epiphany descriptions. The highest percentages were among the aesthetic and intellectual participants, while connectedness participants did not tend to mention environmental issues in their descriptions. Subcategories within the environmental issues code included preserving nature, pollution, global warming, and stewardship. Out of those who discussed environmental issues, 41% spoke about the environment in terms of stewardship, responsibility toward the environment, and concerns for future generations. Topics of nature and place-based issues were highly prevalent in participants’ descriptions of their epiphanies. Three-fourths of all participants discussed these issues within their epiphany stories. The highest percentage of those who discussed nature and place-based issues was realization participants, with connectedness participants closely following. Only a little over half of awakening participants discussed nature and place-based issues, perhaps because of the internal nature of awakenings as opposed to some of the other types of epiphanies. Subcategories included nature as art/metaphor, special places, and various elements of the human-nature relationship.
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications Like it’s something that as humans we have forgotten or we’ve stopped having that as a part of our lives though we were evolved to be with nature originally. So, yeah it just felt like it was filling a missing piece that we were supposed to have, but now with modern civilization we’ve put ourselves in concrete or wooden buildings for most of our days.
Consequences of the Experience Half of the total participants discussed the consequences of their epiphanies during the initial descriptions. Of those, over half described the epiphany acting as an impetus for change in their lives, whether it was in terms of creating a higher commitment to an issue, gaining motivation, or as a reminder of something they needed at the time. Many participants also spoke about their recommitment to spend more time in outdoor environments or other more environmentally responsible actions after the epiphany occurred.
Discussion of Findings in the Context of Other Epiphany-Like Research The typology of environmental epiphanies found in our study suggests that there are several types of these experiences with qualitatively different characteristics. This typology has many similar characteristics to those that have been suggested by others. In James’s (1902) gradations of mystical experiences, he described simple realizations as the subject having known something for some time and suddenly realizing it in a different way, creating a more holistic understanding. This description is similar to the realization epiphanies that were discussed by participants in the present study. Miller and C’de Baca (2001) also discovered the experience of one realizing something that is already known to be true in their study of insights and epiphanies. In addition, James (1902) contended that these realizations can be brought about by elements such as words, light, odors, music, or passages. The intellectual epiphanies in the present study reflect that new insights can be brought about by the reading of texts and passages. James (1902) wrote about the experience of awe and seeing meaning in everything with which one is surrounded. This can be seen as translating to some of the aesthetic epiphanies as well as the awakening epiphanies in which participants were fascinated with their surroundings and made connections that they previously had not. The most extreme type of mystical experience described by James was “pure and simple” religious mysticism, which he described as having the most religious significance. The connectedness types of epiphanies in the present study had many elements of feeling at one with a universal whole and viewing the human-nature relationship as sacred and inseparable. Similarly, in Maslow’s (1964) characteristics of peak-aesthetic experiences, he listed the experience of the “universe perceived as a united whole,” which corresponds directly to the connectedness epiphanies. He also listed elements such as “every person is sacred,” “world is seen as beautiful,” and “self-actualization,” all elements that were found (p. 502) within the present typology of environmental epiphanies. Williams and Harvey (2001) also found the element of union with the universe or higher entity in their study of transcendent experiences. In addition, Kals et al. (1999) included feelings of oneness toward nature in the scale they developed for exploring emotional affinity toward nature. Furthermore, Chenoweth and Gobster (1990) found that the ecology of the experience was significant. This component included time, space, and relation to the environment. This relates to the present findings in that the onsets of epiphanies were more sudden than gradual, the duration was fleeting, and the place was significant. They also discovered that many of their participants had objects in their experiences, similar to the present findings in which over 80% of participants’ experiences involved objects of interest in nature. Miller and C’de Baca (2001) also developed a typology of insights and epiphanies that included many of the same characteristics found in the study we report here. All of their four characteristics of personal transformation were corroborated in the environmental epiphany data. Our participants gave vivid accounts of their experiences with strong emotional content. Most of them were surprised by their experiences, suggesting that the occurrence of the phenomenon was unprovoked. Environmental epiphany experiences were largely benevolent, as evidenced by the high content of positive emotions, and included a sense of gratitude. Miller and C’de Baca (2001) also identified such experiences to be enduring, having a lasting effect on participants. Almost all of our environmental epiphany participants described sustained changes as a result of their epiphanies.
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications There are contradictory findings in the literature as to whether epiphany-like experiences have either social or interactional components. In their study of aesthetic experiences in natural environments, Chenoweth and Gobster (1990) concluded that “the aesthetic experience appears to be a solitary phenomenon” (p. 6). However, Kals et al. (1999) found that emotional affinity toward nature is stronger when nature is experienced with significant others. Similarly, Mitchell et al. (1993) found that participants who were emotionally attached to special places in nature “expressed a strong desire to introduce or share with others the place of their affections” (p. 33). Although Miller and C’de Baca (2001) found that quantum changes occurred when participants were alone, the authors speculated that other people may have an important influence in creating an acceptable social environment before and/or after the experience occurred. Although 59% of our participants reported their environmental epiphanies as solitary experiences, many participants reported having their experiences with significant others or in group settings. Findings related to both the solitary nature and social dynamics of epiphany-like experiences were strengthened in our study. The type of environmental epiphany experience may determine the role of others. The role of a novel or unusual place or activity emerged from our study as well. The place attachment literature revealed a definite connection between the spiritual values of place and the experience of particular geographic locations and everyday places. Chenoweth and Gobster (1990) described some of the aesthetic experiences of their participants as a change in the perception of everyday places. Daitch et al. (1996) also depicted the experience of everyday places of importance in their examination of personal environmental histories. In most of their interviews with quantum changers, Miller and C’de Baca (2001) found that their participants’ epiphanies occurred in everyday environments. In contrast, Kaplan and Talbot (1983) discussed the element of escape or being away (along with fascination, coherence, and compatibility) as a critical factor of psychologically restorative environments. Environmental epiphanies in the present study mainly support the importance of being in a novel place or participating in a novel activity, although an entire type of environmental epiphany (intellectual) as well as a quarter of all experiences occurred while participants were in everyday environments.
A Typology of Environmental Epiphanies The results of our study indicated trends that can be useful in conceptualizing some of the characteristics of each epiphany type. The following proposed working typology is based upon both the descriptive (quantifiable) and qualitative descriptions in our data, as well as the review and integration of epiphany-like studies. When interpreting the characteristics of this typology, please be aware that some listed aspects are based on only a few participants. However, it can be used as a guide for future research to determine more widespread applicability. Aesthetic epiphanies. Aesthetic epiphanies are generally elicited by a striking place and tend to occur at a slightly older age than the other types of epiphanies. An object or objects of interest are present and one is engaged in an unusual activity (p. 503) or in a novel place. Although one may be searching for this type of experience, it usually takes him or her by surprise. These experiences tend to be shared with significant others or groups and last longer than any of the other types of epiphanies. The significance of the epiphany place is an important aspect of these experiences. One attaches more importance or meaning to the place after the epiphany has occurred. This type of epiphany elicits discussions of environmental issues and changes in one’s environmentally responsible behavior. The emotional context of the experience is important, with positive emotions playing a central role. Aesthetic epiphanies are likely to be followed by subsequent epiphanies. Intellectual epiphanies. Intellectual epiphanies are not necessarily place-based and tend to occur in the home environment while the participant is engaged in routine activities, such as reading. There is always an object of interest, in these cases, part of a text or passage within written material. In an intellectual epiphany, one tends to discuss travel and novel experiences, other living beings, the connection to other people, spiritual issues, environmental issues, and the consequence of the epiphany. These types of epiphanies occur suddenly, often giving one an “aha” or “eureka” feeling. They produce widespread changes in environmentally responsible behavior. Intellectual epiphanies tend to be the first experience with environmental epiphanies but don’t necessarily lead to subsequent experiences. Realization epiphanies. Realization epiphanies may be the most prevalent types of environmental epiphanies. They occur when one realizes a concept of which one was aware but did not fully grasp. These epiphanies are
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications accompanied by positive emotions and occur in unusual settings or when one is engaged in unusual activities, mostly recreational. Discussions of place-based issues and consequences of the experience are common. They are likely to last longer than many of the other types of epiphanies. Many of the characteristics (e.g., attempting to experience an epiphany, onset, and the presence of others) tend to occur at mid-range as compared to the other epiphany types. This may suggest that realization epiphanies occur in the middle of a continuum of intensity, with aesthetic epiphanies being the least intense and connectedness epiphanies being the most intense. Awakening epiphanies. Awakening epiphanies differ from realizations in that one is not necessarily realizing a concept to which she had previously been exposed, but she experiences a new awakening or vividness as if she had been asleep before the experience. These tend to be turning points or life-changing events and are characterized by the importance of one’s emotional context. These types of environmental epiphanies always surprise the recipients. One is more likely to be involved in a recreational activity where physical exertion is present while experiencing an awakening epiphany. This type of epiphany is also likely to produce a personification or connection to the object of interest. Although the duration of awakening epiphanies varies, the ending tends to be more gradual than not. Previous and subsequent epiphanies are equally as likely to be present in those who experienced awakening epiphanies. These types of epiphanies are also likely to produce changes in one’s perception of the significance of the epiphany place. Connectedness epiphanies. Connectedness epiphanies are characterized by their mystical and spiritual qualities, and by the experience of becoming one with nature or a higher power. A connection to an object or objects of interest is likely to be present in these types of epiphanies and one is somewhat attempting to have such an experience. They are likely sudden moments and tend to be solitary experiences that are short in duration with gradual endings. Connectedness epiphanies involve high levels of positive emotions as well as the discussion of physical exertion. This is the only type of epiphany that involves the discussion of other physical sensations, such as numbness or tingling. Connectedness participants emphasize spiritual and place-based issues. After experiencing a connectedness epiphany, one may change his perceptions of the place of occurrence, will likely change his environmentally responsible behavior, and is very likely to experience subsequent environmental epiphanies. We envision this typology of environmental epiphanies to act as a theory-building tool and a guide for the design of future research regarding this phenomenon. The trends that we presented in the above guide could be used in research that has a larger and more diverse participant pool, such as large-scale questionnaires. This typology can act as a foundation on which more comprehensive studies can be based. We designed the trends and suggestions in the typology to adapt to findings of future studies, which will give us a better grasp of the phenomenon of environmental epiphanies and epiphany-like experiences in general, but also leave room for the typology and associated explorations to develop according to future findings. (p. 504)
Overall Implications of the Initial Study
Some of the most important findings of this study were not reflected in the data analyses. One such finding was the widespread response we received during the recruitment phase of this project. At one point, over 100 people were on a waiting list to be interviewed about their environmental epiphanies. These people were from various backgrounds, lived in two different American states, encompassed a wide range of ages, and were engaged in a variety of professional activities. This suggests that the environmental epiphany phenomenon is relatively widespread (at least in our recruitment populations). Our experience with this study, which is the first of its kind to our knowledge, is that people immediately understand the concept and are grateful that researchers are interested in a topic that is so personal and meaningful to them. We also found that people were eager to share their epiphany stories. Many of the participants of this study reported the feeling of elation and relief that they could finally share their environmental epiphany with someone. Several participants communicated that they had been uncomfortable sharing their stories with others because of the fear of rejection or negative reactions to “airy fairy” stories, filled with magic, wonderment, and serendipity. Participants also requested that we consider hosting focus groups so that they could share their experiences with others, as well as gain insights from other epiphany stories. Most important, participants expressed the desire for their epiphanies to be taken seriously and given some validity.
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications One of the main reasons that many participants felt ostracized as a result of their epiphanies was they felt society in general does not value highly emotional experiences. In our review of the literature, the emotional emphasis of epiphany-like experiences emerged from existing empirical work as well as from anecdotal evidence. This heavy prominence of emotions was very much supported in our study. In the content analysis of the descriptions of people’s experiences, a high percentage of participants (85%) discussed positive emotions, suggesting that environmental epiphanies are largely positive and very emotional experiences. In fact, several times during the interview process, participants became choked up, experienced tears in their eyes, or in a few cases began openly crying while recounting their epiphanies. This calls for not only an academic shift, but also a cultural shift in which we more fully appreciate the importance of emotionally driven experiences. Other authors who have explored the concept of epiphanies have called for a similar shift (Jauregui, 2007). Another main finding of our study was the importance given to nature and place-based themes suggesting that environmental epiphanies are largely (but not exclusively) a place-based phenomenon. Participants tended to spend the largest parts of their epiphany descriptions discussing place-based issues. Many participants discussed wilderness environments and the idea of a lack of civilization or human impacts being prominent in their experiences. This suggests that the preservation of wilderness areas was valued by participants. However, at the same time participants spoke about their place in nature and how their epiphanies gave them an understanding of themselves as a part of nature. This contradiction of defining nature by a lack of human involvement, yet intuitively knowing that humans are an important part of nature, has been theorized as being an impediment to the success of conservation efforts (see, e.g., Vining et al., 2008). Realizing that humans are part of nature and that the preservation of the environment fundamentally involves human civilization could be the key to developing strategies that increase environmentally responsible behavior. Themes of traveling or taking a physical or metaphorical journey were also emphasized in environmental epiphany descriptions. This suggests that being in a novel environment or engaging in a novel activity can increase the likelihood of having such an experience. Seventy-four percent of epiphanies occurred while people were engaged in unusual activities or visiting novel environments. Many of the stories of travel involved experiencing an environment that is outside of the everyday. The importance placed upon engaging in new recreational activities within these novel environments suggests that traveling to a new place and participating in recreational activities, such as hiking or camping, may be important precursors to an epiphany experience. Finally, the permanent impact of environmental epiphanies was very notable. Participants discussed a wide variety of changes that they made in their lives as a result of their epiphany experiences. These changes took place mainly in participants’ relationships, spirituality, educational or career pursuits, and environmentally responsible behavior. All of the participants in the study described the changes as lasting, with 82% of participants reporting that the changes had lasted to the present day. Perhaps the changes were permanent because epiphanies were described as motivating, life-changing, and instigating a turning (p. 505) point in participants’ lives. The data from our study show that these experiences were memorable and had long-lasting impressions. Notable among these changes was the 77% of participants who described having changed their environmental attitudes, values, or behavior as a result of their experience. Note that we asked participants about many types of behavioral changes, not just environmentally responsible behavior. We also did not indicate during the recruitment or informed-consent portions of the study that we were looking for a link between environmental epiphanies and environmentally responsible behavior. Although these were self-reported changes and should be interpreted with caution, the potential of environmental epiphanies acting to motivate higher levels of environmentally responsible behavior is a promising trend that can be explored in future studies.
Applications and Future Directions
The Nature of Environmental Epiphanies The study of phenomena such as environmental epiphanies calls for an approach to research that embraces interdisciplinary and mixed methods of inquiry. Since these epiphanies hold the most meaning for the individuals who experience them, we encourage researchers to utilize participant descriptions and preserve the significance of such experiences qualitatively. At the same time, it is important to determine the frequency with which
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications environmental epiphanies occur in the population. To date, we have limited empirical evidence of the environmental epiphany phenomenon, and the frequency of their occurrence is unknown. Moreover, invoking Maslow’s Hierarchy, are environmental epiphanies the province of relatively wealthy and articulate individuals who have their basic needs met? There are a few studies of the outcomes of epiphanies—environmental or other—but overall we understand little of the consequences of these experiences. Will environmental epiphanies bring people closer to nature? If people who experience environmental epiphanies are brought closer to nature, will that in turn affect environmentally conscious attitudes, motives, or behaviors? What percentage of environmental epiphanies include an “aha” moment that propels further understanding of the environment in which the epiphany was experienced? Finally, studies of environmental epiphanies specifically or epiphanies more generally have the potential to help understand the roles played by emotions such as awe and wonder in cognition and behavior.
Managing Natural Areas for Environmental Epiphanies Part of the purpose of our exploration of this concept and the initial study was to begin to make recommendations to public land managers regarding the nature of these types of place-based (mostly outdoor) experiences. We have many preliminary results that can be further explored in future research regarding the management of epiphany places. The importance of preserved natural areas was a major theme that emerged in participant interviews. In fact, 59% of our participants’ experiences occurred in US preserved and publicly managed land. This indicates that these areas are special and meaningful places to the public and should be managed with continued efforts that emphasize understanding public experiences and input. We don’t yet know what features of the epiphany environment are the most important or meaningful. Certainly the vast majority of individuals reporting environmental epiphanies experience them in natural environments. Perhaps an interesting exploration would be to conduct studies in which environmental features are used to predict the frequency of environmental epiphanies, in a manner similar to that used by Daniel and Boster (1976) and others in predicting aesthetic quality from measurable features of the landscape. Using environmental epiphanies as an outcome measure will be difficult until we know more about them, but those who studied aesthetics (and emotions, for that matter) experienced early inertia before finding relatively simple ways to measure their outcome variables. The idea that humans possess epiphany-based psychological attachments to certain places is certainly one that should not be overlooked in planning and managing public land (Schroeder, 2002). In fact, after experiencing epiphanies in such environments, the majority of our participants reported becoming more concerned with preservation and proper management. The public’s attachment to these places can be used as a tool to engage more meaningful input regarding important policy changes. If place attachment is enhanced by the experience of environmental epiphanies, it is in land managers’ best interest to understand and value the investment that the public has in such decisions. Another significant finding that relates to management issues is the diversity in the types of people who experience these publicly managed lands. Our initial result that publicly managed areas are used by people of all ages and in a variety of health (p. 506) conditions supports the findings of existing trends in the access and use of public land. This indicates that public lands should continue to offer opportunities for a variety of users. Those who experienced environmental epiphanies were certainly not restricted to rugged outdoorsy types of people, and their experiences were not limited to wilderness, so the importance of facilities that cater to a broader group of users with diverse needs should not be overlooked. The emphasis placed by our participants upon recreation activities related to epiphany experiences also has implications for management, especially in terms of access to wilderness areas and the permitting of recreation activities such as camping. Thought should be given to populations that are financially constrained or less mobile by offering a wide range of access points and permitting procedures. Our findings also indicate the importance of group and guided activities set in novel environments. However, in group settings, it seems vital that enough flexibility be present to allow for solitary time in nature for people to experience the environment on their own terms. These results also suggest that creating more opportunities for
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications initial exposure to nature contributes to a more invested public commitment to the future of these lands as well as the likelihood of future visits. It is also notable that at least in this initial study, most experiences of this type occurred in the summer and fall months. Many of the authors reporting data on epiphany-like experiences indicated that these events are highly emotional experiences with mostly positive consequences. Vining’s (1987) work on emotions and environmental decisionmaking showed that negative emotions were associated with preservation ideals because participants feared the loss of pristine environments. If the location of an individual’s epiphany is changed or threatened, negative emotions could motivate protest. This shows a need for land managers to possess an understanding of and respect for the emotional aspects of nature experiences. This informed understanding can allow managers to better integrate the role of emotions, both their own and those of the public, into land management policies. In addition, it can assist in securing the trust and commitment of vital stakeholders, members of interest groups, and the public at large to create integrated and effective policies.
Future Research Directions Our study of environmental epiphanies was an exploratory effort that allowed us to examine several elements of environmental epiphany experiences in a rich data set, but in a limited number of participants. In addition to collecting data involving as many details as possible regarding the experiences themselves, we also developed a working typology of environmental epiphanies. We explored the circumstances before, during, and after the experience and discovered that most epiphanies resulted in persistent life changes. We would like to see future research support and develop some of the results from our study as well as develop some more convincing statistical relationships that would be possible with larger numbers of participants. All empirical studies of epiphany-like experiences to date (and most of those preceding them) employ more of an idiographic than a nomothetic perspective. We can’t assume that everyone has had an environmental epiphany and research is needed to determine the frequency of these experiences both within and between individuals. Moreover, there are several variables and relationships between variables that could be further explored in future research. One issue that seems to emerge from the present literature on epiphany-like experiences involves the importance, qualities, and characteristics of the places that epiphanies occur. Do those who experience epiphanies have place attachments before the experience, or does the attachment occur with and/or after the epiphany experience? Are certain places more likely to elicit epiphany-like experiences? If so, what are the specific characteristics of these places, and how can they be managed to preserve these qualities to encourage future environmental epiphanies. What are the social dimensions of these experiences? Are environmental epiphanies experienced more often when individuals are alone, or in groups? Another variable that we considered in our initial study was the participants’ relationship with nature before and after the experience. Since one’s relationship with nature has been a significant source of study within conservation psychology, we need to ask how exactly those who have experienced an environmental epiphany shift their perception of their relationship with nature. Can we predict the potential of experiencing an environmental epiphany from one’s existing relationship with nature? One of the main reasons that we became interested in the topic of environmental epiphanies was the potential of the consequences of such experience in terms of environmentally responsible behavior. In our study of the phenomenon, we discovered that there was indeed a connection between experiencing (p. 507) an environmental epiphany and changing one’s environmentally responsible behavior. Not only was the relationship between these variables present, but the permanence of the self-reported changes in behavior was also quite notable. Considering the lasting impacts of epiphanies in terms of more responsible environmental attitudes and behavior, there is tremendous potential regarding environmental education and outreach efforts. The characteristics of the epiphany and the environment in which it occurs may offer ideas for the design and management of environments. Large cathedrals seem to stimulate feelings of reverence and joy—could our forests benefit from these same relationships? Does an old-growth forest engender more environmental epiphanies than one that was harvested 25 years ago? If epiphanies do lead to insight and adoption of environmentally friendly behavior or attitudes, can zoos and aquariums structure their exhibits expressly to enhance epiphanies?
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications Finally, it is vital that more diverse populations are sampled in future studies of environmental epiphanies. Our initial observations and results are largely based upon Americans with a significant amount of education and privilege. It is important to determine whether some form of these experiences are indeed universal and if so with what frequency they tend to occur. Exploring the demographic characteristics of those who have had epiphany experiences should be a priority in future research. Even further into the future, perhaps there could be developmental studies that incorporate environmental epiphanies. Overall, there is a wealth of information to be had about environmental epiphanies in and of themselves, as well as their effects on other psychological variables and outcomes.
Concluding Statements Evidence from our development of this concept, our review of the literature, and our empirical study indicates that environmental epiphanies may be universally understood, widespread, positive experiences with permanent consequences. These experiences have been described as life-changing, turning points, and highly significant and meaningful to those who encountered them. The changes experienced from environmental epiphanies permeated all aspects of life, including relationships, spirituality, career choice, and environmentally responsible behavior. Implications from research concerning epiphany-like experiences can serve to inform environmental educators, conservation psychologists, and land managers. Those interested in recreation, tourism, and environmental design can also benefit from the insights gained from studying this phenomenon. Given that environmental epiphanies may be a common type of life experience, it is essential that future research be conducted to explore the phenomenon in greater detail, on a larger scale, and with more diverse populations. The study of epiphany-like experiences, especially in relation to the human-nature relationship, is essential in our understanding of the complex environmental dilemmas that we presently face. Author note: We are equal coauthors and both participated materially in all phases of the research that is reported here.
Acknowledgments This study was funded by the USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station and we are very grateful for their support. We would also like to express our gratitude to all of the participants of this study as well as our research assistant for this project, Shannon O’Laughlin. Finally, we thank Susan Clayton, the editor of this volume, for her thoughtful suggestions throughout the writing of this chapter.
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2000). Evolutionary psychology and the emotions. In M. Lewis & J. M. Haviland-Jones (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (2nd ed., pp. 91–115). New York: Guilford Press. Cristancho, S., & Vining, J. (2004). Reciprocity as principled argument: The ethics of human-nature interactions for the Letuama. Human Ecology Review, 11(2), 36–50. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: HarperCollins. (p. 508) Csikszentmihalyi, M., & LeFevre, J. (1989). Optimal experience in work and leisure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 815–822. Daitch, V., Kweon, B., Larsen, L., Tyler, E., & Vining, J. (1996). Personal environmental histories: Expressions of self and place. Human Ecology Review, 3, 19–31. Daniel, T.C., & Boster, R.S. (1976). Measuring landscape esthetics: The scenic beauty estimation method (USDA Forest Service Research Paper 167). Fort Collins, CO: Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. Davidson, R. J., Scherer, K. R., & Goldsmith, H.H. (Eds.). (2003). Handbook of affective sciences. New York: Oxford University Press. Isen, A. M. (2000). Positive affect and decision making. In M. Lewis & J. M. Haviland-Jones (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (2nd ed., pp. 417–435). New York: Guilford Press. James, W. (1884). What is an emotion? Mind, 9, 188–205. James, W. (1902). The varieties of religious experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Jauregui, A. (2007). Epiphanies: Where science and miracles meet. New York: Atria Books/Beyond Words. Kals, E., Schumacher, D., & Montada, L. (1999). Emotional affinity toward nature as a motivational basis to protect nature. Environment and Behavior, 31, 178–202. Kaplan, S., & Talbot, J. F. (1983). Psychological benefits of a wilderness experience. In I. Altman & J. F. Wohlwill (Eds.), Behavior and the natural environment (pp. 163–203). New York: Plenum. Keltner, D., & Haidt, J. (2003). Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 17(2), 297–314. Kennedy, J., & Vining, J. (2007). Natural resource conflicts: Why do emotions matter? Journal of Sustainable Forestry, 24, 23–50. LeDoux, J. (1996). The emotional brain: The mysterious underpinnings of emotional life. New York: Touchstone. Lewis, M., Haviland-Jones, J. M., & Barrett, L. F. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of emotion (3rd ed.). New York: Guilford Press. Low, S. M. (1992). Symbolic ties that bind. In I. Altman & S. M. Low (Eds.), Place attachment (pp. 165–185). New York: Plenum. Maslow, A. H. (1962). Toward a psychology of being. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhard. Maslow, A. H. (1964). Religions, values, and peak experiences. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Mazumdar, S., & Mazumdar, S. (1993). Sacred space and place attachment. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 13, 231–242. Merrick, M. (2008). Environmental epiphanies: Exploring the shifts in human nature interactions. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL. Miller, W. R., & C’de Baca, J. (2001). Quantum change: When epiphanies and sudden insights transform ordinary lives. New York: Guilford Press.
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications Mitchell, M. Y., Force, J. E., Carroll, M. S., & McLaughlin, W. J. (1993). Forest places of the heart: Incorporating special spaces into public management. Journal of Forestry, 91(4), 32–37. Pahnke, W. (1963). Drugs and mysticism: An analysis of the relationship between psychedelic drugs and the mystical consciousness. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Saunders, C. D. (2003). The emerging field of conservation psychology. Human Ecology Review, 10, 137–149. Schroeder, H. W. (1991, April). The spiritual aspect of nature: A perspective from depth psychology. Paper presented at the Northeastern Recreation Research Conference, Saratoga Springs, New York. Schroeder, H. W. (1996). Psyche, nature, and mystery: Some psychological perspectives on the values of natural environments. In B. L. Driver, D. Dustin, T. Baltic, G. Elsner, & G. Peterson (Eds.), Nature and the human spirit: Toward an expanded land management ethic (pp. 81–95). State College, PA: Venture Publishing. Schroeder, H. (2002). Experiencing nature in special places: Surveys in the north-central region. Journal of Forestry, 100(5), 8–14. Schultz, P. W., Shriver, C., Tabanico, J. J., & Khazian, A. (2004). Implicit connections with nature. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 24, 31–42. Solomon, R. C. (2000). The philosophy of emotions. In M. Lewis & J. M. Haviland-Jones (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (2nd ed., pp. 3–15). New York: Guilford Press. Tomkins, S. S. (1969). Script theory: Differential magnification of affect. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 26, 201–240. Uzzell, D. L., Rutland, A., & Whistance, D. (1995). Questioning values in environmental education. In Y. Guerrier, N. Alexander, J. Chase, & M. O’Brien (Eds.), Values and the environment: A social science perspective (pp. 171– 181). West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons. Vining, J. (1987). Environmental decisions: The interaction of emotions, information, and decision context. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 7, 13–30. Vining, J. (1992a). Environmental emotions and decisions: A comparison of the responses and expectations of forest managers, an environmental group, and the public. Environment and Behavior, 24, 3–34. Vining, J. (1992b).Value conflict, emotion and forest management. In D. C. Le Master & G. R. Parker (Eds.), Ecosystem management in a dynamic society, West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University, 26–35. Vining, J., Merrick, M. S., & Price, E. A. (2008). The distinction between humans and nature: Human perceptions of connectedness to nature and elements of the natural and unnatural. Human Ecology Review, 15, 1–11. Vining, J., & Schroeder, H. W. (1989a). The effects of perceived conflict, resource scarcity, and information bias on emotions in environmental decision-making. Environmental Management, 13, 199–206. Vining, J., & Schroeder, H. W. (1989b). Emotions in environmental decision-making: Rational planning versus the passionate public. In M. L. Miller et. al (Eds.), Social science in natural resource management systems. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Vining, J., & Tyler, E. (1999). Values, emotions, and desired outcomes reflected in public responses to forest management plans. Human Ecology Review, 6(1), 21–34. Williams, K., & Harvey, D. (2001). Transcendent experience in forest environments. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 21, 249–260. Zajonc, R. B. (1980). Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences. American Psychologist, 35, 151–175. Joanne Vining Joanne Vining Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Environmental Epiphanies: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications Champaign, IL
Melinda S. Merrick Melinda S. Merrick Department of Geography and Environmental Studies Northeastern Illinois University Chicago, IL
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The Natural Environment in Residential Settings: Influences on Human Health and Function
Oxford Handbooks Online The Natural Environment in Residential Settings: Influences on Human Health and Function Nancy M. Wells and Kimberly A. Rollings The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0027
Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the influences of the natural environment on human health, function, and well-being. We focus primarily on the effects of nature within a residential context and consider a range of outcome variables including physical health and physiological stress; cognitive functioning; psychological or mental health; social interaction; and physical activity and obesity. We consider evidence related to adults as well as youth. Following a review of the evidence, we offer a brief methodological critique and suggest directions for future research. Keywords: nature, human health, restoration, cognitive functioning, mental health, social interaction, physical activity, obesity
Introduction The enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it; tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influence of the mind over the body gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration to the whole system. (Olmsted, 1865/1952, p. 21) For centuries, poets, planners, landscape architects, writers, and physicians have touted the salugenic virtues of the natural environment. From Thoreau to Wordsworth to Olmsted, the rejuvenating properties of nature have been praised. The prominence of gardens in hospitals of the 1800s offers further evidence of early beliefs that nature proffered health benefits (Nightingale, 1860/1996). The importance of nature in residential settings, specifically, has been a focus in a variety of poetic writings as well as practical proposals. For example, in the 1800s urban planner Ebenezer Howard proposed “garden cities” as an alternative to the crowded and unhealthy city, and as a place where residences would be surrounded by forests, parks, and farmland. In recent decades, empirical evidence has begun to support the notion that the natural environment has a positive effect on human health (Frumkin, 2001; Wells & Donofrio, 2011). In this chapter, we review the evidence linking the natural environment to human health and well-being, with specific focus on the residential environment. Although an exhaustive review is not possible in the space provided, we attempt to present an overview of the evidence, focusing on five outcome variables or facets of human health that have been linked to nature exposure: (1) general physical health, including physiological stress; (2) cognitive functioning; (3) psychological or mental health; (4) social interaction; and (5) physical activity and obesity. In this chapter, we do not address environmental preference (for review, see Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989) or the environmental education literature (for review, see Rickinson, 2001); and, in large part, we do not address evidence of the benefits of nature within health care settings, workplaces, schools, and other contexts. We do, however, draw examples from laboratory studies and from these other (p. 510) settings to illustrate the relevance to the residential environment. We review the empirical evidence as well as key theories and conclude with suggestions for future research directions.
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The Natural Environment in Residential Settings: Influences on Human Health and Function Physical Health + Physiological Stress With centuries of belief suggesting an association between the natural environment and human health, research in the past four decades has scientifically substantiated these linkages (Frumkin, 2001). In this section, we consider studies with a variety of physical health–related dependent variables, including perceived health, infirmary visits, physicians’ records, post-surgery recovery time, psychophysiological recovery following stress, longevity, and mortality. Some of the earliest evidence linking nature to health comes from several studies documenting that natural views from windows—some from institutional residences—are associated with positive health outcomes. Moore (1981) found that prisoners with natural views from their windows made fewer visits to the infirmary than those with views of an interior space. West (1986) found similar results in another prison environment. Ulrich (1984) documented that gallbladder surgery patients with natural views of trees and grass from their hospital rooms made fewer requests for pain medication, had fewer negative notes from nurses in their files, experienced a speedier recovery following surgery, and were discharged from the hospital sooner than patients with a view of a brick wall. Verderber and Reuman (1987) found similar results. These studies have typically been carried out in institutional settings— prisons and hospitals—where individuals are essentially randomly assigned to rooms. This fact helps to reduce issues of self-selection, which is a particularly salient threat to internal validity in studies of typical residential settings, where people choose where they live. Natural views can be therapeutic and reduce anxiety and stress (Ulrich, 1979). Research suggests that the benefits of natural views may be greatest for people experiencing stress and anxiety (Ulrich, 1981, 1983). Natural views have been found to increase positive feelings, hold interest and attention, and potentially reduce stressful thoughts to encourage restoration (Ulrich, 1986). Mildly stressed rural and urban participants who viewed nature slides (vs. American city views void of vegetation) reported a decrease in feelings of fear and an increase in positive emotions such as affection and elation; the urban scenes increased anxiety and feelings of sadness (Ulrich, 1979). One reason the gallbladder surgery patients previously mentioned benefited from the natural views in their hospital rooms was that they were stressed and anxious about undergoing surgery (Ulrich, 1984). Similarly, in Sweden, a study of 18 participants who viewed nature scenes dominated by vegetation, nature scenes with water, and urban scenes found that natural scenes were associated with sustained attention and interest (based on cortical activity measured by an EEG) more than urban views. No significant differences in heart rate were found (based on an EKG), but heart rates were, on average, higher during viewing nature scenes, which is consistent with increased attention or “wakeful relaxation” (Ulrich, 1981). Another study examined affective states (self-rated) and physiological measures of autonomic arousal (muscle tension, heart period, skin conductance, and pulse transit time) of 120 participants who first viewed a stressful 10-minute video, then watched color videotapes with sound displaying one of six different natural or urban scenes (Ulrich et al., 1991). Participant recovery from stress was faster and more complete when viewing natural rather than urban environments. Both the stressful film and natural scene videos were associated with higher levels of involuntary or automatic attention. A third study of 953 randomly selected participants in Sweden reported a significant inverse association between number of urban green space visits and self-reported experience of stress. Participants who frequented green spaces more often reported lower stress levels (Grahn & Stigsdotter, 2003). Studies based on Roger Ulrich’s (1983) psycho-evolutionary theory suggest nature imbues beneficial effects through physiological and emotional changes that occur in humans when presented with a natural view or nature stimuli. Ulrich et al. (1991) proposed that “immediate, unconsciously triggered and initiated emotional responses— not ‘controlled’ cognitive responses—play a central role in the initial level of responding to nature and have major influences on attention, subsequent cognitive processing, physiological responding and behavior” (pp. 207–208). According to Ulrich, stress recovery occurs due to the combined beneficial effects of increased positive emotions, reduced stressful thoughts, and positive physiological changes related to the stress response. This perspective assumes an evolutionary basis for human response to nature in that humans are biologically prepared to respond positively to environments that provide support for survival. (p. 511)
Large-Scale Epidemiological Studies
In recent years, as more integration has occurred between environmental psychology research and other fields,
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The Natural Environment in Residential Settings: Influences on Human Health and Function such as public health, several large-scale epidemiological studies, mostly conducted with European and Australian population samples, have found an association between the amount of nearby nature or open space and general physical health (de Vries, Verheij, Groenewegen, & Spreeuwenberg, 2003; Ellaway, Macintyre, & Bonnefoy, 2005; Maas, de Vries, et al., 2009; Maas et al., 2006). For example, a Dutch study of 17,000 people indicated that residents living in areas with more green space within a 1 km and 3 km radius experienced better general health based on general practitioner records and patients’ perceptions of their own physical and mental health over a two-week period (de Vries et al., 2003). This association was especially significant for housewives, lower socioeconomic groups, and elder residents. The relationship was not significant for children. Similarly, Maas and her colleagues (2006) also found that nature within a 1 km and 3 km radius and self-reported health of 250,000 people in the Netherlands were associated, while controlling for socioeconomic status (SES), demographics, and urbanity. Where 90% of the areas within a 1 km and 3 km radius of the home were green space, only 10.2% of residents reported feeling unhealthy, whereas in locations where only 10% of the area was green, 15.5% of residents felt unhealthy. In a subsequent study, Maas and colleagues (Maas, de Vries, et al., 2009) found that people with more green space in a 1 km area around their homes had better perceived health, fewer health complaints, and less self-reported propensity for mental illness. Access to the natural environment has also been found to moderate the well-documented association between SES and health. With a sample of more than 40 million British adults, Mitchell and Popham (2008) reported that the association between income and mortality differed significantly by nature exposure over a four-year period. Although the income-mortality association exists across levels of greenness exposure, the association was lower for those with the greatest green space access. This was the case for both all-cause mortality and mortality from circulatory diseases, while controlling for population density, degree of urbanity, and living environment. Authors suggested that both the quality as well as the quantity of green space are related to health benefits. Residential proximity to nature has also been linked to longevity. In a longitudinal study of more than 3,000 Japanese residents born between 1903 and 1918, Takano, Nakamura, and Watanabe (2002) found that the two strongest predictors of five-year survival were the presence of parks and tree-lined streets and having a nearby green space for taking a stroll. Although this study adjusted for age, gender, SES, and marital status, it did not investigate whether the nearby green spaces were actually utilized for walking. This evidence is also correlational; and similar to other large-scale studies, this study utilized generic indicators of health (e.g., mortality and selfreported perception of health) rather than prevalence of specific ailments or disorders. Another study that examined the association between stroke mortality and air pollution, income, and greenness in northwest Florida indicated that residents were at higher risk of stroke mortality in low-income areas with high air pollution levels and low levels of exposure to green space (Hu, Liebens, & Ranga, 2008). As with much of the research in this field, most of these large observational population studies employ a crosssectional, non-experimental design, so the evidence is correlational in nature, and causal conclusions cannot be made. In other words, it is not entirely clear whether nearby green space affects health, or healthier people choose to move to areas with more green space (i.e., selection effects). In addition, analyses typically do not account for differences in duration of exposure to nearby nature. Nonetheless, the evidence suggests that there generally is an association between natural settings and physical health.
Cognitive Functioning (and Attention Restoration Theory) One of the most robust and enduring areas of research linking the natural environment to human well-being and function is the work suggesting that views of, or access to, the natural environment bolsters cognitive functioning, enhancing capacity to focus and concentrate. This work is grounded in attention restoration theory (S. Kaplan, 1995, 2001).
Attention Restoration Theory Attention restoration theory (ART), developed by Stephen Kaplan and Rachel Kaplan (S. Kaplan, 1995, 2001; Kaplan & Kaplan, 1983), is based on the early work of William James (1892), who suggested that attention consists of two components: voluntary attention and involuntary attention. Voluntary attention, also known as “directed attention” (S. Kaplan, 1995, 2001), requires effort to (p. 512) inhibit the urge to respond to potential distraction
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The Natural Environment in Residential Settings: Influences on Human Health and Function and to focus on a task. With prolonged use, neural inhibitory mechanisms underlying directed attention become fatigued, resulting in a state known as “directed attention fatigue,” characterized by difficulty concentrating, feelings of irritability, and being easily distracted (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1983). Involuntary attention, in contrast, is captured effortlessly. When involuntary attention is softly engaged (e.g., by a babbling brook or rustling leaves), then effortful directed attention is able to disengage and can rest and recover. Kaplan and Kaplan (1983) suggested that four environmental characteristics are needed to facilitate the restoration of attentional capacity and recovery from directed attention fatigue. Fascination is found in settings that gently capture involuntary attention, allowing neural inhibitory mechanisms to recover. Being away is the experience of taking a mini vacation from immediate concerns. This may be a brief experience, such as gazing out a window, or it may be a longer experience, such as a walk in the forest or a long vacation spent hiking. Extent refers to the depth or scope of an experience. To be restorative, an environment must have a sense of continuity, so that one is not required to shift cognitive modes or become vigilant due to threat. Extent, or depth, provides this kind of continuity. Lastly, compatibility refers to the match between the environment and one’s purpose or inclination. This is a sense of having the “wind at one’s back” (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989, p. 186). Although there may be nonnatural environments that possess these four characteristics to some degree, nature proves to be the most reliable source of mentally restorative experiences. The capacity for nature to provide cognitive restoration has been documented in a variety of studies; a few will be briefly reviewed. In a study of students living in dormitories, Tennessen and Cimprich (1995) documented that those with window views of trees and grass performed better on cognitive tasks than those with views of buildings and streets. Hartig, Mang, and Evans (1991) conducted a pair of studies to examine the effect of nature on cognitive performance. In the first study, backpackers’ cognitive performance was compared before and after one of three activities four to seven days in duration: a wilderness hiking vacation, an urban vacation, or no vacation. Participants in the wilderness vacation condition showed greater improvement in cognitive function, measured by proofreading performance, from before to after the trip. In a second study, Hartig and colleagues (1991) induced cognitive fatigue among participants and then conducted a true experiment by randomly assigning study participants to take an urban walk, take a nature walk, or quietly sit indoors. Consistent with the first study, those in the nature condition performed better on a cognitive (proofreading) task in which subjects are asked to find errors in a page of text. These findings were recently replicated using a within subjects design and the digit span backward task as a measure of cognitive functioning (Berman, Jonides, & Kaplan, 2008). In a study conducted within inner-city Chicago public housing, Kuo (2001) found that low-income women with views of grass and trees from their windows performed better on measures of cognitive functioning (digit span backward) and were more able to manage major life issues. In addition, Kuo documented that cognitive functioning mediated the relation between nearby nature and the ability to manage life issues. More recently, Berto (2005) compared students’ recovery from induced directed attention fatigue following exposure to either nature images or urban images. Those exposed to images of nature recovered from the induced fatigue, while those in the urban image condition did not. In addition to the evidence linking nature exposure to cognitive functioning, Berman and colleagues (2008) provided evidence concerning the specific aspects of attention that are affected by nature. Comparing participants’ performance when exposed to images of nature or urban scenes, the researchers found that only the aspect of attention that involves directed attention was affected by nature—that is, executive attention, but not alerting or orienting, as measured by the Attention Network Test (Fan et al., 2005; Fan et al., 2002). As with those of adults, studies of children indicate that nature bolsters children’s ability to focus and concentrate. In one of the few longitudinal studies on this topic, Wells (2000) found that children’s improvements in cognitive functioning after relocating to a new neighborhood were explained by increased amounts of vegetation near the home, and not by changes in housing quality. In a study of children living in Chicago public housing, girls living in apartments with green views performed better than girls with barren, treeless views on concentration, impulse inhibition, and delay of gratification tasks (Faber Taylor, Kuo, & Sullivan, 2002). Findings did not apply to boys, possibly because boys typically have a larger territorial range and spend more time away from the home and might therefore be less affected by the apartment view. (p. 513) Although not all the studies described examine the amount of nature in the residential context as an independent variable, all have clear implications for the provision of nature views, trails, and resources within and
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The Natural Environment in Residential Settings: Influences on Human Health and Function proximate to housing environments. From a research design standpoint, the true experiments using random assignment (or “quasi” random assignment, in the case of public housing studies) to assign participants to conditions help to rule out self-selection threats to internal validity. Moreover, the few studies that employ a longitudinal (or pre/post comparison) have more robust internal validity—allowing for causal, rather than correlational conclusions.
Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Exposure to the natural environment has also been associated with reduced symptoms among children diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This line of inquiry is based on the notion that ADHD appears to have fundamental behavioral and possibly physiological parallels with directed attention fatigue (DAF). Both conditions are characterized by difficulty concentrating, inability to complete tasks, trouble delaying gratification, and difficulty inhibiting impulses. Surveys administered to parents of children with ADHD suggest that children function better than usual after activities in green settings compared to activities in non-green settings (Faber Taylor, Kuo, & Sullivan, 2001; Kuo & Faber Taylor, 2004). More recently, a true experiment was conducted in which children diagnosed with ADHD were randomly assigned to a nature walk, a neighborhood walk, or a downtown walk. The findings support those from the survey evidence: cognitive performance following the nature walk was significantly better than following the downtown or neighborhood walks (Faber Taylor & Kuo, 2009).
Mental Health/Psychological Well-Being Relatively few studies have explicitly examined the relation between nature and mental health or psychological well-being. The studies that do examine this domain include varied operationalizations of mental health or psychological well-being such as self-esteem, self-worth, psychological distress, and effective functioning. In a study of low-rise apartment complexes in the midwestern United States, Rachel Kaplan (2001) examined the association of views from apartment windows and various measures of well-being. Apartment views with nature elements were associated with greater psychological well-being. Views of trees were related to a sense of being “at peace” and “not being distracted” and views of gardens and landscaped areas were related to “feeling effective.” While these findings are framed as measures of (psychological) well-being, they also relate to cognitive functioning, as described in the previous section. A recent study of more than 1,800 Australian adults found a significant relation between perceived neighborhood greenness and mental health. Moreover, findings suggest that the association is partially mediated by walking and by social coherence (Sugiyama, Leslie, Giles-Corti, & Owen, 2008). Although nature was not measured objectively, the findings suggest that an association between nature and mental health exists. One study examined nature as a moderator, rather than an independent variable affecting mental health. Wells and Evans (2003) found that nature near the home served as buffer of life stress experienced by children. Specifically, children whose home had more nearby nature (i.e., whose window views had more natural content, who had more indoor plants, and whose yard was grass, as opposed to dirt or concrete) experienced less psychological distress and less detrimental effects on their self-worth as a result of stressful life events, such as being picked on by other kids, fighting with parents, or being subject to peer pressure. While the Wells and Evans (2003) study revealed the potential for nature to buffer the effects of stress or adversity, it does not explain the mechanisms underlying the finding. As we will discuss in subsequent sections, it is plausible that children with more proximate nature form more social connections and more friendships, which provide social support to buffer the effects of stress. Or children with more ready access to nature may be more cognitively restored and therefore able to think more clearly and cope more effectively with the stress they face. One body of evidence suggests synergistic short and long-term physical and mental health benefits from simultaneous exposure to nature while exercising, or “green exercise” (Barton & Pretty, 2010; Pretty, Griffin, Sellens, & Pretty, 2003; Pretty et al., 2007; Pretty, Peacock, Sellens, & Griffin, 2005). In addition to reducing blood pressure, viewing images of rural and urban natural landscapes while running on a treadmill in a controlled laboratory simulation improved mood and increased measures of self-esteem positively associated with mental health more than when exercising without images or while viewing unpleasant rural and urban images (Pretty et al., 2005). (p. 514) Another study found that running in a park promoted restoration more than running in an urban
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The Natural Environment in Residential Settings: Influences on Human Health and Function environment (Bodin & Hartig, 2003). An analysis of 10 case studies focusing on green exercise initiatives that varied in intensity, duration, number of participants, and environment in the United Kingdom revealed improved self-esteem and reduced mood disturbances (depression-dejection, anger-hostility, confusion-bewilderment, tension-anxiety) after green exercise (Pretty et al., 2007). A later study that examined variations in intensity and duration of the 10 green exercise activities and environments found that short engagements (5 minutes) in green exercise yielded immediate mental health benefits, positive but diminishing effects for longer green exercise duration (10–60 minutes), and increased benefits for full-day participation (Barton & Pretty, 2010). Mentally ill participants experienced the greatest improvement in self-esteem. Furthermore, although all green environments improved self-esteem and mood, the presence of water generated greater effects.
Social Interaction and Social Connection A variety of social and community benefits have been associated with the presence of or exposure to nearby nature and urban trees, including empowerment (Westphal, 2003), greater feelings of safety (Groenewegen, van den Berg, de Vries, & Verheij, 2006; Kuo, Sullivan, & Wiley, 1998), lower rates of crime (Kuo & Sullivan, 2001), and environmentalism (Wells & Lekies, 2006). In this section, however, we focus specifically on social interaction and social connections that may be fostered by the natural environment and that form the foundation for the development of community (Elmendorf, 2008; Perkins et al., 1990). One of the relatively early studies to examine linkages between the natural environment and social outcomes examined five-year-old Swiss children. The researcher documented that children who could not easily play outdoors, due to either parental restrictions or heavy nearby traffic, had fewer playmates and also exhibited poorer social and behavioral skills than children with easy outdoor access (Hüttenmoser, 1995). Similarly, the children’s parents were found to have fewer social contacts as well. Two closely related areas of research were completed in Robert Taylor Homes (RTH) public housing complex in Chicago, Illinois. These studies, led by Frances Kuo and William Sullivan, examined both (a) the use of outdoor space and (b) differences in social connections among residents with more, versus less, nearby nature. By comparing the use of green, treed outdoor spaces to that of relatively barren spaces, the first group of studies provides evidence that nearby natural areas are frequently used, facilitate social interaction, and contribute to the development of social bonds. Coley, Sullivan and Kuo (1997) found that the outdoor public spaces with trees and vegetation were associated with greater use by both youth and adult residents. Sullivan, Kuo, and DePooter (2004) replicated these findings. With more than 700 individual observations within 59 outdoor common spaces, they documented that nearly twice as many people used the green spaces compared to the barren areas and that 83% more social activities occurred in green versus barren areas. Similarly, with respect to children, Faber Taylor and her colleagues (1998) found that green spaces were both more supportive of children’s play and that children had more access to adults in green outdoor settings than in the more barren outdoor spaces. The green spaces fostered intergenerational interaction, and supported greater contact with family as well as non-family members. Additional RTH research focused not on the use of outdoor spaces, but on differences in the social connections among people who live in buildings with, versus without, proximate nature. These investigations took advantage of a natural experiment that allowed for comparison of residents living in architecturally identical public housing buildings that differed only in the amount of nearby trees and vegetation. Some buildings were surrounded by trees, while others stood in a relatively barren landscape. Public housing residents were virtually randomly assigned to their housing units, eliminating the potential bias of self-selection. In a study of older residents (ages 64 to 91) of the RTH public housing complex, Kweon and colleagues (1998) found that those living in buildings surrounded by trees and grass had higher levels of social integration than those with little nearby vegetation. Residents with nearby nature had a greater sense of belonging, they were more familiar with their neighbors, and they experienced higher levels of social support than those without nearby trees and grass (Kweon et al., 1998). In addition, Kuo, Sullivan, Coley, and Brunson (1998) studied 145 adult residents of RTH and found that not only did residents of greener buildings have stronger social ties than residents of the less green buildings, but also that the relationship between vegetation and neighborhood social ties was mediated by social interaction. Thus, (p. 515) collectively the Chicago public housing studies document that green spaces are used more than barren spaces, that green fosters social interaction, and that the increase in use of green space and social interaction can lead to stronger social ties.
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The Natural Environment in Residential Settings: Influences on Human Health and Function Consistent with the findings related to children and adults, in a study of adolescents, Eubanks Owens (1988) found that natural areas are highly valued—particularly as places to interact with peers. Together the evidence suggests that green settings serve as a social magnet, drawing people together and facilitating interaction, the development of friendships, and the formation of neighborhood social ties. However, there are some inconsistencies in the evidence. In a study of Australian suburbs, Wood and colleagues (2008), for example, found no significant relation between distance to a park from a residence and social capital. In addition to social interaction or connectedness being a dependent variable fostered by nature access, social contacts have been suggested as one of the possible mediating mechanisms linking nature and health (Health Council of the Netherlands and Dutch Advisory Council for Research on Spatial Planning, 2004; Wells & Evans, 2003). Studying more than 10,000 Dutch residents, Maas and colleagues found support for this idea (Maas, van Dillen, Verheij, & Groenewegen, 2009). Although contact with friends and neighbors was neither predicted by nearby green nor predictive of health outcomes, other measures of social contact did show significant relations. After controlling for socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, feelings of loneliness partially mediated the relation between the amount of green (within a 1 km radius) and several measures of health (perceived health, health complaints in the past 14 days, and self-reported propensity toward psychiatric morbidity). In addition, shortage of social support was also found to partially mediate the relation between nature and health complaints and completely mediate the relation between nature and propensity for psychiatric morbidity. The variety of scales employed in studies linking nature to social well-being is noteworthy. The studies conducted within Chicago public housing by Kuo, Sullivan, and their colleagues deal with very proximate nature at the scale of the apartment building and areas immediately surrounding the building. Nature is defined by the presence of trees and grass on the immediate property. In contrast, the research carried out from a more epidemiological perspective (e.g., by Maas and others) defines “greenness” as the amount of nature within a 1 km or 3 km radius. This methodology does not record small natural areas. The methodologies, therefore, frame the question in substantially different ways, and yet the fact that at least partially converging findings result from investigations at such different scales enhances the evidence that nature affects social well-being, but also suggests that future research might shed light on the relevance of scale in such investigations.
Physical Activity and Obesity The onset of the global obesity epidemic and its associated health risks (e.g., diabetes, cancer, heart disease; Must et al., 1999; The et al., 2010) has generated a relatively recent interest in examining associations between proximity to nature, physical activity, and obesity. In the United States, research focused on environmental influences on physical activity and obesity has been advanced, in part, through the work of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Active Living Research (ALR; www.activelivingresearch.org). ALR’s annual conference and various funding mechanisms have fostered the growth of an interdisciplinary field that merges a variety of disciplines including environmental psychology, urban planning, natural resources, recreation studies, and public health. While studies have focused on the effects of policy as well as both the built and natural environment on physical activity, here we focus on just the natural environment as an independent variable. Studies examining the relation between the natural environment and physical activity focus primarily on residential areas for both adults and children, and use objective or subjective (or a combination of both) measures of nearby nature. In general, evidence suggests that incorporating green space into the built environment (i.e., the amount of green space within the environment) encourages or increases physical activity participation in both leisure and non-leisure activities (Handy, Boarnet, Ewing, & Killingsworth, 2002; Parks, Housemann, & Brownson, 2003; Ross, 2000). For example, a study of approximately 7,000 adults living in European cities indicated that among those living in residential areas with high levels of greenery, the likelihood of being physically active was three times greater and the likelihood of being overweight or obese was 40% less than for those living in the least green settings (Ellaway et al., 2005). When compared with non-park users, parkgoers are more likely to achieve recommended levels of physical activity (Deshpande, Baker, Lovegreen, & Brownson, 2005; Giles-Corti et al., 2005). Giles-Corti and colleagues (2005) showed that Australians with access to large, attractive public open space were 50% more likely to achieve high levels of walking and three times more likely to achieve recommended levels of physical activity than those who did not use the spaces. Elder adults who resided in areas with more parks also walked more than those who lived in areas with fewer parks (Fisher, Li, Michael, & Cleveland, 2004; Li, Fisher,
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The Natural Environment in Residential Settings: Influences on Human Health and Function Brownson, & Bosworth, 2005). In addition, a study of several rural Missouri counties found that respondents with access to walking trails used trails more than those without access. Those respondents using trails were also more likely to have increased their amount of walking since they began to use the trails (Brownson et al., 2000). Proximity to parks, green and open space, and recreational spaces and facilities has been associated with higher rates of park use and both adult and child physical activity (Bedimo-Rung, Mowen, & Cohen, 2005; Cohen et al., 2007; Kaczynski & Henderson, 2007; Macdonald, 2007; Sallis, Bauman, & Pratt, 1998; Sallis et al., 1997; Sallis, Prochaska, & Taylor, 2000). Given the practical challenges of conducting a true (or even quasi-) experiment with respect to residential location, most of the evidence is correlational rather than causal in nature. As mentioned earlier, senior citizens in Japan who lived near parks and tree-lined streets and places to walk were more likely to be alive five years later (Takano et al., 2002). Although this study did not explicitly examine mediating mechanisms, physical activity and maintaining healthy weight are good candidates. Similarly, responses from a Dutch questionnaire of 1,200 adults between 18 and 24 years of age found that residents with nearby gardens or green spaces reported being less stressed and experienced a reduced likelihood of obesity (Nielsen & Hansen, 2007). Kaczynski and colleagues (2009) found an association between the amount of park area and the number of parks within 1 km of where 18- to 34-year-old adults and adults 55 years and older lived, and the likelihood of obtaining at least 150 minutes of weekly park-based physical activity. Additional evidence suggests that subjective measures of the natural environment, such as perceived neighborhood greenness, are associated with physical activity levels, including walking (Sugiyama et al., 2008; Tilt, Unfried, & Roca, 2007). After adjusting for socio-demographic variables, a survey of 1,895 people in Australia found that residents who perceived their neighborhood as highly green were more likely to have better physical and mental health; recreational walking was a potential mediator of the greenness and physical health association (Sugiyama et al., 2008). Another study of 2,194 people in Australia found that perceived attractiveness, which included measures of greenery and tree cover, in addition to outdoor recreational facility access and access to places of interest, was significantly associated with neighborhood street use (e.g., walking) after adjusting for socio-demographic variables (Sugiyama, Leslie, Giles-Corti, & Owen, 2009). Perceived accessibility to green spaces has also been associated with physical activity. A study in England found that survey respondents who lived in deprived areas but close to green space reported poorer perceived accessibility and safety, and used nearby green spaces less frequently than affluent-area residents within similar proximity to parks. Distance to nearby parks was only associated with frequency of use among the more affluent area residents. Deprivation moderated the association between physical activity and perceived accessibility, safety, and frequency of green space use (Jones, Hillsdon, & Coombes, 2009). Among children, neighborhood parks and natural areas also play an important role in facilitating physical activity (Bedimo-Rung et al., 2005). Neighborhoods with a larger proportion of park area were also associated with more physical activity among 4- to 7-year-olds (Roemmich et al., 2006) and among 8- to 12-year-olds (Roemmich, Epstein, Raja, & Yin, 2007). Moreover, an absence of nearby parks is associated with fewer walking and bicycling trips among 10- to 12-year-olds (Timperio, Crawford, Telford, & Salmon, 2004). Although little research to date has examined the relationship between parks and healthy weight status among children, one study in Canada found that distance to nearby parks and nature was inversely associated with healthy weight. Those children who lived within 1 km of a park playground were nearly five times more likely to have a healthy weight when compared to children without nearby playgrounds (Potwarka, Kaczynski, & Flack, 2008). The use of parks and playgrounds by adolescent boys has been positively linked to physical activity (Hoefer, McKenzie, Sallis, Marshall, & Conway, 2001). Males were also more likely than females to participate in higher-intensity physical activity when in urban green spaces (Cohen et al., 2007; Wheeler, Cooper, Page, & Jago, 2010). In another prospective study, a sample of predominantly African-American, economically disadvantaged children and youth, aged 3–16 years, living in greener settings were less likely to experience an increase in body mass index (BMI) over a two-year (p. 517) period when compared to youth living in less green settings (Bell, Wilson, & Liu, 2008). A recent study of more than 1,200 children in European cities suggested that access to nature may partially explain the well-established association between SES and obesity. Evans, Jones-Rounds, Belojevic, and Vermeylen (in press) reported that access to green space partially mediated the relation between SES and physical activity, which in turn, predicted BMI. In addition to the research examining the association between parks, open space, physical activity, and obesity,
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The Natural Environment in Residential Settings: Influences on Human Health and Function some studies have found that time spent outdoors is a consistent and positive predictor of physical activity and higher energy expenditure (Ferreira et al., 2006; Pellegrini, Horvat, & Huberty, 1998; Sallis et al., 2000). More recently, a three-year prospective study in Australia of 5- to 6-year-old and 10- to 12-year-old children found that more time spent outdoors was associated with an increase in physical activity. Children who initially spent more time outdoors also experienced a 27–41% lower prevalence of overweight after three years (Cleland et al., 2010). Another study of preschool children’s home environments in Australia further revealed that in addition to parental activity, residential backyard size and the amount of outdoor play equipment were significant correlates of children’s outdoor play (Spurrier et al., 2008). Another body of evidence indicates that the design of outdoor play spaces (e.g., site layout, amount and variety of play settings and equipment, presence of and proximity to vegetation, types of vegetation) at schools and daycare facilities is associated with children’s physical activity and play-related behavior (Bell & Dyment, 2008; Boldemann et al., 2006; Cosco, 2006, 2007; Fjortoft, 2001; Moore, 1974). Outdoor settings that include nature facilitate or “afford” exploration, which can lead to sustained physical activity (Cosco, 2007). For example, a study of 11 preschools in Sweden found that physical qualities of outdoor environments—size, presence of trees and shrubs, and proximity of play equipment to vegetation—were associated with increased physical activity (Boldemann et al., 2006). Children (ages 4–6) took a significantly larger number of steps in spacious play environments containing trees, shrubbery, and broken ground, according to pedometer readings. Similarly, Cosco (2006) found significant positive effects of outdoor play space design on physical activity. The size and diversity of the play areas were among the most important predictors of children’s physical activity. Areas that contained vegetation, pathways, and manufactured items were associated with the most active children’s play when measured using accelerometry, behavior mapping, and video-tracking (Cosco, 2006). Although most of these studies occurred within school and daycare settings, findings can be extended to outdoor residential spaces such as front and backyards, courtyards, neighborhood parks and open spaces, and other available places for children’s play and physical activity. Although research findings suggest that nature and parks can encourage physical activity that leads to healthier weight and that these effects persist across different populations in different settings, there are several limitations. First, studies using objectively measured predictors of physical activity, such as the amount or proximity of nearby green space calculated via geographic information systems (GIS), often do not distinguish between natural settings that encourage physical activity and uninviting, inaccessible, or unused natural settings (Leslie, Sugiyama, Ierodiaconou, & Kremera, 2010; Sugiyama et al., 2010). Objective and subjective or perceived measures of the natural environment may assess different aspects of neighborhood greenness. For example, subjective, selfreported, perceived levels of greenery measure greenness from participants’ point of view at ground level. Perceptions, however, may be influenced by other factors such as perceived access and safety (Jones et al., 2009). The amount of nearby nature objectively calculated using GIS, on the other hand, yields a measure of the amount of greenness visible from an aboveground viewpoint. Depending on the resolution of the images used, the error for the estimated amount of greenness varies, especially in dense urban areas (O’Neil-Dunne, 2008). Also, as previously stated, no distinction is made between spaces that do and do not encourage physical activity. Objective measures of nature may be addressing quantity of green space while subjective (perceived) measures reflect quality of green space (Leslie et al., 2010; Sugiyama et al., 2010). Second, many studies fail to account for specific attributes and facilities within nature and parks that are likely to increase physical activity levels. It is important to note that the presence of natural areas, including parks, alone may not be enough to encourage physical activity. The types of opportunities afforded by these spaces (i.e., facilities), such as walking and bike trails, safety, trees, shade, play equipment, water fountains and bathroom facilities, paved and grassy areas, and athletic fields, may attract park users; having, for example, a basketball court, may be more important than the distance to (p. 518) a park without a basketball court (Potwarka et al., 2008). Parents and children may visit parks that are not necessarily nearby their residence to participate in physical activity opportunities with friends, or to use specific facilities supporting particular physical activities (Potwarka et al., 2008). Both objective and subjective measures of the quantity and quality of natural settings are needed to further explore the relationship between the natural environment and physical activity.
Conclusion
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The Natural Environment in Residential Settings: Influences on Human Health and Function Growing evidence indicates that the natural environment has numerous beneficial effects on human health, including physical, psychological, and cognitive outcomes as well as health behaviors such as physical activity. Views of nature as well as access to parks or green space are critical components of the residential setting, whether located in a rural, suburban, or urban context. From an evolutionary perspective, neither a connection to nature nor the salugenic effects of nature are surprising. As Howard Frumkin (2001) noted: If the last 2 million years of our species’ history were scaled to a single human lifetime of 70 years, then the first humans would not have begun settling into villages until 8 months after the 69th birthday. Some people —aboriginal groups in Australia, South America, the Pacific Islands, and elsewhere—would remain huntergatherers until a day or two before the 70th birthday. We have broken with long-established patterns of living rather late in our life as a species. (p. 235) And yet, despite the intuitive nature of much of the data, there is a need for further research to more clearly elucidate the relation between the natural environment and human health. Research evidence is valuable both with respect to policy and in terms of theory. From a policy perspective, additional documentation of the value of nature helps to build the case for the protection of woodlands; the planting of street trees; and the incorporation of parks, gardens, and recreation areas within residential communities, whether urban, suburban, or rural. Without evidence documenting that nature is critical to human health and well-being, unfortunately, natural areas are at risk— vulnerable to pressures for new construction in urban centers, to the sprawl in the suburbs, and to myriad economic and other pressures in rural and wilderness areas. In terms of theory, further research will allow us to understand more clearly how and why nature is beneficial, giving us a more in-depth understanding of how we humans relate to the world around us.
Future Research Directions Three areas are particularly rife with possibility for further investigation: dose-response relationships, moderators, and mediators. We will address each of these areas in turn.
Dose-Response Relationships
Figure 27.1 Dose-Response Relations: How Much Nature Yields What Health Outcome?
One of the remaining issues in the study of nature’s relation to health concerns the amount or “dose” of nature required to yield beneficial effects (e.g., Barton & Pretty, 2010) (see Figure 27.1). For example, how proximate must a residence be to a park or open space for there to be a likely and significant association with physical activity rates among residents? Similarly, how long or how much nature exposure is needed to enhance cognitive functioning and recover from directed attention fatigue? Some studies suggest that window views of nature have a potent influence (e.g., Tennessen & Cimprich, 1995); however, it is not clear whether window view might, in some cases, be a proxy for the outdoor environment that residents not only view, but also spend time in. Future studies might assess whether views of nature versus time spent in nature have an impact, and similarly how much time and what level of engagement yields what outcome. Answers to such questions are important both theoretically and
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The Natural Environment in Residential Settings: Influences on Human Health and Function practically. Greater precision in our understanding of “dose” requirements will allow further development of theory linking various doses to specific physical and physiological outcomes and will also contribute to policy recommendations (e.g., how much park area is recommended for every 100,000 residents?) and design guidelines (e.g., how many (p. 519) square feet of nature window views is suggested for an apartment?). Future investigations of dose-response associations of nature and health will allow a more nuanced understanding of the connections between the natural environment and human health and function.
Moderators
Figure 27.2 Moderators Influence the Strength of the Relation Between Nature and Health
Moderators, or “effect modifiers,” can affect the strength or character of the association between nature and health (Baron & Kenny, 1986). Moderators, might address issues of when there is an effect, in what context (where) there is an effect, for whom, or under what circumstances is there an effect (see Figure 27.2). Moderators are also known as “interaction effects”—when two independent variables interact to affect the dependent variable. Moderators are relevant to the study of nature-health linkages in two general ways. First, the influence of nature on health outcomes may differ according to individuals’ age, gender, location, SES, or other factors. Thus, it is critical to note, following the discussion of dose-response relations, that while we are interested in the question of how (and how much) nature is needed to affect health outcomes, there may not be “one-size-fits-all” effects or prescriptions. The association between nature and health may not be the same for young versus old; rich versus poor; male versus female; or in winter versus summer. Additional empirical study of moderating variables will enable a more refined understanding of the conditions and circumstances under which nature most effectively enhances health.
Figure 27.3 Nature Exposure as a Moderator Between Stress or Adversity and Health
A second way to conceptualize moderators in relation to nature-health associations concerns nature exposure as the moderator (see Figure 27.3). In this case, nature may buffer or mitigate the impact of stress, adversity, or risk factors on health and function. A few studies have examined the role of nature as a buffer. For example, Mitchell and Popham (2008) found that in a large sample from the English population, exposure to green space moderated the relation between poverty and health (specifically mortality from all causes and circulatory disease). Incomerelated inequalities were less pronounced among residents with more nature exposure. Wells and Evans (2003) found that access to nature moderated the effect of stressful life events on the psychological well-being and global self-worth of rural youth. Children with more nearby nature were less detrimentally affected by stressors. These studies examining nature as a moderator or an effect modifier illustrate that views of and access to nature in the residential environment may function as a “resilience resource” (Wells, 2012), reducing the detrimental impact of environmental or social risk factors (Luthar & Cicchetti, 2000). The examination of moderators (or “effect modifiers”) is an important facet of future studies examining the linkages between the natural environment and health. The inclusion of moderators (i.e., interaction effects) can be considered as strategies to elucidate both how third variables affect the nature-health relation and how exposure to nature might moderate the relation between other environmental characteristics (e.g., stressors) and health outcomes.
Mediators or Explanatory Mechanisms
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The Natural Environment in Residential Settings: Influences on Human Health and Function
Figure 27.4 Mediators are Intervening, Explanatory Mechanisms Linking Nature and Health
As growing evidence links residential nature with health outcomes, greater understanding can be reached through the investigation of mediating mechanisms. Mediators are intervening causal variables that explain why or how one variable affects another and provide insight concerning the mechanism or pathway (Baron & Kenny, 1986) (see Figure 27.4). For example, Sugiyama and colleagues (2008) found that recreational walking mediated the relation between perceived neighborhood greenness and mental health. In her study of women living in poverty, Kuo (2001) documented that the linkage between proximity to green space and effective functioning was mediated by reduced mental fatigue. In addition to enhancing our theoretical understanding of how nature affects health, mediation studies are also very practical. Elucidation of causal mechanisms suggests leverage points that policy or intervention strategies might also target (p. 520) (in addition to the independent variable) to affect changes in human health and well-being. For example, if physical activity is one pathway through which proximity to residential nature affects physical health, then intervention strategies might be multi-pronged, aimed at increasing nearby nature and directly promoting physical activity.
Integration and Collaboration As we move forward in the study of nature and health, there are several opportunities for further integration and collaboration. Clearly the evidence linking the natural environment to human health and well-being is broad and diverse, ranging from physiological evidence to social outcomes to cognitive effects. Future efforts might work toward a more holistic, integrated model of the salugenic effects of nature on human health and well-being. Second, as disciplinary boundaries are increasingly blurred, more integrated, interdisciplinary collaborative teams will be well-poised for the study of nature-health associations. Third, the study of how and why nature matters to human well-being can be increasingly integrated with practical policy and design decision-making. By bridging the gap between research results and the day-to-day decisions that affect both the environment and policy, environmental psychologists can help to ensure the protection of our natural resources and contribute to thriving individuals, families, and communities.
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The Natural Environment in Residential Settings: Influences on Human Health and Function Boldemann, C., Blennow, M., Dal, H., Martensson, F., Raustorp, A., Yuen, K., et al. (2006). Impact of preschool environment upon children’s physical activity and sun exposure. Preventive Medicine, 42, 301–308. Brownson, R. C., Houseman, R. A., Brown, D. R., Jackson-Thompson, J., King, A. C., Malone, B. R., et al. (2000). Promoting physical activity in rural communities. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 18(3), 235–241. Cleland, V., Crawford, D., Baur, L. A., Hume, C., Timperio, A., & Salmon, J. (2010). A prospective examination of children’s time spent outdoors, objectively measured physical activity, and overweight. International Journal of Obesity, 32, 1685–1693. Cohen, D. A., McKenzie, T. L., Sehgal, A., Williamson, S., Golinelli, D., & Lurie, N. (2007). Contribution of public parks to physical activity. American Journal of Public Health, 97, 509–514. Coley, R., Sullivan, W. C., & Kuo, F. E. (1997). Where does community grow? The social context created by nature in urban public housing. Environment and Behavior, 29(4), 468–494. Cosco, N. G. (2006). Motivation to move: Physical activity affordances in pre-school play areas. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). North Carolina State University, Raleigh. Cosco, N. G. (2007). Developing evidence-based design: Environmental interventions for healthy development of young children in the outdoors. In C. Ward Thompson & P. Travlou (Eds.), Open space people space. London: Taylor and Francis. de Vries, S., Verheij, R. A., Groenewegen, P., & Spreeuwenberg, P. (2003). Natural environments-healthy environments? An exploratory analysis of the relationship between greenspace and health. Environment and Planning, 35, 1717–1731. Deshpande, A. D., Baker, E. A., Lovegreen, S. L., & Brownson, R. C. (2005). Environmental correlates of physical activity among individuals with diabetes in the rural midwest. Diabetes Care, 28, 1012–1018. Ellaway, A., Macintyre, S., & Bonnefoy, X. (2005). Graffiti, greenery, and obesity in adults: Secondary analysis of European cross-sectional survey. British Medical Journal, 331(7517), 611–612. Elmendorf, W. (2008). The importance of trees and nature in community: A review of the relative literature. Arboriculture & Urban Forestry, 34(3), 152–156. Eubanks Owens, P. (1988). Natural landscapes, gathering places, and prospect refuges: Characteristics of outdoor places valued by teens. Children’s Environmental Quarterly, 5(2), 17–24. Evans, G. W., Jones-Rounds, M. L., Belojevic, G., & Vermeylen, F. (in press). Family income and childhood obesity in eight European cities: The mediating roles of neighborhood characteristics and physical activity. Social Science and Medicine. (p. 521) Faber Taylor, A., & Kuo, F. E. (2009). Children with attention deficits concentrate better after walk in the park. Journal of Attention Disorders, 12, 402–409. Faber Taylor, A., Kuo, F. E., & Sullivan, W. C. (2001). Coping with ADD: The surprising connection to green play settings. Environment and Behavior, 33(54), 54–77. Faber Taylor, A., Kuo, F. E., & Sullivan, W. C. (2002). Views of nature and self-discipline: Evidence from inner-city children. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 22, 49–63. Faber Taylor, A., Wiley, A., Kuo, F. E., & Sullivan, W. C. (1998). Growing up in the inner city: Green spaces as places to grow. Environment and Behavior, 30(1), 3–27. Fan, J., McCandliss, B. D., Fossella, J., Flombaum, J. I., & Posner, M. I. (2005). The activation of attention networks. NeuroImage, 26, 471–479. Fan, J., McCandliss, B. D., Sommer, T., Raz, A., & Posner, M. I. (2002). Testing the efficiency and independence of attentional networks. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14, 340–347.
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The Natural Environment in Residential Settings: Influences on Human Health and Function Behavior 35, 311–330. Wells, N. M., & Lekies, K. S. (2006). Nature and the life course: Pathways from childhood nature experiences to adult environmentalism. Children, Youth, and Environments, 16(1), 1–24. West, M. J. (1986). Landscape views and stress responses in the prison environment. Seattle: University of Washington. Westphal, L. M. (2003). Urban greening and social benefits: A study of empowerment outcomes. Journal of Arboriculture, 29(3), 137–147. Wheeler, B. W., Cooper, A. R., Page, A. S., & Jago, R. (2010). Greenspace and children’s physical activity: A GPS/GIS analysis of the PEACH project. Preventive Medicine, 51, 148–152. Wood, L., Shannon, T., Bulsara, M., Pikora, T., McCormack, G., & Giles-Corti, B. (2008). The anatomy of the safe and social suburb: An explanatory study of the built environment, social capital and residents’ perceptions of safety. Health and Place, 14(1), 15–31. (p. 524) Nancy M. Wells Nancy M. Wells Department of Design and Environmental Analysis Cornell University Ithaca, NY
Kimberly A. Rollings Kimberly A. Rollings Department of Design and Environmental Analysis Cornell University Ithaca, NY
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth
Oxford Handbooks Online The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth Louise Chawla and Victoria Derr The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology, Developmental Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0028
Abstract and Keywords With a focus on childhood and adolescence, this chapter seeks to understand how people come to act responsibly on behalf of the environment. It begins with a brief overview of selected theories related to the development of agency and the motivation to act as a framework for research reviews in three areas of young people’s experience: informal play and exploration in nature; environmental education programs in schools and in the field; and wilderness experience programs. The chapter compares research results in these areas with the goal of understanding the types of experiences that prepare young people to take action for the environment, considers how these results correspond with processes that would be predicted by developmental theory, and distills recommendations for the design of school-based programs, wilderness adventure programming, and the design of communities that facilitate free access to nature. Directions for future research are suggested. Keywords: children, youth, environmental behavior, environmental education, place-based education, significant life experiences, wilderness adventure
The Goal of Action for the Environment To build a body of knowledge in conservation psychology that can be effectively applied to the solution of environmental problems and the protection of natural areas and biodiversity, it is essential to understand why people take actions that impact the environment for better or for worse, for it is human action that creates problems or contributes to solutions. Therefore, this chapter reviews research that investigates how children and youth develop active care for the environment. It focuses on three areas of young people’s activity where behavior outcomes have been assessed: informal play in natural areas, environmental education programs, and wilderness adventures. It seeks to understand the experiences that encourage young people to show care for the natural world and choose sustainable behaviors. According to the Tbilisi Declaration of UNESCO (1978), the ultimate objective of environmental education is to enable students to work toward the solution of environmental problems. Agenda 21, the United Nations blueprint for sustainable development, gave children and youth the status of major groups who need to be involved in participatory processes to achieve sustainability (United Nations, 1992). According to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which defines a “child” as anyone under 18, children’s basic rights include access to education for respect for the natural environment and a voice in decisions that impact their lives—which are understood to include decisions that impact their environment (United Nations, 1989). In each of these international agreements, informed action is an essential objective. Leaders in environmental education and children’s rights have further defined this goal. Echoing Dewey’s (1938) emphasis on learning by doing, Hart (1997) observed that children learn democracy (p. 528) by practicing it. He
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth argued that they learn most effectively in their local communities, where issues are visible and meaningful, where they can see the effects of their actions and gain a sense of belonging by feeling valued for their contributions. Jensen and Schnack (1997) have elaborated the concept of “action competence,” when young people choose individual and collective actions after critically investigating the causes of problems and effective solutions. Stapp, Wals, and Stankorb (1996) advocated similar processes of action research and community problem-solving, which enable young people to participate in planning, implementing, and evaluating activities to improve their school and community environments, learning in this way that they can be forces for constructive change. McLaren and Hammond (2005) noted that education for action can proceed in three ways: learning about action through simulations, role-plays, case studies, the history of famous conservationists, and the practice of action skills; learning through action when students undertake projects with tangible outcomes in the real world; and learning from action when they review their experiences from either of the previous approaches, reflecting on the meaning for themselves, their roles as citizens, and future strategies to effect change. While all three approaches complement each other, McLaren and Hammond argued that trying to effect change in the real world, supported by wise teachers and mentors, provides a level of practical experience and preparation for citizenship that cannot be gained in any other way. This chapter’s focus on action does not mean to imply that knowledge, feelings, and beliefs are unimportant. Research with adults indicates, however, that the relationship between what people know and feel and what they do weakens as pro-environmental actions become more costly and difficult (Gardner & Stern, 2002). Twenty years ago, Hungerford and Volk (1990) took environmental educators to task for assuming that if they conveyed information about the environment, it would follow that children would develop pro-environmental attitudes and take responsible actions. The antecedents of action, they noted, are more complicated. Yet when Zint (in press) prepared her recent review of evaluations of environmental education programs published in peer-reviewed journals, she found that only 10% of the studies measured behavior. The rest measured knowledge, values, attitudes, or the acquisition of skills, as if positive gains in these areas were sufficient. Reviews of gardening programs (Blair, 2009) and wilderness adventure programs (this chapter) for young people show a similar emphasis on knowledge, attitude, and skill outcomes rather than behavior outcomes. Part of the explanation for this imbalance may be that knowledge, attitudes, and skills are easier to measure. Ideally researchers would be able to observe what young people do over time—but very few studies attempt this kind of longitudinal tracking. Instead, young people are asked to report what they do or whether they intend to take proenvironmental actions, or teachers or parents are asked what they observe young people doing. As well as being less reliable than direct observations, these measures often fail to include a long-term follow-up, so that there is no way of knowing how lasting these behaviors may be. Although this review highlights studies that involve direct observation or long-term assessments, it also addresses this issue by beginning with research that works backward, identifying adults and youth who exemplify the type of engaged action for the environment that the Tbilisi Declaration and Agenda 21 advocate, and asking them about their formative experiences. It then compares the results of these studies with experiences associated with the development of pro-environmental behaviors through environmental education and wilderness programs. The ages investigated range from early childhood through late adolescence.
Agency and Motivation for Environmental Action
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth
Click to view larger Figure 28.1 Factors Associated with Action for the Environment from Chawla (2009).
Figure 28.1, “Factors Associated with Action for the Environment,” synthesizes the results of studies with both child and adult samples that identify factors that predict pro-environmental behaviors (adapted from Chawla, 2009). Influences on action include two forms of knowledge: direct experience through immersion in the natural world or learning how to protect it through trial and error; and secondhand information about environmental issues and problem-solving from sources such as books, films, or other people’s instruction and stories. The figure also shows that a sense of efficacy to achieve valued goals is crucial, which people gain when they discover that they can have an impact on the world, working either alone or in groups. Just as positive experiences in nature feed a motivation to protect the natural world, satisfying experiences in the course of taking action fuel engagement. People are drawn to act because they come to care for intrinsic qualities of nature, particular places, or the wellbeing of people who are affected by the environment, (p. 529) because they internalize social norms of environmental responsibility, and because they develop an identity of connection to nature. As a framework for understanding the associations that Figure 28.1 summarizes, this review is guided by principles of ecological psychology (Heft, 2001, this volume) and social learning theory (Bandura, 1997) related to the development of agency and motivation. The ecological psychology of James Gibson (1979), Eleanor Gibson and Anne Pick (2000), and Edward Reed (1996a, 1996b) is a particularly well-suited foundation for the study of children’s developing relations with the environment, as it directs attention to the qualities of places that children encounter and the social contexts of their experiences. Grounded in the evolutionary theory of Darwin, it is consistent with underlying principles of the Tbilisi Declaration and Agenda 21: that human beings depend on wellfunctioning ecosystems for survival; that they can discover the environment’s resources and limits through direct perception as well as instruction; and that they can adaptively adjust their behavior. Its concept of affordances (the potentials for action that the environment provides a living creature relative to its capabilities), as well as a belief in intrinsic value and meaning in the environment, can be applied to children’s encounters with nature and help explain why people who take action on the environment’s behalf often have an early history of free play and exploration in nature (Chawla, 2007). Although ecological psychology emphasizes how children learn from direct experiences of the world, Reed (1996a) described how these encounters are influenced from infancy by other people. A key mechanism is joint attention, when children turn their attention to features of the world that other people are noticing, and later begin to control attention themselves by pointing and naming things. In the process children learn what people around them consider worth noticing and how they appraise it, and they find their own spontaneous interests either encouraged, reprimanded, or ignored. Thus a nearby natural area can be a place of fascination that a family explores and appreciates together, a scary place that children are forbidden to enter, or something barely noticed as children ride by in the family car. These principles are consistent with the social learning theory of Bandura (1997), who marshals evidence to the effect that people develop a sense of efficacy most effectively when they have opportunities to practice action to achieve valued goals, they experience for themselves how the world responds to their efforts, and they taste at least some measure of success. One reason why play in nature may figure so prominently in the memories of people who show care for the environment is that natural areas are places where children can set challenges at levels they choose for themselves and enjoy the effects of their actions: new vistas, for example, as they climb
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth higher and higher in a tree or blaze a (p. 530) trail through a woodland; shifting currents of water when they build and breach a dam across a creek; the snug enclosure of a hut that they construct from branches. Bandura described how children also learn from people around them when they see others take action and succeed, and when they are coached and encouraged by others—processes elaborated by Vygotsky (1978) in his concept of the “zone of proximal development” and by Rogoff (1990, 2003) in her work on apprenticeship. As Heft and Chawla (2006) and Chawla and Cushing (2007) showed, this basic research on the development of competence and a sense of efficacy not only helps explain why children value nature play but also how they learn the skills and strategies of environmental citizenship. It is consistent with a study of Swedish teenagers and young adults by Ojala (2011) that found that pro-environmental behavior is associated with “constructive hope” that includes trust in one’s own ability to influence environmental problems in a positive direction and trust in other social actors. Building on the work of Bandura (1997), Eccles and Wigfield (2002) have elaborated an expectancy-value model of achievement motivation, which can be applied to children’s developing motivation to care for the environment (Chawla, 2009). It identifies social interactions and cultural contexts that influence how children experience the world and how they integrate values and goals into their identity, with due recognition that children’s individual characteristics and capabilities impact how they interpret experiences and interact with other people. In the sections that follow, this chapter reviews what research shows about how children and youth learn to take action for the environment in different settings of their lives: in natural areas for free play and in schools, communities, nature centers, and wilderness programs. A concluding section synthesizes this research in the context of these theories of human development, seeking to create a coherent account of the conditions under which motivated action to care for the environment begins.
Play in Nature as a Foundation for Environmental Action According to principles of ecological psychology, the environment contains so much information that we learn what to notice selectively and how to respond, guided in part by innate drives, such as hunger and thirst, but also by the examples and instruction of other people. Reed’s (1996a) concepts of fields of free action, promoted action, and constrained action are useful lenses for examining how social contexts create the conditions for children’s experience of nature. When children head outdoors on their own to dig in the dirt, wade in creeks, or climb trees, they are enjoying fields of free action where they pursue their curiosity, learning in the process about values inherent in the environment. At the same time, they learn their own capacities for action. They may enjoy these adventures with their parents’ blessing, or because their parents are preoccupied with other matters and don’t have time or inclination to control where their children are or what they are doing. When home life is stressful, taking off for the woods may be a way to escape the adult world—but once there, a refuge full of intrinsic fascination. When parents and other adults actively encourage outdoor play and make natural areas accessible, children operate in fields of promoted action. Family outings to a park, the gift of a butterfly identification book, permission to play in a wooded area during school recess: such forms of facilitation suggest to children that adults around them value nature. Fields of promoted action often combine independent discovery with social learning, including the type of joint exploring that Rachel Carson (1956) advocated in her book The Sense of Wonder, when a child and adult venture out together to look up at the sky, listen to the wind, feel rain on their faces, or observe the changing seasons. Although these outings provide opportunities to teach facts about biology, astronomy, or geology, Carson argued that the feelings attached to objects of discovery are the most important learning, whether they involve “a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love” (p. 45). Similar shared learning can happen when children explore nature with playmates. In his book Last Child in the Woods, Louv (2008) raised the alarm that, increasingly, children live in fields of constrained action, confined indoors and knowing nature secondhand, if at all, through images on a screen. Increasingly, they live in built-up urban areas. Under these conditions, nature becomes a socially mediated abstraction. As a Houston fifth grader explained when he was asked to draw a picture of “nature” and answer questions about it: “Nature, it’s out there where the lions be. It’s out in the open. And lions be out there. Zebras. And all other things ’cause I seen it on TV. Channel 8. They showed nature and that’s all.”
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth Do you ever see nature yourself when it’s not on TV? “Not really. Umm, not really.” (p. 531) In this random sample of 50 students from five Houston schools, when students were given paper, crayons, and colored pencils and asked to “draw nature,” only 18% drew places in nature that they had personally encountered (Aaron & Witt, 2011). It may be that 82% drew imaginary places or said that they had no knowledge of nature because they had been taught that nature is “not the city”—and therefore not part of their personal experience—but these results are consistent with studies that indicate that contemporary children are contained indoors or within narrow outdoor ranges of free movement to a degree rare in previous generations (Clements, 2004; England Marketing, 2009; Karsten, 2005; Wridt, 2004). Reed (1996b) advocated “the necessity of experience”: opportunities to engage with the world directly with firsthand, full-bodied encounters. These primary experiences enable children to make discoveries for themselves, and in the natural world, children encounter a dynamic, multisensory flow of information that is essentially infinite in its depth, diversity, and potential for discovery. It is a world of recurring patterns, yet one where nothing ever happens exactly the same way twice, so that every time children go out in the woods or down to a stream, they find a place that is reassuringly the same yet inexhaustibly new (Chawla, 2007). What is also unique about this world is that their human bodies evolved among these natural elements, which still form the foundation on which human existence depends. A growing body of research indicates that free play outdoors and contact with nature can support children’s healthy development, including increased physical activity, more creative and collaborative play, better balance and coordination, better concentration and impulse control, and better coping with stressful events (Charles & Senauer, 2010). These are important reasons to ensure that children have access to nature, but if we think of healthy environments as interdependent systems that foster human well-being and, in turn, require human action to protect ecosystems and biodiversity, then access to nature should be evaluated for its impact on the development of environmental stewardship as well as its benefits for children’s health. The studies reviewed in the following section suggest that opportunities for free play and discovery in nature motivate pro-environmental behaviors, but they also suggest the importance of the social context in which these experiences occur. In Reed’s (1996a, 1996b) terms, they indicate the importance of primary experiences in fields of both free and promoted action.
Significant Life Experiences of Environmentally Active Citizens Associations between early experiences of nature and stewardship behaviors in later life have been investigated through three main research approaches: fixed-response surveys with random or representative samples, openended questionnaires, and long interviews. Although there are limitations to each approach, general consistency among results suggests that positive nature experiences in childhood are significantly associated with later caring action for the environment. The purpose of these studies was articulated by Tanner (1980), who reasoned that if citizen participation is essential to maintain “a varied, beautiful, and resource-rich planet for future generations” (p. 20), then it is important to understand the types of experiences that produce citizens who are committed to this goal.
An Extended Mixed-Method Research Program This review begins with a set of studies that combine all three research approaches. To understand experiences that motivate environmental activism in eastern Taiwan, where rich biodiversity has been threatened by rapid economic growth, Hsu (2009) began by mailing questionnaires to activists to collect their memories of significant environmental experiences. A year later he conducted semi-structured interviews with the same subjects. He found a high degree of consistency between the two sets of responses. On this basis, he constructed a questionnaire that asked a new sample of respondents about the type of environmental actions that they engaged in and their frequency, and then asked them to write about experiences “that have affected you to take action to protect the environment” and to indicate their age at the time of events’ occurrence. He distributed this instrument to 40 educators and civil servants known for high levels of political activism on behalf of the environment. From their responses, he refined 17 categories of experiences that showed high inter-coder reliability. People’s most
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth frequent response was experiences of nature in childhood (65% of the sample), followed by participation in environmental organizations, the loss of beloved natural places, the influence of friends, and experiences of nature in adulthood. Hsu (2009) then created a fixed response survey with questions about these experiences and people’s (p. 532) environmental behaviors, and sent it to a random sample of 430 Taiwanese educators and civil servants. Independent t-tests showed significant differences between respondents with high versus low scores for environmental action. Environmental activists were significantly more likely to report many experiences of nature in childhood, their college years, and adulthood, as well as more likely to identify books or environmental organizations as influences that impacted their understanding of the environment and how to protect it. Hsu’s work is notable for the way that he progressed from open-ended questionnaires and interviews with purposive samples of activists, to a large fixed-response survey with a random sample of citizens with similar demographics, using careful checks on the reliability of his methods and analysis.
Surveys of Significant Experiences The largest survey that compared childhood experiences with conservation behaviors in adulthood involved a random sample of 2004 respondents in the United States (Wells & Lekies, 2006). It asked four questions related to environmental choices: whether respondents recycled, participated in environmental activities like Earth Day, voted “green,” or preferred to go outdoors for recreation. The strongest predictor of positive responses was whether people also stated that they engaged with nature before the age of 11 through hiking, camping, hunting, fishing, or playing in the woods or natural areas. “Domestic” activities associated with gardening were also positively related to pro-environmental behaviors, though not as strongly. (Respondents were not asked whether they had nature experiences after age 11.) Whether respondents said they were outside alone or with others as children was not predictive. This outcome is to be expected, because as ecological psychology observes, children learn about the environment both alone and with other people, and others can communicate appreciative, destructive, fearful, or neglectful ways of responding to the world (Gibson & Pick, 2000; Reed, 1996a). In Germany, a survey of 1,243 10- to 18-year-olds compared students active in nature and environmental groups with students who were not. It found that the strongest predictors of a stated intention to protect nature, in order of influence, were the environmental behavior of parents, the behavior of peers, nature experiences, action-specific knowledge, and environmental knowledge from media (Bögeholz,1999, cited in Bögeholz, 2006). In a Swiss survey of a representative sample of 1,004 adults, people who said that they took action for the environment through recycling, voting, signing petitions, and civic engagement at the local level were also likely to report a history of nature experiences and to say that they had these experiences before the age of 20 (Finger, 1993, 1994). In a mail survey of 822 randomly selected Iowa farmers, those who enhanced wildlife habitat on their land, compared to those who did not, were much more likely to say that in childhood they had a wild place where they went to be alone, hunted with family or friends, fished, and read nature books (Pease, 1992). Using a measure of “environmental sensitivity” that asked people whether they had experiences of hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, or family vacations in outdoor settings sometime before the end of high school, as well as whether they engaged in these activities as adults, two mail surveys in the United States found a positive association between higher levels of environmental sensitivity and more self-reported action for the environment. This was the case when Sia, Hungerford, and Tomera (1985 /1986) compared Sierra Club members and elder hostel participants who scored either high or low on self-reports of responsible environmental behaviors, and when Sivek and Hungerford (1989/1990) did random surveys of members of the Sierra Club, Trout Unlimited, and the Wisconsin Trappers Association. Kals, Schumacher, and Montada (1999) proposed that people are more likely to state a willingness to commit to pro-environmental behaviors if they have developed an emotional affinity toward nature, in the sense of a love for nature and feelings of safety and oneness in it, as well as an interest in nature and feeling of indignation at its inadequate protection. Their hypothesis was confirmed by a survey of 200 men and women who were representative of the general population of Germany and 80 active members of nature protection organizations. The survey also showed that affinity, interest, and indignation were all predicted by more frequent time spent in nature in the present and the past, as well as the accompaniment of significant companions. In childhood, significant companions in nature were family members. Having past experiences in nature with family members was
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth positively correlated with a willingness to commit to private behaviors on behalf of nature, such as installing solar panels or water flow regulators at home. To understand the importance of contact with nature for young people themselves, Müller, Kals, and Pansa (2009) used similar measures with 403 (p. 533) 15- to 19-year-olds in Germany and Lithuania. Each sample was divided between urban and rural environments. Only emotional affinity toward nature and awareness of environmental risks predicted a willingness to commit to protecting the environment, but contact with nature correlated significantly with each of these measures. Given the strength of the association between emotional affinity with nature and a stated willingness to commit to its protection, the researchers concluded that it is important to promote experiences that contribute to this sense of affinity, including frequent positive contacts with nature that begin in childhood and youth.
Open-Ended Questionnaires and Interviews In addition to fixed-response surveys that examine relationships between childhood experiences and adult behaviors or feelings, there are a number of retrospective studies that use open-ended questionnaires or interviews to ask people about the sources of their “decision to choose conservation work” or “environmental science,” their “dedication to the field of environmental education,” their “practical concern” for the environment, “environmental sensitivity,” “environmental interests,” or “commitment to protect the environment.” A strength of these studies is that they involve people with demonstrated records of commitment to environmental protection, evident through environmental careers or a personal history of activism. These objective records are a stronger and more valid measure of behavior than the self-reported actions or intention to act on which surveys typically rely. Two studies of this kind involved comparison groups. One contrasted 51 people engaged in environmental professions or the study of natural history with 10 people who stated that they had no interest in the outdoors or environmental activities (James, Bixler & Vadala, 2010; Vadala, Bixler & James, 2007). The environmental group reported playing as children in wild areas or “interstitial places” like woodlands and waterways near home, exploring the outdoors, building forts and play houses, and having parents and peers who encouraged their interest in nature. All 10 people in the contrasting group reported either no significant outdoor experiences in childhood or negative experiences. A study in Japan contrasted 188 directors of Nature Game groups, which seek to increase public knowledge and awareness about the environment, with 25 ordinary citizens in a Tokyo community center (Furihata et al., 2007). In workshops, people independently filled out open-ended questionnaires about their environmental behaviors and experiences that influenced their environmental attitudes or actions. The Nature Game directors were significantly more likely than the community center members to say that they were influenced by nature experiences and to say that these experiences occurred in childhood, although they reported many influential nature experiences in adulthood as well. When 12 respondents who were particularly involved in civic action for the environment were selected for follow-up interviews, all 12 described extensive nature experiences in childhood, followed by adult experiences that triggered or progressively deepened their activism. On this basis, Furihata and colleagues distinguished “fundamental experiences” of nature in childhood from “direct influences” on action in later life. Most retrospective studies lack comparison groups and simply ask conservationists, environmental educators or environmental scientists to identify life experiences that have led to their vocation. Studies of this kind began when Tanner (1980) sent staff at conservation organizations in the United States a mail survey with an open-ended question about influences that led them to their choice of work. Out of the 45 who responded, all but one described positive childhood experiences in natural habitats. Other frequent responses were parents, teachers, books, and witnessing the loss of nature and wilderness. Interviews or open-ended surveys with conservationists, environmental activists, and environmental scientists in North America, Central America, and Scandinavia (Chawla, 1998, 1999; Farmer, 2011; Horwitz, 1996; Sward, 1999; Wright & Wyatt, 2008) echo these findings, with experiences of nature in childhood and youth the most common response, often with mentors like family members or teachers. When Edmondson (2006) interviewed 20 African Americans who showed a strong connection to wilderness areas and their preservation, results were similar. All 20 talked about extended or intense experiences of nature in childhood or youth, and 13 also described mentors, most often a parent or grandparent. Young people who are already active in environmental groups give similar responses. When high school students
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth in Wisconsin were asked why they joined environmental action clubs or conferences, 14 out of 20 focus group participants and 61 out of 64 survey respondents referred to regular time spent in natural areas around their homes or schools (Sivek, 2002). They also identified role (p. 534) models—most often teachers or relatives—and the impact of witnessing environmental destruction. Twelve 16- to 19-year-olds in Nova Scotia who showed environmental leadership were asked how and why they became leaders (Arnold, Cohen, & Warner, 2009). All 12 described time in nature, and all 12 said that their parents were open to their interests. Other sources of social support were friends, teachers, leaders of camps or environmental programs, and peers in environmentally themed youth groups and gatherings. When 63 adolescents who volunteered in a wildlife education program were interviewed, the majority said that their concern for wildlife arose from experiences of animals in early childhood, supported by adults who acted as role models or who showed approval for their interest in animals, and by instruction in wildlife care (Kidd & Kidd, 1997). Working with 42 10- to 13-year-olds at an International Children’s Environment Conference in Canada, BlanchetCohen (2008) used drawings and interviews to understand the basis of their commitment to the environment and how they expressed it in action. Although she didn’t quantify results, she reported that almost all of the children spoke about experiences of wonder in special places, such as a boulder, a tree, or a beach. The children expressed their concern in a variety of ways, not only through initiating or joining the type of action projects that research has typically assessed, but also through art and writing, questioning existing practices, and maintaining their connection to their special place. Peterson and Hungerford (1981) initiated studies that asked environmental educators how they developed their environmental sensitivity, interest, or concern. Among 22 environmental educators Peterson (1982) interviewed, 20 attributed their sensitivity to the environment to outdoor experiences in childhood and youth: outdoor play, family vacations, camping, hiking, hunting, fishing. Eighteen discussed role models, such as family members, teachers, and friends. Nineteen said that the interests that they formed during these early experiences led them to study the environment in college and seek environmentally related work. When James (1995) interviewed 50 environmental educators of African-American, Asian-American, Native American, Latino, and multiracial backgrounds about the steps that led to their career choice, these educators identified similar early influences. So did 24 volunteer marine docents interviewed by Peters-Grant (1986, reanalyzed by Chawla, 1998). Palmer (1993) created a mail survey for environmental educators that included an open-ended question about experiences that led to their “practical concern” for the environment. When Palmer and colleagues used versions of this survey with environmental educators in nine countries, childhood experiences of nature were identified as a significant influence by more than half the respondents in the United Kingdom (Palmer, 1993), Canada, Australia (Palmer et al., 1999), and South Africa (Palmer et al., 1998). Experiences of nature either in childhood or adulthood were mentioned by at least half of the respondents in all countries except Hong Kong and Slovenia (Palmer et al., 1998). Other important influences were people, education, work, and—especially in Greece, Slovenia, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, and Uganda—negative experiences such as pollution and tree clearing (Palmer et al., 1998). These studies that lack comparison groups cannot determine whether experiences that characterize conservationists and environmental educators distinguish them from other people who are apathetic or opposed to environmental protection. It is noteworthy, however, that their results are consistent with studies that compare people with different levels of environmental engagement. Most studies indicate the importance of direct experiences of nature and environmental mentors in childhood and youth, but the results from Slovenia, Greece, Hong Kong, Uganda, and Sri Lanka (Palmer et al., 1998) suggest that in some cultures and contexts, other experiences such as witnessing environmental degradation may be stronger influences.
Processes of Development Through Significant Experiences An advantage of open-ended surveys and interviews is that they can afford a view of what happens during formative experiences. When Chawla (2007) examined the accounts of environmental activists in Norway and Kentucky, she found that role models in childhood only occasionally gave direct instruction about the importance of protecting nature, but as Carson (1956) proposed, often expressed emotions of fascination and pleasure in nature or disapproval when nature was harmed. This is consistent with the way that young environmental leaders in Nova Scotia described their parents, as supportive of their interests but not “explicit teachers” (Arnold, Cohen, & Warner, 2009).
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth Chawla (1999), Horwitz (1996), Furihata and colleagues (2007), Hsu (2009), and Wright and Wyatt (2008) distinguished influences associated (p. 535) with different stages of the life span. Life paths varied in different contexts, but all five studies found that experiences of natural areas and family members were major influences in childhood and adolescence. Other factors mentioned during this period were teachers, peers, youth organizations, and witnessing environmental destruction. During the university years and early adulthood, education, books, films, travel, student organizations, and friends helped solidify environmental interests and activism. In later adulthood, people increased their knowledge about issues and strategies for action through work or volunteer activities. In both early and later adulthood, nature experiences remained important, including the loss of valued habitats. In their study of emerging natural history interests and vocations, James, Bixler, and Vadala (2010) proposed a model of environmental socialization. It begins with direct, socially facilitated experiences of nature during childhood play and exploration, and proceeds to environmental knowledge, skills, and hobbies that people begin to learn in more formal ways in middle childhood. In adolescence and early adulthood, people prepare for environmental work and volunteering. Together these experiences lead to the formation of an environmental identity that crystallizes in advanced education and skills, and in affiliation with other committed environmental professionals, amateurs, or volunteers. This sequence of experiences is consistent with Figure 28.1, “Factors Associated with Action for the Environment.” It exemplifies a developing knowledge of nature that begins with informal childhood experiences and proceeds to more formal learning about the environment and environmental skills and strategies. This combination of informal and formal learning is associated with both a motivation to protect the environment and a sense of efficacy to do so—conditions that contribute to an environmental identity. Opportunities to experience nature freely in childhood figure prominently in this model and almost all of the preceding studies—suggesting that concern over children’s diminishing contact with nature is justified. Nevertheless, two further observations are evident. If people fail to have outdoor experiences in nature in early or middle childhood, all is not lost. Intense experiences of nature, inspiring mentors, supportive friends, and engaging organizations in adolescence not only reinforce early experiences but also appear to be able to compensate for missed experiences of early free play in nature, for the purposes of action. What emerges are different paths into environmental action, although all involve direct experiences of nature in some way, at some time, as well as some form of social support. As a demonstration that childhood experience of nature may not be sufficient in itself if a supportive social context is lacking, Bixler, Floyd, and Hammitt (2002) surveyed 1,787 middle and high school students in the United States and found that “wildland” play in childhood was sometimes associated with a preference for consumptive activities like riding off-road vehicles rather than nature appreciation. With the exception of witnessing environmental degradation or the loss of a favorite place, the nature experiences that motivate action in all of these studies are positive. But Bixler and colleagues (1994) have documented that not all young people respond to nature positively. When they asked interpreters at urban nature centers to recall student fears during field trips, the interpreters described hundreds of reactions of fear and disgust. When Bögeholz and Rüter (2004, cited in Bögeholz, 2006) compared the impact of positively and negatively perceived nature experiences on intentions to take environmental action in a sample of 265 German 11- to 18-year-olds, negative experiences like nettles, mosquitoes, spiders, and snakes weakened the intention to take action. This impact was less, however, than the intention-promoting impact of positive experiences. These studies underscore the importance of role models who can show children how to use natural areas safely and move beyond reactions of fear or disgust. In the literature on significant experiences, two studies stand out for their methodology of longitudinal observations and interviews. Blizard and Schuster (2004) documented children’s reactions to the loss of a natural area near their elementary school in upstate New York. For many years, children at the school had the opportunity to play during recess in an adjacent natural landscape of woods and fields as well as conventional school grounds, and they used the natural areas intensively for fort building and creative play. A researcher was documenting these activities when one morning everyone arrived at school to discover that the owner of the adjoining land was having it cleared. The children were visibly affected, some bursting into tears and some becoming angry. The researcher explored their feelings in focus groups. Children talked about favorite activities and places that were lost, including favorite trees and rocks, and complained that now recess was boring and there was nothing to (p. 536) do. Observations showed that the children were not, in fact, doing nothing during recess—but now they were more often chasing and wrestling each other. Highly imaginative, constructive play was lost with the woodland. The
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth feelings of attachment to the woods and sense of loss that these children expressed may shed light on why subjects in other studies often remember a favorite childhood place in nature and loss of a beloved habitat as formative experiences. Also working with young children, Owens (2005) did drawings and interviews at the beginning and end of the school year with first-year students in a village school and two urban schools, interviewed staff, and observed school practices, with a focus on the children’s environmental experiences. She also did a case study of an ecoschool. She found that students remembered and valued activities such as gathering autumn leaves, looking for animals, and planting a willow shelter, and when these memories were reinforced by a school ethos of care for the environment, the children expressed their concern to conserve the environment. Older students in the eco-school shared memories of positive experiences in nature with supportive practitioners, with memories extending back to their first year of school.
Strengths and Weaknesses of Significant Life Experience Research Gough (1999) has charged that most studies of significant life experiences are irrelevant because they involve older generations, whereas contemporary young people have incomparable experiences and responses. As a consequence, she claimed, Tanner’s (1980) original goal for these studies—that they may indicate how to foster an informed citizenry who will work actively for the protection of the environment—has no validity. Chawla (2001) defended the value of these studies, which now span several generations of respondents, noting that whether there are generational differences is an empirical question, and if they are occurring, it is important to document them and understand what may be lost and what may be gained as the conditions of children’s lives change. In fact, empirical studies with young people yield responses similar to results with adult samples, although young people now talk about environmental youth groups that were not available to previous generations (Arnold, Cohen, & Warner, 2009; Bögeholz, 1999, cited in Bögeholz, 2006; Kidd & Kidd, 1997; Müller, Kals, & Pansa, 2009; Sivek, 2002). These studies with youth samples suggest that direct encounters with nature, supportive family members, teachers, other mentors, and opportunities to participate in environmental organizations are experiences that remain influential. Another caution related to this field of research is that it is composed of surveys, questionnaires, and interviews that rely on memory, and memory is fallible. Memory research shows that people are indeed often inaccurate about details of life events, but these studies of environmental experiences tap into the type of memories that are most likely to be valid: general accounts of events of personal importance that people describe under conditions of free recall, which were either routine (such as outdoor play in a special childhood place) or distinctive (such as a family camping trip to the Grand Canyon), and which are associated with emotions (Howes, 2007). Although people may misrepresent some details of these experiences, they are unlikely to falsely recall that they did these things. Methods that compare people’s accounts with objective records or that cross-check their stories with family members or friends could address this issue. Background information gathered in this way, in turn, could be shared to prompt more fully developed memories. A more fundamental issue is that people with different environmental values may reconstruct memories differently. People who have come to believe that the environment needs protection may be more likely to recall positive experiences in nature, role models of nature appreciation, and the other types of experiences that recur in study findings. People who ignore environmental problems or oppose environmental protection may forget if they had experiences of these kinds or discount their significance. To address this issue, longitudinal studies are needed that track environmental experiences and behaviors over time. Experiments could also be designed to expose young people to different experiences and then monitor their behavior. This concern for what Neisser (1988) called the “verity” or accuracy of memory is legitimate, but it misses a special dimension of open-ended questionnaires and interviews: they seek to understand people’s own construal of the experiences that motivate their actions. Neisser calls this the “utility” of memory as people interpret the past to apply it to the present and prepare for the future. It is, he claimed, memory’s most important function. To understand how people construct the meaning of memories as they explain to themselves, as well as to others, the sources of their commitment to environmental (p. 537) protection, this type of introspection is an appropriate approach.
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth In the Classroom and into the Field: Behavior Outcomes from Formal Programs for Environmental Learning In research on significant life experiences, people mention “teachers,” “school,” or “education” as an influence on their environmental concern or choice of work in proportions that range from 6% among leaders of Nature Game groups in Japan (Furihata et al., 2007) to 59% among environmental educators in the United Kingdom (Palmer, 1993). In 15 out of 19 study samples that report this data, at least 20% of the respondents say that their actions for the environment were influenced by education in some way. This proportion is notable, but many more respondents mention positive experiences of nature outside of school. In the six studies that involved environmental activists, 65% to 100% say that they were influenced by outdoor play and recreation in nature (Arnold et al., 2009; Chawla, 1999; Hsu, 2009; Sivek, 2002; Sward, 1999; Tanner, 1980). Overall, the influence of formal education is small relative to all the categories of “free-choice learning” outside of school (Falk, 2005) that people refer to, including nature play and discovery, the shock of witnessing environmental destruction, outdoor interactions with family members and friends, participation in environmental organizations, and nature books or films. Nevertheless, formal education plays an important though qualified role in environmental learning, and according to the Tbilisi Declaration (UNESCO, 1978) on environmental education, its ultimate goal is to prepare the type of engaged citizens that people in these studies represent. Therefore, this section will review environmental education research with the goal of identifying the characteristics of programs that encourage conservation behaviors. There has been a running debate in environmental education about whether, and how, education should influence behavior, most of it centered on whether behavior goals should be determined by curriculum designers and teachers and then shaped through behavior modification, or chosen autonomously by students. Authors such as Stapp, Wals, and Stankorb (1996), Hart (1997), Jensen and Schnack (1997), and Short (2010) have argued that societies require citizens who can independently analyze problems, make pro-environmental choices even when doing so challenges social norms, and work collaboratively to find solutions. Therefore, education should cultivate autonomous decision-making as well as collective problem-solving. This ideal for education is consistent with the Tbilisi Declaration, Agenda 21, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the theoretical foundation that this chapter has adopted as its framework.
Earlier Reviews of Environmental Education Research There have been several comprehensive reviews of outcomes associated with environmental education that this chapter can build on, by Leeming, Dwyer, Porter, and Coburn (1993), Zelezny (1999), Rickinson (2001), and Zint (in press). Together they cover peer-reviewed published articles from 1971 through 2008. Leeming et al. (1993) examined 34 studies published from 1974 through 1991 that evaluated changes in environmental attitudes, knowledge, or behavior associated with educational programs in classrooms, camps, parks, or nature centers. Out of the 27 studies that involved young people through grade 12 (age 17), only 4 evaluated behavior. When Zelezny (1999) searched publications from 1971 through 1996 for studies of the effect of educational interventions on environmental behaviors, 8 of the 18 studies she reviewed involved children and adolescents. For the period 1993 through 1999, Rickinson (2001) reviewed articles, books, project reports, and government documents that evaluated school-based environmental education, examining evidence of impacts on student knowledge, attitudes, behavior, perceptions of nature, experiences of learning, and ability to influence parents and communities. He identified five studies that related school programs to behavior. Like Zelezny (1999), Zint (in press) focused on evaluations of behavior change, covering articles in peer-reviewed journals from 1975 through 2009. Eight of the 10 articles she reviewed involved students below college age. One striking observation about these successive reviews is that few studies have investigated the impact of school-based programs on young people’s environmental behaviors. Given the overlapping periods covered, the reviews identify a total of only 17 distinct studies that associate environmental education interventions in primary and secondary school with behavior outcomes. In their initial review, Leeming et al. (1993) noted the disproportionate research emphasis on student knowledge or attitudes rather than behavior, concluding that “this trend is most unfortunate because it is ultimately behavior change that is required to preserve (p. 538) environmental quality” (p. 19). In her recent review, Zint (in press) calculated that out of the 64 outcome evaluations she identified, only 10% evaluated behavior. Another 10% measured changes in skill levels, with 80% focusing on knowledge, values, or attitudes.
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth Only one of these 17 studies documented observed behavior versus self-reported or intended behavior. The difficulty of measuring behavior may partly explain why researchers emphasize easier-to-measure knowledge, attitudes, and values. An early study by Asch and Shore (1975), however, demonstrated that behavior observations can be creatively designed. The study observed the behaviors of 24 randomly selected fifth-grade boys during a weekend visit to a nature center, comparing 12 who had two years of environmental education with 12 from another visiting class. Trained raters who were unfamiliar with the nature of the study noted whether the boys treated the environment responsibly or destructively while they were building a small shelter, making changes to a creek, fishing in a small pond, and planting a vegetable garden. On every task, the experimental group showed significantly more conserving behaviors and the control group significantly more destructive behaviors. The study did not control for possible confounding group effects, such as differences between schools, but it demonstrated that behaviors can be feasibly observed in settings that have ecological validity. Leeming et al. (1993) noted other common methodological weaknesses in environmental education research, in addition to rare attempts to observe behavior directly or to control for group effects. Many studies used measurement instruments constructed specifically for one study, which makes comparisons across studies difficult, or instruments without established reliability and validity, and few studies controlled for experimenter expectancy effects by having a neutral person carry out the outcome measures, or by including long-term follow-up measures. Not only do long-term assessments lessen the likelihood that students will say what they expect experimenters or teachers want to hear, but they also determine whether experiences have a lasting impact. Zint (in press) noted that some researchers responded to the review by Leeming et al. (1993) by using established valid and reliable measures, collecting follow-up data, and controlling for group effects. For future research, she recommended more mixed-method strategies that report both quantitative and qualitative data, more case studies, and collaboration with stakeholders such as teachers, school administrators, or nature center staff to define outcome objectives that most relevantly reflect students’ experiences and program goals, increasing the likelihood that research results will be applied. She also cautioned that it is critical to document how programs are implemented, noting that in two cases where this was assessed, teachers did not carry out all of the intended program activities and this information helped explain the low rates of change in student behavior. In a similar vein, Rickinson (2001) observed that very few studies have closely examined actual processes of learning as they relate to outcomes. He recommended that learners be viewed as active agents rather than as passive subjects of educational treatments, and that in addition to understanding how students respond to different teaching approaches, researchers need to theorize the learning processes that take place. He pointed to theories of participatory learning, such as the work by Rogoff (1990) on learning through observation and participation in meaningful tasks. As noted before, Rogoff’s work on learning through “apprenticeship” fits well within the theoretical framework of ecological psychology that guides this chapter. Within the context of these observations about the existing research base, what do these reviews suggest about the characteristics of programs that are most likely to promote pro-environmental behavior? Zelezny (1999), Rickinson (2001), and Zint (in press) concluded that programs of long duration are more effective than short programs. Programs associated with increased pro-environmental behaviors range from a weekend of activities (Padua & Jacobson, 1993) to two years of environmental education instruction (Asch & Shore, 1975), with most programs lasting a week or more. Rickinson (2001) noted the importance of in-class preparation and reinforcement before and after fieldwork. In-class work extends the duration of a program as well as helping students integrate experiences. Students are also likely to report more environmental behaviors when they are actively involved in the learning process rather than passively receiving information (Leeming et al., 1993; Zelezny, 1999; Zint, in press). Successful programs include experiential learning during service projects, field trips, or the investigation of local issues. The following sections describe educational processes associated with positive behavior outcomes, in studies covered by these reviews and in more recent work. (p. 539)
Classroom-Based Curricula
What distinguishes the studies described in this section is that students work through a predetermined curriculum that is delivered primarily within school walls—although in successful programs associated with increases in proenvironmental behavior, in-class instruction is combined with activities that extend beyond the classroom. A water conservation unit evaluated by Aird and Tomera (1977), for example, gave sixth-grade students two weeks of
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth instruction about water resources and the threat of pollution, at the same time as students were asked to monitor their own water consumption, report back to the class, and discuss how they could conserve water. At the beginning and end of the unit, students in this class and a control group listed what they believed they should do to conserve water and then underlined what they felt they really would do. Students who worked through the unit showed a significantly greater increase in intended conservation behaviors than the control group. Because the post-test was delivered right at the end of instruction, students may have been influenced by teacher expectations. An evaluation of a similar but more extended curriculum by Hanson (1993) suggested that a combination of instruction and activities can have a long-term effect. Hanson compared 1,349 sixth-grade students who had worked through different numbers of units of an energy curriculum for kindergarten through sixth grade, which included a booklet of activities to do at home. Even six years after students completed a unit, the program showed a positive impact on students’ energy knowledge, interest, and conservation behaviors. When Bogner (1999) assessed a year-long conservation education program for Swiss secondary schools that combined classroom instruction about the natural history of a local endangered bird with outdoor observations of the bird, constructing nesting boxes, and writing letters to Senegal, where the bird migrated for the winter, questionnaires administered a week before and four weeks after the curriculum showed that program students expressed a greater increase in their enjoyment of nature and intention to act in environmentally conscious ways than a control group. Several curriculum evaluations show limited impacts on behavior. When Covitt, Gomez-Schmidt, and Zint (2005) compared 535 high school students in the United States who were in an environmental risk curriculum with 305 students in a control group, students who completed the curriculum were more likely to say that they intended to take individual actions to reduce environmental risks. The curriculum had less impact on their intention to participate in collective actions, but a review of the teacher logs revealed that only 3 of the 28 classes enrolled in the curriculum had participated in all of the recommended activities, including a group action project. Thus the potential impact of the curriculum was not fully tested. Kumler (2011) found a similar failure to implement group actions in her assessment of a land use curriculum of about three weeks’ duration in Michigan high schools. Under these conditions, the curriculum failed to affect how many environmental actions students said they had taken or could take, and with few exceptions, students listed what they did as individuals, such as recycling or picking up litter, rather than political actions or information sharing. Rovira (2000) compared students in Spanish primary and secondary schools that were more and less engaged in a global environmental education program. She found that primary school students were more likely to report pro-environmental behaviors than secondary school students, but overall, students’ levels of self-report were determined more by whether they came from working-class or middle-class families than by their school’s level of engagement. These results are similar to those found by Negev and colleagues (2008) when they evaluated environmental education curricula for 6th- and 12th-grade students in Israel. Sixth graders were more likely to report pro-environmental behaviors than 12th graders, but the curriculum had a modest effect on behavior relative to the students’ social class and whether students reported having role models of pro-environmental behavior.
Issue Investigation and Action Training The Issue Investigation and Action Training (IIAT) approach to environmental education comes out of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Southern Illinois University (Hungerford et al., 2003). It also combines classroom instruction with activities, but students often have autonomy in identifying the environmental issues that they want to investigate and address. The approach is grounded in a meta-analysis of factors associated with proenvironmental behavior (Hines, Hungerford, & Tomera, 1986/1987; Hungerford & Volk, 1990), which suggests that people are more likely to take action for the environment if they take ownership of an issue, gather knowledge about it, know action strategies that could address (p. 540) it, and feel confident that they have the necessary action skills. Consistent with this model, students in an IIAT curriculum study environmental issues in depth and design responsive actions. The curriculum exemplifies a process for learning about action, in the terms of McLaren and Hammond (2005). It recommends implementing an action plan, but this is not a required part of the curriculum. As an illustration of the IIAT approach and its assessment, Ramsey, Hungerford, and Tomera (1981) compared the effects on eighth graders of environmental action training with simple instruction for environmental awareness. The action class identified environmental problems and the value positions implicit in them, investigated the problems,
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth learned problem-solving skills, and developed strategies to address two local problems in their school and community. Their teacher got actively involved in the process, encouraging the students’ individual and collective problem-solving. The awareness class engaged in case studies of environmental problems such as endangered species or water management, investigated underlying issues and values, and identified potential solutions, but did not learn action skills or address real problems. Their teacher delivered instruction and information through conventional lectures and demonstrations. A control class had textbook-based science instruction. An open-ended questionnaire asked students to list actions that they thought they could use to help solve environmental problems, and then to list actions they themselves had taken. The three groups did not differ on a pretest, nor did the awareness and control groups differ on a post-test at the end of seven months of instruction. In contrast, on the post-test the group that received action training showed significantly more knowledge of environmental action skills and significantly more self-reported pro-environmental behaviors than either of the other two groups. When parents were sent a questionnaire two months later that asked them to report environmental actions their children had taken during and after instruction, children in the awareness group were reported to take more actions for the environment than the control group, but the action group showed more pro-environmental behaviors than either of the other two groups. According to Hungerford and Volk (1990), Ramsey conducted an unpublished follow-up three years later by sending interviewers to the high school where the original study participants had transferred. Without knowing students’ instructional group, the interviewers found that members of the action group still reported more environmentally appropriate behaviors. A number of other evaluations of this approach have used similar pre-post designs. Jordan, Hungerford, and Tomera (1986) compared high school students who were in either action groups or awareness groups in six-day residential workshops in a nature camp and found that training in environmental action strategies resulted in significantly higher levels of knowledge about potential actions as well as self-reported action. Simpson (1989) found similar differences between fifth and sixth graders who engaged in a 10- to 13-week case study of Canada geese and their habitats, which included IIAT elements, versus a group that received typical science instruction. Working with seventh graders in three states, Ramsey and Hungerford (1989) compared four control groups that received conventional science instruction with four experimental groups that received the IIAT curriculum, using a larger battery of measures that included individual and group locus of control, knowledge of potential environmental actions, self-perceived skill to use environmental actions, and self-reported environmental behaviors. There were no significant differences between groups on pretests, but the IIAT groups performed significantly higher on each measure at the end of the 18-week study period. Ramsey (1993) obtained similar results when he compared eighth graders with 18 weeks of IIAT instruction with a control group that had equally long instruction in physical science. In Illinois and Missouri, Culen and Volk (2000) compared three groups: six classes of seventh and eighth graders who received IIAT instruction during an extended case study of wetlands; four classes with instruction in environmental knowledge and awareness only; and five classes receiving typical science instruction. Pretests revealed no significant differences among the groups, but both experimental groups reported significantly greater knowledge of environmental action skills, self-perceived ability to use skills, and selfreported pro-environmental behavior than the control group, and the group with action instruction reported significantly more pro-environmental behavior than the awareness group. These evaluations are impressive for their consistency in methods, measures, and results, and because they compare students’ independent investigations of environmental issues and processes of planning for action with more conventional approaches to environmental education that simply seek to increase knowledge and awareness. These studies’ (p. 541) limitations are that the behavior measures are based almost exclusively on student self-reports and they lack long-term follow-up assessments, with the exception of the study by Ramsey, Hungerford, and Tomera (1981), which included parents’ reports of their children’s behaviors two months after instruction ended. In this case, it is notable that the parent reports were consistent with the student self-reports. As Rickinson (2001) and Zint (in press) recommended, it would be valuable to supplement such experimental designs with qualitative measures to understand students’ experiences of different learning processes. The most recent published evaluation of this curriculum addresses these recommendations, and in the process highlights potential discrepancies in outcome results, depending on the measurements used. Volk and Cheak (2003) compared fifth- and sixth-grade students in an IIAT program with an action component on the island of Molokai, Hawaii, with classes that followed a traditional curriculum. In fifth grade, students learned how to analyze local environmental issues and conduct independent research, working under the guidance of more experienced
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth sixth graders. In sixth grade, they mentored fifth graders and organized a public symposium to promote environmental problem-solving to create a more sustainable Molokai. On a fixed-response survey that limited respondents to reporting whether they took discrete environmental actions, such as planting a tree or talking to friends about the environment, students in the traditional curriculum scored higher than the IIAT students on the post-test. When students created their own survey, IIAT students reported more environmental actions, and when students, teachers, parents, and community members were interviewed about IIAT students’ accomplishments, they all described high levels of achievement, such as testifying before the state legislature, setting up a recycling program, organizing their families to recycle, and writing editorials for the local paper (actions that were not listed on the standardized behavior survey).
Place-Based Education Place-based education makes the walls between a school and its community permeable by using the local community and environment as an integrating context to teach subjects across the curriculum (Powers, 2004; Sobel, 2005). The school invites resource people from the community into classrooms and sends students out to work on local issues. It is not a new idea: Dewey (1938) recommended experiential learning and many progressive schools have practiced it. Since a 40-school study by Lieberman and Hoody (1998) demonstrated that placebased education increases student engagement in learning, raises student grades and scores on standardized tests, and improves attendance and behavior, there has been a resurgence of interest in this approach. The IIAT curriculum has elements of place-based education when it involves students in investigating local issues, but as a movement, place-based education goes beyond single classrooms and subjects to involve whole schools in the interdisciplinary study of local environments and in projects to improve the school itself or the community. According to a qualitative evaluation of the Jaegerpris Project in Denmark, a form of place-based education that created school-community partnerships to solve local environmental problems, students identified three aspects of this approach as most important: authenticity, as it involves real issues; their participation in forming action plans and making decisions; and their ability to take meaningful actions (Jensen, Kofoed, Uhrenholdt, & Vognsen, 1995). In his portrait of a high school in Oregon where students learn by creating and implementing action plans related to five domains of sustainability, Smith (2011) observed that this approach cultivates a sense of community, care for individuals and the environment, and students’ confidence that they can make a positive difference in the world. Implemented in this way, place-based education exemplifies learning through as well as from action (McLaren & Hammond, 2005). Duffin, Powers, Tremblay, and PEER Associates (2004 ) examined outcomes for schools across New England that belonged to a Place-based Education Evaluation Collaborative (PEEC). Students engaged in activities such as community mapping, creating sustainable schools, studying local forests, and improving local environments. The evaluation was guided by a “dose response” measurement strategy on the premise that the more that schools trained teachers in this approach and offered place-based activities to students, the greater the impacts would be. As predicted, there was a positive correlation between teachers’ level of training and engagement and student outcomes, including civic engagement and stewardship behaviors. Students with more engaged teachers were more likely to say that in the past two months they had done something to take care of their neighborhood or community, either with classmates or on their own time. Duffin et al. (2004) (p. 542) also found that there appears to be a tipping point when place-based learning becomes integrated into the school culture and new teachers adopt it as the school norm. (Survey sample sizes, with some variation per question, were approximately 300 for teachers and 1,400 for students.) A need for time to embed place-based learning in school practices may partly explain the limited outcomes associated with the first year of the introduction of a Green Schools project in western Quebec (Legault & Pelletier, 2000). Schools that joined the project integrated ecological topics across subject areas and involved students in initiatives such as recycling, composting, and energy conservation on the school site. In pre- and post-test comparisons between 85 sixth-grade students in Green Schools versus 99 students in classes that lacked any formal ecological program, students in Green Schools were significantly less likely to say that they engaged in ecological behaviors for extrinsic motives, but otherwise they did not report more pro-environmental behaviors. The Green Schools and PEEC evaluations reflect different goals and measures. Like studies of classroom-based curricula and the IIAT approach that came before them, Legault and Pelletier (2000) surveyed students’
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth performance of discrete environmental behaviors, such as asking for reusable lunch containers or recycled paper. These are similar to measures in many past studies (turning out unneeded lights, turning off the water while brushing teeth, refraining from littering, etc,), which constitute what Stern (2000) called private sphere actions for the environment. Important as these individual choices are, Stern argued that they should not be privileged above other spheres of action that are also vital for the protection of the environment: collective political action and institutional change. In contrast, PEEC adopted a utilization-focused evaluation process that involved schools and community partners in identifying goals and outcome measures (Powers, 2004). The result was a focus on students’ civic engagement and community participation in addition to individual stewardship behaviors. Recent research on sustainable schools (reviewed in Barratt-Hacking, Scott, & Lee, 2010) takes as a given that when students are involved in discussions, decision-making, and action to improve their school and community environments, they are demonstrating the type of responsible citizenship that constitutes both process and outcome measures. This is the principle underlying a case study of a Colorado high school that reduced its electrical energy consumption by half over a six year period (Schelly et al., 2012). The school achieved its shift to a culture of conservation by communicating and modeling sustainable behaviors through its facilities and operations, participatory school governance, and role models such as the principal, teachers, staff, and student leaders. As Volk and Cheak’s (2003) evaluation of the IIAT program on the island of Molokai demonstrated, student behaviors may appear very different through the lens of surveys that offer limited fixed choices of behaviors, open-ended interviews that allow respondents to describe what students have done, or objective measures of what students accomplish. A critical question for future research is whether students in place-based education programs remain environmentally and civically active later in life. Beane, Turner, Jones, and Lipka (1981) showed the potential of a retrospective approach when they assessed the influence of a high school social studies teacher in Pennsylvania who involved his senior classes for four years in assisting the city planning commission in preparing a master plan for anticipated growth. Students’ assignment to his class was effectively random. Thirty years later, Beane and colleagues tracked down alumni from these classes and compared them to high school students who were not part of the planning project but were otherwise similar. Over the intervening 30 years, members of the planning class were four times more likely than nonmembers to have belonged to volunteer civic and service organizations and twice as likely to have been organization officers. This study design could be adapted to evaluate the impacts of place-based education on a range of environmental behaviors over varying intervals of time.
Environmental Service Learning Like place-based education, service learning is commonly community based, and many place-based projects include elements of service. Service learning targets a range of needs that are often social rather than environmental, and it can be the focus of a single class or out-of-school program rather than a whole-school approach. Consistent with assessments of place-based education, evaluations of service learning often show gains in service leadership, defined in terms of awareness of community issues, capacity to develop a project, and commitment to trying to make a difference (Melchior & Bailis, 2002). When it puts social and environmental goals together by preparing young people for sustainable livelihoods that benefit natural habitats and endangered species, it represents a model for (p. 543) environmental education that is especially relevant for low- and middle-income nations. These goals are exemplified by the Roots and Shoots program founded by Jane Goodall, which engages youth in community-centered conservation initiatives, such as sustainable agriculture, to reduce pressure on wildlife habitats. Johnson-Pynn and Johnson (2010) worked with 487 youth, most between the ages of 14 and 20, who were randomly selected from active participants of Roots and Shoots clubs in Tanzania and Wildlife Clubs in Uganda. The clubs were typically school based. Whereas the Wildlife Clubs of Uganda were created by the government to instill pride in the nation’s wildlife and raise awareness about sustainable development, the mission of Roots and Shoots is to encourage young people’s self-determination and community service. The researchers compared outcomes across different program settings, using a Service Experiences Survey and measures of a sense of efficacy and hope, as well as civic attitudes, actions, and skills. Young people also answered open-ended questions about their program activities and involvement. Consistent with their program’s mission, Roots and Shoots members scored significantly higher than Wildlife Club members for service involvement and civic action,
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth and generally reported higher perceptions of self-efficacy and collective efficacy, but youth in both programs gave themselves high ratings for civic action and expressed high levels of satisfaction with their program experiences. In Baja California Sur, Mexico, Schneller (2008) evaluated a year-long secondary school class that sought to engage students as catalysts for community change. Students learned about the region’s environmental problems, explored the local environment, practiced pro-environmental behaviors, and performed public service and outreach, such as cleaning beaches and creeks, talking to people about beach protection, and helping to release newly hatched sea turtles into the ocean. Using a retrospective panel design, Schneller conducted pre- and postclass interviews with 21 students who were selected to participate, as well as post-class interviews with 15 students from the previous cohort who volunteered to enroll when the class was initiated two years earlier. He also interviewed teachers, community leaders, and a convenience sample of parents. Three-quarters of the new graduates from the class said that they had adopted at least one or two new behaviors, such as recycling, composting, water conservation, or not eating sea turtles, and most of the students who were in the class two years earlier reported that they were still practicing new behaviors that they had learned. Of equal importance, more than 70% of each group said that they had talked with their families, with high rates of success in changing family practices, and parents confirmed that these changes occurred. Engaging young people as catalysts for change in their communities is an important element of the environmental service learning model.
Learning at Nature Centers and Forest Schools In some schools, environmental education is concentrated in field trips to parks and nature centers. Several studies suggest that programs that immerse students in extended field experiences can lead to behavior change. Asch and Shore (1975) evaluated a two-year program in Montreal that combined classroom instruction with outdoor experiences at a nature center. An introductory year of classroom-based instruction about the environment included discussions about what the students heard and felt related to environmental problems and research in small groups on environmental issues of their choice. During the subsequent summer and school year, students took field trips to a nature center in different seasons, where they had chances to observe wildlife and take part in soil conservation experiments. As previously noted, boys who had been through this program demonstrated stewardship behaviors in a series of tasks, in contrast to boys in a control group. In an evaluation of nature center programs in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee, Stern, Powell, and Ardoin (2008) gathered students’ self-reports of their sense of connection to nature, interest in learning and discovery, knowledge about the park and biodiversity, and environmental stewardship attitudes and behaviors. Fourth- through seventh-grade students who visited the residential nature center completed these measures at three points in time: immediately on arrival in the park, immediately following the last park activity, and back in the classroom three months later. Ten students from each of 20 different school groups were randomly selected to complete the measures, divided between participants who attended for three days or five days. Students explored issues related to biodiversity conservation and invasive species firsthand and participated in competitions to reduce food waste. At the end of the program, students showed significant gains in all measures. In the follow-up assessment, they retained significant (p. 544) gains in environmental knowledge and stewardship behaviors, although mean scores for these outcomes declined during the three-month period. In the follow-up, students in the five-day program differed from students in the three-day program only in the area of greater environmental knowledge. In a similar evaluation of a five-day residential program on the Chesapeake Bay, Stern, Powell, and Ardoin (2011) tailored pre- and post-surveys to the characteristics of students, who included large samples from low-income families in urban Baltimore, by focusing on a sense of environmental responsibility for home environments and communities. Students were asked whether they were interested in working to make their community a better place and whether they intended to work as a volunteer in their community (immediate post-test) or currently volunteered (three-month follow-up). In two successive years of use, students showed significant gains in a sense of environmental responsibility in the immediate post-test, with significant gains retained three months later only in the second year, after the program made adaptations to more tightly connect program activities to students’ home lives. Gains were especially strong among the urban students, compared to suburban and rural students. In another evaluation of Chesapeake Bay programs, Zint, Kraemer, Northway, and Lim (2002) compared the effects of one-day, three-day, and two-week field trips to the bay, an in-class curriculum, and a curriculum that involved
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth the experiential component of raising juvenile shad in a tank and then releasing them in a local waterway. On adjusted post-test scores, all of the student groups in the experiential programs scored significantly higher than students in the in-class curriculum for their perceived knowledge or skill to take action for the environment or their intention to act. The study included questionnaires sent to former participants in field trips and the in-class curriculum. Former field trip participants were more likely to report knowing how to take action for the environment if they engaged in longer field trips or a combination of field trips, and as a group, former field trip participants were significantly more likely to report taking actions to protect the bay than respondents who had the in-class curriculum. In another assessment of field trip effects, Bogner (1998) compared a one-day and a five-day outdoor ecology program for German secondary school students in a national park. He found that both versions of the program improved environmental knowledge and attitudes, but only the five-day program was associated with increases in students’ stated willingness to plan and take action for the environment. In the five-day group, this gain was still evident in a six-month follow-up. Bogner (1998) and Zint et al. (2002) recommended longer, more indepth field experiences or multiple experiences over time. A study of 255 sixth-grade students who attended three outdoor science schools in California also found gains in knowledge and pro-environmental behaviors, as measured by science scores and parents’ reports of their children’s home behaviors 6 to 10 weeks after the week-long residential program ended (American Institutes for Research, 2005). A delayed treatment design compared half of the group, who attended the program in the fall, with the half who were not going to attend until the following spring. Fifty-six percent of the treatment group, who were mostly Hispanic students from low-income families, stated that they had never spent time in a natural setting before. The principle of immersion in nature is fully realized in forest kindergartens: mixed-age schools where children (typically ages three to six) are outside in a forested setting for all or part of every school day. After developing in Scandinavia, Germany, and the United Kingdom, they have recently been established in the United States. In these settings, children use nature as a home, for eating, sleeping, and playing; as a classroom, for learning and exploring nature; and as a fairyland, for imagination and creative play (Änggård 2010). One of the most relevant findings from research with low-income British children in these settings is that forest kindergartens produced a “ripple effect,” as children and their families who did not previously have much exposure to nature began to seek out nature experiences similar to those in school (Knight, 2009, Murray, 2004, Murray & O’Brien, 2005). Research has not yet examined effects of these programs on stewardship behaviors in early childhood or long term.
Ingredients of Effective Environmental Education Programs Looking back over these evaluations of formal education, it is apparent that despite the relative neglect of research on behavior outcomes, a body of evidence has accumulated that suggests that well-designed programs can increase pro-environmental behaviors among students. Given the limitation that few studies include follow-up measures and that when they do, the assessments are usually made within three months after a program ends, little is known about long-term effects. Nevertheless, the (p. 545) fact that some studies have found behavior change after one year (Schneller, 2008), six years (Hanson, 1993), and 30 years (Beane et al., 1981) gives hope that education can successfully introduce lasting habits of action. More research is needed to understand the conditions under which young people learn and maintain active care for the environment. Three key ingredients are repeatedly evident in effective programs. As Zelezny (1999), Rickinson (2001), and Zint (in press) noted in their reviews, and as this chapter also finds, one ingredient of a program’s effectiveness appears to be an extended duration. The programs that Beane et al. (1981) and Schneller (2008) evaluated involved year-long curricula that combined work in the classroom with activities in the community, and the program that Hanson (1993) assessed distributed curriculum units on energy across kindergarten through sixth grade, with activities to be carried out both at school and at home. Other programs that show behavior change either involve a term or more of instruction or total immersion in field trip experiences for several days. In addition to an extended duration or at least intense immersion in field experiences, these programs share a second key ingredient: they connect learning to the real worlds of students’ homes, communities, or regions. As Leeming et al. (1993), Zelezny (1999), and Zint (in press) also noted, successful programs involve students actively. Evaluations of the IIAT curriculum that compared students’ investigation of local environmental issues and training in action skills with curricula that only emphasized science instruction or environmental knowledge and
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth awareness have repeatedly shown that if pro-environmental behaviors are a goal, students need opportunities to learn action skills (Culen & Volk, 2000; Jordan, Hungerford, & Tomera, 1986; Ramsey, 1993; Ramsey & Hungerford, 1989; Ramsey, Hungerford, & Tomera, 1981; Simpson, 1989; Volk & Cheak, 2003). When students take action at school, at home, in their local environment, or during field work in a natural setting, they can see issues for themselves and the effects of their efforts. For these reasons, place-based education is especially promising, as it is a whole-school approach that seeks to involve students in study and service in the local environment as part of every subject area and in every grade. It embodies the extended duration, investigation of meaningful local issues, and opportunities to practice action that have been associated with effectiveness, and according to the evaluation by Duffin et al. (2004), it is associated with increased stewardship and civic service. The environmental service learning models assessed by Schneller (2008) and Johnson-Pynn and Johnson (2010) demonstrate that in regions characterized by poverty as well as threats to the environment, meaningful action can address social and environmental issues simultaneously.
Stewardship Outcomes from Wilderness Experience Programs Wilderness adventure programs began in the 1940s in Asia and in the 1960s in the United States. These programs have shown growing popularity at the turn of the 21st century, with a burgeoning number of programs that provide challenge, adventure, therapy, and sometimes reflection or stewardship (Dawson et al., 1998; Ewert, 1987; Gasner & Russell, 2008). In 2000, Ewert and McAvoy estimated that more than 700 wilderness organizations provide some form of wilderness experience, with this number growing at a rate of approximately 15% per year. These programs have been categorized as adventure education, wilderness therapy, outdoor experiential education, wilderness experience, and wilderness challenge (Dawson et al., 1998). Most programs are rooted in the philosophy of John Dewey (1938), who believed that all education should come from experience, reflection, and practical skills. These programs typically serve youth ranging from 14 to 25 years in age, in a wilderness setting that provides for interpersonal and intrapersonal growth coupled with any number of additional foci, including intervention, education, leadership, and therapy, as well as personal or technical skills (Friese, 1996). Well-known wilderness programs include Outward Bound, the National Outdoor Leadership School, the Wilderness Education Association, and the Student Conservation Association. Additionally, some Youth Conservation Corps programs provide similar wilderness experiences, typically with a stewardship focus. Programs generally run a minimum of 5 days, and typically 10 or more days. Most programs provide some education about minimizing human impacts on the wilderness area used for the program. These experiences allow for a variety of social and psychological benefits including interpersonal relationships (e.g., group problem-solving and communication), personal development (e.g., self-esteem, self-concept, autonomy, self-awareness, locus of control, spiritual growth), and technical skills development. These benefits of engagement with nature are well documented (Daniel, 2003; Driver et al., 1987; (p. 546) Ewert et al., 2007; Ewert & McAvoy, 2000; Faber Taylor & Kuo, 2006; Gass et al., 2002; Gillett et al., 1991; Hazelworth & Wilson, 1990; Kellert & Derr, 1998; Schuster et al., 2005). Actual benefits of these programs depend on specific program goals (such as therapy, education, or personal growth). Importantly, only those with an educational focus have the goal of influencing environmental knowledge, skills, positive environmental attitudes, or pro-environmental behaviors (Friese, 1996). Less understood is the impact of wilderness experiences on environmental awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. It is assumed that wilderness experiences will promote positive environmental attitudes, awareness, and behaviors, yet this has not been well documented (Ewert et al., 2007). Even more limited is our understanding of how youth might apply wilderness experiences and the values and attitudes they gain to their everyday lived experiences (Haluza-Delay, 2001). The limited evidence that does exist suggests that these can be powerful experiences for adolescents; for some, they are considered among the most influential and worthwhile experiences in a lifetime (Daniel, 2003; Kellert & Derr, 1998). As with the evaluations of formal environmental education, more studies of wilderness experiences have focused on the effects of programs on attitudes, knowledge, and intention to act rather than on actual pro-environmental behaviors. While heightened appreciation for nature and increased knowledge are integral factors associated with action for the environment (Figure 28.1), research on wilderness programs frequently does not take into account the sense of efficacy necessary to take action, or measure actual changes in behavior.
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth A handful of studies have evaluated the impact of wilderness experiences on behavior change. These studies all report similar findings, which are that participants show an increase in pro-environmental behavior, and that program influences diminish over time (Hammit et al., 1995; Kellert & Derr, 1998; Mazze, 2006; Morrison, 2010). Most of these studies record impacts within the first year following programs, and some also examine longer-term effects through retrospective studies. Daniel (2003) conducted retrospective studies with 210 participants of a wilderness expedition offered by Montreat College in North Carolina. Subjects participated in the program anywhere from 1 to 25 years prior to the time of the study. Daniel found that 20% of participants were working in a field related to outdoor education, and that of these, 87% had participated in multiple wilderness experiences, including the program being investigated. Many stated that it was the accumulation of these experiences that contributed to their choice of profession. Because of their repeated experiences in wilderness programs, they did not attribute explicit significance to any one wilderness program in shaping their career path. Morrison (2010) conducted in-depth interviews with 20 alumni from the Wild Rockies Field Institute (WRFI), an outdoor education program that combines wilderness experience with field courses. His research found that the program did result in perceived behavior changes, such as academic or career goals, lifestyle choices, and political involvement. Participants reported significant changes in their environmental awareness and ability to reduce their environmental impact. Haluza-Delay (2001) and Morrison (2010) both touched on the inability of many participants to transfer proenvironmental behaviors learned in a wilderness experience to lived experiences at home: Despite the emphasis on sustainable living, WRFI courses are a product that is consumed. Hence, participants may have a great time on a WRFI course, but do not necessarily walk away with core behaviors changed because they viewed the experience as just a good time in the woods. (Morrison, 2010, p. 114) This disconnect was the focus of Haluza-Delay’s (2001) research with eight youth, ages 14 to 16, who participated in a 12-day wilderness program in Alberta, Canada. Haluza-Delay attended the program as a participant observer and then used semi-structured interviews two weeks and six months following the program to assess how participants responded to nature at home. Most of the teens showed environmental concern and awareness but did not see a link to environmentally responsible behavior back at home. Many youth said they wanted wilderness areas to be preserved but did not see anything natural in their home community and therefore did not engage in any environmental behaviors. Mazze (2006) considered this question in depth when she considered the transference of skills to everyday lived experiences among students of the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). Mazze interviewed 9 NOLS students before, immediately after, and several months following program experiences as well as 10 NOLS alumni who had participated in the program anywhere from 3 to (p. 547) 28 years prior. Mazze found that all subjects were able to transfer some skills to their behaviors at home, with the majority of longitudinal subjects and about half of the retrospective subjects attributing their pro-environmental behaviors directly to the wilderness experience. Changes in behaviors included reducing consumption of goods, electricity, or water; increasing alternative transportation and organic food purchases; and participating in environmentally active groups. Interestingly, prior to the program experience, most longitudinal subjects attributed pro-environmental behaviors to their parents while retrospective subjects attributed their behaviors to other factors, such as NOLS, career choices, and place of residence. Though many alumni said NOLS was one of the most influential events in their lives, only 2 of the 10 subjects attributed their pro-environmental behaviors to their NOLS experience. However, many alumni did state that NOLS was an important catalyst for their current pro-environmental behaviors, and all 19 subjects said that NOLS increased their sense of responsibility toward the environment. Subjects ascribed their motivation to care for the environment to a variety of factors, including the beauty of wilderness areas, the experience of living minimally in the wilderness, the amount of time they spent in the wilderness, increased knowledge and skills in general, and the program’s explicit focus on transferring skills to home. In addition, those alumni who practiced only a few pro-environmental behaviors attributed this not to a lack of desire or concern for doing more, but to constraints in their current setting. Some of the longitudinal subjects thought the experience might influence college curriculum choices or careers; however, this was not measured
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth due to the limited length of the longitudinal study. In general, the wilderness experience provided by NOLS significantly influenced participants’ motivation for pro-environmental behaviors, with greater impact during the short-term experiences of longitudinal subjects than across the long-term experiences of alumni. Kellert and Derr (1998) also found this trend in their comprehensive study of participants of National Outdoor Leadership School, Outward Bound, and Student Conservation Association (SCA) programs. They conducted longitudinal research with 296 participants before, immediately after, and six months after the wilderness experience, as well as retrospective research with 450 individuals who had participated anywhere from one to six or more years ago. Both the longitudinal and retrospective research involved structured, semi-structured, and indepth interviews to evaluate program effects on attitudes, knowledge, and pro-environment behaviors. Both forms of research found that wilderness experience programs had a significant impact on environmental attitudes (with more than 80% expressing increased connection to and affinity for nature). In addition, 72% of retrospective subjects felt the experience had made them more environmentally responsible. Many participants reported elevated feelings of awareness and connection, as exemplified below: After five weeks, I realized that the world is my home, the stars are my roof, the dirt, my floor. I can no longer isolate building life (urban life) from the rest. I know that everything we do affects everything else. The great web. (Kellert & Derr, 1998, p. 19)Before the program my feelings of ethical responsibility and stewardship were just ideals. Through the program, I gained confidence and incentive to actually act on these feelings. Ever since, I have felt a connection with the environment and a desire to continue that stewardship. (Kellert & Derr, 1998, p. 21) Yet when the study asked participants to report their environmental behaviors, only 15–30% of participants in the retrospective study reported increased behaviors in recycling or avoiding products that are environmentally detrimental. Retrospective participants’ membership in conservation or environmental organizations was higher, at 40–60%. Program influence on activist behaviors, such as writing letters, attending meetings, working with citizen groups, or volunteering on behalf of the environment, were low among the retrospective study participants, with most of these behaviors increasing 2–7%. These changes also diminished over time, with those who participated 6 or more years ago showing fewer program influences on behavior than more recent participants. Among organizations, SCA participants reported more significant program impacts on various conservation activities, including interest in community service, volunteering, and environmental education and careers. This is likely due to the stewardship activities and conservation focus of many SCA programs (Kellert & Derr, 1998), and perhaps to a self-selecting bias of those who chose SCA programs over those with different experiential goals. Indeed, part of SCA’s mission statement is to “build the next generation of conservation leaders and inspire lifelong stewardship” (Hoffman, 2004). (p. 548) These findings correlate with the analysis by Dawson and colleagues (1998), which identified varying goals associated with wilderness experience programs. Their analysis revealed that while the majority of programs seek to provide opportunities for personal growth and the transfer of skills learned during the experience to everyday life, only the programs with an educational focus seek to develop responsible behaviors and advocacy for the environment (Friese, 1996; Dawson et al., 1998; Adkins & Simmons, 2002). Even for wilderness experience programs that do have a primary focus of education, significant differences exist in the extent to which these programs identify increases in responsible behaviors as an explicit program goal (Dawson et al., 1998). Programs that emphasize stewardship behaviors during the program experience have greater long-term impacts on behavior change at home, as Kellert and Derr (1998) found for SCA programs and Mazze (2006) found for NOLS. While many programs have the goal of transferring skills to home life, the emphasis largely has been on transferring personal and social skills rather than pro-environmental behaviors (Dawson et al., 1998). In their analysis, Dawson and colleagues (1998) further found that “wilderness” (defined as areas with conditions consistent with those set forth in the 1964 Federal Wilderness Act) is an essential component in successful wilderness experience programs, and that regardless of whether a program had an explicit educational focus, the remote and wild characteristics of wilderness that allow youth to “get away” from everyday life create an inherent disconnect when youth return back home. That youth connect to the essential nature of “wilderness” without necessarily gaining transferable skills leads to an important question: Will youth come to see nature as a medium to be used for personal growth and benefit, or will it also be respected and cared for? As Morrison (2010)
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth emphasized, though a program may include sustainable living in its ideals, participants more frequently may come away from an experience as a “good time in the woods” rather than with any lasting change in core behaviors. Wilderness, then, becomes a product for consumption, a means to personal growth and benefit, rather than something to be responsible for through everyday actions. This is a potentially significant shortcoming in program execution. Wilderness programs with an educational focus might do more to bridge this disconnect between the wilderness experience and the ability to act on behalf of the environment once at home. As Mazze’s (2006) research showed, an explicit emphasis on transferability can be a powerful motivation for behavior change. For research, the implication is that transferability to home life constitutes one of the most significant and least understood aspects of wilderness program evaluation. Research that considers the transferability of experience, the impact of single programs versus repeated experiences, and influences on sustaining long-term changes in pro-environmental behaviors would help address this important aspect of conservation psychology.
Implications for Research and Practice This concluding section asks the questions: What do the different bodies of research that have been reviewed in this chapter tell us that can be applied to promote the development of active care for the environment? What are their implications for different fields of practice that shape children’s experience of the environment? How can further research enable us to answer these questions more effectively?
Implications for Education, Planning, and Design Existing research suggests that if societies seek to achieve a sustainable world where not only will people act to protect the biosphere today but also future generations will value this goal and work for its achievement, then children need to be provided with regular access to nature. Research has linked a background of childhood play in nature with every form of care for the environment: informed citizen action, volunteerism, public support for proenvironmental policies, environmental career choices, and private-sphere behaviors like buying green products, conserving energy, and recycling. For the fields of planning, architecture, landscape architecture, real estate development, parks and recreation, wilderness management, and education, this means weaving natural areas for play, exploration, and experiential learning into the fabric of children’s lives at every scale: from housing sites and the yards of child care centers and nursery schools, to naturalized schoolyards and gardens, to greenways where children can travel safely to school and other community resources, to networks of parks, to opportunities for wilderness adventure. This recommendation is consistent with biophilic design principles, which seek to connect people to nature and their local landscapes (Kellert, Heerwagen, & Mador, 2008; Moore & Cooper Marcus, 2008). This recommendation assumes places of graduated risk, where challenges in the environment (p. 549) match children’s developing capabilities to identify and negotiate risks. As Tovey (2007) noted, children gain competence and autonomy by learning to understand and overcome challenges. Ironically, while parents and school administrators often try to prevent children from taking risks such as climbing trees, accident data show that children are much more likely to be seriously hurt or killed in the built environments of the home, in cars, and on local streets with traffic (Centers for Disease Control, 2011). Risks that children cannot manage include those they cannot see, such as toxins in soil, air and water. Children’s developing bodies, for example, are especially vulnerable to the herbicides and insecticides often used on lawns and gardens (American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Environmental Health, 2003; President’s Cancer Panel, 2010; Steingraber, 2011). Access to nature needs to allow for appropriate challenges while protecting children from unmanageable and invisible risks. Along with regular access to nature, the research reviewed in this chapter indicates the importance of social support for the development of care for the environment. Research on formative experiences of environmentally active adolescents and adults repeatedly shows the role of parents and other family members who model care for nature and encourage their child’s interests, as well as friends, teachers, and mentors in environmental clubs or organizations. James, Bixler, and Vadala (2010) observed that while an interest in nature and a commitment to its protection may begin with direct, socially facilitated experiences of nature through free play and discovery, in middle childhood and adolescence young people need opportunities to extend their environmental knowledge and skills in more formal ways. In addition to a tapestry of nature in different spaces of their lives, children need people who can help them appreciate and understand what they find there.
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth Evaluations of formal programs for environmental education and wilderness programs for youth also point to these conclusions. They indicate the importance of immersion in nature through field trips to parks or nature centers, excursions beyond school walls through place-based education or environmental service learning, and wilderness adventures. Research on wilderness programs for youth also indicates the importance of repeated, accumulated experiences and opportunities for young people to transfer what they learn in distant places to responsible environmental practices when they return home. Bixler, James, and Vadala (2011) gave detailed recommendations for how interpretive naturalists can apply research findings to have the greatest possible impact on children and youth in their programs—and their suggestions can be applied to other domains of work with children as well. Another research conclusion is that it is important to give young people opportunities to learn about, through, and from action (McLaren & Hammond, 2005). As this chapter’s review of evaluations of the IIAT approach to environmental education showed, conventional teaching about science and environmental problems is not sufficient to promote environmentally responsible behaviors: students need opportunities to learn action skills. They also need opportunities to apply these skills to issues that they find personally relevant. Place-based education, environmental service learning, nature centers, and wilderness programs can engage young people in activities that form both process and goal: enabling young people to exercise active citizenship as they encounter and address environmental issues firsthand.
Directions for Future Research These research results are consistent with the theories of child and youth development that form the framework for this chapter. Ecological psychology helps explain the significance of free play in nature in childhood as well as the importance of processes of joint attention when children explore nature with family members, friends, teachers, or other guides (Chawla, 2007). The social learning theory of Bandura (1997), which identifies key processes that contribute to children’s sense of competence, can be applied to competence in environmental care and problemsolving (Chawla, 2009; Heft & Chawla, 2006). The model of achievement motivation of Eccles and Wigfield (2002) is relevant to the development of an environmental identity, which includes a feeling of connection to nature and may include care for the environment as part of a person’s goals and self-definition (Chawla, 2009; Clayton, 2003). Rickinson (2001) and Zint (in press) noted that research about young people’s environmental learning and behavior needs to be guided by a theoretical framework to build coherent narratives that can be meaningfully applied in practice. These theories are offered as an appropriate framework. By showing how knowledge, feelings, values, and action are connected, they suggest how to bring more balance to environmental education research, which has been dominated by a focus on (p. 550) knowledge, values, and attitudes at the expense of behavior. Consistent with the need for a theoretical structure, Rickinson (2001) and Zint (in press) also recommended more qualitative studies that can provide insight into processes of learning and how young people themselves interpret experiences. If increased care for the environment is associated with a particular program in a school, nature center, or wilderness expedition, what happens that makes the difference? Do program activities embody the processes that theories would predict? What experiences do children, teachers, program leaders, and parents consider most formative and why? According to young people themselves, how do they develop a sense of affinity with nature and learn to express it in action? To answer these questions, observations, interviews, and qualitative methods, such as photography, drawing, journaling, and program logs, can complement quantitative measures of behavior change. These methods can also serve as a means to verify which program goals and curriculum plans are actually implemented in practice. Three studies by Rickinson, Lundholm, and Hopwood (2009) demonstrated the importance of hearing students’ own perspectives of environmental learning experiences. Ideally, qualitative and quantitative measures progress together, as Hsu (2009) demonstrated when he used interviews and open-ended questions to identify key items for a fixed-response survey with a larger population. When statistically significant differences emerge between groups that exhibit greater or less care for the environment, qualitative research can be used again to better understand experiences that explain these differences. Not only are observational methods integral to qualitative descriptions of young people’s environmental learning, but they also can address a current weakness of most research in this field, which is its primary reliance on selfreport or reports by parents or teachers about young people’s behavior. As the quasi-experimental design by Asch and Shore (1975) demonstrated, and as Camargo and Shavelson (2009) suggested, situations can be created
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The Development of Conservation Behaviors in Childhood and Youth where it is practical to directly observe young people’s treatment of the environment. As Blizard and Schuster (2004) showed, case studies can include repeated observations that follow how children respond to events in the environment over time. Future research also needs to include more long-term, longitudinal, and retrospective assessments. Through their account of Ramsey’s work, Hungerford and Volk (1990) suggested how students can be tracked longitudinally as they move through grades. Another approach is a panel design, such as Schneller (2008) used to compare different cohorts of young people. Retrospective pretests can ask young people what they believe their level of action was before embarking on a program—a method with demonstrated validity (Pratt, McGuigan, & Katzev, 2000). Long-term assessments are necessary to understand whether behavior changes are lasting, to compare the effects of a single program experience versus repeated experiences, and to determine whether young people can transfer conservation practices learned in a special setting like the wilderness or a nature center back to everyday life when they return home. As Beane and colleagues (1981) have shown, sometimes it is possible to contact people years after they experienced a special environmental program in childhood or youth to determine whether they became more environmentally or civically engaged than others in their cohort. Similarly, Zint and colleagues (2002) used questionnaires to compare former participants in Chesapeake Bay field trips with former students in an in-class curriculum. Wells and Lekies (2006) have used survey data to connect adult levels of pro-environmental behaviors with childhood experiences, including free play in nature. More retrospective and correlational studies like these are needed to understand experiences that encourage pro-environmental behaviors over time. Given concerns that many children no longer experience nature directly, it is important to understand the impact of vicarious experiences of nature through media. When do images of nature leave children with feelings of fear and powerlessness, or a sense of connection with nature and a motivation to conserve it? Can media augment children’s skills for taking action? Kahn (2010) suggested in his book Technological Nature that “(media)ted” nature may not substitute for direct experience but may encourage care for nature nonetheless, but how this can be achieved is an area for future research. In an increasingly urban world, how can media and opportunities to experience nature directly in schoolyards and urban parks be used together to reduce the feelings of fear and discomfort in nature that urban children often express? Finally, the research covered in this chapter has been largely limited to high-income countries in North America, Western Europe, and Asia Pacific. Although high levels of consumption in these regions of the world have a disproportionate impact on the (p. 551) environment and it is important for young people in these regions to become environmentally aware and engaged, most population growth is occurring in low- and middle-income countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where many hot spots of threatened biodiversity are located. It is critical to invest more research in these parts of the world. As the studies by Johnson-Pynn and Johnson (2010) in Tanzania and Uganda and by Schneller (2008) in Mexico have demonstrated, environmental service learning is an approach that can simultaneously address environmental protection and people’s needs for livelihoods. How to most effectively support youth initiatives to develop sustainable livelihoods should be a future research emphasis. The theme of this chapter has been how children learn to act for the benefit of the environment. In closing, it is possible to observe that providing the conditions for this learning is a win-win objective. One condition for the development of care for the environment is access to nature, but as the beginning of this chapter noted, contact with nature has the “windfall” benefit of supporting children’s physical and mental health and positive social relations. Creating a mosaic of green spaces around homes, schools, and communities can not only provide young people with grounds for environmental learning but also offer restorative spaces for children and adults and habitats for diverse species. A second condition for learning care for the environment is to enable children and youth to take action for the environment through their schools or programs for service learning or wilderness adventure. These opportunities for action can not only increase young people’s sense of competence and feeling of value in the context of meaningful action, but yield tangible gains for their communities. Creating conditions for children to learn to care for the environment has the potential to benefit not only children but all ages and all other living things as well.
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior
Oxford Handbooks Online Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior P. Wesley Schultz and Florian G. Kaiser The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology, Health Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0029
Abstract and Keywords AbstractAchieving a sustainable future will require changes in behavior, and recent analyses have shown the importance of a behavioral perspective in addressing environmental issues. This chapter reviews the large and rapidly growing body of psychological research aimed at understanding and promoting pro-environmental behavior. The behavior change research is organized into approaches that focus on the person and those that focus on the context. Person-level approaches include information campaigns, along with approaches that target egoistic, social-altruistic, and biospheric motivational bases of behavior. Context-level approaches have generally focused on convenience and structural barriers, but new research is examining the role of contextual variables in activating or enhancing personal motivations. The chapter concludes with a discussion of practical considerations, including behavior selection, rebound effects, and spillover. Keywords: pro-environmental behavior, conservation, behavior change, person-level approaches, context-level approaches, environmental education, social marketing
Introduction Humans stand at the tipping point, brought about by our unsustainable use of natural resources. While human activity has always affected the local natural environment, these effects are magnified by the number of people living on the planet, and by the technology used to support our lifestyles. Fortunately, people can change. Behavior can change. Technology can change. Given the link between environmental problems and human behavior, any solution will require that people do things differently. While solutions will take a variety of pathways—from political, technological, community-based programs, or individual choices—any solution to environmental problems will require changes in behavior (Midden, Kaiser, & McCalley, 2007). This chapter summarizes the theories and research findings from more than 40 years of work on pro-environmental behavior. Our aim in this chapter is not to advocate for a specific approach, but rather to provide a broad overview of the various approaches, theoretical foundations, and limitations. We begin by making a case for the importance of a behavioral perspective in understanding and solving environmental problems. While this is probably not an issue for most readers of this volume, it is certainly a major issue outside of psychology (Kazdin, 2009). Following this brief introduction, we then proceed to summarize the major approaches that have been used to understand and promote pro-environmental behavior. In organizing these models, we differentiate between approaches that focus on the person, and those that focus on the context.
The Behavioral Wedge
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior Given the complexity and scale of environmental problems, what can we reasonably expect to achieve with a behavioral perspective? Several previous (p. 557) papers have highlighted the importance of policy changes, changes in corporate practices, or advances in technology in promoting large-scale changes in pro-environmental behavior (Midden, Kaiser, & McCalley, 2007; Oskamp, 2000; Stern, 2000a). So what can we reasonably expect to achieve by focusing on the individual? In their analysis of various approaches to curtail carbon emissions, Dietz et al. (2009) concluded that behavioral interventions in the United States could save an estimated 123 million metric tons of carbon per year, which corresponds to 20% of residential emissions and 7.4% of US national emissions. Their analysis focused on 17 specific household actions, in five behavioral categories. The five behavioral domains include weatherization, utilizing more efficient modes of transportation and residential equipment, maintaining residential equipment, adjusting residential equipment, and modifying daily use practices (WEMAD). For each of the 17 specific household actions, they estimated the plasticity—that is, likelihood that the behavior can be changed. The plasticity estimates were derived from a review of the empirical literature on each behavior, from which they selected the best practice. By combining estimates for the carbon emissions, linked with each of the 17 behaviors and estimated plasticity derived from their review of the existing behavioral research, the authors were able to calculate realistically achievable emissions reductions (RAER) in both metric tons of carbon emitted per year and relative percentage. The categories and results are summarized in Table 29.1. The bottom-line message is that behavior matters. In terms of total carbon emissions, behavior represents a substantial portion (i.e., the wedge of the carbon pie). Importantly, these realistically achievable emissions reductions can come about quickly, without the need for new policies or technologies, which can take years to develop and implement. Furthermore, these changes can be brought about with little or no reduction in household well-being.
What Do We Mean by Pro-Environmental Behavior? Throughout this chapter, we have chosen to use the term “pro-environmental behavior.” And while the term may be intuitively clear, the literature is replete with similar terms and emphases: conservation, sustainability, efficiency, environmental protection, and preservation, to name a few. Indeed, defining the types of behaviors that are considered pro-environmental has proven quite difficult. First, there are changing standards for what is proenvironmental, and behaviors that are considered pro-environmental today could potentially be considered environmentally harmful in the future. So in this regard, pro-environmental behavior is culturally and historically prescribed. Second, the impact of a behavior on the natural environment must be considered in relation to other actions, and pro-environmental is therefore a relative term. All human behavior exerts some impact on the natural environment, but some actions have a bigger impact than others. Breathing emits carbon dioxide, as does riding a bus, or driving a car. But walking to work emits less carbon than does riding the bus, which in turn emits less carbon per person than driving a car. But even driving a car could be considered pro-environmental compared with taking a private jet. The point here is that what is considered pro-environmental must be considered in relationship to other possible actions, and there is no absolute standard for determining what is pro-environmental.
An Impact-Oriented Approach Two dominant approaches have been used to study pro-environmental behavior: one focused on impact, and a second focused on intention (Stern, 2000b). On the one hand, pro-environmental behavior can be approached from an impact orientation perspective (Steg & Vlek, 2009). From this perspective, the term “pro-environmental” refers to behaviors that contribute to the sustainability of the natural environment. For example, pro-environmental behavior can include conservation of resources such as water or energy, or reductions in pollution. The definition emphasizes the outcome of the behavior, rather than the motivation behind it. From this perspective, a person’s intentions can often deviate from reality, and while a person may aim to engage in a pro-environmental behavior, they often fail to engage in actions that have an environmentally significant consequence (Whitmarsh, 2009). The impact-oriented approach makes no assumptions about underlying motivations, such that a person can engage in a pro-environmental behavior for non-environmental reasons. In addition, the approach is relative, in that these are behaviors that “contribute” to environmental protection. As pointed out above, there is no absolute standard for determining whether a behavior has a large or small environmental impact, so the emphasis for
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior impact-oriented researchers is on behaviors that move the individual in the direction of a smaller impact. (p. 558) Table 29.1 Behavior change
Category*
Potential emissions reduction (MtC)†
Behavioral plasticity (%)‡
RAER (MtC)§
RAER (%I/H)§
Weatherization
W
25.2
90
21.2
3.39
HVAC equipment
W
12.2
80
10.7
1.72
Low-flow showerheads
E
1.4
80
1.1
0.18
Efficient water heater
E
6.7
80
5.4
0.86
Appliances
E
14.7
80
11.7
1.87
Low-rollingresistance tires
E
7.4
80
6.5
1.05
Fuel-efficient vehicle
E
56.3
50
31.4
5.02
Change HVAC air filters
M
8.7
30
3.7
0.59
Tune up AC
M
3.0
30
1.4
0.22
Routine auto maintenance
M
8.6
30
4.1
0.66
Laundry temperature
A
0.5
35
0.2
0.04
Water heater temperature
A
2.9
35
1.0
0.17
Standby electricity
D
9.2
35
3.2
0.52
Thermostat setbacks
D
10.1
35
4.5
0.71
Line drying
D
6.0
35
2.2
0.35
Driving behavior
D
24.1
25
7.7
1.23
Carpooling and trip-chaining
D
36.1
15
6.4
1.02
123
20
Totals
233
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior (*) See text for definitions of categories W, E, M, A, and D. (†) Effect of change from the current level of penetration to 100% penetration, corrected for double counting. Measured in millions of metric tons of carbon (MtC). (‡) Percentage of the relevant population that has not yet adopted an action that will adopt it by year 10 with the most effective interventions. (§) Reduction in national CO2 emissions at year 10 due to the behavioral change from plasticity, expressed in MtC/year saved and as a percentage of total US individual/household sector emissions (%I/H). Both estimates are corrected for double counting. Source: Dietz et al. (2009) And finally, the approach embraces the term “sustainability,” which refers to the ability of the natural environment to continue in its present form for an indefinite period of time. While sustainability is certainly a philosophical impossibility (only the future can determine whether an action is indeed sustainable), it is used in this context as a goal for evaluating the relative impact of different behaviors (Schmuck & Schultz, 2002).
Intention-Orientation The second approach for studying pro-environmental behavior has taken an intention-orientation, and thereby defined it as the degree to which the person wants to produce a positive environmental outcome (Kaiser, 1998). From this perspective, what is important is the underlying motivational basis for a person’s actions (Kaiser & Wilson, 2000, 2004). In their goal-directed theory of behavior, Kaiser et al., (2007) suggested that proenvironmental behaviors can be arrayed along a single motivational dimension, ranging from easy to difficult. At the core is a person’s motivation to protect the natural environment, which can be deduced from his or her actions (Kaiser et al., 2010). The more strongly motivated the person is to protect the environment, the more (p. 559) barriers he or she will overcome in an attempt to achieve this goal. A pro-environmental behavior is thus defined from this perspective as: a behavior intended to contribute toward the sustainability of the natural environment.
Domains of Pro-Environmental Behavior As a starting point to understanding pro-environmental behavior, it is useful to provide a classification of the many behavioral domains. Such domains can range from actions in the political arena, or environmental activism, to private-sphere behaviors, and behaviors at work or within an organizational structure (Stern, 2000b). Our focus in this chapter will be on the behaviors most frequently studied in psychological research on pro-environmental behavior, including personal use, purchase, or disposal of products. Importantly, this focus reflects the research that has been conducted by behavioral scientists over the past 40 years and is not exhaustive of the many environmental problems that we face. Indeed, it’s likely that new issues and behaviors will emerge in the future. Under the umbrella heading of pro-environmental behavior, it is useful to differentiate between two classes: curtailment and efficiency (Gardner & Stern, 1996; Stern & Gardner, 1981). Curtailment behaviors involve changes in routine; they are recurring behaviors that can produce a reduction in consumption. Examples include turning off lights when leaving a room, turning town the home heating system at night, recycling newspapers, or using nontoxic household cleaning products. Efficiency behaviors, on the other hand, refer to one-time actions that result in reduced consumption. Examples include choosing to reside in a community near your place of employment to avoid driving a private vehicle every day, installing extra home insulation, or purchasing a more efficient automobile. While efficiency behaviors generally occur only once, they often have a large proenvironmental effect. Indeed, installing a more efficient home washing machine is likely to produce greater reductions in electricity use than maximizing one’s use of a less efficient appliance. However, it is also important to point out that just installing more efficient technologies does not guarantee a pro-environmental outcome (see section below on rebound effects). Psychological research on pro-environmental behavior has examined a range of specific behaviors. Table 29.2 shows a list of some of the many behaviors that have been studied, classified into different domains. As noted above, these represent only behaviors in the private sphere, and while psychological research has examined
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior other behavioral domains, these are not the focus of the current chapter.
The Person or the Context? In recent years, the field of environmental psychology has devoted an increasing amount of attention to the behavioral aspects of environmental problems (Giuliani & Scopelliti, 2009). While certainly there has been a longstanding interest among environmental psychologists in pro-environmental behavior (Altman & Rogoff, 1987; Darley & Gilbert, 1985), the past 10 years have witnessed a dramatic growth in research on environmental problems (Winkel, Saegert, & Evans, 2009). The growing interest in the role of human behavior in understanding and solving these problems has prompted a resurgent interest in the field. But what is surprising about this resurgence is its disconnect with traditional views of environmental psychology as the “scientific study of the interplay between human behaviour and its environmental settings” (Craik, 1973, p. 403). The important contribution of classic environmental psychology is the role of physical context in determining behavior. That is, environmental psychology arose in response to a broader psychological discipline that overemphasized person-level variables, and underestimated (or excluded entirely) contextual level variables. While social psychologists emphasized the interpersonal context of behavior, environmental psychologists emphasized the physical context—both built and natural (but primarily built). Given the traditional emphasis of environmental psychology on physical environments, the study of proenvironmental behavior was not an easy fit. Studies of natural experiences, zoos, or environmental hazards fit easily with the boundaries of environmental psychology, but understanding and promoting pro-environmental behavior did not fit so easily. Today the study of pro-environmental behavior has become a core area within environmental psychology, and the leading journals and volumes regularly publish articles in this area. While the physical context of these behaviors is certainly important, equally important are the individual-level attitudes, beliefs, and motivations. Research on these topics has drawn heavily on social psychological theories and methods, and blurred the boundaries between social and environmental psychology (Clayton & Brook, 2005). This handbook represents the melding of these research traditions—it is about environmental (p. 560) Table 29.2 Environmentally Relevant Behaviors Waste Disposal • Litter and littering • Recycling (paper, plastic, metals, glass, green waste) • Hazardous waste disposal (batteries, electronic, paint, household cleansers, medicines) • Composting • Reusing items Residential Resource Conservation • Electricity use • Home heating and cooling • Water use • Installing solar panels Consumption Page 5 of 31
Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior Consumption • Purchasing recycled content • Nontoxic household products (cleansers, pesticides, fertilizers) • Purchasing efficient appliances • Food choices, including growing own food, eating lower on the food chain, purchasing locally grown food • Purchasing more sustainable products (e.g., produced locally, organic, or made from renewable materials) Transportation • Automobile use • Carpooling • Mass transit • Walking, biking • Air travel Lifestyle choices • Choosing where to live • Yard and home characteristics • Family size psychology (in the traditional sense) and conservation psychology with its focus on pro-environmental attitudes and behavior. In the sections that follow, we examine psychological research aimed at promoting proenvironmental behavior. Our emphasis is on specific theoretical models and research findings, and we organize this work into person-oriented and context-oriented approaches. In many ways, this tension between personoriented and context-oriented perspectives has a long history in environmental psychology (Magnusson, 1981; Craik, 1981). Most of the behavioral work on environmental problems conducted to date has taken a personoriented approach, emphasizing the role of values, attitudes, beliefs, and motives in promoting pro-environmental behavior. However, we also see a growing interest in the context-oriented approach, in which pro-environmental behavior is seen as largely a product of the physical environment in which it occurs.
Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior—The Person By far, the most common psychological approach to promoting pro-environmental behavior focuses on changing the person. In the public arena, such approaches are referred to as “campaigns,” “raising awareness,” “outreach,” or “education.” The fundamental premise behind this approach is that individuals fail to engage in proenvironmental behavior because they lack sufficient knowledge and motivation. They just don’t care, aren’t aware of the harmful consequences of their actions, don’t know what to do, or aren’t sufficiently motivated to take action.
Information Campaigns From the earliest days of the environmental movement, environmental psychologists have been skeptical that factual information would be sufficient to change behavior. Indeed, evidence from 40 years of research has clearly
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior shown that information alone generally fails to promote changes in pro-environmental behavior (Abrahamse et al., 2005; Geller, 2002; McKenzie-Mohr, 2000; Skinner, 1987). Fact-based messages about the severity of a problem, announcements about the availability of a program, or lists of the “easy ways” that individuals can help are unlikely to produce substantial changes in behavior. In essence, these types of messages do little to alter the underlying motivational basis for engaging in the behavior. As Joule, Girandola, and Bernard (2007) put it, “Information and persuasion are…not sufficient on their own” to change behavior (p. 494). As an illustration of this point, Schultz (2002) reviewed studies using a knowledge-deficit model to promote proenvironmental behavior. The (flawed) assumption behind this model is that lack of behavior results from a lack of knowledge: if people only knew better, they would surely engage in the desired behavior. The existing research suggests that fact-based messages generally do result in an increase in (p. 561) knowledge; that is, people know more about the topic after receiving the information. In addition, individuals who are more knowledgeable about the topic are more likely to engage in the desired behavior; that is, knowledge and behavior are correlated. However, the experimental evidence suggests that changing knowledge generally does not produce changes in behavior. Exceptions to this basic finding can be found for new issues or programs, or when there is evidence that a target population is generally not familiar with an issue or program (McKenzie-Mohr, 2011; McKenzie-Mohr et al., 2012). Unfortunately, there are many notable examples of information-based campaigns that have failed to produce substantial changes in behavior. For example, a $200 million advertising campaign in California was launched to encourage residents to install energy-efficient devices in their homes and to adopt curtailment behaviors, such as closing window blinds on sunny days. Yet despite the large budget, the campaign failed to produce meaningful changes in behavior (Hirst, 1984). Similar evidence comes from a number of other large-scale campaigns (Brown, 2009). As a case in point, California conducted a 10-year FlexYourPower campaign from 2001 through 2010. Funded at approximately $50 million per year, the campaign aimed to educate California businesses and residents through marketing and outreach. Despite political accolades, the data suggest that it generated very little in the way of behavior change (Opinion Dynamics, 2008, 2010). Similar results have been reported for other outreach campaigns, such as Canada’s national One Tonne Challenge campaign (Environment Canada, 2006). While such media campaigns are generally effective at raising awareness, or increasing knowledge, they rarely result in durable behavior changes. Even when such information is framed to highlight the financial savings of an activity, the results are disappointing (Costanzo et al., 1986; to clarify, this example refers to the framing of a behavior as financially beneficial. See below for examples of effectively changing behavior by offering financial incentives). There is also evidence that even when information-based messages are effective at changing behavior, the effects tend to diminish over time. For example, Joireman et al., (2009) conducted a series of lab-based studies on the impact of messages warning about the depletion of a natural resource. Such warnings are not uncommon in the media, and they are generally intended to spur conservation. The issue is found especially in water conservation messages in locations where freshwater is in short supply. Using a resource dilemma framework in which individuals choose to harvest from a shared resource across multiple trials, the researchers presented participants with a warning that the common resource was running out. Such messages produced a short-term reduction in consumption, and the effect was particularly strong under conditions where the participants were told the resources would last for only a short period of time. Unfortunately, across the trials, the harvesting quickly returned to pre-alarm levels, as the warning about a dwindling resource began to wear off.
Egoistic, Social-Altruistic, and Biospheric Motivations In the preceding section, we have suggested that information-based campaigns are generally not effective at promoting pro-environmental behavior. Even when such messages are tied to warnings that a natural resource is about to be exhausted, or with information framing the behavior in terms of cost savings, information alone is generally not sufficient to motivate changes in behavior. Consider the case of information about energy consumption at home. Providing residents with information that using their air conditioner on a hot day could cost them 36 cents per hour might be motivational for a few low-income households, but for most households in the United States this message is not motivational (Schultz, 2010; there is even some evidence that this type of financial framing can produce unintended increases in consumption; see below). Fortunately, there are a number of strategies that have been shown to produce significant changes in behavior (Osbaldiston & Schott, 2012). In the sections that follow, we organize these approaches according to their
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior motivational basis: egoistic, social-altruistic, or biospheric (Stern, 2000b). Previous studies have suggested that each of these can provide a motivational foundation for environmental concern and pro-environmental behavior, and the motivations have been integrated into a broader value-belief-norm model (Stern, 2000b). An egoistic motivational basis is grounded in self-interest, and behavior is motivated by the personal pursuit of reinforcement or the avoidance of an aversive consequence. Social-altruistic motivation reflects the social embeddedness of the person, and the desire to engage in socially responsible actions. Finally, the biospheric motivation reflects a desire to engage in actions that protect the natural environment (Schultz, 2001; Schultz et al., 2005). According to (p. 562) the value-belief-norm model, each of these motivational bases can lead to pro-environmental behavior under the right conditions (Steg, Dreijerink, & Abrahamse, 2005).
Egoistic Approaches to Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior: Self-Interest Behavior analysis is one of the most widely used—and most effective—approaches to promoting pro-environmental behavior. Behavior analysis is rooted in the principles of operant conditioning, and traces its origins to the work of B. F. Skinner (1958, 1971). The approach has been used widely across many domains of applied psychology, including efforts to promote pro-environmental behavior. As Geller (2002) summarized the approach: The behavior-based approach focuses on observing what people do, analyzes why they do it, and then applies a research-supported intervention strategy to improve what people do. (p. 527) The behavior analytic approach to changing behavior emphasizes observable actions and contextual variables that can be manipulated to promote changes in behavior (Geller, 1987). It is about “acting people into thinking differently” (Geller, 2002, p. 528). Behavior analysis focuses on three aspects of behavior: activator, behavior, and consequence. • Activator: Activators are events that precede the behavior; that is, they are antecedent factors. Examples of activators include instructional interventions, prompts, posted informational messages, or motivational messages. • Behavior: An observable response. • Consequence: An extrinsic stimulus that occurs in response to a behavior. These are the events that motivate or dissuade behavior. Examples include discount coupons, raffle tickets, public recognition, and even monetary rewards. While behavior analysis provides a broad framework from which to approach behavior change, it is the consequence that clearly distinguishes it from other approaches. Drawing on an operant conditioning framework, consequences are viewed as contingencies. Contingencies can be pleasant or unpleasant, and they can be applied or removed. Table 29.3 below summarizes the four major types of contingencies, along with examples of each. In the short sections below, we briefly summarize two specific behavior analytic approaches: prompts and contingencies.
Prompts Prompting is an antecedent approach. Antecedent approaches like prompts occur before the behavior. Prompts can be printed, verbal, or auditory messages that designate desirable behaviors. Examples would include a message to “Please turn out the lights” posted on an office door, “Only rain in the drain” stenciled on a city storm water drain, or “Recycle your bottles” posted near a trash can in a food court. Prompts have been used effectively across a number of environmental domains, including energy conservation (Oceja & Berenguer, 2009; Winett, 1978), litter prevention (Durdan, Reeder, & Hecht, 1985; de Kort, McCalley, & Midden, 2008), and recycling (Austin et al., 1993). In summarizing the studies on prompts, Geller (1982) suggested that prompts are most effective when the behavior is relatively simple, clearly defined, and placed in close proximity to where the behavior will occur. There is also some evidence to suggest that prompts should be worded positively—for example, “Recyclables here” rather than the negative “Don’t litter.” In addition, politely worded prompts tend to produce better responses than do direct or commanding prompts. Further, work by Werner et al., (1998) suggests that prompts should work to activate an existing schema for a desirable behavior or override a schema for an undesirable behavior.
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior In an interesting extension of prompting, Duffy and Verges (2009) used specially fitted lids on public recycling containers to “cue” individuals about the proper material for each bin. All bins were labeled with a prompt about the appropriate material: trash, aluminum, glass, plastic, paper. But half of the bins were fitted with a lid that specified the shape of the appropriate material: round hole for the aluminum, glass, and plastic; slotted top for paper. Results showed that compared to the generic bins, fitted lids increased the volume of material collected by 34%, and decreased the amount of inappropriate material by 95%.
Contingencies Whereas prompting is an antecedent strategy to changing behavior, contingencies occur after the behavior. Contingencies can be based on a specific action or tied to an outcome, and they involve administering a consequence to the individual—either a reward or a punishment. In the environmental arena, punishments include various forms of disincentives and penalties, such as fines for littering, large cost increases for electricity use above (p. 563) Table 29.3 Four Types of Consequence Strategies in Behavior Analysis Nature of Consequence
Apply
Action with Consequence Remove
Pleasant
Unpleasant
Positive PunishmentA quarter for boarding the “Red Star” bus (response based)
Positive ReinforcementName of potential carpooler is listed on “Gas Waster” poster when observed driving to work alone (response based)
One raffle coupon per 5% reduction in weekly vehicle miles traveled (outcome based)
Truckers call fellow employee a “gas guzzler” when his truck shows a decrease in mpg on feedback chart (outcome based)
Negative Reinforcement
Negative Punishment
Three-month suspension of license for driving 80 mph (response based)
Loss of company van avoided by finding sixth carpooler (response based)
Worker loses preferential parking privilege after showing an increase in vehicle miles traveled (outcome based)
Loss of gasoline credit card avoided by showing increase in miles per gallon (outcome based)
Adapted from Geller (1987, p. 373). an allotted amount, or social sanctions for watering lawns during hot daily hours. Such consequences are used to decrease the frequency of a behavior. In contrast, reward strategies are used to increase the frequency of a desired behavior—for example, monetary rebates for purchasing an energy-efficient appliance, or raffle tickets to win prizes. There are two basic types of contingencies. Response-based contingencies are connected to an individual’s actions; for example, offering $50 to replace an inefficient water heater with a more energy-efficient one. In this case, the contingency is tied to the behavior—installing a new water heater. In contrast, outcome-based contingencies are connected to consumption, rather than specific behaviors. For example, a car readout showing miles per gallon (in aggregate), or a monetary reward for reducing home energy consumption by 10% over the previous year. In both cases, the specific behaviors are not isolated, but rather the reinforcement is tied to achieving a goal.
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior
The efficacy of behavior analysis (and especially contingency strategies) at promoting pro-environmental behavior has been well documented, and readers are referred to other more comprehensive reviews of this material (Dwyer et al., 1993; Geller, 1987, 2002; Lehman & Geller, 2004; Porter et al., 1995). The research shows that offering a reward following a desired behavior generally increases its frequency. Providing a punishment following a behavior generally decreases its frequency. We highlight three examples below to illustrate the point. 1. Gasoline prices. In the United States, the cost of gasoline is relatively cheap. Compared to Europe, gas prices generally run about 50% less in the United States; as a result, Americans drive more compared to, for example, their British counterparts (7,753 average miles per year, compared with 3,406 miles per year; O’Brien & Zoumbaris, 1993). In 2003, the average retail price for a gallon of gasoline in the United States was $1.50 (about 40 cents per liter). But during 2007, gasoline prices rose dramatically to exceed $3/gallon on a national average (in some states, such as California, the price exceeded $5/gallon). Unlike the shortages in the 1970s, the “crisis” in 2007 was one of cost and not of availability. Gasoline was in plentiful supply, but the uncertainty introduced by international conflicts and political discourse resulted in skyrocketing prices. The behavioral response to the increasing price was clear. Consistent with behavior analysis, the changing contingency resulted in reductions in consumption. The average number of miles driven by motorists decreased; motorists made fewer trips by car; carpooling and ride sharing increased, as did use of mass transit; and purchasing patterns shifted toward more fuel-efficient vehicles (Congressional Budget Office, 2008). 2. Bottle bills. In many countries around the world, there is an added charge attached to the purchase of beverage containers. These deposits are then refunded to the customer upon return of the container, thereby providing a contingency for the behavior. (p. 564) While such bottle bills are politically contentious, the behavioral research is clear—in areas with a bottle bill, recycling rates are higher and littering rates are lower (Institute for Applied Research, 1980; Levitt & Leventhal, 1986; Shireman, 1993). In some instances, the return rate for bottles in locations with a deposit exceeds 90% (R3 Consulting Group, 2009). 3. Variable fees improve efficiency of trash collection. Trash collection is an important service offered to residents. But often there is little incentive to reduce the amount of refuse that is put out for collection. The cost is fixed, regardless of the volume. A promising alternative can be found in pay-as-you-throw programs, whereby recycling is collected for free, but trash is charged by the volume or weight. In one such program, the City of Seattle introduced a program whereby residents were charged per can that was placed out for collection (recycling was collected for free). The results showed that in the ensuing years, the amount of trash collected decreased dramatically, while the amount of recyclables increased. Prior to the start of the program, the average household used 3.5 cans of trash per week; after several years with the program in place, the average had dropped to only 1 can per household (Cuthbert, 1994; Shireman, 1993). Limitations. Given the clear results for the efficacy of behavior analysis to promote pro-environmental behavior, the reader might wonder why such strategies are not used more extensively. In this short section, we summarize some of the limitations with the approach. Our focus is on direct financial incentives, both response-contingent and outcome-contingent, although similar critiques have been leveled at other forms of contingencies (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999). 1. Cost. One of the most apparent limitations with the behavior analytic approach is cost. While the approach can clearly provide large-scale changes in behavior, the funds required to monitor and then incentivize these changes are often prohibitive. As an example, consider the case of residential energy-efficiency programs. There is abundant evidence that homes in the United States and worldwide could be much more energy efficient. Oftentimes simple one-time actions, such as adding extra attic insulation or installing more efficient water heaters, can produce large aggregated reduction in residential energy use. But for a variety of reasons, home owners are reluctant to make these investments (Stern & Aronson, 1984). An example of a very effective, but costly, program can be found in the Hood River project (Hirst, 1987, 1988). The program involved two steps: a home energy audit, which resulted in a series of recommended retrofit actions, coupled with direct financial incentives up to $4,000 per household to complete the work. Whereas typical residential retrofit programs have participation rates below 10%, the Hood River project was able to motivate 85% of residents within a geographic region to complete one or more major home-retrofit activities. The authors
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior estimated that the changes resulted in a 15% reduction in home energy usage. A more recent example of a successful, but costly, financial incentive is the “cash-for-clunkers” program, launched as part of the American Recovery and Reinvest Act of 2009. Under this program, consumers were given $4,000 in direct rebates for returning an older car and purchasing a new one—with very little in the way of restrictions on the condition of the older car. To be fair, behavior analysis is more than just financial incentives, and there are many examples of behavior analytic approaches to behavior change that do not require financial incentives (Geller, 1989). In addition, the cost of a program needs to be considered in broader context, and the approach is a demonstrated success. Contrast this with information campaigns, which also come with a high price tag but typically fail to produce behavioral changes. Nevertheless, in considering a behavior analytic approach, particularly one that involves material forms of positive reinforcement, cost is an important consideration. 2. Behavioral specificity. A second limitation with the behavior analysis approach is the focus on specific actions. Particularly for response-contingencies, the approach will lead to specific behavioral changes. But because the contingency is external to the individual, the motivation to engage in the behavior is disaggregated from the behavioral domain. As a result, the success is limited to a specific action, or at most to a specific outcome. To illustrate the limitation, consider the bottle bill programs mentioned in the preceding section. The results are clear in showing that offering a financial incentive for returning beverage containers increases recycling rates. But the effect is generally limited to those items to which a deposit is attached. Since no financial incentive is attached to other containers (for example, milk cartons or pickle jars), recycling rates for these containers are likely to be unaffected by the bottle bill. This behavioral specificity is inversely related to spillover (discussed below). Because the behavior analysis approach isolates specific actions instead of targeting an underlying behavioral (p. 565) domain, any change in behavior is unlikely to “spillover” into related but unincentivized actions. The specificity limitation is also relevant to outcome contingencies. Consider the pay-as-you-throw example discussed in the preceding section, where residents are offered a financial incentive to reduce their volume of trash. While the results are clear in showing that the approach can achieve the desired outcome, it is unlikely that the change will manifest in other related behavioral domains. For example, we would not expect to find an increase in recycling rates for small pieces of electronic waste, such as batteries or old cell phones. Because these items are unlikely to substantially affect volume of trash, there is no incentive to engage in the behavior. In addition, we might expect to find an increase in improper disposal of materials, and abandoned items in nearby open spaces. Because the motivational basis for engaging in the recycling behavior is financial, rather than social or environmental (see below), we would expect no change in other environmental-protection-related behavioral domains. 3. Overjustification. A final limitation with behavioral analysis builds on the underlying motivational basis for the behavior. When a behavior is incentivized, particularly instances of financial incentive and positive reinforcement, it has the potential to undermine intrinsic motivation for the action (Anderson, Manoogian, & Renick, 1976; Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 2001; Lepper, Greene, & Nesbitt, 1973). That is, when we induce environmental protection by offering financial incentives, these incentives have the potential to become the sole reason for the behavior. As such, the person is motivated to engage in the behavior, but only as long as the incentive remains in place. Without a more enduring, intrinsic motivational basis, the behavior becomes entirely dependent on the reward. To illustrate this point, consider the case of gas prices in the United States. As noted in the previous section, gas prices increased dramatically over a two-year period from 2007 to 2008, and during this time we also observed a corresponding change in driving patterns. But what happens when the cost decreases? Since driving behavior was altered because of the contingency, it will likely return to pre-increase levels. Or worse, motorists might now compensate for the curtailed behavior, and driving behaviors may now exceed the original levels. Provided that the incentives remain in place, as is the case with bottle bills, the behavior change will be durable. But if the contingency changes, there is the potential for the incentive to undermine a person’s intrinsic motivation for the behavior.
Social-Altruistic Approaches to Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior Humans are by nature social creatures, and as a result, we are sensitive to group pressure and social processes. We generally see actions that benefit others as desirable, and we are motivated to conform to the standards and norms of the group. The social-altruistic approach to promoting pro-environmental behavior leverages these tendencies in an effort to change behaviors. Examples include public commitments, social norms messages, and approaches that build on a social dilemmas framework.
Public Commitments A number of studies have tested public commitments as a strategy for promoting pro-environmental behavior (DeLeon & Faqua, 1995; Mathies, Klöckner, & Preissner, 2006; Katzev & Wang, 1994). To illustrate, Wang and Katzev (1990) obtained a written commitment to recycle paper from residents in a retirement home. The commitment read: We, the residents of the 2nd floor, are willing to participate in the paper recycling project sponsored by the Reed College Environmental Group. It is understood that any recyclable paper can be placed in the “RECYCLE” garbage can. We commit ourselves to participating in this recycling project for the next four weeks. (p. 267) Results showed a 47% increase in the amount of material recycled in the four weeks following the commitment, and the increase persisted across an additional four-week follow-up. In a second study, Katzev and Wang (1994) extended the approach to students living in a campus dormitory. Using a similar pledge, the students signed a commitment form stating, “We commit ourselves to participating in this recycling project for the next 4 weeks.” The forms were signed either individually or in a group context during the monthly hall meeting, and the recycling volumes were compared to a control group (information only) and an incentive group (coupons from local businesses in exchange for participation). During the four-week intervention phase, participants in all three treatment groups recycled more frequently and more material than participants in the control condition. However, during a four-week follow-up phase after the treatment was discontinued, (p. 566) participation rates and recycling volume dropped for the incentive condition and the group commitment condition, although the rates remained higher than the control (see also Burn & Oskamp, 1986). Similar evidence comes from a study by Matthies et al., (2006). The behavioral focus was on transportation mode, and the researchers tested the efficacy of a commitment intervention at promoting bicycling and mass transit use. In the commitment condition residents were asked to sign a pledge to engage in specific actions. Although residents had a choice in which actions they selected, all were related to climate-saving activities—for example, “I commit to use public transportation at least one time during the next two weeks for my regular trip.” The intervention began with a series of telephone interviews to assess attitudes and beliefs, followed by a free ticket to use the transit system, and then in the third phase a request for a commitment. Results showed that the commitment was effective at changing transit mode, but the impact was particularly strong for participants who had previously indicated during the interview that they felt a personal moral obligation to engage in climate-saving activities (see also Menses & Palacio, 2007). Another remaining question is a person’s willingness to make a commitment. In the studies cited above, commitments were shown to produce an aggregated effect, and most participants were willing to make the commitment. But what about individuals who choose not to make the commitment? And what variables predict willingness to commit? Some initial data on this topic were provided by Lokhorst, van Dijk, and Staats (2009). Their results showed that willingness to commit is a function of dispositional and situational factors. In two studies, they found that individuals who are more trusting (dispositionally) showed the strongest tendency to make a commitment, but only when there was little social support for the initiative. When there was high social support, less trusting individuals showed the strongest tendency to commit. Taken together, the results suggest that making a commitment to engage in a behavior increases the likelihood of doing it. However, ambiguities remain around the nature of the commitment (private versus public), the durability of the behavior change, and the requisite boundary conditions that can enhance or detract from the effect.
Social Norms
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior In recent years, the social norms approach has emerged as a promising strategy for promoting pro-environmental behavior. In the psychological research tradition, social norms refer to an individual’s beliefs about the common or accepted behaviors within a group (Cialdini & Trost, 1998). Such beliefs are differentiated from a personal norm, which refers to an individual’s beliefs about his or her own moral obligation to engage in a behavior (Harland, Staats, & Wilke, 2007; Stern, 2000b). Within the social norms literature, researchers have distinguished between descriptive norms and injunctive norms. Descriptive norms are an individual’s beliefs about the level of a behavior within a group—that is, what is common. In contrast, injunctive norms refer to an individual’s beliefs about the approval for a specific behavior among group members. While the two normative beliefs are often positively correlated, there is evidence that they exert independent influences on behavior (Cialdini, 2003). Researchers have used normative messages to promote pro-environmental behavior across several domains, including recycling, energy, transportation, habitat protection, and litter (Chen et al., 2009; Schultz, Khazian, & Zaleski, 2008; Schultz, Tabanico, & Rendón, 2008). In one study, Schultz (1999) provided residents with descriptive normative information about the recycling behavior of other households in their community. The messages were delivered weekly with information about the percentages of households in their neighborhood that participated in the recycling program that week. Results showed that in the four weeks after the messages were discontinued, participation rates and the amount of material recycled increased from baseline and exceeded that of a randomized control group. Normative messages have also been used to promote reductions in residential energy conservation (Nolan et al., 2008; Schultz et al., 2007). In one study, Schultz et al., (2007) provided residents with personalized normative feedback through which they received weekly information about home electricity use, coupled with a descriptive normative message about the average electricity use during the same period by other households in the community. Results for the four weeks after the message discontinued showed a small (1%) reduction in consumption. However, the aggregated effect masked an intriguing interaction: for households that were above the descriptive norm (i.e., the high users), energy consumption dropped by 6%. But for households that were below the descriptive norm (i.e., low users), consumption increased by 8%. Fortunately, in a second set of conditions, (p. 567) this boomerang effect observed among low users was mitigated by adding an injunctive norm to the message—a smiley face emoticon conveying the social approval for low energy use. Combining the high- and lowconsuming groups that received the descriptive norm message and the injunctive emoticon resulted in a 4% aggregated reduction in electricity consumption. This 4% aggregated result has attracted considerable attention among industry groups interested in reducing consumption and developing interventions aimed at curbing carbon emissions (Hallet & Kavazovic, 2010; Hunt & Mullainathan, 2010). Hunt (2010) reported an analysis of a large-scale application of the technique to approximately 80,000 homes in Minnesota. Half of the households were randomly assigned to receive a mailed normative feedback message, and the remaining homes were randomly assigned to a no-treatment control condition. An example of the normative feedback is shown in Figure 29.1. Results from monthly electricity usage over the subsequent year showed a 2.4% reduction in electricity use for treatment households, compared to control. As of 2010, the approach was being tested at 23 utilities across the United States, with more than 1 million participating homes (Hunt, 2010), and plans were under way to integrate the approach into the forthcoming “smart meter” infrastructure. Across all 23 of the utilities utilizing the normative feedback approach, results show statistically significant reductions in residential energy use, consistent with the 2.4% estimate from the Minnesota evaluation. See www.opower.com for more information about the approach.
Social Dilemmas A social dilemma is a situation in which the interests of the individual are at odds with the interests of the group. For each individual, acting in ways that maximize their personal interest has a detrimental effect on the group (for a review, see Kramer, Tenbrunsel, & Bazerman, 2010). Consider the case of cigarette butt disposal for a smoker in an outdoor public location. For the individual, it is often easiest not to use an ashtray. The effort, cognitive resources, and time required to find an ashtray for proper disposal are typically more extensive than simply throwing the butt on the ground. But not properly disposing has harmful effects on the environment, and in aggregate, has deleterious consequences for the group. In a social dilemmas framework, acting in the best interest of the collective is termed cooperation and acting in one’s personal interest is termed defection (Gibson & Murnighan, 2010; Komorita & Parks, 1996).
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior The commons dilemma is one type of social dilemma that is particularly relevant to environmental problems. In a commons dilemma, the individual is engaging in an action that draws resources from a common pool (Hardin, 1968). For example, harvesting trees from a forest; using water at home; electricity usage from the public grid; or driving a private car all consume a shared resource. In such situations, it is often in the best interest of the individual to use more resources (in terms of comfort or convenience), yet such consumption is at odds with the collective interest (Gifford & Hine, 1997; Hine et al., 2009; Joireman et al., 2001; Vlek, 2000).
Click to view larger Figure 29.1 OPOWER’s Home Energy Reports, Social Comparison Module
Psychological research on social dilemmas has explored a number of variables that predict whether a person will choose to cooperate. These include personal qualities such as moral integrity, values, and social value orientation (Kramer et al., 1986; Van Lange, 1999). Research has also identified strategic responses that can lead to cooperation, and for example, individuals are more likely to cooperate after others who are harvesting from the pool first choose (p. 568) to cooperate. And finally, social dilemmas research has explored structural solutions that can facilitate cooperation, including privatization, establishing a managing authority, incentivizing conservation, and punishments for overharvesting (Dawes & Messick, 2000; Gifford, 2008; Jost & Kay, 2010). While social dilemmas provide a useful framework for understanding pro-environmental behavior, very few studies have used the framework to promote behavior change in a real-world context. In summarizing the existing research, Van Vugt (2009) offered guidance for behavior change interventions utilizing a commons dilemmas framework. He suggested four important considerations, with each based on a core motivation: information, identity, institutions, and incentives (see Table 29.4). • Information. One of the persistent features of a commons dilemma is uncertainty. The size of the shared resource and the level of consumption by others within the group are often unknown. Thus, providing individuals with accurate information can play an important role in promoting pro-environmental behavior. For example, Van Vugt and Samuelson (1999) found that during a water shortage, individuals who believed that the problem was caused by overconsumption were less likely to conserve than individuals who attributed the water shortage to weather. • Identity. Individuals who feel a stronger connection to and identity with their group are more likely to engage in cooperative behaviors, and there is even evidence that high-identifying group members will attempt to compensate for overconsumption by other group members (Brewer & Kramer, 1986). In a recent example, Sanna et al., (2009) showed that when primed to think about superordinate collective identities, participants cooperated in a commons dilemma (harvesting fish) more often than did participants primed to think about selfinterest. • Trust in institutions. In commons dilemmas, overconsumption is often the result of unrestricted harvesting by individuals. But in many instances, governmental, corporate, or community groups can serve to buffer individual actions by imposing rules and limits. But a key element in the effectiveness of these institutions is their perceived trustworthiness. The extent to which an individual has confidence in the institutional controls plays an important role in his or her decisions to cooperate. Particularly relevant are perceptions of fairness, credibility, and enforcement. • Incentives. Commons dilemmas result from individuals pursuing their personal interests, to the detriment of the group. But through the use of incentives, it is often possible to align personal and collective interests. For example, offering rebates for energy-efficient products, or subsidies for installing solar panels can motivate individuals to take actions that benefit the group (Dietz et al., 2003). Data from Van Vugt and Samuelson (1999) showed that during a water shortage, households with individual meters who were financially
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior
Table 29.4 Four I’s: Core Motives and Foci of Interventions for Successful Commons Resource Management and Potential Constraints Focus of Intervention
Core Motive
Description
Aim of intervention
Potential constraint
Information
Understanding
The need to understand the physical and social environment
Reducing environmental and social uncertainty
Global environmental problems are inherently uncertain.
Identity
Belonging
The need for positive social identity
Improving and broadening one’s sense of community
Resource competition between communities increases overuse.
Institutions
Trusting
The need to build trusting relationships
Increasing acceptance of commons rules and institutions
Authorities are not always seen as legitimate and fair.
Incentives
SelfEnhancing
The need to improve oneself and increase one’s resources
Punishing overuse and rewarding responsible use
Economic incentives undermine intrinsic motivations to conserve.
Source: Adapted from Van Vugt (2009). (p. 569) affected by a large increase in price reduced their water usage more than households without an individual meter.
Biospheric Approaches to Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior A third class of strategies for promoting pro-environmental behaviors draws on appeals to environmental protection. Public opinion data are clear in showing that individuals around the world are concerned about environmental problems (Leiserowitz, Kates, & Parris, 2005) and that they express a desire to act in ways that benefit the natural environment. Despite a downturn in public support for environmental protection since 2001, concern and motivation remain high (Dunlap, 2002; 2010). For example, a 2010 public opinion poll of US residents conducted by the Gallup organization found that 61% of respondents were either active participants in the environmental movement (19%) or “sympathetic toward the movement” (42%). And when it comes to environmental actions, an overwhelming majority report engaging in pro-environmental behaviors, such as recycling (90%), reducing household energy use (85%), and making environmental purchases (76%). Indeed, in a recent telephone survey, Nolan et al., (2008) found that California residents cited environmental protection as the primary reason for conserving energy at home.
Predicting Pro-Environmental Behavior While the focus of this chapter is on promoting pro-environmental behavior, it is useful to briefly mention correlational studies that attempt to predict behavior, both observed and self-reported. • Environmental attitudes. One of the most frequently studied predictors of pro-environmental behavior over the past 40 years has been environmental attitudes. The term “environmental attitude” is quite broad and generally refers to a person’s positive or negative evaluation of environmentally related activities or issues. This would include concerns about the biospheric consequences of environmental problems, along with specific attitudes toward programs or activities. Despite long-standing criticisms of the attitude construct, studies have
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior consistently shown that attitudes about environmental issues are positively correlated with pro-environmental behavior (Bamberg & Möser, 2007; Hines, Hungerford, & Tomera, 1986/1987). • Personal norms. A second consistent predictor of pro-environmental behavior is a personal norm—that is, a moral obligation to engage in behaviors that protect the natural environment. The stronger that individuals hold this moral obligation, the more likely they are to engage in pro-environmental behaviors (Bamberg, Hunecke, & Blöbaum, 2007). There is some research to suggest that personal norms are especially strong predictors of behavior when activated (Schultz et al., 2005; Schwartz & Howard, 1980), although other data suggest a more direct pathway in which personal norms lead to directly pro-environmental behavior (De Groot & Steg, 2009; Stern et al., 1999). • Values. A third consistent predictor of pro-environmental behavior is a person’s values. Values are defined as a person’s life goals—broad sets of personal goals that individuals identify as guiding principles in their lives. Research has shown that individuals who hold more self-transcendent values—such as broad-minded, equality, a world at peace, inner harmony, and meaning in life—are more likely to engage in pro-environmental behavior (Hansla et al., 2008; Lopez & Cuervo-Arango, 2008; Milfont & Gouveia, 2006; Nordlund & Garvill, 2002; Schultz & Zelezny, 1999). Combined, these findings illustrate the connection between pro-environmental behavior and environmental attitudes, moral obligations to protect the environment, and personal values. We return now to our focus on biospheric approaches for promoting pro-environmental behavior. Given the broad level of support for environmental protection and the consistent correlation between environmental attitudes, values, and personal norms, it seems likely that framing a behavior as pro-environmental would spur individuals to take action. Yet surprisingly, the existing research has generally not shown this framing effect. As discussed above, there is some evidence to suggest that individuals who hold biospheric environmental concerns are more likely to engage in pro-environmental behavior (De Groot & Steg, 2010; Milfont, Duckitt, & Cameron, 2006; Schultz et al., 2005; Steg, 2011, Steg & De Groot, 2012), although the link between stated attitudes and behavior has long been a contentious issue for environmental psychologists (Vining & Ebreo, 2002). In several experimental studies aimed at promoting pro-environmental behaviors (e.g., household energy consumption, participation in curbside recycling), (p. 570) messages highlighting the environmental benefits of the behavior failed to produce significant changes in behavior relative to a control condition (Nolan et al., 2008; Schultz, 1999; see also Goldstein, Cialdini, & Griskevicius, 2008). So here we have a conundrum. Individuals are stating that environmental protection is the primary reason for proenvironmental behavior, yet messages about the environmental benefits of a behavior fail to spur action. A potential resolution for this discrepancy can be found in research using the Campbell paradigm (Kaiser, Byrka, & Hartig, 2010; Kaiser, Oerke & Bogner, 2007; named after Donald Campbell, 1963). This conceptual model takes an intention orientation to pro-environmental behavior and argues that a person’s motivation to engage in proenvironmental behaviors can be inferred from his or her actions. Research has identified a class of behaviors that individuals engage in for pro-environmental reasons (e.g., Kaiser & Wilson, 2004). While pro-environmental behaviors vary in their level of difficulty (e.g., recycling is generally easy; installing photovoltaic solar panels on one’s home is generally hard), there is evidence for a single underlying motivational basis. Note that because the approach is intention-oriented rather than outcome-oriented, the behavioral domain is defined by beliefs individuals hold about the consequences of a behavior, and not the actual impact of the action (Tanner, Kaiser, & Wölfing, 2004; see Kaiser, Doka, Hofstetter, & Ranney, 2003, for study linking intention to impact). The behaviors within this domain range from easy to difficult, and the more motivated a person is, the more he or she engages in these proenvironmental actions. An individual who is more motivated to act will overcome more barriers and engage in more difficult behaviors. But even a person who is relatively low in pro-environmental motivation will occasionally engage in a pro-environmental behavior if the barriers are low enough. The Campbell paradigm provides a useful framework for promoting pro-environmental behavior and for understanding the finding that framing a behavior as pro-environmental generally fails to change it. Particularly useful is the quantification of motivational and contextual aspects of pro-environmental behavior. As such, efforts to promote pro-environmental behavior can focus on increasing the motivation of individuals within a target population, or alternatively on modifying the contextual factors to reduce the difficulty of a behavior. From this perspective, studies that attempt to change a behavior by framing it as environmental are neither increasing
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior motivation nor decreasing contextual behavioral difficulty. As a result, they are generally not effective at promoting behavior change. The model further specifies the importance of segmenting a target population with respect to motivation. Kaiser, Midden, and Cervinka (2008) provided an example in which districts within a large residential region are described by their average levels of motivation. Some regions have a higher motivational level, and some lower. The graphical “motivational map” showing the different levels across the many districts in the region can provide important data about the spatial distribution of pro-environmental motivation and about fruitful target groups. Kaiser, Midden, and Cervinka (2008) argued that a motivational campaign is most likely to produce changes in behavior for segments of the population who are low in motivation, whereas structural changes are best suited to promote difficult by crucial behaviors.
Environmental Education Another biospheric approach to promoting pro-environmental behavior emphasizes the importance of education. Importantly, environmental education is more than just presenting factual information about what to do or how to do it (see previous section on the limitation of the knowledge-deficit approach to promoting behavior change). At a general level, environmental education refers to formal and informal learning activities designed to teach individuals about ecosystems and natural environments, the connection between human activities and natural processes, and ultimately to encourage individuals to engage in pro-environmental behaviors (Palmer, 1998). While there has been some disagreement about the relative emphasis on knowledge versus lifestyle choices, the focus on promoting “new patterns of behavior” has been central to environmental education from its inception (Bogner, 1998; Heimlich & Ardoin, 2008; UNESCO, 1978). Over the past 30 years, environmental education has developed into its own field, with involvement from educators, biologists, policy makers, and social scientists. Environmental education involves both formal and informal learning. Formal environments are primarily classrooms, and there are a number of widely used curricular modules and materials developed for different age groups. In fact, environmental education is an officially recognized curricular theme in many countries around the world, with (p. 571) clearly explicated learning objectives (Palmer & Neal, 1994). In addition to classroom-based curricular activities, environmental educational activities can also take place outside of the classroom in informal learning environments, often as an extension to a recreational activity. Examples would include national parks, exhibits and activities at zoos, aquariums, or museums, and even movies or media campaigns. As an illustration of such informal learning environments, Bogner (1999, 2002) has shown how programs offered at national parks or field centers can affect knowledge and attitudes among visitors. The field of environmental education has grown steadily over the past 30 years, and the area is characterized by a wide range of approaches and research methodologies. Yet reviews of the research consistently find that educational activities can impact pro-environmental behavior (Leeming, Dwyer, Porter, & Cobern, 1993; Zelezny, 1999). In their review and synthesis of existing studies, Hart and Nolan (1999) concluded that: The most obvious conclusion that emerges from these quantitative studies of environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour is a change toward more positive environmental attitudes among people of all ages after exposure to some form, almost any form, of environment-related or even in-class environmental education experience whether short or longer term. (p. 7) In her meta-analysis examining the impact of environmental education activities on pro-environmental behavior, Zelezny (1999) reported that both classroom-based activities and educational activities conducted in nontraditional environments affected subsequent behavior. The effects were stronger for classroom-based activities, and for interventions with younger participants.
Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior—The Context The goal of this chapter is to summarize some of the many approaches that have been used to promote proenvironmental behavior. In the previous section, we reviewed research findings from an egoistic, social-altruistic, and biospheric perspective. All of these studies focused on changing the person, or in aligning appeals for proenvironmental behavior with an individual’s motivational basis.
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior But another approach is to focus on the context, rather than the individual. Such structural interventions modify the physical context to change the availability, cost, or benefits associated with a pro-environmental behavior. In many ways, this approach resonates quite strongly with an “environmental” perspective that emphasizes the role of physical context in behavior (Craik, 1973). As described in the introduction of this chapter, the field of environmental psychology emerged as a counterpoint to a mainstream psychological perspective that treated behavior as largely a manifestation of person-level variables (e.g., attitudes, beliefs, motivation). Yet surprisingly, given its prominence within environmental psychology, few psychological studies of environmental issues have focused on the role of physical context in promoting pro-environmental behavior. The existing studies on structural approaches to promoting pro-environmental behavior are clear in showing that physical context plays an important role in both individual-level and group-level behavioral patterns. As Steg and Vlek (2009) pointed out, contextual variables can affect pro-environmental behavior in four ways. First, they can exert a direct influence, as in the availability or convenience of a program. Second, contextual variables may be mediated by psychological process. For example, introducing a new curbside recycling program may promote normative beliefs that other people in the neighborhood are recycling, and thereby produce changes in behavior. Third, psychological variables can moderate contextual variables. For example, individuals with a strong personal norm toward residential energy conservation may respond more favorably to a new “smart” metering system than individuals without a strong personal norm. And fourth, contextual variables may frame behaviors in different ways, thereby activating different motivational bases for the behavior. The existing psychological studies of structural interventions have primarily adopted the first of these pathways, emphasizing direct effects. In addition, the studies have primarily adopted an egoistic perspective, whereby structural interventions aim to reduce costs or increase the benefits of acting in a pro-environmental way. Consider the case of carpooling. In the United States, and in many countries around the world, most vehicles are driven by a single occupant. In studies of work-trip commutes, the average vehicle in the United States averages just 1.09 occupants, and the trend has been declining since 1970 (National Research Council, 1998). One proenvironmental alternative is to carpool, where several individuals who live and work in a similar location ride together. But such activities require effort to coordinate, they limit a person’s (p. 572) freedom while at work, and carpooling often means a longer commute time. A structural intervention to promote carpooling might involve a special carpool lane on the highway that is less prone to traffic congestion, thereby reducing the commute time. Such a structural change might be combined with a work-based program to dramatically subsidize vehicle cost and maintenance for vehicles used for carpooling to work. While it is tempting to classify structural interventions as an egoistic strategy, there simply are not enough data to clearly establish that contextual changes operate solely through egoistic means. Drawing on the process outlined by Steg and Vlek (2009), it seems clear that multiple motivational bases can be involved with a structural intervention. For example, consider the case of labeling on household appliances. In recent years, many countries have introduced labeling programs that alert customers to the energy consumption associated with different brands and models. One such program widely used in North America is the EPA’s ENERGY STAR label. While the effect of such labels might be moderated by a person’s desire to save energy (an egoistic motivation), they would seem equally likely to be moderated by a person’s desire to limit carbon emissions in an effort to protect against global climate change (a more biospheric orientation). In the short section below, we highlight several areas where contextual variables have been used to promote proenvironmental behavior. 1. Transportation. Several studies have examined structural variables that affect the use of public transportation, including subways, trains, and public buses (Joireman et al., 2001). While the availability and accessibility of public transit options certainly affect ridership, the behavioral responses and transportation decisions of riders are often complex, with many documented unanticipated responses (Stopher, 2004). In addition, psychological research suggests that introducing new transit options can result in changed social boundaries and personal identities, which can affect their actions (Gatersleben et al., 2007). Another transportation issue is driving speed, whereby driving faster tends to result in reduced fuel efficiency, as does accelerating faster. Some structural variables that have been studied in this context include roadside landscapes (Antonson et al., 2009), radar-controlled traffic areas with visual feedback about speed, and traffic-
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior calming infrastructure, such as speed humps (Transportation Research Board, 1998). To illustrate, consider the use of posted messages showing a visual display of a vehicle speed. Studies have shown that a large majority of motorists who are exceeding the speed limit slow down when presented with such feedback, and the slower speeds tend to persist for several miles (Casey & Lund, 1990; Hamalainen & Hassel, 1990). However, the effects are observed only while the feedback technology is in place, and once removed, speeds in these areas return to their baseline levels. It also seems likely that motorists driving below the posted speed limit may increase their speed in response to the feedback. 2. Walkability. Related to the topic of public transit described above, studies have also examined the contextual variables that affect an individual’s decision to choose walking as a mode of transit. While defining the physical features that make a community “walkable” has proven difficult (Saelens et al., 2003), there is evidence that specific features—such as sidewalks and crosswalks—promote walking among residents. Werner, Brown, and Gallimore (2010) found that residents living in a neighborhood with fewer barriers to walking were more likely to utilize a new light rail transit system. Similarly, Borst and colleagues (2009) identified specific street characteristics in different communities that predicted walking among elderly. 3. Recycling. Another area where physical context has been studied is recycling programs. While the availability of the program is an important first step, studies have shown that more convenient programs generate more material. For example, curbside collection programs whereby recyclables are collected at the street garner higher participation rates and generate substantially more material than do specialized drop-off locations (Folz, 1991). Similarly, within a curbside collection program, eliminating the need for sorting materials through a commingled system produces more materials (Gamba & Oskamp, 1994; Oskamp et al., 1996). These same structural principles of eliminating barriers have been applied to range of other recycling programs, including electronic waste, paint, and used motor oil (Cabaniss, 2008). 4. Habit discontinuity. In the previous sections, contextual variables have been viewed from a largely egoistic perspective—that is, changing the physical environment in such a way that the target behavior becomes easier or more rewarding for the individual. Another perspective on the role of physical context in promoting proenvironmental behavior can be found in the habit discontinuity model (Verplanken et al., 2008; Wood & Neal, 2007). Many behaviors (p. 573) related to environmental issues are habitual, and occur without active reflection or cognitive elaboration (Wood, Tam, & Guerrero Witt, 2005). But a change in the physical context can disrupt a person’s habit and induce an elaborate decision-making process. As Verplanken and colleagues (2008) stated, “Context change enhances the likelihood that important values and related beliefs are activated and thus guide behavior.” In an analysis of transit mode choice, Verplanken and colleagues (2008) showed that individuals who recently moved to an area made transit mode choices that were more in line with their environmental attitudes. Among recently moved residents, those with stronger environmental attitudes were more likely to utilize public transit and less likely to drive a personal vehicle, compared to individuals with weaker environmental attitudes.
Practical Considerations In the preceding sections, we have summarized the research findings across a range of different approaches to promoting pro-environmental behavior. In this final section, we take a more applied perspective and discuss several practical considerations related to these behavior-change strategies.
Which Behaviors to Target? In conducting applied research designed to develop or test strategies that can promote pro-environmental behavior, it is important to consider which behaviors to target. While environmental psychologists have examined a range of topics (see Table 29.2), most have relied on behaviors of convenience or on behaviors of crisis. Among studies with behaviors of convenience are many in social psychology in which the behavior is chosen without consideration of its environmental impact. Rather, the focus is on a broad theoretical model, and nearly any behavior from a class of behaviors will suffice; it just happens by chance that a certain pro-environmental behavior is selected. On the other side are studies that are reactionary, whereby the behavior of interest reflects an immediate crisis or social issue, typically brought about by a disruption in supply (e.g., various “energy crises” in the United States, or water shortages in Australia).
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior Here we focus on three sets of considerations, offered by psychological researchers for selecting a target behavior: high impact, specificity, and potential to change. 1. High impact. A first consideration is the environmental impact of the behavior (Geller, 2002; Stern, 2000b). As Steg and Vlek (2009) stated: From a practical point of view, environmental psychologists should study behaviours that significantly affect environmental quality. (p. 309) For example, in the United States, direct energy consumption is divided among households and individuals (21.7%), industries (32.4%), commercial (17.8%), and transportation (28.1% across all forms). But within each of these categories is a range of specific actions. For example, home energy use falls into space heating (18.8%), air conditioning (6.2%), water heating (6.5%), lighting (6.1%), and computers (0.6%; data reported by Gardner & Stern, 2008). So developing a program to encourage residents to turn off their computers when not in use is unlikely to produce substantial energy savings, compared with a program targeting a reduction in space heating or lighting. This is not to say that computer use is unimportant, but rather that programs aimed at reducing overall consumption would be better served by targeting a more important behavioral domain, such as space heating. 2. Specificity. A second consideration in selecting a target behavior is the level of specificity. That is, to what extent should environmental psychologists focus on single actions versus behavior domains? On the one hand are recommendations to focus on specific actions, rather than on classes of behavior or goals (McKenzie-Mohr, 2000, 2011). For example, when developing a program to promote reductions in residential water use, McKenzie-Mohr (2008) recommended focusing on a specific action, such as “install a low-flow showerhead” or “water your lawn only once per week.” Such specific behaviors stand in contrast to more general appeals to “use less water” or “be water wise.” As McKenzie-Mohr (2008, 2011) has argued, behaviors that are selected as a target for intervention should be nondivisible, end-state behaviors. By “nondivisible,” he means an action that cannot be reduced to a more specific behavior. For example, installing a low-flow showerhead could be performed by the home owner, by a relative, or by a plumber. This makes it a “divisible action.” Asking a home owner to personally install the showerhead would make it nondivisible. By “end-state,” he means the final desired outcome. For example, requesting a home energy audit is not an end-state behavior because it does not mean that the specific energy-efficiency actions will be taken. In contrast, installing extra attic insulation is an end-state behavior. While some researchers have recommended focusing on specific actions, others have suggested (p. 574) focusing instead on behavior domains (Kaiser, Midden, & Cervinka, 2008; Midden, Kaiser, & McCalley, 2007). From this perspective, the probability that an individual will engage in a specific behavior is determined by the difficulty of the behavior and by an individual’s intention to realize a particular goal, for example, environmental conservation (i.e., one’s personal pro-environmental motivation). In each behavior domain, there are a large number of possible actions, arrayed along a difficulty continuum, with which one can realize a personal motivation level. Increasing a person’s intention or motivation within that domain will inevitably result in changes across several behaviors, and the specific behavioral outcome will to a certain extent vary by person. Thus, researchers taking such a motivation or goal-orientation recommend focusing on increasing motivation levels, rather than reducing the behavioral difficulty of a single action. 3. Potential to change. A final consideration in selecting a target behavior is to focus on actions (or market segments) where change is possible. This concept is glaringly simple, yet widely overlooked. First, targeting individuals who already engage in the desired pro-environmental behavior will do little more than what they already do to contribute to environmental conservation. While such individuals—with their actual behavioral engagement— have already shown to be receptive to the message, any further commitment apparently is unrealistic for them and, thus, unlikely to realize. Rather, it is better to target individuals (or market segments) that are not already doing what seems possible and sensible within a certain population. Kaiser et al. (2008) referred to these market segments as “motivational sinks.” While targeting behaviors and market segments with room for change, it is also important to consider the likelihood that the behavior can be changed—that is, its amount of behavioral plasticity (Dietz et al., 2009). Determining the level of plasticity for a behavior can be quite challenging, and to date there is no established procedure for
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior assessing likelihood of change. Dietz et al. (2009) reported an approach that involves a review of existing literature, identifying the best practice, and then extracting from the best practice a measure of effect size. While such an approach is based on several fundamental assumptions about the representativeness of the samples and generalizability of the findings, it provides a more reliable approach, compared with self-report approaches that ask respondents to rate their likelihood of change (for an alternative approach involving the systematic cross-cultural search for behavior relevant contextual factors, see Kaiser et al., 2008; Scheuthle et al., 2005).
Rebound Effects New technologies offer exciting possibilities for promoting conservation. More efficient devices offer equal or enhanced performance while using fewer natural resources. For example, CFC and LED lightbulbs use less energy than traditional incandescent bulbs, while providing comparable lighting performance. Given this increased efficiency, if a homeowner replaced all of the 100-watt lightbulbs in his home with 15-watt CFC bulbs, we would expect an 85% reduction in energy used for lighting. Unfortunately, this rarely happens, and the realized energy savings often fall short of projected technical estimates (Sorrell, 2007). In economics, this effect is referred to as the Jevons paradox, named after the 19th-century scholar who first reported this effect in an analysis of coal consumption during the industrial revolution in England. Jevons noted that as industries developed more efficient ways to use coal, the demand increased rather than decreased (see also Alcott, 2008, and Madlener & Alcott, 2008). In an individual-level analysis (as compared to an economic perspective), psychologists refer to this as a rebound effect. The discrepancy between the projected and actual resource savings occurs because of changes in behavioral patterns. In many instances, the individual realizes the added savings that result from the more efficient technology and subsequently compensates by using it more often. A person who realizes that the CFC bulb is using less energy might be less likely to turn it off when leaving a room. This direct rebound effect accounts for a substantial portion of the discrepancy between projected and realized savings. Sorrell (2007) estimated approximately 10–30% in direct rebound effects, although the effect size varies across behavioral domain. In addition, an indirect rebound effect has also been documented, whereby an individual engages in a more harmful action in one domain after engaging in a pro-environmental behavior in another (cf., Mazar & Zhong, 2010). These indirect rebound effects are also referred to as negative spillover (see below).
Behavioral Spillover? In recent years, environmental psychologists have begun to examine spillover. That is, does engaging in one proenvironmental behavior increase the (p. 575) probability that the person will engage in similar behaviors? For example, if we can persuade a person to install CFC lightbulbs, will that person then be more likely to engage in other behaviors, such as purchasing energy-efficient appliances or even recycling? This research question builds on the broader social psychological phenomenon of the foot-in-the-door effect (Burger, 1999). The data available to date are mixed. In a series of analyses, Thøgersen (1999) and Thøgersen and Ölander (2003) explored the possibility of behavioral spillover. In the 2003 study, data are reported from a sample of 300 consumers measured annually over three years. The design allowed the researchers to examine patterns of behavior over time and, using a cross-lagged panel design, to test directly for behavioral spillover. The results provide some evidence for spillover, but also suggest a more complicated pattern. First, their results show that three classes of behavior (recycling, buying organic, and using public transit) remained relatively stable over time. However, with regard to spillover, the data show evidence for both positive and negative spillover. That is, in some cases, engaging in a pro-environmental behavior led to subsequent decreases in other pro-environmental behaviors. Finally, their analyses also show evidence for moderated effects, such that individuals who are high in environmental values (operationalized with Schwartz’s measure of universalism) exhibited a greater likelihood of positive spillover, while participants with low universalism tended to exhibit more evidence for negative spillover. Several recent studies have explored negative spillover effects in more detail. Merritt, Effron, and Monin (2010) described the process of moral self-licensing, whereby engaging in a virtuous behavior affords an individual more latitude to engage in undesirable behaviors. For example, Effron, Cameron, and Monin (2009) showed that after expressing support for presidential candidate Barack Obama, individuals were more likely to make discriminatory
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior statements in a subsequent task. In the environmental domain, Ohta and Fujii (under review) showed that after purchasing a car that they considered eco-friendly, Japanese motorists drove more miles than motorists who purchased a car that they did not consider eco-friendly. The effect was particularly strong for motorists who believed that their car purchase could help to solve environmental problems. As evidenced by our discussion in this section, there are a number of practical considerations that should be considered in efforts to promote pro-environmental behavior. Of particular importance is the choice of which behavior to target, and the consideration of unintended consequences, such as rebound effects and negative spillover.
Conclusions Research on pro-environmental behavior has a long history in environmental psychology. Across 40 years of research and hundreds of empirical studies, one finding is clear: behavior can be changed. This chapter summarizes these research findings, organized around behavior change strategies that target the person and those that target the context. In organizing the research, the chapter categorizes these studies into egoistic, social-altruistic, and biospheric approaches. The chapter also highlights the importance of contextual-level variables in promoting pro-environmental behavior, and summarizes several lines of work in this vein. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of practical considerations, including which behaviors to target, spillover, and the potential for rebound effects. Psychological research on pro-environmental behavior has uncovered a number of effective strategies for promoting behavior change. As environmental issues continue to attract public and political attention, we foresee many opportunities for psychological research to inform efforts to promote change. Rather than lamenting the fact that human activity is causing environmental problems, or focusing exclusively on theoretical models that can document or describe behavioral pattern, research by environmental psychologists offers a positive message. Drawing on a solid empirical foundation, environmental psychologists can offer behavioral solutions for change. While personal, societal, and global shifts toward more sustainable behavior patterns will certainly require changes at multiple levels, psychologists have an important perspective to offer, and an important role to play in promoting change.
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Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior Winett, R. A. (1978). Prompting turning-out lights in unoccupied rooms. Journal of Environmental Systems, 6, 237– 241. Winkel, G., Saegert, S., & Evans, G. (2009). An ecological perspective on theory, methods, and analysis in environmental psychology: Advances and challenges. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 29, 318–328. Wood, W., & Neal, D. T. (2007). A new look at the habit-goal interface. Psychological Review, 114, 843–863. Wood, W., Tam, L., & Guerrero Witt, M. (2005). Changing circumstances, disrupting habits. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 918–933. Zelezny, L. (1999). Educational interventions that improve environmental behaviors: A meta-analysis. Journal of Environmental Education, 31, 5–14. P. Wesley Schultz P. Wesley Schultz Department of Psychology California State University, San Marcos San Marcos, CA
Florian G. Kaiser Florian G. Kaiser Department of Social Psychology Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany
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Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation
Oxford Handbooks Online Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation Víctor Corral-Verdugo, Martha Frías-Armenta, César O. Tapia-Fonllem, and Blanca S. Fraijo-Sing The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0030
Abstract and Keywords Water is one of the most valuable natural resources for humankind and other forms of life on earth, and this chapter addresses the topic of its conservation. Environmental psychology (EP) investigates the dispositional and contextual factors that incite both water waste/contamination and conservation. It also studies the psychological positive consequences that result from engaging in water conservationist practices. The obtained information has let us know the individual characteristics that promote water conservation behaviors, the extrinsic and intrinsic consequences that maintain those behaviors, and the situations that make people use water in a sustainable way. EP also participates in the design of interventional strategies aimed at the instauration of conservationist uses of freshwater, including water conservation campaigns, environmental education programs, and experiments intended to shift wasteful and contaminating water uses toward more sustainable water-consuming behaviors. A model integrating the knowledge on freshwater conservation determinants and its consequences is presented and future directions for research and interventions are outlined. Keywords: water conservation, antecedents, consequences, contextual factors, interventions
Introduction Freshwater is one of the most precious and limited resources for humankind, and its integrity is seriously endangered by a series of human factors, namely water overconsumption and contamination. Thus, in the past few decades, issues related to the quantity and quality of freshwater resources have been a focus of political action, scientific research, and public opinion (Carrus et al., 2010). Human use and a number of psychological processes related to freshwater are among the main priorities in the current environmental agenda. This agenda includes biophysical and human-social sciences activities as well as political action. According to experts, the depletion of water resources is one of the most serious changes affecting our global environment (Brown & Flavin, 1999; Rosegrant, Cai, & Cline, 2003). Currently about 1.4 billion people in the world do not have free access to freshwater. According to the previsions of intergovernmental bodies, the entire world population in 2025 will be over 8 billion, and 3 billion will be without available freshwater (UNESCO-WWAP, 2003). Humans consume more than half of the world’s available freshwater, affecting the availability of the resource for wildlife and the integrity of ecosystems everywhere (Prasanna, 2010). The gravity and complexity of this environmental problem require the participation of all scientific disciplines, psychology included. Environmental psychology has dealt with issues concerning water problems for several decades and, though no ultimate solution has been offered, we now possess a clearer view of the psychological processes involved in water overconsumption and contamination that have caused those environmental problems. With such information, interventional (p. 582) strategies intended at changing nonsustainable water consumption practices can be developed and implemented.
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Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation The Psychology of Water Problems Water problems, as most environmental dilemmas, include a behavioral and social component. Individual and group behaviors are responsible for the depletion of aquifers and the growing water contamination. Thus, in solving these problems, the assumption of a perspective exclusively centered on the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, and biology) and their derivate engineering represents an enterprise condemned to fail. To face integrally and effectively such problems, it is necessary to investigate the behavioral and social determinants of freshwater consumption, in addition to using the perspective of the “hard” sciences (Somerville & Briscoe, 2001). This implies studying perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, skills, motives, values, and all kinds of psychological and social predispositions developed by people in their contact with water. It also implies the investigation of the psychological consequences that an individual obtains from his/her consuming/saving water, since everybody engages in actions that produce positive benefits and avoids behaviors resulting in unpleasant consequences (Stern, 2002). Very importantly, the study of freshwater consumption requires the knowledge of how people interact with situational factors, including both physical (weather, drought, water abundance, availability of technology, etc.) and social (values, water-related norms and prescriptions, etc.) contexts, and how those situational factors affect psychological processes (representations, perceptions, beliefs) and water-consumption behaviors (Moser, Ratiu, & de Vanssay, 2004). Therefore, psycho-environmental research focuses mainly on the psychological and contextual antecedents of freshwater use, and also studies the positive psychological consequences of a more sustainable use of this natural resource. The aim of this chapter is to present a general perspective of research results in environmental psychology related to water problems and solutions.
Overview The second part of this chapter describes the situation of freshwater throughout the world, emphasizing the challenges faced by the most water-deprived regions of the planet, as well as their perspective for the short and long terms. In this part, the two most serious water problems are mentioned—freshwater depletion and contamination—and the main human sources of these problems are also described. In the following section, the psychological antecedents of freshwater depletion and contamination are discussed. These include individual dispositional variables, as well as contextual (physical and social) factors. Briefly, the section reviews a series of psychological and social theories that might explain why people overconsume and contaminate water. Subsequently, we define water conservation as a series of deliberate actions resulting in the conservation of such a natural resource. This conservation implies a reduced consumption and the maintenance of freshwater availability for further use (i.e., a noncontaminating consumption). A description of water conservationist behaviors is included and the use of research instruments assessing these behaviors is discussed. Then a section that deals with the personal and contextual antecedents of freshwater conservation and with the psychological consequences of such conservation is presented. Although there is no research specifically oriented toward studying the psychological consequences of water conservation, a series of reports dealing with general ecological behaviors (freshwater conservation included) reveals that conservationist people are more likely to experience positive psychological states. These reports are discussed. The final sections integrate all the previous information. An explanatory model of water conservation, including its contextual and psychological determinants, the behaviors defining freshwater conservation, and its positive psychological consequences, is outlined. Next, prospective research lines on water conservation are discussed, by mentioning what is necessary to investigate and what possible outcomes from such research might result in terms of new knowledge and interventional strategies to effectively deal with water problems.
A Thirsty World Freshwater scarcity is a crude reality in several regions of the planet. According to Gardner (2009), “water scarcity” has diverse meanings. Physical water scarcity means that available water is insufficient to meet demand.
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Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation This kind of scarcity is present in parts of the southwestern United States, northern Mexico, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, northern China, and southeastern Australia. Alternatively, economic water scarcity occurs when water is available but inaccessible because of a lack of investment in water provision or poor management (p. 583) and regulation of water resources. Water scarcity of sub-Saharan Africa falls into this category. Humans already consume 54% of all the accessible freshwater of rivers, lakes, and underground aquifers. If the freshwater stored in the form of polar ice caps and glaciers is excluded, about 97% of the world’s freshwater exists underground in groundwater aquifers (Prasanna, 2010). This source of water is being dramatically depleted as the population increases and the satisfaction of their needs also grows. Since humans share water with plants and animals, a water shortage is also a crisis for wildlife. According to experts’ forecasts, climate change will impact water scarcity during the next decades. By the middle of the 21st century, the earth’s area subject to greater water stress due to climate change will be twice as large as the area experiencing decreased-water stress. Less rainfall is expected in already arid areas, including the Mediterranean basin, western United States, northern Mexico, southern Africa, and northeastern Brazil, where runoff is expected to decrease by 10–30%, and loss of snowpack will remove a natural, off-season water reservoir in many regions (Gardner, 2009). In addition, large river basins are already overburdened by housing, industrial, logging, and/or farming activities; these result in an accelerated rundown of water and decreased water quality, which will continue if appropriate measures are not implemented (Schmuck & Vlek, 2003). As Lehman and Geller (2004) pointed out, pesticides, fertilizers, industrial chemicals and wastes, fossil fuel emissions, and residential runoff have polluted much of our freshwater supply. They cited data from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicating that 33% of the lake acreage and 15% of the total river miles in the United States are contaminated with mercury, polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs), and other chemicals in levels that make some or all species unsafe to eat. Therefore, the two most serious water problems are freshwater depletion and water contamination. Water depletion has to do with global warming, and with growing human consumption. The main human source of water consumption is agriculture, which globally represents 70% of the liquid consumption. Livestock farming is also an important contributor to water depletion: producing one ton of grain requires 1,000 tons of water, but producing one ton of beef requires 15,000 tons of the liquid. Industrial use represents 20% of global consumption, while urban and domestic uses contribute the rest of water consumption. The primary causes of water contamination include urbanization impacts (residential sanitation, solid waste disposal); industrial and mining development; agricultural impacts including leaching of nutrients and use of pesticides; salinity, and waste water use for agricultural irrigation. One major urban pollutant is sewage, which is particularly serious in poorer countries that lack adequate sanitation systems (Prasanna, 2010). Most research on conservation psychology has focused on residential water consumption and conservation, while water contamination practices and their remedies are rarely considered as research subjects in this area of the behavioral sciences.
Psychological Antecedents and Consequences of Water Depletion and Contamination As is true for the rest of environmentally relevant behaviors, water use (and abuse) is determined by psychological and contextual antecedents. Psychological antecedents are studied as dispositional variables, which constitute behavioral capacities, tendencies, and inclinations that predispose water consumption. Attitudes, beliefs, values, and skills are among those dispositional variables. Contextual antecedents include discriminative stimuli, affordances, and situational factors (weather, economic affluence, social ideals, technology, etc.) that induce water misuse. Those contextual factors affect water consumption behaviors through psychological mediators, such as perceptions and emotions, that might induce freshwater overconsumption or contamination.
Psychological Determinants of Water Misuse Motivation is a potent instigator of water consumption and contamination. People overconsume and pollute water because its consumption provides pleasure and status that reinforce egoistic tendencies (Wilk, 2006; Hörnig, 1983). Acording to Biel and Gärling (1995), egoistic motives are determinants of the misuse of this natural
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Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation resource; therefore, individuals have to restrain themselves, imposing constraints on their individualistic motives. Some personality traits are also mentioned as variables predisposing people to misuse water. Antisocial traits are among them. In a study conducted in Mexico, Corral-Verdugo, Frias, and González (2003) found that water waste (assessed as water consumption above the expected) was positively associated with tolerance of general antisocial behavior (hitting someone, stealing, cheating, etc.); (p. 584) the more the tolerance of socially deviant actions, the more the water consumption. A subsequent study by these authors (Corral-Verdugo, Frías, Fraijo, & Tapia, 2006) revealed that risk-taking and lack of self-control, two antisocial personality traits, negatively correlated with pro-environmental behavior, assessed as water conservation actions. Corral-Verdugo and Frías (2006) complemented these results, showing a positive and significant correlation between antisocial behaviors (fighting others, painting graffiti at public places, breaking others’ objects, etc.) and water waste. One more personality trait seemingly related to water consumption, and to antisociality, is the so-called present-time perspective (PTP). Corral-Verdugo, Fraijo, & Pinheiro (2006) assessed individual water consumption and PTP, which is common in people who are prone to enjoy “here-and-now” situations, without concern for the past or the future or, alternatively, to live the present at the expense of fate or others’ will (Zimbardo & Boyd, 2008). They found that the more present-oriented a person was, the higher was his/her water consumption. Perception of a low involvement of others in water conservation actions affects one’s conservationist effort. CorralVerdugo et al. (2002) attempted to measure the social trap created by the perception of others’ water misuse. They reported that perceiving that other individuals waste water negatively affected the motivation to conserve the liquid. As a consequence of such decreased motivation, water consumption increased. Utilitarian water beliefs seem to lead to water misuse. These beliefs encourage people to conceive the resource as unlimited and to see humans as having the right to use as much water as they want. Corral-Verdugo, Bechtel, and Fraijo (2003) found a significant influence of those beliefs on the consumption of the liquid. The role that indifference regarding the status of freshwater availability plays has also been investigated, at least in one study. Carrus et al. (2010) found that such indifference negatively impacted the effort of water conservation.
Contextual Factors Facilitating conditions of physical, demographic, and normative nature exist that promote water overconsumption. One of the most important contextual factors influencing water consumption is the size of the household, which of course correlates with economic income. Affluent households consume much more water than low-income households, regardless of family size and other demographic controls (Corral-Verdugo, 2002; Vickers, 2001). Richer families also save less water when asked to conserve (De Oliver, 1999). According to Harlan, Yabiku, Larsen, and Brazel (2009), excessive consumption by high-class residential users is very likely to increase class inequality in basic human needs and access to a healthy environment. These authors claimed that the size of the house is the most important intervening mechanism between household income and domestic water consumption, which, they suggested, is associated with the number and size of water-intensive possessions in residences. Larger households contain more indoor water amenities (spas, fountains, aquariums, and icemakers) and more plumbing that is susceptible to leakage, and are more likely to engage in a careless use of water. In those homes there are also more guests and entertainment, as well as more to clean and less concern for the water bill. Although richer people are more educated than the poor, and education positively impacts environmentally friendly attitudes (Guerin, Crete, & Mercier, 2001), these environmental attitudes are not always closely linked to water conservation behavior (Gregory & Di Leo, 2003); besides, affluent individuals consume more goods and services (Harlan et al., 2009). Aitken, McMahon, Wearing, and Finlayson (1994), in Australia, found that water consumption mainly depends on family size and the value of the household. In fact, Tinker, Bame, Burt, and Speed (2005), in the United States, found that the appraised value of the household positively correlated with water consumption more than any other socioeconomic variable. Families with larger number of members, and those living in more expensive households, waste more water. Hanke and de Mare (1982) also reported those results in Sweden. In addition, Syme, Thomas, and Salerian (1983) found that the value of home owners’ private gardens, the perception of such a value, and economic income were important predictors of water consumption.
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Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation In the United States, the Energy Policy Act of 1992 mandated the manufacturing of indoor plumbing fixtures that increased water conservation in new built homes (General Accounting Office, 2000). However, as Harlan et al. (2009) established, between 1979 and 2004, the size of new single-family homes increased 57% in that country, and the percentage of households with three or more bathrooms increased from almost zero to 24%. In related, terms, Harlan et al. (2009) argued that choices of house size, appointments, and (p. 585) landscaping are indicative of a preference for either a water-intensive or a water-saving lifestyle. In their study, household income had a positive and significant effect on consumption that was mediated by house size. Irrigable lot size and landscape type also have significant effects on consumption (Yabiku, Casagrande, & Farley-Metzger, 2008). A number of scholars (Gottdeiner, 2000; Harlan et al., 2009; Wilk, 2006) interested in explaining the drivers of consumption maintain the idea that under conditions of economic affluence, the use value of consumer goods— freshwater included—is supplanted by ever-increasing demand for those goods. Such a demand is stimulated by emotional needs for self-identity and symbolic social competition for status (Harlan et al., 2009). It is likely that this situation explains, at least partly, why people in richer countries, which have higher levels of human development, consume significantly more water than individuals living in poorer regions of the world, where there is a lower level of human development (Carrus et al., 2010).
Psychological Explanatory Theories of Water Misuse General psychological and social theories have served the purpose of explaining why people waste and contaminate freshwater. Behaviorism, evolutionary psychology, the theory of affordances, and the tragedy of the commons are among the most prominent. Behaviorists were perhaps the first psychologists investigating why people overconsume and contaminate water and other natural resources. According to the classical behaviorist framework, a discriminative stimulus indicates the occasion for a behavior to be produced, which is followed by a consequence that could be either reinforcing, if this increases the likelihood that such behavior will occur again, or punitive, if it decreases the likelihood that that behavior will appear in the future. Cone and Hayes (1980) adapted this model to the explanation of environmental problems. According to these authors, anti-environmental behaviors, such as freshwater overconsumption and contamination, occur because there are positive reinforcers maintaining those behaviors and discriminative stimuli inciting environmentally depredatory responses. Positive reinforcers—the consequences of using natural resources—provide satisfaction to human needs, as well as pleasure, status, and prominence to those experiencing such reinforcers (Geller, 2002). Cone and Hayes (1980) acknowledged long-term consequences of anti-environmental behaviors, and according to the theory, those consequences negatively affect (by punishing) people. Water waste in the long term results in its depletion, which is bad for the user. Unfortunately, short-term consequences of water consumption—pleasure, status, satisfaction of needs—have a larger effect on behavior, so that their control determines that antienvironmental behavior would be more likely to occur than the pro-environmental one. Environmental risks such as drought or water scarcity are perceived as long-term contingencies, and people do not respond immediately to those signals warning their possible occurrence (Gattig & Hendrickx, 2007). The lapse between human actions and their notorious effect on the environment is frequently assessed in years or decades, while the learning or modification of a behavior occurs in intervals of hours (Uzzell, 2000); this makes a difference when attempting to administer interventional programs for freshwater conservation based upon behavioral contingencies. Yet, the strategies using short-term negative consequences for water waste seem to function appropriately. For instance, Agras, Jacob, and Ledebeck (1980), in the United States, confirmed that linking punishment (fines) to excessive consumption of freshwater produced a decreased use of the liquid. Evolutionary psychology considers that the overexploitation of water and other natural resources is stimulated by evolved adaptive tendencies. Psychological processes (preferences, aptitudes, motivations, perceptions) that evolved to solve problems faced by humans in the early environment are still involved in the production of present behaviors and institutions (Crawford, 2004). Evolutionary psychology assumes that the human psyche is biologically conditioned and that people’s present behavior is strongly influenced by their evolved heritage. Such heritage leads us to the search for, monopolization, and overuse of natural resources, such as water, even if we can do without them in the current conditions or if their accumulation is not necessary for our survival.
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Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation Consumerism has an evolutionary basis that led to the selection of behavioral patterns of resources accumulation because they made possible individuals’ survival and their obtaining sexual mates (Wright, 1994). Consumerism is associated with prosperity, so that the latter makes more likely the manifestation of the evolved behavioral patterns of waste of resources. Since prosperity creates opportunity, there appears a universal human drive to raise the standard of living, which manifests as the acquisition and expansion of private possessions. In the case of water (p. 586) consumption, these possessions include large households, pools, spas, fountains, aquariums, and furniture and devices that use the liquid. Richer people create higher standards for meeting basic needs as well as setting trends in fashionable lifestyles (Wilk, 2006). They also strive for the psychological satisfaction of outperforming others in competition for social status (Hörnig, 1983). The theory of affordances (Gibson, 1979) has also been utilized to explain overconsumption of water and other natural resources. An affordance is a property of stimulant objects or situations that induces effective responses, and those responses may lead to overexploitation of resources. According to Kurz (2002), the concept of affordances includes the idea that people may perceive the utility of an object in their environment in many possible ways. Harlan et al. (2009), in conceiving water affordances as utilities, suggested that people who have unlimited access to water are attuned to multiple affordances (utilities) of their water-consuming possessions (furniture, gardens, etc.) and, as a consequence of such attunement, they waste and contaminate water. In their words, “Beyond meeting basic needs, water enables the satisfaction of running a clean, attractive, and recreationcentered home that provides visible indicators of social status. In choosing to live in large houses with high wateruse profiles, people reveal that they are attuned to water’s affordance as a good that enables them to achieve a desired lifestyle” (pp. 693–694). Unfortunately, fewer such people are attuned to water’s affordance as a valuable, scarce natural resource. One of the most likely explanations for differences in water consumption is that water carries important aesthetic, social status, and recreational affordances, which are deeply ingrained in uppermiddle-class lifestyles (Harlan et al., 2009). Thus, these authors proposed better models of social organization that encourage affluent householders to be more attuned to the water affordances that result in pro-environmental lifestyles. Water misuse is also conceived as a tragedy of the commons, one additional theory that explains antienvironmental behaviors. According to Hardin (1968), a tragedy of the commons starts when someone takes more than his or her pro rata part of a resource, to the detriment of the common good (s)he shares with other individuals. Water, as a common good, is misused by individuals who deplete and contaminate such a resource at the expense of harm for others (and ultimately for themselves). The exploiter does not realize that the rest of the people may rationalize the situation and, consequently, may respond in a similar manner, producing a social trap. As this abusive conduct becomes a norm, commons such as water are depleted because they are consumed (and/or contaminated) faster than they are replaced. This explanation has been empirically tested by Corral-Verdugo et al. (2002), who reported a decreased motivation to conserve water in people who perceived that others waste water. In their study, these authors found that individuals who suspected that their neighbors, the government, and owners of industries overconsumed water presented lower levels of motivation to engage in water conservation, and as a consequence, their conservationist actions also decreased.
Water Conservation Behavior Water conservation can be defined as the set of effective and deliberate actions that result in the protection of water resources, avoiding its waste and contamination. In this sense, water conservation fits into the more general category of sustainable or conservation behaviors, which are defined as intentional and effective practices aimed at protecting the socio-physical environment (Corral-Verdugo, Frías, & García, 2010). Freshwater conservation is effective, because it implies the display of skilled or competent actions (i.e., waste-avoiding and problem-solving behaviors; see Geller, 2002, and Fraijo, Corral-Verdugo, Tapia, & González, 2010) in response to personal and/or social requirements (Corral-Verdugo, 2002). The increasing unavailability of the resource, plus the social awareness regarding water problems and other conservationist predispositions, constitutes a fundamental component of such requirements, which ask people for a careful use of the liquid. In turn, its efficient utilization, along with the possession of the necessary skills for conserving water, represents the effective element of water conservation (Fraijo et al., 2010). When those conservationist skills are displayed in response to conservationist
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Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation requirements, a water conservation competency appears (Corral-Verdugo, 2002). Moreover, to be pro-environmental, water conservation should be deliberate, according to a number of authors, which means that individuals have to consciously direct their behavioral efforts to the purpose of freshwater conservation. Although the deliberative (and conscious) component of water conservation behaviors is accepted by most environmental psychologists and educators (Emmons, 1997; Staats, Harland, & Wilke, 2004, Stern, 2000), others are comfortable with the idea that water conservation—and the rest of pro-environmental (p. 587) behaviors—might be unconscious, as manifested in habits (Geller, 2002; Gregory & di Leo, 2003). This distinction might be significant, according to some authors (e.g., Fraijo et al., 2010), because deliberation and consciousness are critical processes in the induction of versatile pro-environmental skills (i.e., changing skilled behaviors in response to changes in environmental conditions and problems), and versatility is a key feature of proenvironmental competency (Corral-Verdugo, 2002).
Water Conservation Practices There are a number of actions practiced by people aimed at conserving water, and they are the focus of psychoenvironmental research. At a residential level, the use of the toilet represents around a third of water consumption; that is why the installation of water-efficient toilets is considered an important conservationist action. Decreasing time for taking a shower (five minutes, at the most, is recommended) is another water-conservation strategy. Recycling water from the laundry, sink, and bathroom (gray water) to gardens and/or toilets is also a recommended practice (Lazarova, Hills, & Birks, 2003). Control of leakage is included within water conservation practices as well; this implies locating and repairing leaks in the distribution network, supply pipes, and household (Gray, 2008). Recently, rainwater harvesting has begun to be implemented in public buildings and households; in some places where rain is frequent, new buildings rely on rainwater as a primary water source for consumption (Gray, 2008). Additional measures include using buckets instead of hoses for car-washing, watering plants and gardens at night, using water-efficient technologies (besides the ones for the toilet) for saving the liquid, brushing one’s teeth without water running from the faucet (Corral-Verdugo, 2002), planting vegetation other than grass or water-intensive consuming plants, especially in arid regions, and avoiding the use of pools and spas, among many others (Yabiku et al., 2008; Harlan et al., 2009). Efficient irrigation systems, industrial processes that avoid water waste and contamination, and livestock farming systems that conserve water also have to be considered within these types of pro-environmental behaviors.
Methods for Studying Water Conservation Behaviors A number of research methods for assessing water consumption practices have been used by environmental psychologists and extensively reported in the literature. They include self-reports of water consumption and conservation, water consumption metering, archive analysis, and direct observations of water use.
Self-Reports Questionnaires and interviews are two types of self-reports commonly used to obtain information regarding the intensity or frequency of freshwater consumption behaviors. People express whether they engage in water-waste behaviors (Kaiser, 1998; Middlestadt et al., 2001) and whether their consumption is excessive, moderate, or low, or very frequent or infrequent (Bustos, 2004; Vaske & Kobrin, 2001); they can also indicate, by using numbers, how many times they get involved in water consumption actions during a specific interval (Corral-Verdugo & Frías, 2006). Self-reports of freshwater use have a number of advantages over alternative assessment methods: they are reliable and easy to administer, and allow gathering wide information with regard to environmental practices. A disadvantage is their limited validity; Corral-Verdugo (2000) found low and nonsignificant correlations between water conservation self-reports and the conservation registered through direct observations, as well as very low correlations between the self-reports and water consumption recorded in water meters.
Water Consumption Metering Perhaps the most valid indicator of water consumption is obtained through water consumption billings. These include not only the money to pay for the consumption but also the exact amount of consumed water in cubic meters or gallons. Several researchers have used this technique in their studies: Tinker and Woods (2001) utilized
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Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation water billing to assess outdoor residential consumption, such as car-washing and garden watering. Corral-Verdugo (2002) and Corral-Verdugo et al. (2003) used this strategy to calculate total consumption, both outdoor and indoor, contrasting this result with those of using alternative measurement techniques. Their findings reveal that water metering produces outcomes more closely related to those obtained from direct observations than those obtained from self-reports of freshwater consumption. Although water metering is highly valid (even more than the direct observations), it has an inconvenience: water billings do not reflect individual consumption but rather the collective use of water that results from the liquid’s consumption by all the members of a household. If the aim of a study is to investigate the (p. 588) individual characteristics determining water waste, water billing will not be very useful because it does not accurately indicate how much water a particular person consumes. Individual differences within the same family are expected, as research reports indicate (see, e.g., Corral-Verdugo et al., 2003).
Archival Analysis It is possible to obtain relevant data for psycho-environmental research through the analysis of files containing historical recordings of individual or collective behaviors. Information regarding the affiliation of people with ecologist groups, or the record of products or natural resources consumption—water included—of a social group may be obtained. In regard to our topic, De Oliver (1999) studied the records of water consumption of San Antonio, Texas, and Harlan et al. (2009) obtained records of consumption in a specific area of Phoenix, Arizona, which allowed them to estimate residential consumption. As in the case of water billings, the measures these authors utilized were valid for estimating group consumption. Yet, this validity decreases when attempts to calculate individual behavior are made, since those archives refer to household water use.
Direct Observations The validity of direct observations of behavior is acknowledged by psychological researchers (Bechtel, 1990). Using this method, pro- or anti-environmental actions resulting in water waste or conservation may be recorded. The first step implies the selection of the target behaviors. For instance, it can be decided to investigate behaviors such as washing cars, watering plants, or washing clothes. Later, a recording sheet is designed in which the observations will be annotated, and finally those observations and recordings are conducted. Corral-Verdugo (2002) and Corral-Verdugo et al. (2003) reported examples of the use of this technique. Its validity is one of its advantages; the difficulty of conducting the observation as well as the reactivity that may produce (when a participant is aware of being observed) and a possible violation of the participant’s privacy are disadvantages (Bechtel, 1990).
Antecedents and Positive Psychological Consequences of Water Conservation As in the case of water waste and contamination, antecedent and consequent factors that promote water conservation can be detected. This section reviews the most studied of those factors.
Antecedent Variables: Awareness, Knowledge, Skills, and Competence Awareness and knowledge of water problems are two evident candidates to function as positive antecedents of freshwater conservation. It has been claimed that because of the apparent success of media campaigns, interventional strategies should be devoted to better educating the public and to promoting water conservation behavior (Connelly, Buchanan, Forster, & Cow, 1992). Nevertheless, not all media campaigns have proved successful. In one study seeking specifically to evaluate a water conservation campaign, Penman (1988) described the results of a two-month multimedia campaign that included information regarding the need to conserve water. Television was the most effective medium promoting an awareness of the campaign. Yet, despite this awareness, the campaign did not appear to contribute to people’s knowledge of water conservation issues, nor was it successful in changing water consumption behavior. In spite of this, Gregory and di Leo (2003) found that greater awareness of water conservation issues correlates with a lower water usage. Knowledge, operationalized as the information an individual possesses regarding water problems and their solutions, seems to have a significant—although not much salient—effect on water conservation. Yet, its importance lies on the fact that knowledge is a prerequisite for developing pro-environmental skills, which are direct determinants of freshwater conservation behavior (Corral-Verdugo, 2002). Moore, Murphy, and Watson
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Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation (1994) examined knowledge and reported water conservation behavior over a three-year period. They found that a reduced consumption of water correlated positively with knowledge. Middlestadt et al. (2001), in turn, suggested that providing high school students with specific “behavioral knowledge” regarding water may lead them to conserve the liquid. As mentioned, skills are important and direct determinants of water conservation. Corral-Verdugo (2002) found that water-saving skills (assessed through the observation of problem-solving situations) were indicators of proenvironmental competency, a factor directly and significantly influencing water conservation. Bustos (2004), in turn, reported that freshwater conservation in personal cleaning and meal preparation results, to a large extent, from conservationist skills, while Fraijo et al. (2010) modeled those skills as indicators of pro-environmental competency in children, demonstrating that the higher the competency, the more reduced the consumption of water. (p. 589)
Beliefs and Perceptions
According to Berk et al. (1980), at least five personal belief factors exist that enhance conservation and consequently reduce the demand for water: (1) a belief that a water shortage exists and constitutes a problem for a group with which an individual identifies; (2) a moral commitment to produce “fair” contributions to group welfare; (3) a belief in the efficacy of personal efforts to achieve a collective solution; (4) a belief that the personal cost of inconvenience resulting from conservation efforts will not be great; and (5) a belief that others in the relevant group will also conserve. Dziegielewski (1994) confirmed that the belief in the seriousness of a water shortage is a predictor of household water conservation. Similarly, Bruvold (1979) reported that perceived seriousness of a drought predicted both per capita water consumption and water conservation behaviors. Pro-ecological beliefs may also be significant determinants of freshwater conservation. In their paper, CorralVerdugo, Bechtel, and Fraijo (2003) reported that the general environmental beliefs of the new environmental paradigm (Dunlap & Van Liere, 1978) had a positive effect on specific beliefs regarding water, which conceive it as a valuable, exhaustible resource that requires conservation. Such specific beliefs, in turn, positively and directly influenced water conservation. Fraijo et al. (2010), in studying Mexican children, found that those specific water beliefs are a component of a pro-environmental competency of water conservation, while Martinportugués, Canto, García and Hidalgo (2002) reported an effect of water beliefs on water conservation in Spanish teenagers. In recent reports, Corral-Verdugo et al. (2008) and Carrus et al. (2010) found that general beliefs of a new human interdependence paradigm (i.e., the idea that the physical environment might be preserved by humans and that people need nature in order to survive) directly predict the self-report of water conservation. In regard to perceptual factors, Hirose and Kitada (1987), in Japan, found that the perceived efficacy of governmental water conservation (i.e., how much individuals believe that their government conserves water) becomes a determinant of residential water conservation in a drought situation. Dziegielewski’s (1994) findings suggest that the perception that conservation measures are equitable predicts the support of household water conservation. Also, the trust people confer upon their authorities leads them to accept measures of water conservation, such as the installation of water-recycling plants (Bridgeman, 2004).
Behavioral Intentions Most environmental psychologists consider conservationist behaviors to be deliberative responses. Stern (2000), for instance, defined environmentalism in behavioral terms as “the propensity to take actions with proenvironmental intent” (p. 411). This means that water conservation actions should be guided by intentions to act, to be considered pro-environmental. The theory of planned behavior (TPB) is the explanatory model that best incorporates the deliberative component of conservationism. In short, the TPB posits that the immediate antecedent of behavior is intention to act, which in turn is predicted by an attitude toward the given behavior (ACT), subjective norm (SN), and perceived behavioral control (PBC). According to the TPB, attitudes are an individual’s overall evaluation of a given behavior and subjective norms as a person’s belief about whether significant people (friends, neighbors, or relatives) think he or she should engage in the specified behavior. PBC measures an individual’s perception of how easy or difficult a given behavior is to perform (Ajzen, 1991). Trumbo and O’Keefe (2001) used the TPB to predict water conservation intention and behavior in three US
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Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation communities. In their study they included socio-demographics, environmental values, and information effects in addition to the TPB variables. Their model accounted for 27% of the variance in behavioral intention, with the core TPB variables making up 67% of that total. Lam (1999) used a modified TPB model to separately predict intention to reduce water usage and intention to install water-saving appliances in Taiwan. The author included perceived moral obligation and perceived water rights in his model. The TPB explained 41% of the variance in intention to reduce water consumption and 24% of the variance in intention to install water-saving appliances. Clark and Finley (2007) found that the TPB variables significantly predicted water conservation intention. They also found that awareness of climate change and global warming was a significant predictor of intention to implement water conservation measures.
Personal Norms, Values, and Future Orientation Norms may affect pro-environmental actions in a positive way (Kalgreen, Reno, & Cialdini, 2000; see also the section regarding behavioral (p. 590) interventions in this chapter) and these conventions are assumed by individuals as normative attitudes. Social normative attitudes are an “understanding of the behaviors of others” (Schultz, 2002, p. 73), including what other people do or should be doing, while a personal norm is manifested as “a feeling of obligation to act in a particular manner in specific situations” (Schultz, 2002, p. 74). In a study conducted in Mexico, Corral-Verdugo and Frías (2006) found that personal normative beliefs about water conservation had a direct and significant influence on the self-report of a pro-environmental use of that resource. In addition, environmental values have been studied as predictors of water use. Values are a dispositional factor that guides behavior; Schwartz (1992) saw them as universal and proposed a classification of values in two big dimensions: self-transcendence (oriented toward altruism or concern for others and the environment) and selfenhancement (oriented toward achieving personal well-being). Thus, environmental values are included within selftranscendent values. Trumbo and O’Keefe (2001) found that environmental values had a significant, yet weak, effect on the freshwater conservation effort, while the study by Schultz and Zelezny (1998) revealed a positive relationship between self-transcendence values (especially the environment-oriented ones) and pro-environmental behaviors that included water conservation. Future orientation—a personality trait—is also a determinant of a responsible use of water. This orientation characterizes individuals who like to plan strategies and meet their long-term obligations. These individuals tend to avoid risky situations and behaviors, and to visualize and formulate future goals that influence their present decisions and judgments. They are also conscious, self-controlled, organized, creative, reliable, and responsible (Zimbardo & Boyd, 2008). Studies conducted by Corral-Verdugo and Pinheiro (2006), Corral-Verdugo, Fraijo, and Pinheiro (2006), and Pinheiro and Corral-Verdugo (2010) revealed that water conservation is practiced more by future-oriented people than by present- or past-oriented individuals.
Situational Factors Physical situations may be powerful inductors or facilitators of pro-environmental behaviors. For instance, living in an environment with temperate weather makes easier the adoption of water conservation practices, as opposed to living in a hot climate, which requires a more intensive consumption of the liquid to survive (Harlan et al., 2009). A limited availability of water is also a significant inducer of water-saving behaviors. In Mexico, Corral-Verdugo (2002) investigated the effect of a reduced supply of water on its consumption. His findings suggest that water scarcity is one of the most important situational factors positively influencing the conservationist effort. Having access to water-saving technologies also works in the effort of conserving the liquid. In the United States, Geller, Erickson, and Buttram (1983) found that the use of water-saving devices was significantly effective as a strategy for reducing the liquid’s consumption. Harlan et al. (2009) suggested that it is easier to require developers to install water-saving technologies in new homes than to enforce new regulations on homeowners. The technologies they mention include “smart” irrigation and gray-water recycling systems, community pools or smaller pools, and pool covers. Normative situational factors such as social norms and legal regulations may also induce water conservation, in addition to the physical situations above mentioned. Harlan et al. (2009) indicated that cash or tax incentives to convert yards to drier landscapes, purchase water-saving technologies, or reduce water usage are likely to work
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Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation for home owners. A number of studies include water price as a determinant of domestic water consumption and conservation (see Terrebonne, 2005, for a review). In general, most researchers indicate that water demand is quite inelastic (Dalhuisen, Florax, de Groot, & Nijkamp, 2003). Water is inexpensive in most countries because it is considered essential for all human activities (Clark & Finley, 2007). People pay for the service of delivering water and not the resource itself (Corral-Verdugo et al., 2003). An increase in the price of the liquid and progressive block rate structures should be effective if public water agencies do not buffer consumers from paying the full cost of the liquid (Clark & Finley, 2007). This is especially true in the case of richer people, since their water bill is a negligible cost.
Behavioral Interventions Kantola, Syme, and Nesdale (1983) used behavioral intention as an indirect measure of water conservation. They found that those people who had seen a persuasive film about water conservation produced conservation intentions superior to those of a control group that did not see the film. Thompson and Stoutmeyer (1991) combined educational information with commitment and (p. 591) found that a message focusing on the long-term environmental consequences of water conservation was a better strategy in promoting a decreased water consumption than a message that stressed only the economic benefits that could result from conservation. Southwell (2001) taught water conservation lessons to a group of students and measured their impact on water conservation at home, with positive results. Fraijo et al. (2010) also used environmental education to promote water conservation in children. They found that a 40-hour educational program resulted in a decreased consumption of the liquid, as well as in increased conservationist motivation, skills, and beliefs. Prompts and feedback are also used as strategies to promote freshwater conservation. Prompts including signs reading “Turn off tap when not in use” can be effective in reducing water consumption, as McKenzie-Mohr (1999) suggested and Aronson (1982) demonstrated three decades ago. To be more effective, these signs should be obtrusive, although people consider them annoying, as Aronson’s (1982) study suggested. Feedback has been shown to produce sustained behavior change across a range of conservation behaviors. A study conducted in Australia (Geller, Winett, & Everett, 1982) found that water consumption decreased around 30% as a consequence of daily feedback on water use and a rebate proportionate to demand reduction. Punishment—in the form of fines—of excessive water consumption also decreases the waste of this resource, as Agras et al. (1980) found in their quasi-experiment in California. Positive reinforcements such as jackpots could also be employed to reward water conservation, as Pryor (1999) has established. Based on these results, Foxall (1995) recommended a combination of three behavioral interventions aimed at reducing water consumption: (1) punishment, especially in the form of fines for excessive consumption or contamination; (2) metering, to provide an association between behavior and its contingencies as well as consumption feedback; and (3) closing the setting by reducing the range of times and places during which water can be consumed.
Positive Psychological Consequences of Water Conservation The sustainable management of water resources supposedly, at minimum, includes the triple levels of social, economic, and environmental analysis. Syme and Nancarrow (2008) criticized the fact that there is relatively little emphasis on the social dimension of water conservation, including the social consequences of a sustainable use of the liquid. We would add that there is much less emphasis on the psychological consequences of conserving such a natural resource. The major discourse appears to be between the economic and environmental consequences. Hoekstra, Savenije, and Chapagain (2001) analyzed some aspects of water value, at the catchment scale in the context of an African river. They concluded that if a cubic meter of water provides some sort of ecological or economic benefit, water should be viewed not only at that point in space and time, but also in its previous stages in its journey through the catchment. That is, in economic terms the same drop of water has many often related values, and the total value of water depends on its context or place in the hydrological cycle. A similar observation was made by Syme and Nancarrow (2008) from a social perspective. According to them, water can provide for
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Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation both health and recreation, and these social values can accumulate. As these authors posited, water benefit is not the quantity of water itself (i.e., the economic or environmental benefit). People may obtain positive consequences from consuming water in the form of refreshment, the feeling of enjoyment of a vase of flowers, or as a spiritual experience. Therefore, there is also a positive psychological consequence of water consumption. Of course, negative psychological consequences of lacking water have to be taken in account as well. Water scarcity may result in negative psychological consequences, as Coelho, Adair, and Mocellin (2004) demonstrated, by showing that people get anxious and emotionally distressed when experiencing the effects of drought. That is why it is so important to assess how satisfied (and/or happy) people feel with the alternative benefits that water allocation and consumption imply. Moreover, it would also be important to assess the psychological consequences that engaging in water conservation produce on individuals. There is not much information on those consequences, yet the literature mentions that practicing environmental conservation and other sustainable actions results in psychological benefits for people. Indeed, since the origin of conservation psychology, its behaviorist practitioners have reported that externally provided positive consequences (i.e., receiving benefits such as material rewards or social recognition) increase freshwater conservation. The effect of such reinforcement on conservation behavior is so salient that Schmuck and Vlek (2003) were (p. 592) compelled to state that “behaviorism implies that human behavior may be changed by forcing choices via physical and social incentives that cannot (or can hardly) be evaded” (p. 70). The problem with external consequences is that they represent a cost that sometimes overpasses the benefit of the intended environmental conservation. One more problem is that the withdrawal of the consequence leads to the extinction of that conservation behavior (Lehman & Geller, 2004). But there is more than externally positive consequences that incites the practice of pro-environmental behaviors. Intrinsic consequences (i.e., the “natural” and automatic consequence of a behavior), such as the satisfaction that results from being conservationist (De Young, 1991; Iwata, 2001), motivation competence (De Young, 1996), psychological restoration (Hartig, Kaiser, & Bowler, 2001), happiness (Brown & Kasser, 2005), and personal wellbeing (Corral-Verdugo et al., 2011), have been reported to appear in people as a consequence of their proenvironmental actions. In regard to freshwater use, one study by Bechtel and Corral-Verdugo (2010) found higher levels of happiness in American and Mexican undergraduates who self-reported pro-ecological behaviors, including water conservation. Interestingly, the association between being conservationist and happiness was three times larger in the Mexicans than in the Americans. One more study (Corral-Verdugo et al., 2011) revealed that the feelings of personal wellbeing significantly correlated with the self-reported practice of pro-ecological behaviors, which also include freshwater conservation actions. The area of research on the positive psychological consequences of water conservation is still incipient. Environmental psychologists need to know much more about these positive consequences to design effective interventional programs aimed at promoting a sustainable lifestyle of water consumption.
Conclusion As in other areas of conservation psychology, a growing body of research indicates that, depending upon the circumstances and their personal history, people might be compelled to either waste or conserve freshwater. Economic affluence, human development levels, water accessibility, extreme weather, social-status values, egoistic and antisocial tendencies, present time-orientation, indifference toward the state of water, and suspiciousness regarding others’ waste of water are among the most important factors promoting water overconsumption and contamination. Alternatively, awareness and knowledge of water problems and solutions, pro-environmental skills and competency, pro-ecological beliefs, perceptions of equity, trust of authorities, intentions to conserve water, personal environmental norms, environmental and self-transcendence values, and future-time orientation are psychological dispositional variables that induce freshwater conservation. Temperate weather, water scarcity, access to water-saving technologies, water prices, social norms, and legal regulations are situational factors that also promote the conservation of that natural resource, as do a series of behavioral interventions, including environmental education and water conservation campaigns. These results suggest actions and human-group targets to consider when implementing interventional programs.
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Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation For instance, richer nations and affluent individuals have to be specially considered when designing such programs (Carrus et al., 2010); a more equitable distribution of the resource has to be guaranteed. In addition, people need to perceive others’ effort in conserving freshwater to feel compelled to engage in protecting the resource (De Oliver, 1999; Dziegielewski, 1994); one way to achieve this is through legal regulation and enforcement of water conservation measures (Corral-Verdugo and Frías, 2006); environmental education may also significantly contribute (Fraijo et al., 2010). The access to water-saving technologies has to be guaranteed (Geller et al., 1983), and prices that discourage overconsumption (Terrebonne, 2005) as well as sanctions for contaminating the resource are necessary. As for environmental education, this strategy should include the promotion of freshwater conservation activities along with the instauration of their corresponding dispositional variables: knowledge, water ecological beliefs, values, norms, and motives, functioning as water-conservation requirements, which combined with water conservation skills constitute a pro-environmental competency for the solution of water problems (Corral-Verdugo, 2002; Fraijo et al., 2010). One area of special interest is the investigation of the psychological consequences that might result from conserving freshwater. For the past several decades, behaviorists have indicated that a responsible use of water might be followed by external positive consequences (monetary rebates, social recognition, etc.), which in turn make more likely further engagement in freshwater conservation. Taking this approach within conservationist campaigns is a fruitful strategy, for instance, by providing rebates in (p. 593) water bills to people who reduce their consumption and maintain it below a certain level. Unfortunately, the means for providing external consequences are not always at hand, and consumers return to previous levels of water use if the positive consequence is withdrawn or absent. Therefore, the promotion of intrinsic consequences has to be considered, since these consequences result naturally and automatically from just engaging in a due behavior. Although, as Lehman and Geller (2004) indicated, intrinsic consequences that support pro-environmental behavior are not always available, the literature in this area provides evidence that sustainable behaviors are usually accompanied by satisfaction, happiness, competence motivation, personal well-being, and—likely—psychological restoration, which are intrinsic contingencies resulting from the simple act of conserving natural resources. If this applies to water conservation, as suggested by a number of findings (Bechtel & Corral-Verdugo, 2010; Corral-Verdugo et al., 2011), asking people to conserve water while also anticipating or prompting them with the consequences of such actions should result in at least some of the intrinsic consequences of water conservation. Since this is an area of research practically unexplored, there is a need for studies investigating those intrinsic consequences and the way people might get attuned to them (as in the case of conservationist affordances).
Future Directions Most psycho-environmental studies on freshwater conservation are aimed at studying residential uses of water. Although this is an important—and growing—type of consumption, there are other areas to pay attention to, since their effects on water depletion and contamination are fundamental. More investigation of the psychological determinants and consequences of water waste in the agricultural, livestock farming, and industrial sectors is needed, since these sectors represent more than 90% of water consumption. Their impact on human and natural ecosystems is huge. A study by Carlos (2004), for instance, showed that almost 80% of the variance in family and social problems of an agricultural community was explained by only two factors: agriculture mono-cultivation and wasteful irrigation systems. The study of the psychological factors that inhibit water contamination is also necessary, since most research is devoted to analyzing variables related to avoiding water depletion. This should lead to studying the situational and psychological antecedents of water conservation in agricultural, industrial, and livestock farming activities, as well as the consequences that might maintain a sustainable use of water in these sectors. Figure 30.1attempts to integrate the (known and to-investigate) factors that promote freshwater conservation. The factors on the left represent the physical and normative situations that induce a responsible and noncontaminating use of the liquid. These factors exert their influence on water conservation through the development of dispositional and perceptual variables. The mediator role of perceptions is understandable since one necessarily must perceive situations to be affected by them (Gaspar de Carvalho, Palma, & Corral-Verdugo, 2010). The availability of (both physical and social) conditions facilitating water conservation makes possible the acquisition of conservationist knowledge, skills, values, norms, and the development of pro-ecological beliefs and intentions to conserve freshwater (Corral-Verdugo, 2002). Being exposed to propitiating situations also results in the display of
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Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation emotions toward nature and the conservation of its resources (Kals, Schumacher, & Montada, 1999), water included. Some social contexts promote altruistic and equitable tendencies that allow a reduced consumption of natural resources so that they could be accessible to other persons (Ohnuma et al., 2005). Water conservation is depicted in the model as constituted by responsible (i.e., nonwasteful and noncontaminating) uses of the resource in agriculture, livestock farming, industry, and residential scenarios. Such conservation would be reinforced by positive consequences, either extrinsic (material or social reinforcement) or intrinsic (satisfaction, happiness, competence motivation, psychological restoration, personal well-being). Since the study of the intrinsic consequences of water conservation is markedly scarce, the water-conservation research area will benefit from further investigation of those consequences.
Click to view larger Figure 30.1 Model of Water Conservation Explained by Contextual and Psychological Antecedents and Its Positive Consequences
In addition, the relationship between some of the dispositional factors included in the model and water conservation has not been investigated or has been studied but not intensively. Research regarding the effect of emotions toward nature on water consumption, the influence of environmental values on the conservation of the liquid, and the impact of altruistic, frugal, and equitable tendencies on water-saving behaviors is not found in the literature or has been barely considered. Also, most studies are nonexperimental, to the detriment of interventional or experimental strategies, which guarantee higher levels of internal validity (i.e., certitude of a causal relationship (p. 594) between water conservation and its determinants), thus, more experimental studies are needed. Although the model of Figure 30.1 intends to be integrative, its contents are not necessarily theoretically driven by a particular explanatory framework. It includes pieces of behaviorism, evolutionary psychology, social-norms theory, and the theories of affordance and commons dilemma, which have attempted to explain why people conserve natural resources, with varying degrees of success. Yet, few of those theories have devoted their attention to specifically addressing why some people are conservationists in their uses of freshwater. This means that more theorization in this area is required, and such theorization should lead to the design of research models and implementation. Freshwater conservation is crucial for the survival of our species and other forms of life on earth. Since environmental psychology comprises the study of the reciprocal relation between human behavior and the sociophysical environment, this scientific area is specially committed to provide information regarding the factors that facilitate a responsible use of freshwater. Thus, a special and continued effort in conducting nonexperimental and interventional studies on water conservation should be manifested by environmental psychologists in the close future. Understanding the psychological and contextual factors that underlie water conservation would undoubtedly be helpful in guaranteeing the endurance of life as we know it on this planet.
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Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation Aitken, C., McMahon, T., Wearing A., & Finlayson, B. (1994). Residential water use: Predicting and reducing consumption. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 21, 611–619. Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179–211. Aronson, E. (1982). The relative effectiveness of models and prompts on energy conservation: A field experiment in a shower room. Journal of Environmental Systems, 12, 219–224. Bechtel, R. B. (1990). The ubiquitous world of paper and pencil tests. In R. B. Bechtel, W. W. Marans, & W. Michelson (p. 595) (Eds.), Methods in Environmental and Behavioral Research. Malabar, FL: Krieger. Bechtel, R. B., & Corral-Verdugo, V. (2010). Happiness and sustainable behavior. In V. Corral-Verdugo, C. García, & M. Frías (Eds.), Psychological approaches to sustainability. New York: Nova Science. Berk, R., Cooley, T., Lacivita, C., Parker, S., Sredl, K., & Brewer, M. (1980). Reducing consumption in [eriods of acute scarcity: The case of water. Social Science Research, 9, 99–120. Biel, A., & Gärling, T. (1995). The role of uncertainty in environmental dilemmas. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15, 221–233. Bridgeman, J. (2004). Public perception towards water recycling in California. Water and Environmental Journal, 18, 150–154. Brown, K. W., & Kasser, T. (2005). Are psychological and ecological well-being compatible? The role of values, mindfulness, and lifestyle. Social Indicators Research, 3(74), 349–368. Brown, L. R., & Flavin, C. (1999). A new economy for a new century. In Linda Starke (Ed.), State of the world: A Worldwatch Institute report on progress toward a sustainable society. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Bruvold, W. (1979). Residential response to urban drought in Central California. Water Resources Research, 15, 1297–1304. Bustos, M. (2004). Modelo de conducta proambiental para el estudio de la conservación del agua potable. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Facultad de Psicología, México, UNAM. Carlos, E. (2004). Factores condicionantes de la gestión del uso de agua y su impacto en el distrito de riego del Río Yaqui, México. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Tijuana, Mexico. Carrus, G., Bonnes, M., Corral, V., Moser, G., & Sinha, J. (2010). Social-psychological and contextual predictors of sustainable water consumption. In V. Corral, C. García, & M. Frías (Eds.), Psychological approaches to sustainability. New York: Nova Science. Clark, W., & Finley, J. (2007). Determinants of water conservation intention in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. Society and Natural Resources, 20, 613–627. Coelho, A., Adair, J., & Mocellin, J. (2004). Psychological responses to drought in northern Brazil. Interamerican Journal of Psychology, 38, 95–103. Cone, J. D., & Hayes, S. C. (1980). Environmental problems. Behavioral solutions. Monterey, CA: Brooks Cole. Connelly, K., Buchanan, K., Forster, C., & Cow, H. (1992). Melbourne water resources review interim report: Water for our future. Melbourne, Australia: Melbourne Water. Corral-Verdugo, V. (2000). La cultura del agua en Sonora: Un estudio empírico de los determinantes contextuales e individuales del ahorro del líquido. Estudios Sociales, 19, 9–31. Corral-Verdugo, V. (2002). A structural model of pro-environmental competency. Environment and Behavior, 34, 531–549. Corral-Verdugo, V., Bechtel, R., & Fraijo, B. (2003). Environmental beliefs and water conservation: an empirical
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Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation Fraijo, B., Corral-Verdugo, V., Tapia, C., & González, D. (2010). Promoting pro-environmental competency. In V. Corral, C. García, & M. Frías (Eds.), Psychological approaches to sustainability. New York: Nova Science. (p. 596) Gardner, G. (2009). Water scarcity looms. Retrieved from www.worldwatch.org/node/6213? emc=el&m=279787&l=4&v=41526f22f. Gaspar de Carvalho, R., Palma, J. M., & Corral, V. (2010). Why do people fail to act? Situational barriers and constraints on proecological behavior. In V. Corral, C. García, & M. Frías (Eds.), Psychological approaches to sustainability. New York: Nova Science. Gattig, A., & Hendrickx, L. (2007). Judgmental discounting and environmental risk perceptions. Dimensional similarities, domain differences, and implications for sustainability. Journal of Social Issues, 63, 21–39. Geller, E., Winett, R., & Everett, P. (1982). Preserving the environment. Elmsford, NY: Pergamon. Geller, E.S. (2002). The challenge of increasing proenvironment behaviour. In R. B. Bechtel & A. Churchman (Eds.), Handbook of environmental psychology. London: Sage. Geller, S., Erickson, J. B., & Buttram, B. A. (1983). Attempts to promote residential water conservation with educational, behavioral, and engineering strategies. Population and Environment: Behavioral and Social Issues, 6, 96–112. General Accounting Office. (2000). Water infrastructure: Water-efficient plumbing fixtures reduce water consumption and wastewater flows. Retrieved from www.gao.gov/new.items/rc00232.pdf. Gibson, J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Gottdeiner, M. (Ed.) (2000). New forms of consumption. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Gray, N. F. (2008). Drinking water quality: Problems and solutions (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Gregory, G., & Di Leo, M. (2003). Repeated behavior and environmental psychology: The role of personal involvement and habit formation in explaining water consumption. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 33, 1261– 1296. Guerin, D., Crete, J., & Mercier, J. (2001). A multilevel analysis of the determinants of recycling behavior in the European countries. Social Science Research, 30, 195–218. Hanke, S., & de Mare, L. (1982). Residential water demand: A pooled time series, cross section study of Malmo, Sweden. Water Resources Bulletin, 18, 621–625. Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162, 1243–1248. Harlan, S., Yabiku, S., Larsen, L., & Brazel, A. (2009). Household water consumption in an arid city: Affluence, affordance, and attitudes. Society and Natural Resources, 22, 691–709. Hartig, T., Kaiser, F., & Bowler, P. (2001). Psychological restoration in nature as a positive motivation for ecological behavior. Environment and Behavior, 33, 590–607. Hirose, Y., & Kitada, T. (1987). Determinants of residential consumers’ water conservation in urban drought. Research in Social Psychology, 2, 21–28. Hoekstra, A., Savenije, H., & Chapagain, A. (2001). An integrated approach towards assessing the value of water: A case study on the Zambesi basin. Integrated Assessment, 2, 199–208. Hörnig, K. H. (1983). Social structure, life-styles, and man–object relationships. In L. Uusitalo (Ed.), Consumer behaviour and environmental quality (pp. 17–26). Aldershot, UK: Gower. Iwata, O. (2001). Attitudinal determinants of environmentally responsible behavior. Social Behavior and Personality, 27, 379–386.
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Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation Kaiser, F. (1998). A general measure of ecological behavior. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 28, 395–442. Kalgreen, C., Reno, R., & Cialdini, R. (2000). A focus theory on normative conduct: When norms do and do not affect behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 1002–1012. Kals, E., Schumacher, D., & Montada, L. (1999). Emotional affinity toward nature as a motivational basis to protect nature. Environment and Behavior, 31, 178–202. Kantola, S., Syme, G., & Nesdale, A. (1983). The effects of appraised severity and efficacy in promoting water conservation: An informational analysis. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2, 164–182. Kurz, T. (2002). The psychology of environmentally sustainable behavior: Fitting together pieces of the puzzle. Analysis of Social Issues and Public Policy, 2, 257–278. Lam, S. (1999). Predicting intentions to conserve water from the theory of planned behavior, perceived moral obligation, and perceived water right. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29, 1058–1071. Lazarova, V., Hills, S., & Birks, R. (2003). Using recycled water for non-potable, urban uses: A review with particular reference to toilet flushing. Water Science and Technology: Water Supply, 3, 69–77. Lehman, P., & Geller, S., (2004). Behavior analysis and environmental protection: Accomplishments and potential for more. Behavior and Social Issues, 13, 13–32. Martimportugués, C., Canto, J. M., García, M. A., & Hidalgo, C. (2002). Actitudes hacia el ahorro del agua: un análisis descriptivo. Medio Ambiente y Comportamiento Humano, 3, 119–143. McKenzie-Mohr, D. (1999). Fostering sustainable behavior: An introduction to community-based social marketing. Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society Publishers. Middlestadt, S., Grieser, M., Hernández, O., Tubaishat, K., Sanchack, J., Southwell, B., & Schwartz, R. (2001). Turning minds on and faucets off: Water conservation education in Jordanian schools. Journal of Environmental Education, 32, 37–45. Moore, S., Murphy, M., & Watson, R. (1994). A longitudinal study of domestic water conservation behavior. Population and Environment, 16, 175–189. Moser, G., Ratiu, E., & de Vanssay, B. (2004). Water use and management in the light of sustainable development. Update, Newsletter of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change, 4, 13– 15. Ohnuma, S., Hirose, Y., Karasawa, K., Yorifuji, K., & Sugiura, J. (2005) Why do residents accept a demanding rule? Fairness and social benefit as determinants of approval of a recycling system. Japanese Psychological Research, 47, 1–11. Penman, R. (1988, Summer). Evaluation of ACT water conservation campaign. (Available from Communication Research Institute of Australia, CPO Box 655, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia). Pinheiro, J., & Corral-Verdugo, V. (2010). Time perspective and sustainable behavior. In V. Corral-Verdugo, C. García, & M. Frías (Eds.), Psychological approaches to sustainability. New York: Nova Science. Prasanna, P. L. (2010). Water management. Retrieved from www.legalserviceindia.com/articles/water.htm. Pryor, K. (1999). Don’t shoot the dog! The new art of teaching and training (rev. ed.). New York: Bantam Books. Rosegrant, M. W., Cai, X., & Cline, S. (2003). Will the world run dry? Environment, 45, 24–36. (p. 597) Schmuck, P., & Vlek, C. (2003). Psychologists can do much to support sustainable development. European Psychologist, 8(66), 76. Schultz, P. W. (2002). Knowledge, information, and household recycling: Examining the knowledge-deficit model of behavior change. In T. Dietz and P. Stern (Eds.), New tools for environmental protection: Education, information,
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Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation and voluntary measures. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Schultz, P. W., & Zelezny, L. (1998). Values and pro-environmental behavior: A five-country survey. Journal of Crosscultural Psychology, 29, 540–558. Schwartz, S. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical test in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental and Social Psychology, 10, 221–279. Somerville, C., & Briscoe, J. (2001). Genetic engineering and water. Science, 292, 2217. Southwell, R. (2001). Turning minds on and faucets off: Water conservation education in Jordanian schools. Journal of Environmental Education, 32, 37–45. Staats, H., Harland, P., & Wilke, H. (2004). Effecting durable change: A team approach to improve environmental behavior in the household. Environment and Behavior, 36, 341–367. Stern, P. (2000). Toward a coherent theory of environmentally significant behavior. Journal of Social Issues, 56, 407–424. Syme, G., & Nancarrow, B. (2008). Justice and the allocation of benefits from water. Social Alternatives, 27, 21–25. Syme, G., Thomas, J., & Salerian, S. (1983). Can household attitudes predict water consumption? In Hydrology and water resources symposium (pp. 53–56). Canberra: Institution of Australia Engineers. Terrebonne, R. (2005). Residential water demand management programs: A selected review of the literature. (Working Paper 2005–002). Albany: Georgia Water Planning and Policy Center. Thompson, S. C., & Stoutemyer, K. (1991). Water as a commons dilemma: The effects of education that focuses on long-term consequences and individual action. Environment and Behavior, 23, 314–333. Tinker, A., Bame, S., Burt, R., & Speed, M. (2005). Impact of “non-behavioral fixed effects” on water use: Weather and economic construction differences on residential water use in Austin, Texas. Electronic Green Journal, 22. Retrieved from http://escholarship.org/uc/item/7rh33286 Tinker, A., & Woods, P. (2001). Development of a formula to determine outdoor residential water consumption in College Station, Texas. ASC Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference (pp. 147–154). West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University. Trumbo, C., & O’Keefe, G. (2001). Intention to conserve water: Environmental values, planned behavior, and information effects: A comparison of three communities sharing a watershed. Society & Nature, 14, 889–899. UNESCO-WWAP. (2003). Water for people—water for life. The United Nations world water development report. Barcelona, Spain: UNESCO Publishing & Berghahn Books. Uzzell, D. (2000). The psycho-spatial dimensions of global environmental problems. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 20, 307–318. Vaske, J. V., & Kobrin, K. (2001). Place attachment and environmentally responsible behavior. Journal of Environmental Education, 32, 16–21. Vickers, A. 2001. Handbook of water use and conservation. Amherst, MA: Water Plow Press. Wilk, R. R. (2006). The ecology of global consumer culture. In N. Haenn & R. R. Wilk (Eds.), The environment in anthropology. New York: New York University. Wright, R. (1994). The moral animal—Why we are the way we are: The new science of evolutionary psychology. London: Abacus. Yabiku, S., Casagrande, D., & Farley-Metzger, E. (2008). Preferences for landscape choice in a southwestern desert city. Environment and Behavior, 40, 382–400.
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Protecting Natural Resources: Psychological and Contextual Determinants of Freshwater Conservation Zimbardo, P., & Boyd, J. (2008). The time paradox: The new psychology of time that will change your life. New York: Free Press. Víctor Corral-Verdugo Víctor Corral-Verdugo Division de Ciencias Sociales University of Sonora at Hermosillo, Los Portales Hermosillo, Mexico
Martha Frías-Armenta Martha Frías-Armenta, Division de Ciencias Sociales, University of Sonora at Hermosillo, Los Portales Hermosillo, Mexico
César O. Tapia-Fonllem César O. Tapia-Fonllem, Division de Ciencias Sociales, University of Sonora at Hermosillo, Los Portales Hermosillo, Mexico
Blanca S. Fraijo-Sing Blanca S. Fraijo-Sing Division de Ciencias Sociales University of Sonora at Hermosillo Los Portales Hermosillo, Mexico
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management
Oxford Handbooks Online Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management Charles D. Samuelson and Clare L. Barratt The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0031
Abstract and Keywords This chapter reviews current literature on the use of collaborative processes in ecosystem management. Relevant theoretical frameworks for understanding environmental conflict resolution (ECR) collaborative processes and stakeholder partnership success are reviewed from political science, sociology, alternative dispute resolution (ADR), and systems engineering. The chapter provides an overview of existing and emerging models, techniques, and governance institutions for implementing public involvement processes (e.g., policy dialogues, collaborative learning). Conceptual progress in developing evaluation criteria for assessment of these collaborative processes and programs is summarized, followed by a narrative review of relevant empirical evaluation studies. The chapter concludes with commentary on prevailing trends in the literature and promising directions for future research. Keywords: alternative dispute resolution, ADR, collaborative processes, collaborative learning, environmental conflict resolution, ECR, ecosystem management, public involvement, stakeholder partnerships
Introduction The past 40 years have witnessed a quiet revolution in the way environmental policy conflicts and local disputes are handled in the United States. New attitudes and beliefs have emerged in American society since the early 1970s about the value of public participation and collaboration in ecosystem management (Koontz & Thomas, 2006; Sabatier, Weible, & Ficker, 2005; Wondolleck & Yaffee, 2000; Yaffee et al., 1996). There has been a steady progression in the practice of environmental dispute resolution (e.g., Bacow & Wheeler, 1984; Bingham, 1986; Dukes, 1996; O’Leary, 1995; Susskind & Ozawa, 1983), from the first documented use of mediation over construction of a flood-control dam in the Snoqualmie River valley of Washington state (Cormick & McCarthy, 1974) to the consensus-based environmental conflict resolution (ECR) processes used today (e.g., Beierle & Cayford, 2002; Dukes, 2004; Emerson, Nabatchi, O’Leary, & Stephens, 2003; Susskind, McKearnan, & Thomas-Larmer, 1999). D’Estree, Dukes, and Navarrete-Romero (2002) introduced the history of the ECR field and existing theory and research on downstream conflict resolution methods, such as mediation and other quasi-judicial processes (Emerson et al., 2003). Our focus in this chapter is on recent developments in public conflict resolution (Dukes, 1996) involving the use of collaborative processes in upstream conflict situations (Emerson et al., 2003): those in which environmental policies are discussed and debated by members of diverse stakeholder groups (e.g., government agencies, commercial and business interests, community citizen groups, environmental groups).1 We believe there are promising research (p. 599) opportunities in this arena for environmental psychologists and researchers from allied disciplines. One major goal of this review is to shine a light on where those research problems and questions reside.
San Francisco Estuary Project
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management We begin with a case example of the application of collaborative processes in a complex, upstream environmental conflict situation. The San Francisco Estuary Project provides an excellent example of the full range of ECR collaborative processes applied to a common problem in ecosystem management: development of a consensusbased restoration management plan for a coastal estuary (Innes, Gruber, Neumann, & Thompson, 1994; Innes & Connick, 1999). The San Francisco Bay/Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta Estuary is home to a unique ecosystem containing numerous endangered species. In this estuary, saltwater from the Pacific Ocean mixes with freshwater from the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers to create a vital salt gradient to support aquatic life. Although its unique existence and balance was not fully understood, many stakeholders within the region recognized that water quality and flows in the estuary needed protection. The San Francisco Estuary Project (SFEP), part of the larger National Estuary Program (NEP) established in 1987 by federal Clean Water Act amendments, was designed to achieve this objective. Its goals were to determine the state of the estuary and design a plan for restoration and management. To do so, all stakeholders in the estuarine system needed to work together and attempt to reach consensual agreement on a comprehensive management plan. This was particularly challenging for the San Francisco Estuary because of the number and variety of stakeholders involved, problem complexity, technical knowledge required, political and economic forces, and the sheer size of the estuary region. This estuary encompasses over 1,600 square miles and is one of the largest on the West Coast of the United States. The problem was not simply a water quality or habitat conservation issue, but also one involving water use. Water from the estuary is diverted throughout California for urban and agricultural use. Consequently, numerous interest groups and agencies, each responsible for different aspects of water rights decisions and protection, had to negotiate the water quality standard and water use issues. Given the legendary battles over water in California since the early 20th century (Reisner, 1993), the conflicts between these parties were deep-seated and emotional. Environmentalists, municipal water users, agricultural users, and business/development interest groups had been arguing bitterly for years, never mind working together at the same conference table. Due to the complexity of California water politics, Governor George Deukmejian had reservations about the nomination of the San Francisco Estuary for the NEP in 1987. Aware of the state’s hesitation, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provided support for the organization and personnel, but shared sponsorship with the state. The NEP directed that a “management conference” be convened with three primary objectives: (1) assessment of trends in the bay/delta estuary, (2) data collection and characterization of the current state of the estuary, and (3) development of a comprehensive conservation and management plan (CCMP). Four committees were formed by the EPA. A management committee was created, composed of federal, state, regional, and local agencies, including other organized interest groups.2 A public advisory committee and technical advisory committee were also created to assist the management committee in its decision-making. The public advisory committee consisted of local citizens who wanted to be actively involved in the process so their voices could be heard. The technical advisory committee’s main task was to act as the technical and scientific authority of the project with principal responsibility for assessing the state of the estuary. Overall, approximately 120 stakeholders participated, with membership distributed across numerous committees to ensure adequate representation. From the beginning the SFEP process faced numerous obstacles. Due to the size and complexity of the problem, stakeholders disagreed about the project’s scope and what issues should be addressed. It took the three committees close to a year to agree on these questions about scope and specific issues, at which time they were assigned to subcommittees. Initially six subcommittees were established to address aquatic resources and wildlife, land use, wetlands, pollutants, dredging, and local government. For three years the subcommittees discussed and investigated these issues extensively, sharing their experiences, interests, and concerns. This process allowed stakeholders to build knowledge leading to greater understanding and consensus. Once consensus was reached on each issue, a report was written to the management committee, including an assessment of the estuary’s current state and recommended actions for the final CCMP. (p. 600) Establishing formal consensus within the management committee required 100% agreement. However, the facilitator used a “six-finger” voting rule to allow members to indicate their evaluations of a specific proposal, 3
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management where fewer fingers indicated greater agreement.3 While this voting system was effective in reaching agreement, it did allow for “consensus” when members of the committee did not approve but were unwilling to block the idea. This led to some dissatisfaction, but minority reports were permitted in the final CCMP when committee members could not support the majority’s reports and recommended actions. Although the subcommittees eventually reached agreement, the overall consensus-building process had varying levels of success depending on the issue being addressed. Agreements were reached on pollution, dredging, and aquatic resources. However, the wetlands and land use subcommittees experienced significant problems with the consensus decision rule. While the wetlands subcommittee ultimately reached agreement without the aid of a facilitator, the land use subcommittee struggled over policy implementation and regional government issues. Following two meetings with a facilitator, consensus was finally reached and the land use status report was written. More important, participants in this group left more satisfied with the process and their report and recommendations were adopted unanimously by the management committee. Beyond the subcommittee reports, however, loomed the more pressing five-year NEP deadline for completion of the CCMP. To reach agreement on the final CCMP and write the report by the deadline, two facilitators were hired to manage the final meetings. They helped keep the management committee on a strict time schedule and moved the process forward, ensuring that agreement was reached when possible. The management committee finally adopted the CCMP in 1993. Implementation of the CCMP was beset with uncertainties. While some stakeholders did not feel they addressed how the plan should be implemented, others questioned whether the plan could be implemented at all. Others worried it had not gained sufficient political support. Despite such initial criticisms and doubts, the CCMP was officially approved by Governor Pete Wilson in 1993 with several additional stipulations.4 According to Innes and Connick (1999), the CCMP made significant changes in how stakeholders in the estuary communicate to accomplish their goals. They continued to coordinate actions to implement the CCMP’s recommended actions. An important water quality measure (isohaline index) proved to be an enduring mark of impact. Scientists agreed upon a 2 parts-per1,000 salinity index that was later accepted by the EPA and other agencies as a valid water quality indicator. Beyond environmental impact, the CCMP had lasting impact on learning and collaboration (Innes & Connick, 1999). Both stakeholders and the public at large gained greater insight into others’ perspectives, the estuary’s importance, and the role of communication in managing conflict. The working relationships built over the five-year project have been influential in addressing concerns beyond the SFEP. The learning that occurred during the consensus-building process has inspired further collaboration. Several spin-off organizations (e.g., San Francisco Estuary Partnership, Friends of the Estuary, San Francisco Estuary Institute) represent tangible evidence of the human and social capital created by the SFEP process (Innes & Connick, 1999).
Chapter Goals and Organization We have several objectives in this review. First, theoretical frameworks dealing with collaboration in ECR contexts are widely scattered across academic disciplines. Thus, we aim to bring together some leading conceptual approaches to understanding collaborative partnership formation, development, and policy/social outcomes. Second, new collaborative methods and processes have been devised and implemented by ECR researchers and practitioners over the past two decades. Hence, we review some important recent developments in the methods of collaboration and public involvement for upstream ECR conflicts. Third, a major concern in the past decade has been the question of how to evaluate success in collaborative ECR processes and programs (d’Estree & Colby, 2004; Innes, 1999; O’Leary & Bingham, 2003). We provide a brief overview of conceptual progress on this critical issue and then review recent empirical studies that assess both processes and outcomes of ECR interventions/programs. Finally, we draw several conclusions about prevailing trends in the literature and discuss new research questions that merit further investigation.
Theoretical Approaches to Collaborative Partnership Formation and Success Political scientists have long been interested in the emergence and dynamics of governance institutions for managing natural resources and the (p. 601) associated policy-making processes. Sabatier, Leach, Lubell, and Pelkey (2005) presented an excellent overview of several theoretical frameworks from political science and sociology relevant to understanding collaborative partnership success in watershed management. Following their
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management discussion, we review three theoretical approaches to the policy process that may apply to a wider range of ECR cases in ecosystem management: (1) institutional analysis and development framework (Kiser & Ostrom, 1982; Ostrom, 2007), (2) social capital theory (Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 2000), and (3) advocacy coalition framework (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1988, 1999; Sabatier & Weible, 2007).
Institutional Analysis and Development Framework Elinor Ostrom has been the guiding intellectual force behind the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework for analyzing the formation, maintenance, and change of governance institutions (Kiser & Ostrom, 1982; Ostrom, 1990, 2005, 2007; Ostrom, Gardner, & Walker, 1994). The specific focus in her research program has been the development of a theory of common-pool resources (CPRs). Specifically, she has presented substantial empirical evidence from numerous international case studies that local communities can devise effective institutional arrangements for preserving small-scale CPRs, such as alpine meadows, irrigation systems, fisheries, and groundwater basins (Ostrom, 1990). The IAD framework was created to provide a common metatheoretical language to describe and explain how governance institutions emerge to manage CPRs in local communities (Ostrom, 2007). This framework reflects the institutional rational choice approach, emphasizing how institutional rules shape the behavior of self-interested actors operating under bounded rationality (Sabatier, 2007; Simon, 1955). Figure 31.1 displays the key IAD variables and their interrelationships. At the center of Figure 31.1 is the “action arena,” which contains a set of actors in an action situation. Ostrom (2007) defined an action arena as the “social space where actors interact, exchange goods and services, solve problems, dominate one another, or fight” (p. 28). Three classes of variables are proposed to influence action arena structure: “institutional rules-in-use” that govern relationships and behaviors of actors, biophysical resource characteristics, and community attributes. The IAD framework further analyzes action situations into the following seven components: (1) participants, (2) specific positions, (3) permissible behaviors and resulting outcomes, (4) possible action-outcome linkages, (5) actors’ control over choices, (6) information, and (7) costs and benefits (to actors) from specific actions and outcomes.
Figure 31.1 A Framework for Institutional Analysis. Source: Adapted from Ostrom, Gardner, and Walker (1994, p. 37)
The IAD framework predicts that actors will weigh the costs and benefits of possible future actions and choose to collaborate with other actors to establish rules and governance institutions when long-term benefits of cooperation exceed short-term rewards for noncooperative behavior. According to Sabatier, Leach et al. (2005), the IAD framework predicts that collaborative partnerships are more likely to form under the following situational conditions: (1) environmental problems are diverse and diffused geographically (e.g., nonpoint source pollution); (2) environmental problems are severe (p. 602) (or perceived severe by most actors); (3) scientific knowledge about environmental problems is extensive; (4) existing institutions are not taking action to deal with environmental problems; (5) community has high existing levels of human and social capital; and (6) community consists of stakeholders with low discount rates (i.e., preference for short-term costs in exchange for long-term benefits). Another important theoretical insight of the IAD framework is that the emergence of governance institutions to manage natural resources operates at multiple levels of analysis (Ostrom, 2007). The three levels of analysis are constitutional choice, collective choice, and operational choice. Sabatier, Leach et al. (2005) suggested that collaborative partnerships actually function at the collective choice level, while the management plans and actions implemented by these collaborative institutions represent operational rules governing how resources are managed in a specific watershed.
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management Social Capital Theory Sociologist James Coleman (1988) introduced the concept of social capital to the broader social science community. Coleman (1988) argued that social action is best described and explained by viewing the actor as socialized and action as governed by social norms, rules, and obligations. He distinguished clearly between human capital and social capital. “Human capital is created by changes in persons that bring about skills and capabilities that make them able to act in new ways. Social capital, however, comes about through changes in the relations among persons that facilitate action” (p. S100). Three forms of social capital were identified: obligations and expectations, information-flow capabilities of social networks, and norms accompanied by sanctions. Coleman (1988) proposed that social capital is a resource that can be used to increase productivity of both individuals and groups. This resource function allows the integration of social capital within the classic rational actor framework. He also noted that social capital is a public good, which means it is vulnerable to self-interested free-riding behavior resulting in its underproduction. Social capital is greatly enhanced, however, when there is “closure” in social networks, enabling actors to sanction norm violators efficiently (Coleman, 1988). Popular interest in social capital theory received a major boost with the publication of Robert Putnam’s (2000) influential book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. He traced the decline of civic engagement in the United States over the last third of the 20th century to the concomitant loss of social capital in local communities. According to Putnam (2000), social capital is composed of three interdependent components: reciprocity norms, trust, and social networks. “The touchstone of social capital is the principle of generalized reciprocity—I’ll do this for you now, without expecting anything immediately in return and perhaps without even knowing you, confident that down the road you or someone else will return the favor” (p. 134). His concept of “thin trust” suggests that people hold expectations that others can be trusted because of this generalized reciprocity norm in dense and varied social networks. Putnam’s (2000) distinction between bonding and bridging social capital is most relevant to the potential benefits of collaborative institutions for managing ecosystem resources. The bridging form of social capital refers to connections between people across different groups of homogeneous composition (e.g., socioeconomic status, ethnicity), whereas bonding social capital develops through connections between actors within such groups. Presumably, collaborative institutions for ecosystem management should help build the bridging form of social capital, which in turn should facilitate cooperation between stakeholders from different interest groups. Thus, social capital theory predicts that collaborative partnerships (e.g., watershed management) should be more likely to reach consensus-based agreements and implement project plans when relationships between stakeholders are characterized by high trust, established reciprocity norms, and overlapping social networks (Sabatier, Leach et al., 2005).
Advocacy Coalition Framework The advocacy coalition framework (ACF; Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1988, 1999; Sabatier & Weible, 2007) takes an alternative approach, combining theoretical ideas from political science and social psychology. The ACF views the policy process as a competition between different advocacy groups, experiencing conflict over goals and technical issues, to control policy outcomes of the collaborative process. The policy process is shaped by specialists from interest groups, agencies, legislatures, or research organizations that attempt to influence policy within a particular policy subsystem (e.g., water quality, land use, flood control). Figure 31.2 presents an overview of the ACF.
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management
Click to view larger Figure 31.2 2005 Diagram of the Advocacy Coalition Framework. From Sabatier & Weible (2007). Reprinted with permission of Westview Press.
(p. 603) The ACF focus is the analysis of belief systems of different advocacy coalition members and how these beliefs change through collaborative processes of discussion, deliberation, and negotiation (Sabatier, Leach et al., 2005). These beliefs are categorized into three types: (1) deep core beliefs, (2) policy core beliefs, and (3) secondary beliefs. Deep core beliefs (e.g., liberal-conservative) refer to general views of human nature, the role of government versus markets, and the relative importance of core values, such as liberty and equality. Policy core beliefs represent the application of deep core beliefs to issues within a specific policy subsystem. Secondary beliefs are more limited in scope, such as the severity and causes of environmental problems in a particular geographic area, specific rules and budgetary program constraints, or rules for public participation dictated by state or federal legislation. The ACF presumes that both deep core and policy core beliefs are most resistant to change, while secondary beliefs may change from policy-related learning in collaborative institutions (Sabatier, Leach et al., 2005). The ACF assumes that formidable barriers to cooperation exist, such as resistance of deep core and core policy beliefs to change within advocacy coalitions due to the “perceptual filtering” of information that perpetuates these beliefs (Sabatier & Weible, 2007). A “devil shift” is assumed to motivate actors within advocacy coalitions to view members of opposing groups as more powerful, more evil, and less trustworthy (Sabatier, Hunter, & McLaughlin, 1987). This phenomenon is closely linked to the ingroup-outgroup bias (Brewer, 1979), documented extensively in social psychology research on intergroup relations (e.g., Sherif et al., 1961; Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Sabatier and Weible (2007) incorporated concepts from alternative dispute resolution (Carpenter & Kennedy, 1988) concerning conditions under which negotiated agreements are more likely to emerge. Hypotheses are proposed by Sabatier and Weible (2007) about the facilitative effects of full representation of relevant stakeholders at group meetings, the common experience of a “hurting stalemate,” neutral and skilled leadership by respected professionals, use of consensus decision rules, development of trust among stakeholders, extended commitment of stakeholders over time to the collaborative process, and low BATNAs (best alternative to negotiated agreement; Fisher & Ury, 1981) for advocacy coalitions in conflict. The ACF also predicts that negotiated agreements are less likely when high levels of policy core conflict exist across coalitions, and more likely when: (1) a collaborative forum exists allowing for resolution of (p. 604) technical disputes over empirical issues between different coalition experts, and (2) stakeholders give serious consideration to information received from opposing coalition members (Sabatier, Leach et al., 2005).
Theoretical Foundations of ECR Process Implementation
ADR and Consensus Building Theory One important theoretical foundation for the field of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is the seminal work of Roger Fisher and William Ury in their book, Getting to YES (1981 ). They introduced a new conceptual framework for negotiation called principled negotiation. This perspective ushered in a new era for ADR theory in which the notion of interest-based negotiation replaced the traditional positional bargaining view from industrial-labor relations. Principled negotiation introduced new terminology, such as “integrative solutions,” “bridging,” “singletext procedure,” and “BATNA.” These concepts were soon adopted as core normative principles for “mutual-gain”
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management public sector negotiations using consensus-building methods (Susskind & Cruikshank, 1987; Susskind & Ozawa, 1983; Susskind et al., 1999). Another influential contribution to ADR theory was Howard Raiffa’s (1982) classic book, The Art and Science of Negotiation. He applied the tools of formal decision theory to show how value could be created during the negotiation process through identification of integrative solutions that maximized benefits to both parties. Applications of the distinction between creating value versus claiming value (i.e., integrative vs. distributive bargaining) to business negotiations in the private sector were further developed by Lax and Sebenius (1986). These analyses extended Fisher and Ury’s (1981) principled negotiation framework by revealing how quantitative decision analysis could derive similar normative principles for optimizing negotiation outcomes between parties. Finally, thorough treatments by Carpenter and Kennedy (1988) and Gray (1989) moved ADR theory and practice forward by consolidating existing knowledge about multiparty collaboration in public disputes. The culmination of this scholarship was the publication of the Consensus Building Handbook by Susskind et al. (1999). This comprehensive guidebook presented best practices in consensus-building methods to a broad audience: essentially anyone who must solve problems in ad hoc or permanent groups. The theoretical footprints of Fisher and Ury (1981) and Raiffa (1982) were unmistakable in the prescriptive advice about how to structure and facilitate consensus-based agreements among multiple stakeholders. Lawrence Susskind and his colleagues have been influential in expanding and integrating these theoretical ideas into workable procedures for mediating multi-party public sector negotiations. Their applications of consensus-building theory and methods have addressed a wide range of environmental and community disputes over land use, affordable urban housing, public health, and restoration of polluted marine ecosystems (Susskind et al., 1999).
Soft Systems Methodology There is a sizable literature in systems engineering on soft systems methodology (Checkland, 1981; Checkland & Scoles, 1990) that has potential application to ECR collaborative processes. Soft systems methodology (SSM) adopts a holistic view by using systems thinking concepts to analyze and manage fuzzy, ill-defined problem situations. SSM has yet to penetrate into the mainstream ECR literature, possibly because its published applications focused more on problem-solving within formal business and government organizations (Checkland & Scoles, 1990). However, Wilson and Morren (1990) demonstrated its relevance and value as a tool for managing sustainability-related problems in agriculture and natural resource management (e.g., soil erosion, water resource shortages, nonpoint source water pollution, land use planning). Following Checkland and Scoles (1990), the primary entity for soft systems analysis is the human activity system. They noted that a common thread in all problem situations is “human beings in social roles trying to take purposeful action” (Checkland & Scoles, p. 24). A human activity system is formally defined as a “set of activities so connected as to make purposeful whole, constructed to meet the requirements of the core system image (emergent properties, layered structure, processes of communication and control)” (Checkland & Scoles, p. 26). SSM users build conceptual models of human activity systems for comparison to the real-world problem situation. The mnemonic CATWOE identifies the six elements of any human activity system: customers, actors, transformations, worldviews, owners, and environmental constraints (Checkland, 1981). SSM assumes that multiple worldviews (i.e., assumptions, values) often produce different versions of these conceptual models. (p. 605) Wilson and Morren (1990) proposed an elaborated version of Checkland’s (1981) original seven-step process of SSM inquiry. Figure 31.3 presents this problem-solving process in clockwise, circular form. In stage 1, participants discuss their perceptions of the current situation, describing specific areas where problems exist. The goal in stage 2 is to record these collected facts and perceptions about the situation in written form. In stages 3 and 4, participants engage in model building of alternative human activity systems using Checkland’s (1981) CATWOE process. Stage 5 begins the group process of comparing these models to problem situation reality. In stage 6, participants discuss, debate, and deliberate about possible “systemically desirable” and “culturally feasible” improvements (Checkland, 1981) to the current situation. Finally, stage 7 involves implementation of suggestions for improvement agreed to in stage 6. The learning cycle then repeats itself iteratively as changes are monitored relative to desired goals. Wilson and Morren’s (1990) model of SSM inquiry serves as a design blueprint for Daniels and Walker’s (2001)
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management collaborative learning activities within a cyclical learning process. Two important features in Wilson and Morren’s (1990) model are the integration of Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning styles (diverging, assimilating, converging, accommodating) within each quadrant of Figure 31.3 and the labeling of the X- and Y-axes in terms of the prehension (active experimentation [AE]—reflective observation [RO]) and transformation (concrete experience [CE]—abstract conceptualization [AC]) dimensions, respectively. These two dimensions are key components of Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning-cycle model, with theoretical roots in the writings of Dewey (1910), Piaget (1970), and Lewin (1951).5
Models of ECR Collaborative Processes and Stakeholder Partnerships In this section, we review established ECR processes such as policy dialogues, along with several newer approaches to structuring collaborative processes. Due to space constraints, we focus on developments in the literature within the past 15 years. For excellent previous reviews of these ECR methods, see Bingham (1986), Gray (1989), and Dukes (1996). This section is organized according to the duration of the collaborative process: (1) short-term collaborative engagement processes and (2) long-term collaborative stakeholder partnerships (e.g., SFEP case).
Collaborative Engagement Processes Policy Dialogues
Figure 31.3 The Process of Soft Systems Inquiry as an Application of the Learning Cycle (after Checkland, 1981, modified). From Wilson & Morren (1990). Reprinted with permission of Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
Policy dialogues originated in the mid-1970s as experiments in bringing together leaders from the business and environmental communities (p. 606) for constructive discussion of the major issues dividing them (Bingham, 1986). According to Gray (1989), “The purpose of policy dialogues is largely to open up discussion among the parties, to identify and promote increased understanding of the issues that may be subject to debate, and to assess the extent of the controversy that exists” (p. 200). Policy dialogues are not typically designed with the goal of reaching a consensus decision among participants. Bingham (1986) reported that of 33 policy dialogues in her database, only 4 were focused on reaching a consensus decision, while the remaining 29 were conducted with the objective of reaching agreement on a set of recommendations. The policy dialogue process normally consists of the following three phases: entry, design/planning the intervention, and intervention implementation (Ehrmann & Lesnick, 1988). During entry, an advisory committee identifies issues for dialogue and selects participants (ranging from 12 to 50 or more) based on criteria such as scientific credentials, political credibility, or representation of particular interest groups relevant to the policy issues. Parties are usually asked to represent themselves, rather than their institutional affiliations, to encourage open discussion and lessen constituency advocacy concerns. Dialogue process design includes decisions on location, agenda and scheduling, process ground rules, and the role of third-party facilitators (Dukes, 1996).
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management Early applications often did not insist that government agency officials with formal decision-making authority be present at the dialogue table (Bingham, 1986). It was initially believed that their presence could inhibit discussion among stakeholders from business and environmental groups. It was assumed that agencies did not need representation because they were primarily interested in policy options that received widespread support from key stakeholders (Dukes, 1996). However, this practice has changed in recent years because of implementation problems from weak linkages between the policy dialogue process and formal policy-making structures (Dukes, 1996). It is advisable to have appropriate government agency decision makers involved directly in the dialogue process from the outset (Bingham, 1986; Gray, 1989). Policy dialogues continue to be popular in ECR today (Brogden, 2003). Wade (2004) described a recent version called “intentional, values-based dialogue” used in complex public policy disputes by the Aspen Institute. The basic assumption of this approach is that conflict should be regarded as a resource that serves as a springboard to new ways of thinking. Its key components include values, intention (i.e., commitment to dialogue process), and education (Wade, 2004). The Aspen Institute sponsors three categories of policy dialogues: educational, informational, and convergent. Wade (2004) summarized the convergent form, in which the ultimate goal of the dialogue group is to issue recommendations or guidelines. Both sufficient time and proximity are important for the parties to develop relationships, learn each other’s values, and gain mutual respect through informal interactions (Wade, 2004). Success requires the facilitator to conduct a thorough “scoping” process by gathering information from potential participants, representing the conflict assessment phase in consensus-building processes (Susskind & Thomas-Larmer, 1999). The number of meetings varies, ranging from two or three sessions over 12 to 18 months to eight or more meetings over two to three years. The Aspen Institute retains authority to make final decisions about participants in these policy dialogues. Invitations state that participants represent only themselves, not their organizations (Wade, 2004). Strict adherence to process ground rules and use of effective dialogue skills are emphasized at the outset of the convergent dialogue process (Wade, 2004). Facilitators serve as role models for active listening and communication skills, reinforcing these competencies as learning opportunities arise. A key activity of facilitators in this method is to coach participants in collaborative dialogue skills (Wade, 2004). The “representation dilemma” is handled delicately: all final recommendations are authored by the group, but there are no individual signatures on final documents or minority reports. Moreover, the cardinal rule of the convergent dialogue is “nonattribution,” which requires that no formal meeting minutes be kept, nothing said in meetings can be repeated, and no substitutes or outside observers are permitted in meetings (Wade, 2004).
Analysis and Deliberation Another framework with direct normative implications for structuring collaborative processes, analysis and deliberation (A&D), was proposed by the National Research Council panel on risk characterization (National Research Council, 1996). The NRC panel was motivated by serious deficiencies in the prevailing “Red Book” view of risk characterization in the US government (National Research Council, 1983), which defined risk characterization (p. 607) as “a summary or translation of the results of technical analysis for the use of a decision maker” (National Research Council, 1996, p. 1). The 1996 NRC report pinpointed the crucial flaws in this initial conceptualization: An often overlooked danger to risk decision making is a fundamental misconception about how risk characterization should relate to the overall process of comprehending and dealing with risk.…We envision a process in which the characterization of risk emerges from a combination of analysis and deliberation.…The aim of risk characterization, and therefore of the analytic-deliberative process on which it is based, is to describe a potentially hazardous situation in as accurate, thorough, and decision-relevant a manner as possible, addressing the significant concerns of interested and affected parties, and to make this information understandable and accessible to public officials and to the parties…. A risk characterization that fails to address their questions is likely to be criticized as irrelevant or incompetent, regardless of how carefully it addresses the questions it selects for attention. (pp. 1–2) The NRC committee further highlighted the central role of risk characterization and the critical attributes of the A&D approach:
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management Risk characterization must be seen as an integral part of the entire process of risk decision making: what is needed for successful characterization of risk must be considered at the very beginning of the process and must to a great extent drive risk analysis. If a risk characterization is to fulfill its purpose, it must (1) be decision driven, (2) recognize all significant concerns, (3) reflect both analysis and deliberation, with appropriate input from the interested and affected parties, and (4) be appropriate to the decision. (p. 16) One may perhaps question the relevance of the NRC’s risk characterization focus to the collaborative processes used in ecosystem management today. However, we agree with the NRC committee’s (1996 ) conclusion that these issues are relevant “whether the goal is to understand the risk of cancer to humans, noncancer health risks, or risks to ecological, social, or political systems” (p. 13). This A&D framework developed in response to the negative experiences of risk management experts dealing with a hostile public (e.g., NIMBY [Not in My Backyard] syndrome) on controversial issues such as radioactive waste disposal, toxic chemical exposure, and siting of hazardous industrial facilities (Kunreuther, Fitzgerald, & Aarts, 1993; Slovic, 1993). The NRC report was clear that use of the idealized A&D process must be based on a skilled diagnosis of the specific risk characterization situation. The NRC panel did not advocate use of these costly and effortful public participation procedures in all risk characterization situations. For example, many repetitive risk decisions will be routine and standard risk characterization protocols are often sufficient (e.g., renewals of pollutant discharge permits to industrial facilities). However, in “novel, complex, or highly controversial risk situations—which involve questions about major potential impacts and the equity of the distribution of risks and benefits—routines are likely not to be satisfactory” (National Research Council, 1996, p. 22). These are the types of risk characterization situations in which an elaborated A&D process would be warranted.6 The NRC committee was deliberately mute on specific procedures to implement the recursive analytic-deliberative process. The general process reveals that practitioners and researchers must interpolate many details to construct workable processes for facilitating an A&D process in a particular ECR situation. Subsequent work, however, is plugging this gap.7 For example, Webler and Tuler (1999) adapted the A&D framework as a design template for regional watershed management planning. They described five essential steps in a watershed management planning process that will naturally involve analysis and deliberation, such as problem formulation, process design, selecting options, information gathering, and synthesis. The SFEP case exemplifies the type of A&D planning process that Webler and Tuler (1999) envisioned. Problem formulation required a year’s worth of analysis and deliberation among members of the management, technical advisory, and public advisory committees. Once these specific issues were identified, each of the subcommittees engaged in analytic-deliberative processes for three additional years.
Collaborative Learning More recently, Daniels and Walker (2001) have proposed an innovative, integrated approach to public deliberation in ecosystem management called collaborative learning (CL). They argued that new methods of public participation are urgently needed to deal with the “fundamental paradox” of effective policy formation: “finding ways to increase the quality of technical expertise, while simultaneously increasing the inclusivity of decision processes” (p. 608) (Daniels & Walker, 1995, p. 31). This orientation to collaboration can be considered a hybrid set of methods, combining ideas from three distinct areas of study: systems theory, learning theory, and conflict management (Daniels & Walker, 2001). According to Daniels and Walker (2001), CL is based on five assumptions. First, it assumes that conflict is ubiquitous in modern life. Second, it asserts that “conflict is unresolvable, but manageable” (Daniels & Walker, 2001, p. 14). This is a core CL principle: the presumption that conflict is something to be resolved is replaced with the more modest goal of managing conflict so that its destructive effects are mitigated. Third, it assumes that “wicked problems” (Rittel & Webber, 1973) in formulating public policy regarding ecosystem management are usually replete with systems complexity. Fourth, the CL orientation asserts that collaborative processes derive much of their value from the learning opportunities provided to participants. Finally, CL assumes that the “best way to improve decisions in highly complex situations is to understand decision making as a learning process” (Daniels & Walker, 2001, p. 14). A comprehensive CL project can be subdivided into five phases (Daniels & Walker, 2001). Figure 31.4 presents
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management these phases (outer circle) in graphic form along with the nine stages of activities composing the CL process core (inner circle). Moving clockwise around the outer circle, the five basic phases include assessment, training, design, implementation/facilitation, and evaluation. The CL project begins with a careful situation assessment conducted by the facilitators (Susskind & Thomas-Larmer, 1999). Participants then receive a brief training session to familiarize them with collaboration and specific CL guidelines (e.g., communication competence in active listening and collaborative dialogue/argument). In the third phase, facilitators develop a set of meaningful activities that are situationally appropriate for participants in a specific CL project. The fourth stage consists of actual implementation of the CL process design. Finally, the fifth phase involves an evaluation in which data is collected from participants regarding their experiences with the CL process and suggestions for improvement.
Figure 31.4 Collaborative Learning Project Phases and Process Stages. From Daniels & Walker (2001). Reprinted with permission of ABC-CLIO Praeger.
The inner circle of Figure 31.4 shows the series of activities associated with the implementation phase, usually involving meetings, workshops, or field trips (Daniels & Walker, 2001). Stage 1 begins by introducing the CL process to participants, moving then to stages 2 and 3 (identifying the problem situation and describing it using system models), and then proceeds directly to stage 4 (participants engage in direct dialogue about their interests and concerns in problem situation). In stage 5, transformative system models are used to identify possible (p. 609) improvements to the problem situation. This stage often requires the assistance of specialists in systems analysis working with participants in small groups. Stage 6 continues the analytical process by having participants compare alternative system models to the reality of the current situation. Stage 7 involves thoughtful deliberation and collaborative debate among participants about which of the suggested improvements from stages 5 and 6 represent both desirable and feasible changes to the current situation. Finally, stage 8 concludes with implementation of the suggested improvements that participants have committed to during stage 7. The entire CL core process is iterative, provided that sufficient time, resources, and motivation are available to continue the project beyond the initial phase of implementation (stage 9).8 In comparison with existing ECR collaborative processes, the CL approach parts company on several key issues. For example, Daniels and Walker (2001) did not believe the term “resolution” should be the primary focus of the CL effort. Instead, they emphasized the notion of situation improvement as the principal goal of the collaborative learning process. Another difference concerns their skepticism about the abundance assumption that underlies the mutual gains approach to negotiation, typical of many ECR consensus-based processes (e.g., mediation). Daniels and Walker (2001) contended that this presumption of an “enlarged pie” is often unjustified in many natural resource or environmental conflict settings. Finally, they suggested that process outcomes such as positive relationship change among stakeholders are not assured by CL, nor may such changes be required for significant situation improvements to occur. Thus, while CL incorporates many key principles from ADR and consensusbuilding theory, it is not identical to more established ECR collaborative processes. The clear emphasis on social learning differentiates the CL orientation from previous collaborative methods.9
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management Collaborative Stakeholder Partnerships Western Watershed Partnerships Another important form of collaboration observed in the past two decades is the watershed partnership. Kenney, McAllister, Caile, and Peckham (2000) defined a watershed partnership as: a primarily self-directed and locally focused collection of parties, usually featuring both private and intergovernmental representatives, organized to jointly address water-related issues at the watershed level, or a similarly relevant physical scale, normally operating outside of traditional governmental processes or forums, and typically reliant on collaborative mechanisms of group interaction characterized by open debate, creativity in problem and solution definition, consensus decision-making, and voluntary action. (p. 2) Leach, Pelkey, and Sabatier (2002) analyzed western stakeholder partnerships in California and Washington state and identified several common features. According to their inclusion criteria, a watershed partnership must: “(1) meet at least four times per year, (2) manage one or more streams, rivers, or watersheds, (3) include at least one federal or state official, one local government representative (city, county, special district), and at least two opposing interests, such as resource users and either a regulating agency or environmentalist” (Leach et al., 2002, p. 648). They reported that most participants in these watershed partnerships consisted of resource users, environmentalists, or agency officials. Another important distinguishing feature of watershed partnerships is their longer life span, often lasting three to five years, or indefinitely. This characteristic is theoretically relevant because it affects the relative likelihood of social capital being created through new working relationships among parties characterized by high trust, reciprocity norms, and interconnected social networks (Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 2000). For example, Leach et al. (2002) reported that it often takes up to 48 months for these partnerships to achieve their primary objectives in the form of formal agreements and implementation of monitoring and restoration projects.
Coastal Estuary Partnerships A specific type of stakeholder partnership is illustrated by the SFEP case. According to Lubell (2004), the NEP is a “collaborative institution” created by the EPA to “resolve conflict and facilitate cooperation between the diverse stakeholders in a particular estuary, while at the same time making environmental policy with a watershed focus” (p. 677). The management conference involves a three- to five-year collaborative planning process that culminates in a comprehensive conservation management plan that details specific actions to address pressing estuary problems. Lubell and Leach (2005) reviewed the defining characteristics of these NEP coastal estuary partnerships. Most use consensus decision-making rules, professional neutral facilitators, and watershed (p. 610) coordinators. Lubell and Leach (2005) noted that estuary partnerships focus on two primary issues: water quality and nonpoint source pollution (from urban and agricultural runoff), and habitat degradation/preservation. These estuary partnerships differ (in some cases) from the western watershed partnerships sampled in Leach et al.’s (2002) study because they may be larger in geographic scope and membership, more highly structured (due to NEP procedural guidelines), and supported by more financial resources and staff because of EPA sponsorship. In summary, an important characteristic of these watershed partnerships (both western and NEP estuary) is their variability in management structure, membership, geographic scale, funding, and presence of coordinators and/or facilitators (Clark, Burkardt, & King, 2005).
Evaluation Criteria and Research on ECR Collaborative Processes and Stakeholder Partnerships Innes (1999) provided an influential review of the primary issues and challenges in evaluating consensus-building processes. A novel contribution was her conceptualization of consensus-building processes as self-organizing systems (Innes & Booher, 1999). Using theoretical concepts from complexity science (Holland, 1995; Kauffman, 1995; Waldrop, 1992), Innes (1999) identified fundamental processes and outcomes that provide a new evaluation framework for consensus-building processes. This systems view has gained momentum in recent years, and its
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management heuristic value for guiding future work of ECR researchers and practitioners is recognized. Innes (1999) identified both process and outcome criteria that should be considered. Table 31.1 presents a summary of these criteria. She further noted that any given consensus building process would not likely meet all eight process criteria, but the more that can be satisfied, the more successful the collaborative process. No consensus-building process could realistically meet all of Innes’s (1999) process and outcome criteria in practice because situational constraints will affect their relative importance or feasibility. Nevertheless, the value of her comprehensive list lies in the theoretical framework of self-organizing systems that inspired this evaluation approach. An important book edited by O’Leary and Bingham (2003) further developed the evaluation agenda, emphasizing the pressing need for large-scale, systematic data collection efforts in the ECR field. Bingham, Fairman, Fiorino, and O’Leary (2003) were optimistic about Innes’s (1999) proposal to apply theory from complexity science to improve our understanding of ECR processes that extend over time. They concluded, “Much work remains to be done at the systemic level. Until such systems research is available, we cannot adequately understand the dynamics of protracted environmental conflicts as complex systems” (Bingham et al., 2003, p. 340). This was a prescient conclusion, given the state of the field in 2003 when complexity science theory was just beginning to permeate the ADR and conflict management literature. Indeed, significant conceptual and methodological progress on this issue is occurring in the conflict management field (e.g., Coleman, Vallacher, Nowak, & Bui-Wrzosinska, 2007; Nowak et al., 2010; Vallacher, Coleman, Nowak, & Bui-Wrzosinska, 2010). A number of contributors to the O’Leary and Bingham (2003) volume made important observations related to evaluating success in ECR processes. For example, Coglianese (2003) warned strongly against the common practice of relying exclusively on satisfaction measures collected only from participants. Beierle and Cayford (2003) examined ECR success in terms of the social goals to be accomplished with public participation (Beierle, 1999). They highlighted the trade-off that often occurs between achieving specific social goals (e.g., educating the public, including public values in decisions, resolving conflict) for a relatively small group of “unrepresentative” participants in a consensus-building process versus accomplishing these goals for a larger, more diverse group of stakeholders. On a positive note, Rowe (2003) concluded that while there are unique challenges in evaluating ECR programs, they are not insurmountable. He suggested that additional resources for applied research to collect missing cost/benefit information would permit more rigorous ECR program evaluation. D’Estree and Colby (2004) proposed a comprehensive evaluation framework that consists of 28 criteria, classified into six basic categories: (1) outcome reached, (2) process quality, (3) outcome quality, (4) relationship of parties to outcome, (5) relationship quality, and (6) social capital. They applied and assessed this evaluation framework using four case studies on water management conflicts in the western United States. D’Estree and Colby’s (2004) evaluation framework is a major step forward by synthesizing the existing literature into a concrete and practical approach to evaluation for both ECR practitioners and researchers. (p. 611)
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management
Table 31.1 Overview of ECR Process and Outcome Criteria Process • Full representation of all relevant and interested stakeholders • Guided by practical and shared purpose • Self-organizing (i.e., participants “own” and direct process) • Obeys rules of “civil discourse” • Accurate, current information established by joint fact-finding • Participants free to question assumptions & propose innovative ideas • Participants remain engaged in active learning process • Consensus sought only after full discussion of relevant issues & interests Outcome • Produces high-quality agreement (i.e., meets basic interests of all parties) • Ends stalemate between parties • Generates feasible and practical proposals that solve problem(s) • Fosters innovative ideas to resolve problems & promote learning • Enhances knowledge and understanding of issues and others’ views • Creates new informal & working relationships (social-political capital) • Produces new information & conclusions that stakeholders endorse • Shares learning & knowledge with others in community/organization • Triggers “second-order effects” beyond formal agreements (e.g., changes in attitudes, norms, behaviors; new collaborative partnerships) • Results in “flexible and networked practices/institutions” that permit rapid adaptation to change in ecological & social environment • Produces outcomes viewed as “just” by stakeholders and society at large • Yields outcomes that serve “common good or public interest” • Generates outcomes that promote sustainability of social & natural systems Note: Adapted from Innes, 1999, pp. 647–654.
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management More recently, Orr, Emerson, and Keyes (2008) proposed an ECR evaluation framework resulting from a multi-year collaboration among the US Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, the Policy Consensus Initiative, and a coalition of federal and state agencies.10 Orr et al. (2008) bounded the ECR domain by three conditions: (1) deals with “environmental, natural resource, or public land issues and conflicts (including energy, transportation, landuse),” (2) “independent, third-party facilitator or mediator” involved, and (3) “process intention” of reaching agreement (p. 287). Figure 31.5 shows the four basic components of the framework (i.e., desired process conditions, expected process dynamics, outcomes, impacts) and their hypothesized relationships.
Click to view larger Figure 31.5 The Conceptual Design of the ECR Evaluation Framework. From Orr, Emerson, & Keyes (2008). Reprinted with permission of Conflict Resolution Quarterly.
Of particular interest is Orr et al.’s (2008) specification of outcomes and impacts, judged from the dual perspectives of “independent accomplishments and relative merits” (p. 288). Independent accomplishments refer to what actually happens within the group after ECR processes are used (e.g., agreements reached, process satisfaction of stakeholders, better working relationships). Relative merits refer (p. 612) to comparing these outcomes to what might have occurred if other decision processes had been used (e.g., unilateral agency or court decisions). Finally, Orr et al. (2008) identified three themes that capture ECR impacts: (1) the “conflict landscape,” (2) environmental management, and (3) physical setting. The process and outcome-impact criteria in the Orr et al. (2008) framework are consistent with those proposed by Innes (1999) and d’Estree and Colby (2004). Thus, a consensus among scholars and practitioners is emerging on the fundamental criteria to guide future ECR evaluation research.
Empirical Studies of Watershed Partnership Processes and Outcomes In this section, we review empirical findings related to ECR collaborative processes and outcomes. This literature is diverse in terms of research objectives and methods, including meta-analyses, qualitative interviews, archival records, survey research, and quasi-experimental designs. Our primary focus is on research studies conducted within the past decade. We begin with empirical studies testing hypotheses concerning the formation, processes, and success of stakeholder partnerships.
Watershed Partnership Project Leach and Pelkey (2001) conducted a meta-analysis of 37 studies of factors leading to success (or failure) of watershed partnerships in the United States, Canada, and Australia. They identified 210 prescriptive conclusions in these reports and then categorized them into 28 distinct themes. The most frequently mentioned factors affecting success were sufficient funding and good leadership; next most frequent were mutual trust and commitment among participants. Subsequent factor analysis uncovered four factors explaining the variance in these 28 themes: (1) resources and geographic scope (e.g., time, funding, agency/legislative support); (2) flexibility and informality (i.e., operating rules and management); (3) ADR-related factors (e.g., competent leadership/facilitation, inclusive membership criteria, consensus decision-making); and (4) IAD-related factors (e.g., monitoring, grassroots leadership, accurate technical information). Overall, 33% of the variance was explained by ADR-related variables, compared to 17% for IAD-related factors. The resources/scope (24%) and flexibility/informality (21%) factors explained the remaining variance. Leach and Pelkey (2001) concluded that watershed partnerships should consider allocating their resources toward (1) securing the services of an effective facilitator (and/or coordinator),
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management and (2) activities that build interpersonal trust among partnership members. Prior to 2000, few studies evaluated the success of the growing number of watershed partnerships formed during the 1990s (Kenney et al., 2000). (p. 613) Fortunately, this gap has been addressed by the Watershed Partnership Project (WPP), conducted by Paul Sabatier, William Leach, and colleagues. Leach et al. (2002) reported the first comparative evaluation study using a random sample of 44 watershed partnerships in California and Washington. They compared the partnerships on six measures of success: (1) level of agreement reached, (2) restoration projects, (3) perceived effects on watershed conditions, (4) perceived effects on human-social capital, (5) monitoring projects, and (6) education/outreach projects. The data were analyzed as a function of partnership age. Multiple data sources included personal interviews with three to six key stakeholders (including facilitators and coordinators), mail surveys of partnership members, and archival documents. How effective were these watershed partnerships? Leach et al. (2002) found that partnership age had consistent effects on five success criteria. Not surprisingly, older partnerships (> 6 years) had significantly higher perceived effects on watershed conditions than younger partnerships (under 2 years, 2–4 years).11 A similar age effect was observed for stakeholder perceptions of human-social capital: stakeholders from older partnerships perceived significantly more new human-social capital created than stakeholders from younger partnerships. Overall, stakeholders perceived that the partnerships had the greatest impact on the most important problems in the watershed.12 Leach et al. (2002) also reported that partnership age had significant effects on the level of agreements reached and the number/extent of restoration/monitoring projects implemented. For example, they found that in partnerships greater than five years old, 100% reached agreements, 54% agreed on a comprehensive management plan, 90% implemented at least one restoration project, and 64% conducted some monitoring activities. In contrast, among partnerships under two years, only 33% reached limited agreements, none reached consensus on a comprehensive management plan, 11% implemented any type of restoration project, and none initiated monitoring projects. Education and outreach efforts were equally common in younger and older partnerships. Overall, Leach et al. (2002) concluded that positive outcomes from watershed partnerships take four years or more and their success should not be judged prematurely by public officials and funding agencies. A subsequent study by Leach and Sabatier (2003) analyzed the roles of facilitators and coordinators in partnership success in a random sample of 50 watershed partnerships. It is virtually axiomatic in the ECR field that facilitators must be neutral and trained professionals to assure success in collaborative consensus-building processes (Elliott, 1999). Leach and Sabatier (2003), however, presented empirical results that question these assumptions. Specifically, they investigated whether specific facilitator and/or coordinator characteristics (i.e., neutrality, professional training, paid/volunteer status, effectiveness) could account for partnership outcomes. Leach and Sabatier (2003) found that facilitator traits were significantly linked to the level of agreement measure, and coordinator traits were significant predictors of perceived impacts on human-social capital. As expected, regression analyses showed that neutral facilitators were associated with higher levels of agreement. However, being a professionally trained and paid facilitator was a bad combination: the effects on agreement level were actually negative, implying that unpaid and nontrained facilitators had positive effects on this success measure. Moreover, the level of agreement reached was higher for facilitators who were judged to be less effective by the small group of stakeholders interviewed. These latter findings were inconsistent with hypotheses.13 Several theoretical frameworks (i.e., social capital, ACF, IAD) suggest that trust and social capital are important determinants of success in collaborative institutions. What empirical evidence supports this claim? Leach and Sabatier (2005) tackled this question in a study of 76 watershed partnerships from their WPP database. They also tested whether trust (and social-human capital) and success operate in reciprocal causal paths or as one-way linear relationships. Leach and Sabatier (2005) found that interpersonal trust interacted with partnership age such that trust had a positive effect on agreements reached in older partnerships (> 3 years). However, this relationship was negative in younger partnerships (< 3 years).14 Social-human capital also predicted agreements in regression analyses. Neither trust nor social-human capital was related to restoration project activity. Both trust and socialhuman capital, however, were significant predictors of perceived effects on the watershed. Comparison of results from the regression models revealed no support for the hypothesized recursive relationships between trust and success criteria, or between social-human capital and success. Leach and Sabatier (2005) concluded that the
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management results were (p. 614) more consistent with one-way causal models in which trust (and social-human capital) influences agreements, which in turn affects restoration project activity, and ultimately, watershed ecological conditions.
National Estuary Program Coastal Partnerships A relevant question is whether the findings of Leach and Sabatier (2005) on western watershed partnerships generalize to other types of stakeholder partnerships. Lubell (2004, 2005) and his colleagues (Schneider et al., 2003) conducted a series of studies that evaluated the effects of the NEP on watershed partnership processes and success. In these quasi-experimental studies, the NEP is treated as the treatment variable and these partnerships are directly compared to similar matched US estuaries without the NEP designation.15 Schneider et al. (2003) performed a social network analysis to test whether NEP partnerships showed greater evidence of new social capital compared to non-NEP estuaries. They found that social networks were dramatically different in these two institutional structures. Specifically, Schneider et al. (2003) reported that NEP social networks were characterized by (1) higher frequencies of interaction including more people and organizations, (2) bridging of multiple levels of government/interests, (3) more vertical boundary-spanning “clans,” (4) more technical experts included in policy discussions, and (5) stronger interpersonal ties between stakeholders. Moreover, these NEP networks were linked directly to beliefs and attitudes (e.g., trust, fairness, conflict resolution) that build a foundation for cooperation. Lubell (2004) addressed the question of whether NEP partnerships are better at resolving conflict and promoting cooperation, relative to non-NEP estuaries. He conducted semi-structured interviews with informants from 12 NEP partnerships and 10 non-NEP watersheds. NEP effects were assessed using specific conflicts and restoration projects. Lubell (2004) identified 112 major conflicts and 102 estuary restoration projects. For each conflict and project, indices of conflict resolution (i.e., similar to “level of agreement reached”) and project cooperation (i.e., number of cooperative activities) were developed. Similarly, measures of specific action arena characteristics (Ostrom, 2007) were also generated, such as geographic and issue scope. Lubell (2004) found that NEP partnerships were associated with increases of 17% in conflict resolution and 15% in project cooperation. Additionally, conflict resolution was less successful for conflicts with broader geographic scope. This moderator had no impact on project cooperation. Finally, a large-sample survey study by Lubell (2005) investigated the effects of NEP partnerships on collective action beliefs and their implications for cooperation in collaborative institutions. His theoretical argument, guided by the ACF and transaction cost economics, was that collaborative institutions will be more successful, compared to traditional command-and-control regulation, if they increase the benefits and reduce the transaction costs of cooperation for stakeholders. The collective action beliefs examined were (1) nature of watershed problems (i.e., problem severity/diffusion, scientific uncertainty) and (2) institutional performance (i.e., trust, fairness, conflict resolution). Lubell (2005) reported results from regression analyses that the NEP partnership variable had significant effects on six collective action beliefs. Specifically, beliefs about problem diffusion and scientific uncertainty among NEP stakeholders increased by 5% and 9%, respectively. The results showed that the NEP was associated with increases of 6% for trust (in other stakeholders) and 12% for perceived fairness. Moreover, NEP effects were negative and largest for beliefs concerning economic interest domination (-15%) and whether conflicts needed to be moved outside the partnership (-15%). NEP effects on trust, fairness, and economic interest domination were also moderated by stakeholders’ deep core beliefs of environmentalism and conservatism. Overall, Lubell (2005) noted that NEP effects were stronger for beliefs about institutional performance compared to beliefs about watershed problems.
Assessment Studies of ECR Processes and Dispute Resolution Programs Multiagency ECR Evaluation Study Emerson, Orr, Keyes, and McKnight (2009) recently published the first large-sample, comparative analysis of ECR cases to test Orr et al.’s (2008) evaluation framework. The Multiagency ECR Evaluation Study (MAES) used 52 cases involving the use of ECR in state and federal agencies from 2005 to 2007. Three outcomes variables were
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management assessed: (1) agreement reached, (2) agreement quality (including durability), and (3) quality of working relationships. The five explanatory variables were: (1) ECR is appropriate to situation, (2) appropriate participants are “at the table” and engaged, (3) parties have capacity to engage (e.g., time, skills, resources), (4) (p. 615) mediator possesses required skills and employs best practices, and (5) “relevant, high-quality, trusted information” is used (Emerson et al., 2009, p. 31). The degree to which participants are engaged effectively is treated as both an explanatory factor and an intervening process-related variable (see Figure 31.5). Self-report questionnaire scales were carefully constructed to measure all explanatory, process, and outcome variables, and were completed by the participants and mediators (or facilitators). Explanatory variables were measured using both factual data from case sponsors and survey responses of participants and mediators. Emerson et al. (2009) used multilevel modeling (MLM) procedures (Kreft & De Leeuw, 1998; Singer, 1998) to test the hypothesized relationships between explanatory factors and ECR outcomes. Data from survey respondents were specified as the individual-level model and cases as the group-level model in the MLM analyses. Emerson et al. (2009) reported that agreements (including full and partial) were reached in 82% of the cases. Both participants and mediators rated these agreements to be of good quality (e.g., participant understanding of terms, primary issues addressed, key interests of parties met, feasible implementation). Moreover, working relationships (indexed by before and after measures of trust and ability to work together cooperatively) improved significantly, according to both participants and mediators. In general, the MLM results provided statistical support for the basic relationships proposed by the Orr et al. (2008) evaluation framework. The explanatory variables (“desired process conditions”) in Figure 31.5 showed the predicted effects on the three ECR outcome variables (“end-of-process outcomes”). Furthermore, these explanatory factors exerted their hypothesized effects indirectly through effective engagement (“expected process dynamics”) in Figure 31.5, and also via direct paths to the three outcome variables.
Policy Dialogues Bingham (1986) conducted the first systematic evaluation of policy dialogues, focusing on two primary criteria: agreement rate and agreement implementation. She reported that the agreement rate in policy dialogue cases (N = 33) was 76%, a figure almost identical to the overall 78% rate for site-specific disputes, and reasonably close to the 82% rate reported recently by Emerson et al. (2009). Bingham (1986) further divided the 33 policy dialogue cases in terms of whether the parties had authority to either make decisions (N = 4) or issue recommendations (N = 29). Agreement rate was 100% in the decision cases and 72% in the recommendations cases. Thus, the likelihood of reaching agreement in policy dialogues is similar to that of more traditional third-party mediated ECR cases, which increases further when the parties have formal authority to make decisions. However, the performance of policy dialogues on implementation of agreements is another matter. Bingham (1986) found that 41% achieved full implementation of agreements, 18% had partial implementation, and 41% did not implement the agreements. When cases involving making decisions are omitted from the analysis, Bingham (1986) reported that half of these agreements were fully implemented and half were not. Thus, Bingham’s (1986) data suggest that the best estimate of implementation likelihood in a typical policy dialogue is basically a coin flip. Are there techniques to increase the odds of successful implementation in policy dialogues? Brogden (2003) described a new approach that involves incorporating implementation criteria into agreements concerning monitoring and assessment activities. For example, she headed a facilitation team for the SCA National Policy Dialogue, consisting of a series of eight workshops across the United States to discuss how state conservation agreements (SCAs) could be used proactively to manage endangered species conservation efforts at the state government level. Brogden (2003) summarized the outcomes from these stakeholder workshops in a checklist that may be useful in the evaluation of upstream ECR cases. Workshop recommendations strongly advocated the use of adaptive management principles (Holling, 1978; Lee, 1993) in evaluating SCA effects. Brogden (2003) argued that systematic checklist use by third-party practitioners may increase the odds of invaluable data being collected about “on-the-ground” environmental outcomes, criteria that have proven elusive in ECR program evaluation studies to date (Emerson et al., 2009; Leach et al., 2002). How are outcomes evaluated in more recent applications of policy dialogues? Wade (2004) reported that six of seven convergent dialogues that she facilitated at the Aspen Institute reached agreement on recommendations and/or guidelines. Qualitatively, Wade (2004) noted that participants were most satisfied with working productively
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management with people of different values/opinions and having the opportunity to develop personal communication (p. 616) skills through the dialogue process. Negative aspects included the patience to accept the pacing of the dialogue process and working with others with considerable variability in communication skills. Wade (2004) also identified group size as a limiting factor in policy dialogues: too many parties can compromise effectiveness.
Empirical Studies Related to Analysis and Deliberation Framework Our literature search revealed that evaluation studies of the A&D framework are sparse. Research conducted since the 1996 NRC report examines how stakeholders perceive and evaluate various models for combining public participation with science-based deliberation and seeks to provide conceptual guidance to public agency managers about when to use A&D processes. Weible, Sabatier, and Lubell (2004) used the ACF to investigate stakeholder preferences for different approaches to involving scientists in public deliberation processes. This framework predicts that stakeholder preferences should be influenced by deep core beliefs. Weible et al. (2004) compared two public involvement processes used by the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) to implement the 1999 Marine Life Protection Act, which mandated creation of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) along the coast. The CDFG began this process using a topdown approach led by scientists with public involvement occurring after implementation plans were developed. The CDFG faced outraged citizens at public meetings who vehemently protested the plans for locating MPAs. Subsequently, the CDFG initiated another attempt to implement the Marine Life Protection Act using an A&D process with multiple teams of scientists and stakeholders working to generate recommendations for implementation. Weible et al. (2004) measured deep core beliefs and related policy core beliefs to test the hierarchical structure of the ACF. Scales assessing these preexisting beliefs included: (1) Pro-Scientific Management versus ProCollaboration, and (2) Pro-MPA Empirical versus Pro-Local Knowledge. Secondary beliefs were measured regarding stakeholders’ relative optimism for the following possible MPA effects: protecting major marine habitats, avoiding negative fishing effects, and preventing unfair agency control. Consistent with the ACF, Weible et al. (2004) found that deep core beliefs had significant impact on the secondary beliefs indirectly through policy core beliefs. Scientists, environmentalists, and state government officials were generally pessimistic regarding the A&D collaborative process, while commercial/recreational fishing interests and local government officials were more optimistic. Weible et al. (2004) concluded that the NRC assumption that A&D processes will be preferable for all stakeholders may be flawed because deep core beliefs about the role of science in ecosystem management constrain stakeholder preferences. In a subsequent study, Webler and Tuler (2006) found substantial differences across stakeholder groups in perceived “ideal” processes for public deliberation. Webler and Tuler (2006) used Q-sort methodology to gather perceptions of stakeholders from a diverse set of cases dealing with issues such as river/watershed management, forest management, national park management, and cleanup of contaminated sewage sludge. Each participant sorted 56 “issue of interest” statements (i.e., responses to “what are important elements of public participation in environmental assessment/decision-making?”) into three piles based on their relative importance to the design of a public participation process. Participants were then asked to arrange these statements to conform to a normal distribution. These Q-sorts were then factor analyzed to determine their underlying dimensions (see also Danielson, Webler, & Tuler, 2010, for applications of Q method to formative evaluation studies). Webler and Tuler (2006) obtained four distinct factors corresponding to different perspectives on appropriate public participation processes: (1) science-centered stakeholder consultation (task-focused, action-oriented leadership, informed scientific analysis), (2) egalitarian deliberation (participants mitigate agency control, open information access, active public deliberation), (3) efficient cooperation (give feedback and comment for final agency decision in public interest), and (4) informed collaboration (goal-oriented process to create legitimacy for agency decisions, build trust between agency and community). Webler and Tuler (2006) observed relatively low levels of agreement and substantial divergence of opinion across participants. We find it revealing that none of these stakeholder perspectives fully captures the iterative synthesis of scientific analysis and public deliberation in the A&D framework. We noted that trust is a significant predictor of success (i.e., agreements) in watershed partnerships (Leach & Sabatier, 2005). Does trust also affect stakeholder preferences for different forms of public involvement? Focht and
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management Trachtenberg (2005) investigated this question by interviewing 150 stakeholders in the Illinois River basin of eastern Oklahoma. Their conceptual model of stakeholder preferences for public involvement processes assumed these judgments are influenced by two distinct forms of trust. Social trust is defined as “stakeholders’ tendency to accept the judgments of other stakeholders in the policy process”; official trust denotes “stakeholders’ willingness to defer to policy officials’ policy judgments” (Focht & Trachtenberg, 2005, pp. 94–95). Each trust dimension has two levels (trust vs. distrust), resulting in four possible strategies for public participation: confirmation, consultation, facilitation, and negotiation. Focht and Trachtenberg (2005) predicted that the confirmation strategy (i.e., policy officials lead in policy development, then seek stakeholder feedback later) should be preferred more often when both social and official trust are high. When social and official trust are low, the framework predicts that stakeholders will prefer the negotiation strategy (i.e., policy officials engage in joint negotiation with stakeholders).16 Focht and Trachtenberg (2005) tested these hypotheses by asking their stakeholders which of the four participation strategies were most preferred. Participants were then classified into four categories based on their trust judgments. Results revealed that 86% of participants with low social and official trust scores chose negotiation as most preferred, while 62.5% of participants scoring high on both social and official trust chose the confirmation strategy. Focht and Trachtenberg (2005) interpreted these empirical results as support for their trust-based conceptual framework.17
Evaluation Studies of Collaborative Learning Processes and Outcomes Our literature search located three published articles and technical reports that presented empirical evaluation results for collaborative learning (CL) projects. We begin with two CL projects involving public lands management in forest and coastal areas of Washington state and Oregon (Blatner, Carroll, Daniels, & Walker, 2001; Daniels, Walker, Carroll, & Blatner, 1996; Daniels & Walker, 1996). We then summarize evaluation results from a CL application on urban watershed restoration in San Antonio, Texas (Samuelson, Matlock et al., 2003). According to Daniels and Walker (2001), the most comprehensive application of CL was performed in the context of fire recovery planning in the Wenatchee National Forest (WNF) (Daniels, Walker, Carroll, & Blatner, 1996). They conducted the Fire Recovery Collaborative Learning project to meet NEPA public involvement requirements for the US Forest Service fire recovery planning process. The impetus was the devastating forest fires, generated by a lightning storm during July and August 1994. Daniels et al. (1996) facilitated four full-day, citizen workshops in the communities of Leavenworth, Entiat, and Seattle. In advance of these meetings, they conducted a two-day CL training course with 25 WNF staff members, who would later be active participants in public meetings with citizens. The primary goal of the workshop meetings was to involve the public to develop ideas on how fire recovery in the WNF should proceed, using available scientific expertise. The evaluation data consisted of citizen responses to surveys collected pre- and post-workshop. Four questions (on Forest Service decision-making processes in fire recovery planning) were administered twice, allowing assessment of change from the CL workshop process. Blatner et al. (2001) analyzed these survey data for the Leavenworth and Seattle workshops and concluded there was some evidence of positive change in citizen perceptions of the Forest Service for expected quality of decisions and likelihood of implementation (Leavenworth only).18 Another set of survey questions that evaluated the CL process were administered at the conclusion of the workshops (i.e., post-test only design).19 Blatner et al. (2001) interpreted the general patterns in mean scores as supportive of CL process effectiveness on most dimensions. Specifically, respondents provided the highest ratings (4.0 to 4.5 on 5-point Likert disagree/agree scales) for the following statements characterizing the CL workshop: “provided parties with opportunity to generate ideas regarding community’s effort,” “allowed every party’s interests to be considered,” and “involved public in ways different from other meetings” (Blatner et al., 2001, pp. 260–261). Participants also expressed general agreement with the following descriptive statements about the workshops: “constructive communication occurred,” “included opportunities for participants to argue constructively about issues, concerns, and recommendations,” “promoted development of coordinated improvements to community’s situation,” and “views and concerns of other parties are as important as yours or those of the group you represent.” Survey respondents had mixed feelings (near scale midpoint) that “workshop participants [were] from all affected parties and communities of interest,” “key Forest Service decisions pertaining
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management to (p. 618) fire restoration efforts on the WNF will actually be implemented,” and “workshop lead to development of ongoing, organized approach to coordinate progress on local matters.” Blatner et al. (2001) also reported results on survey questions dealing with specific aspects of the CL workshop experience. Participants reported that the following factors were very important to the effectiveness of the community-level workshop: CL process used in workshop, use of outside facilitators, and willingness of Forest Service and other agency employees to participate in workshop. They also agreed that the CL workshop “helped parties understand various aspects and perspectives regarding community specific issues.” However, the ratings on whether “parties understand each other’s views and concerns (technical issues)” were less positive. In summary, Blatner et al. (2001) concluded that the CL workshops achieved the primary goals of the WNF’s public involvement process. Moreover, several ideas generated during CL workshops were incorporated in the final WNF fire recovery plan.20 A second application of CL was conducted in the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area (ODNRA; Daniels & Walker, 1996). This project was initiated by Siuslaw National Forest leadership to supplement its standard methods of public involvement to revise the ODNRA management plan. Daniels and Walker designed and implemented this project in three stages, which involved five full-day, public workshops in July 1993. Daniels and Walker (1996) reported that the primary goal was to create opportunities for citizens to communicate about their concerns, interests, issues, and ideas for improvements to ODNRA management. The entire sequence of CL activities (see Figure 31.4) was implemented, beginning with CL training, moving to building a common knowledge base and identifying concerns/interests, to developing suggestions for improvement and debating their desirability and feasibility. The evaluation of the CL approach in the ODNRA planning process consisted of a post-workshop survey, similar to the Wenatchee fire recovery project.21 Overall, participants were most positive about the CL workshops on the following characteristics: “opportunities to generate ideas about the ODNRA,” “open and accessible to all interested people,” and “included participants from all affected parties and interests.” There was general agreement that the CL workshops “encouraged open discussion and evaluation of ideas,” “allowed every party’s ODNRA interests to be considered,” “helped parties understand aspects of and perspectives on ODNRA issues,” and “involved the public in ways different than other public meetings” (Daniels & Walker, 1996, p. 93).22 There were several significant outcomes from the ODNRA workshop process in terms of implementation. For example, the final Record of Decision issued by the Forest Service for ODNRA management plan revisions included more extensive efforts to stop the spread of beachgrass, which was rapidly encroaching on open sand areas. This was a specific issue where strong consensus emerged among CL workshop participants. Modifications were also made to the draft Environmental Impact Statement about night riding of off-road vehicles and access to more isolated areas. In summary, the results from post-workshop surveys and actual implementation of improvement suggestions provided solid evidence for CL program effectiveness. Finally, the third CL evaluation study was an EPA-funded research project to investigate a new method for rehabilitation of urban watersheds in the city of San Antonio, Texas (Samuelson, Matlock, et al., 2003; Samuelson et al., 2005). Specifically, this research tested a method for restoring the ecological integrity of urban watersheds that combined knowledge from ecology, engineering, and social sciences. Stakeholders in the Salado and Leon Creek watersheds of San Antonio were recruited to participate in two restoration planning councils. CL was used to structure the public participation process over a series of 12 monthly half-day workshop meetings. The objective of these meetings was to solicit stakeholder feedback to guide risk-based research conducted by the ecological science team (i.e., biological/agricultural engineering, hydrology, aquatic ecology). Two integrated bio-indicators, periphyton and bluegill sunfish, were used to evaluate and communicate risk to the stakeholder groups. The CL approach represented an iterative A&D process to facilitate communication and mutual learning between citizens and scientists. Another goal of each restoration council was to develop a set of recommendations for improving management of watershed issues such as water quality, in-stream flows, riparian vegetative cover, and flood control. The effectiveness of the CL process was evaluated using pre-test and post-test surveys of council members, along with unstructured personal interviews of participants following project completion. Samuelson, Matlock, et al. (2003) predicted that the CL process should: (1) increase participants’ general understanding of non-point source
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management pollution issues in these watersheds; (2) increase (p. 619) participants’ understanding of and ability to use scientific information about total maximum daily load and rehabilitation options; (3) increase participants’ understanding of and ability to use systems thinking in ecosystem management; and (4) increase communication competence of council members. Statistical analyses of the survey data from the Salado Creek Council showed positive changes for several learning/knowledge outcomes (Samuelson, Matlock, et al., 2003). Participants’ ratings of their familiarity and skills in using system thinking principles and knowledge/use of scientific information (e.g., total maximum daily loads) in water quality management increased from pre-test to post-test. Limited support was found for the hypothesis regarding participant knowledge and understanding of non-point source pollution issues. Survey ratings of communication competence did not support the original hypothesis: there was significant change over time, but in the opposite direction from expectations.23 Overall, while there were no systematic changes in trust between stakeholders over time, a modest decline in relationship quality was observed. In comparison to the quantitative survey results, qualitative data from personal interviews suggested a more positive conclusion about CL program effectiveness (Samuelson, Matlock, et al., 2003). Comments of council members in post-workshop interviews reinforced survey indicators that significant learning occurred for non-point source pollution, ecological principles/dynamics, and rehabilitation options. Moreover, interview data suggested that some council members felt their communications skills improved, new relationships with other council members formed, and a stronger sense of group identity emerged over the year-long CL process (Samuelson, Peterson, & Putnam, 2003). Agency representatives (i.e., San Antonio River Authority, San Antonio Water System) were positively impressed with the quality of CL meetings. There was evidence from interviews that the CL approach was being used as a model for other watershed collaborative groups in San Antonio. In summary, these qualitative results provided complementary support for the original hypotheses (Samuelson, Matlock, et al., 2003).
Conclusion This review has provided a broad overview of current theory and research on collaborative processes in ecosystem management. In this concluding section, we discuss several emerging trends in this literature. These observations reflect four themes: (1) recent focus on evaluation of success in ECR programs and processes within past decade; (2) absence of control groups or pre-ECR baseline data in most empirical studies; (3) lack of theoretical integration across ECR research studies; and (4) ambivalent attitudes among public agency managers and practitioners toward current ECR evaluation agenda. First, the recent focus on evaluation criteria and assessment of ECR processes and outcomes within the past decade is a significant development. Compared to the rather dismal state of empirical affairs chronicled in O’Leary’s (1995) early review, the ECR field has taken major forward strides toward maturity as an established area for social science research. We noted above the influential contributions of Innes (1999), O’Leary and Bingham’s (2003) edited volume, d’Estree and Colby (2004), Orr et al. (2008), and Emerson et al. (2009). Moreover, a number of comparative large-sample studies on watershed and estuary partnerships by Sabatier, Leach, Lubell, and their colleagues have advanced the sophistication of research on collaborative institutions on both theoretical and methodological fronts. The prevailing lament (Emerson et al., 2003; Sabatier, Focht et al., 2005) about the onedimensional state of the existing ECR research database (i.e., qualitative case studies) is missing its mark in 2012. Second, despite this positive assessment on the evaluation front, we noted the conspicuous absence of control groups or pre-ECR baseline measures in the research designs of most empirical ECR studies reviewed here (see also Bingham et al., 2003; Lubell et al., 2005). This fact was not a surprise given the dominance of qualitative case study methodology in the early years of ECR research. However, this weakness in research design is more problematic now because more is expected from the ECR field in terms of demonstrating its value to society. The only studies we encountered that employed any form of control groups were the quasi-experimental designs of Lubell (2004, 2005) that compared NEP partnerships and non-NEP estuaries. Statistical methods of control using multivariate regression analyses were used effectively in the watershed partnership studies of Leach et al. (2002), Leach and Sabatier (2003), and Leach and Sabatier (2005). We also observed the use of basic pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental designs in two empirical studies evaluating CL program effectiveness (Blatner et al., 2001; Samuelson, Matlock, et al., 2003). However, we failed to locate any evaluation studies of either policy dialogues or A&D processes that collected baseline belief or attitude measures in addition to post-intervention participant responses.
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management (p. 620) A third observation concerns the relative lack of theoretical integration in the ECR literature on collaborative processes reviewed here. This literature is widely scattered across academic disciplines (e.g., political science, sociology, public administration, planning, environmental law, public participation, systems theory/engineering, social and organizational psychology, environmental psychology) and areas of practice (ECR, public participation). It is a certainty that our review has omitted relevant studies on collaborative processes because of practical difficulties in canvassing such a rapidly growing, disparate literature. Integration across these diverse specialty areas does not happen naturally. This multidisciplinary characteristic explains in part the apparent disconnect we observed between broad theoretical frameworks (IAD, ACF, social capital theory) from more traditional disciplines like political science and sociology and the ongoing discourse and research agenda in the ECR practice literature. Familiar “turf battles” across social science disciplines explain part of the integration problem. However, there is also the commonly observed academic-practice gap, which is clearly evident in the ECR field (O’Leary & Bingham, 2003), as in many other applied disciplines in psychology (e.g., clinical, industrialorganizational). Greater theoretical integration should improve the quality of future ECR evaluation studies by refining the guiding program theory and logic models that underpin specific evaluation designs and outcome measures (Rowe, 2003). Finally, we detected a mild undercurrent of ambivalence (or perhaps even dissent) among some public agency managers and ECR practitioners about the relative importance of quantitative evaluation research (Bingham et al., 2003; Birkhoff & Lowry, 2003; Dukes, 2004; Emerson & Carlson, 2003). This attitude, if widely shared, could be a potential barrier to effective progress on Bingham et al.’s (2003) ambitious agenda to institutionalize data collection in ECR. Without the cooperation of agency professionals and mediators/facilitators, this effort may result in limited success. Bingham et al. (2003) reported that some agency managers and members of the ECR practitioner community have shown reluctance to fully embrace the underlying goals of the current evaluation agenda (see also Birkhoff & Lowry, 2003; Emerson & Carlson, 2003). Emerson and Carlson (2003) suggested that this resistance is motivated by cost factors, staff overload, or confidentiality concerns about the ways in which evaluation data may be used by others. One can certainly sympathize with these legitimate administrative and privacy concerns. However, this view creates a social dilemma for public agency managers and ECR practitioners: exposing one’s dispute resolution programs and professional mediation/facilitation skills to evaluation runs the risk of bad news, but resistance to systematic evaluation efforts poses potential risks of greater magnitude to the entire field.24 Fortunately, a productive collaboration has emerged among some ECR practitioners, academic researchers, federal and state agencies, and funding organizations to locate common ground for integrating evaluation processes with self-reflective practice. As noted earlier, organizations such as the Policy Consensus Initiative and the US Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution have actively facilitated this type of collaborative effort among a growing number of state agencies and university ECR-public policy research institutes (Emerson & Carlson, 2003). The culmination of the initial phase of the MAES project has produced a useful conceptual framework for ECR evaluation studies (Orr et al., 2008) and a large new data set of ECR cases to test specific hypotheses about the factors that produce effective ECR programs and consensus-based processes (Emerson et al., 2009). This early collaborative success with the MAES project may help convince skeptics that partnership is preferable to estrangement.
Future Directions Our review concludes with a set of research questions that need further investigation. We present them with brief commentary on why these issues represent promising future research directions and how they might be addressed methodologically. Some of these questions have been identified in earlier appraisals of the ECR literature (e.g., Bingham et al., 2003; Dukes, 2004; Lubell et al., 2005), while others represent new problems that emerged while preparing this review.
Research Question 1. Which process factors in ECR collaborative interventions produce which outcomes and impacts in Orr et al.’s (2008) evaluation framework? A major obstacle in tackling this question has been the heterogeneity in the specific collaborative processes used
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management in existing ECR cases (Emerson et al., 2003; Brogden, 2003). We need more refined classification systems to sort cases according to levels (p. 621) of key process variables, perhaps using case survey methodology (Beierle & Cayford, 2002, 2003). The detailed coding system developed by d’Estree and Colby (2004) could be used to operationalize these process variables for greater precision in case classification. Standard methods of quantitative meta-analysis (Cooper, 2010; Hunter & Schmidt, 2004; Rosenthal, 1991) could assist in addressing the heterogeneity problem. For example, moderator analysis could help identify contextual variables in empirical studies that influence effect size estimates. In terms of data requirements, these methods normally require only correlation coefficients or means (and standard deviations) of at least two groups (treatment, control) in quasiexperimental designs.25
Research Question 2. Do ECR collaborative processes have long-term effects on actual environmental conditions? Experts in the field agree that this question represents the next uncharted frontier in ECR evaluation research (Bingham et al., 2003; Brogden, 2003; Lubell et al., 2005). The lack of ecological impact measures in empirical studies has been a critical deficit in the existing literature (Koontz & Thomas, 2006; Thomas, 2008). Answering this question definitively will require the long-term interdisciplinary collaboration of social and ecological scientists to integrate data collection on actual environmental conditions with longitudinal ECR evaluation studies. This research agenda, however, will not come cheap. Federal (e.g., NSF, EPA) and state agencies, and private funding organizations will have to rethink their future funding priorities. Research conducted within the past 15 years has demonstrated that reliable, scientific methods exist to assess ecological conditions with acceptable levels of uncertainty (e.g., Costanza et al., 1997; Samuelson, Matlock, et al., 2003; Schweik & Thomas, 2002). However, this new generation of collaborative research will demand significantly more time, money, and human capital than has been allocated to grant-funded ECR research in recent years.
Research Question 3. What are the empirical implications of complexity science theories(e.g., self-organizing systems) for understanding the dynamics of ECR collaborative processes and evaluating their outcomes? Innes and Booher (1999) were the first to link evaluation criteria for consensus-building processes to the growing interest in complexity science. Bingham et al. (2003) concurred that the consensus-building process is best viewed as a self-organizing system. This perspective holds great promise for advancing understanding of ECR processes, dynamics, and outcomes/impacts. In fact, Bingham et al. (2003) proposed that each ECR case could be treated as a system itself. Innes and Booher (1999) emphasized that the conceptual lens of self-organizing system theory highlights processes of change, adaptation, learning, feedback, and the emergence of innovative responses occurring across longer time frames than typically studied in past ECR research. We find this perspective fertile with research opportunities because several theories from complexity science have already made significant impact on understanding social psychological phenomena during the 1990s (e.g., Arrow, McGrath, & Berdahl, 2000; Liebrand & Messick, 1995; Nowak & Vallacher, 1998; Vallacher & Nowak, 1994). Specifically, nonlinear dynamical systems theory has proven its value through pioneering use of computer simulations and controlled experimentation for a diverse array of social psychological phenomena, including selfevaluation, social judgment, dynamics of public opinion change, and intractable intergroup conflict (Nowak, Szamrej, & Latane, 1990; Vallacher, Coleman, Nowak, & Bui-Wrzosinska, 2010; Vallacher & Nowak, 2007; Vallacher, Read, & Nowak, 2002). In fact, Nowak et al. (2010) recently described a workshop method for teaching negotiation in multiparty conflict settings using dynamical systems theory and computer simulations to guide the learning process. To stimulate further thought using this complexity science view, we offer the following corollary research questions:
Research Question 3a. How do individuals who participate in ECR collaborative processes change over time? Change can occur at both individual and group levels simultaneously in ECR collaborative processes. For example, most stakeholder partnership research to date has chosen either the individual level or the group level for its primary unit of analysis (e.g., Leach et al., 2002; Lubell, 2005; Lubell & Leach, 2005). We believe that multilevel
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management modeling techniques (e.g., Emerson et al., 2009) could be used more often with ECR evaluation data to assess these changes at individual and group levels in future research. This statistical technique is useful because it allows relationships between variables to be modeled at two levels of analysis simultaneously, instead of having to choose between the individual or the group level.26 (p. 622) Quasi-experimental research designs that permit within-participant change comparisons could also be employed more often in future research (Bingham et al., 2003). The complexity science framework focuses our research attention on how individual participants in ECR processes learn, adapt to feedback, change beliefs and attitudes, generate creative ideas, and forge new relationships with other stakeholders over time. These changes could be assessed by collecting pre-ECR baseline measures on those outcome variables that relevant program theory predicts should be changed by ECR processes (Rowe, 2003). Multiple measurements over time could then be made on these key variables using standardized instruments (e.g., Emerson et al., 2009). Longitudinal designs should permit more accurate measurements of relationship change (trust, reciprocity, “cognitive shift,” group cohesion) over time (d’Estree, 2003). Our review suggests that the research infrastructure and human capital are in place to implement this new generation of longitudinal ECR research studies.
Research Question 3b. What are the impacts of ECR collaborative processes on future behavior of participants in conflict situations? The question here is whether internal changes in participants of ECR collaborative processes will be manifested in how those individuals deal with other stakeholders in subsequent conflict situations. As Innes and Booher (1999) noted, consensus-building processes often have fuzzy end points demarcating their conclusion. Multi-party conflicts usually evolve over time, sometimes in positive directions and other times in downward spirals of protracted conflict, hostility, and dysfunctional communication. Thus, another important research problem is to understand whether these stakeholders acquire new knowledge and communication skills to create more productive interactions with others who hold different values, beliefs, interests, and worldviews. Bingham et al. (2003) suggested that agent-based modeling methods currently used in psychology, sociology, and political science may provide a viable methodological approach to this question (e.g., Axelrod. 1984; Goldstone, Roberts, & Gureckis, 2008; Guastello, Koopmans, & Pincus, 2009; Kameda, Tsukasaki, Hastie, & Berg, 2011; Macy & Willer, 2002, Smith & Conrey, 2007; Takahashi, 2000; Vallacher et al., 2010; van Overwalle & Heylighen, 2006). Social capital theory could be used to guide which variables to include in simulations of multiparty social dynamics (e.g., trust).
Research Question 3c. What factors affect the survival of collaborative stakeholder partnerships over time? Our current understanding of what conditions predict the success and future survival of stakeholder partnerships is limited. The absence of longitudinal studies that track the development of these partnerships over time is largely responsible for this knowledge gap. Both Lubell et al. (2005) and Bingham et al. (2003) have called for greater attention to temporal dynamics that occur across the lifespan of stakeholder partnerships (or ECR cases). Evaluation studies that collect data beyond the official “end” of ECR collaborative processes are badly needed. Standard data collection procedures in ECR cases that are institutionalized should reduce costs and facilitate completion of these longitudinal studies (Bingham et al., 2003; Emerson et al., 2009).
Research Question 4. What research activities will produce actionable knowledge to motivate collaboration among agency managers, ECR practitioners, and academic researchers to implement the current evaluation agenda? Our final question has a touch of irony for the ECR field, yet warrants further contemplation.27 Both Dukes (2004) and Birkhoff and Lowry (2003) have raised concerns about whether and precisely how current evaluation research studies will help ECR practitioners do their jobs better. We suggest that further constructive dialogue between the academic/research and practice camps may be worthwhile. For example, it would be useful to survey existing agency personnel who manage dispute resolution programs and ECR practitioners who work directly with these organizations to assess their beliefs and attitudes toward the current evaluation agenda, as well as future continuing education needs. Public forums for dissemination and discussion of needs assessment results already exist, such as the annual conferences of ECR professional associations (e.g., Association for Conflict Resolution) and meetings hosted by the US Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution. Visible ECR journals such as Conflict
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management Resolution Quarterly could sponsor a special issue on this theme to provide another public forum for constructive exchange of information and ideas. These relatively simple, cost effective activities could help bring greater integration to the ECR field, which will be crucial to its long-term health and vitality. Current trends make us optimistic about future prospects for this research- practice rapprochement.
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Notes: (1.) For more comprehensive reviews of the pre-2000 literature on public participation and collaborative conservation programs, see Renn, Webler, and Wiedemann (1995), Conley and Moote (2001), and Beierle and Cayford (2002). (2.) The management committee began with approximately 20 people but increased to 49 members at the project’s conclusion. Harry Seraydarian, a respected senior EPA administrator, chaired the committee using a consensusbuilding process. (3.) For example, one finger represented “I fully agree,” five fingers indicated “There is no way I will agree to this,”
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management and six fingers communicated “I won’t agree but perhaps further discussion can resolve it” (Innes & Connick, 1999, pp. 815–816). (4.) Additional provisions included: (1) new revenue sources would not be provided for implementation; (2) clarification that CCMP “neither requires nor recommends” use of the salinity index as a water quality “standard”; and (3) the Bay-Delta Oversight Council (governor-appointed group consisting of stakeholder majority representing farming and urban water interests in Southern California) would “revisit” SFEP proposals on flows and water quality (Innes & Connick, 1999). (5.) Interested readers should consult original sources (Checkland, 1981; Checkland & Scoles, 1990; Wilson & Morren, 1990) for expanded coverage of SSM. Systems thinking principles were introduced to the general business community by Peter Senge’s (1990) best-selling book, The Fifth Discipline. The first formal application, however, of open systems theory to organizational behavior can be traced to Katz and Kahn’s (1966) text, The Social Psychology of Organizations. (6.) Of course, deciding which situations are which requires considerable professional training, judgment, and political acumen. Bureaucratic government agencies more comfortable and experienced with routine risk characterization procedures may find these nuanced judgments challenging. (7.) McCreary, Gamman, and Brooks (2001) presented joint fact-finding procedures for integrating scientific expertise in complex public policy disputes. This joint fact-finding process represents further progress by ECR practitioners in integrating A&D processes within established consensus-building methods. (8.) This sequence of CL project phases and process stages is not viewed as a rigid, formulaic protocol. Daniels and Walker (2001) acknowledged they have never conducted a CL project the same way twice. The model in Figure 31.4 is a generic design template that can accommodate procedural variations. (9.) CL does, however, incorporate key elements of the NRC’s A&D process. (10.) Agencies included in this project were the US Environmental Protection Agency, US Department of the Interior, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Oregon Department of Justice and Oregon Dispute Resolution Commission, Massachusetts Office of Dispute Resolution, and Florida Conflict Resolution Consortium. (11.) Leach et al. (2002) acknowledged that attrition of failing partnerships in their sample could partly, but not completely, explain this trend. (12.) Leach et al. (2002) also noted that in roughly one-third of these partnerships, stakeholders reported that the partnership made things worse in terms of property rights, economic conditions, and regulation. (13.) Based on personal interviews, Leach and Sabatier (2003) suggested that some partnership members (i.e., farmers, ranchers) resented the paid status of facilitators because of personal sacrifices of time and money these members made to attend meetings during normal business hours. The puzzling finding related to training may be linked to the perception among some stakeholders that professional facilitators spent too much partnership meeting time on procedural matters (e.g., establishing ground rules, coaching in communication skills). (14.) Leach and Sabatier (2005) speculated that in younger partnerships (i.e., severe watershed crises more common), stakeholders may be more willing to agree to specific restoration actions, regardless of their distrust of others. In older partnerships where information about others’ trustworthiness is presumably more certain, trust shows the expected positive relationship with agreements reached. (15.) Because neither the 28 NEP sites nor the 10 non-NEP estuaries were randomly assigned, these studies are quasi-experimental designs. (16.) Focht and Trachtenberg (2005) assumed the negotiation strategy would involve mediation and/or facilitation by a neutral third-party, with assistance from independent technical experts. An elaborated A&D process could implement this strategy. (17.) No statistical tests were reported by Focht and Trachtenberg (2005) to confirm the reliability of these findings.
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Collaborative Processes in Ecosystem Management (18.) Kendall’s tau is reported to evaluate the statistical significance of changes between pre- and post-workshop survey responses. However, because Kendall’s tau is a rank correlation coefficient (Siegel & Castellan, 1988), significant changes over time within the same respondent should theoretically decrease Kendall’s tau, making it less likely for these correlations to reach conventional significant levels. Hence, it is unclear how to interpret the statistical reliability of these pre- and post-workshop comparisons. (19.) The absence of baseline, pre-workshop measures in this study precluded statistical tests of change over time for these CL process items. (20.) The Leavenworth ranger district continued using CL in future public involvement efforts. Several project ideas generated during CL workshops were included in this ranger district’s final fire recovery plan (e.g., prison labor used to clear brush around rural buildings). (21.) Surveys were mailed to 100 workshop participants; 54 surveys were returned. (22.) Daniels and Walker (1996) noted that participants who attended full-day workshops responded more favorably on CL process items than half-day attendees. (23.) This negative finding was not surprising given that communication competence training was not emphasized in this particular CL implementation, relative to systems thinking principles and active learning SSM activities. (24.) This situation appears to parallel the current science-practice conflict in psychology between clinicians who deliver psychological services to clients and psychological scientists who conduct rigorous research testing the efficacy of clinical therapeutic treatments (Baker, McFall, & Shoham, 2008). (25.) Quantitative meta-analysis does impose requirements regarding the minimum number of independent empirical studies to obtain reliable effect size estimates and permit moderator analyses (Cooper, 2010). (26.) Multi-level modeling does require that sample sizes are large enough in the number of independent cases (N = 100) and number of participants per case (N = 10 or higher) to allow reliable estimation of regression coefficients. This data requirement highlights the need for building large datasets, such as those in the Watershed Partnership project (Leach et al., 2002) and the MAES Project (Emerson et al., 2009). Lubell et al. (2005) suggested that ECR evaluation researchers should consider 100 cases as an appropriate sample size target. (27.) This issue may be perceived by the ECR research and practice community as less relevant in 2012 because of the early track record of success in recent collaborative ECR evaluation research projects (Orr et al., 2008; Emerson et al., 2009). However, rapid institutional change often brings refractory inertia and resistance over time from members of professional communities and government agencies. Charles D. Samuelson Charles D. Samuelson Department of Psychology Texas A&M University College Station, TX
Clare L. Barratt Clare L. Barratt Department of Psychology Texas A&M University College Station, TX
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Learning Our Way Out of Unsustainability: The Role of Environmental Education
Oxford Handbooks Online Learning Our Way Out of Unsustainability: The Role of Environmental Education Arjen E. J. Wals The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0032
Abstract and Keywords In this chapter the role of education in creating a planet that is more sustainable than the one currently in prospect will be discussed from two vantage points: an instrumental one and an emancipatory one. The instrumental perspective emphasizes the potential of education in changing human environmental behavior in predetermined and more or less agreed upon directions. The emancipatory perspective, on the other hand, emphasizes the potential of education in strengthening people’s capacities and confidence to enable them to help determine how to live together in ways that do not further undermine the carrying capacity of the earth. Whereas the former, more behaviorist vantage point tends to have more support among environmentalists with a strong concern about the rapid loss of biodiversity, climate change, depletion of natural resources, and so on, the latter, more human development–oriented vantage point, tends to have more support among educators with a strong concern for selfdetermination, agency, and democracy. The chapter ends with the introduction of “post-normal” environmental education. Keywords: environmental education, sustainable development, nature conservation education, emancipatory learning, instrumental learning, agency, participation, post-normal science, hybrid learning, social learning, reflexive monitoring
Introduction During the past 50 years or so—depending on where one finds oneself on the globe it could be longer or shorter— a whole range of instruments and mechanisms have evolved to address the loss of nature, environmental degradation, or, in a more general and contemporary term, unsustainability. These instruments and mechanism include socio-technological innovations (e.g., Spaargaren et al., 2006), legislation and law (see www.hg.org/environ.html for an overview), policies (e.g., Caldwell, 1984; Young, 1997), fiscal policy (e.g., Gupta, 2002; López and Toman, 2006) and economic incentives (e.g., Ekins, 2000; Mäler and Vincent, 2005; van den Bergh, 2002), and social marketing (e.g., McKenzie-Mohr, 2000). In addition, both in parallel and intricately connected, environmental communication, education, and learning have always played a role in finding an adequate response to what is nowadays seen as a global challenge. The significance of these learning-based instruments has varied, though, from country to country but also within countries over time. Historically speaking, one could say that there has been an evolution from nature conservation education to environmental education (EE) to education for sustainable development (ESD). In this chapter a brief history of the role of education in living more sustainably on this planet will be provided. Two distinct vantage points that have major implications for the purposes, processes, and evaluation strategies deemed appropriate will be used: (1) an instrumental utilitarian perspective (emphasizing the potential of education in (p. 629) changing human environmental behavior in predetermined and more or less agreed upon directions) and (2) an emancipatory human development perspective (emphasizing the potential of education in strengthening
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Learning Our Way Out of Unsustainability: The Role of Environmental Education people’s capacities and confidence to enable them to help determine how to live together in ways that do not further undermine the carrying capacity of the earth).
Nature Conservation Education When trying to trace the beginnings of nature conservation education—while recognizing that such beginnings will vary from country to country—some scholars refer to events such as Petrarch’s climbing of Mont Ventoux centuries ago for no apparent reason other than to simply enjoy natural beauty and to experience the mountain just because it was there (O’Connell, 1983; Weiss, 2005). Others refer to the creation of national parks and state parks in many countries as a response to citizens’ becoming concerned about the loss of nature. In some countries, such as the United States, this has happened already, when Yellowstone National Park in was created in 1872 “to promote and regulate the use of the…national parks…which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations” (National Park Service, 1916). Similar movements took place at different points in time depending on a number of factors, including the prevailing political currents, the perceived pressures on what was considered nature or wilderness, and the power of the (mostly) elites who decided to spend much of their time and fortune on conservation. The national and state parks were often equipped with visitor centers to help visitors understand, appreciate, and protect nature as one of two main purposes along with nature conservation (Lemons, 2010). It must be noted here that nature conservation education and, more generally, the nature conservation movement as a whole tended to involve and engage the socioeconomically advantaged, paying little attention to those living in rural or urban poverty. Several scholars have discussed this issue; see, for instance, Henderson (1992) for an analysis of North America and Great Britain in this respect, Oyadomari (1989) for a Japanese perspective, or Spierenburg and Wels (2010) for a South African view of elitism in nature conservation. A related but distinct nature conservation education stream emerged around the same time or shortly thereafter when nature conservation and nature studies became a subject in many public school systems, often as a component of science education (Bodzin et al., 2010). Schools began taking children on excursions or field trips to a local nature preserve or a local farm and tried to integrate such activities into the regular curriculum. In some countries special structures were designed to provide nature-oriented education for those, particularly young children, who were unable or hardly able to leave urban areas (Wals, 1982). In the Netherlands, for instance, the school gardens and city farms were created over 90 and 50 years ago, respectively, in cities such as The Hague, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam. Reconnecting citizens, children in particular, with nature and the sources of their food, and getting them into the outdoors, were some of the main objectives that in some cases intersected with an educational field that evolved in parallel: outdoor education (Rickinson et al., 2004). People with backgrounds mostly in natural resources, ecology, or forest management were often responsible for creating edutainment (forms of education that are not perceived as such by the learner) that made discovering, experiencing, and understanding the natural world both enjoyable and educational. Again it can be argued that schools paying attention to nature conservation, the outdoors, and the sources of food tended to be somewhat privileged, as they were able to provide and organize such educational experiences, whereas schools in poorer urban areas were not. Much of this is still going on today, and is even getting renewed attention in countries where there is rapid urbanization and/or “virtualization” (e.g., human activity taking place in a virtual place), which results in a disconnect between people and the land (e.g., Louv, 2005; Kellert, 2005; Kahn & Kellert, 2002). Understanding and discovering nature and the web of life, how we affect nature and how nature affects us, where our food comes from, how our eating habits affect nature, and so on generally form the desired learning outcomes of these activities. In many urban areas around the world, these activities are increasingly connected to the rise of urban agriculture and the rebirth of school and community garden programs (e.g., Nettle, 2008; Doyle & Krasny, 2003). Another movement that seems to be supportive of nature (conservation) education can be coined the “nature as teacher” movement (e.g., Hall & Clover, 2005; Swan, 1992). Advocates of this stream claim that there are a lot of processes going on in the natural world that humans (p. 630) can benefit from when seeking to live more lightly on this planet. Concepts frequently used by them include “resilience” (Krasny et al., 2010), “managing complex adaptive systems” (Allen et al., 1998; Rammel et al., 2007), and “ecological intelligence” (Goleman, 2009). The “nature as a teacher” movement represents a “worldview derived from living systems, a framework for thinking
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Learning Our Way Out of Unsustainability: The Role of Environmental Education where connections and relationships are paramount, where waste equals food, where we learn from Nature to close the loops and move from a linear to a circular economy. Without such a new framework for thinking, young people are powerless in the face of looming resource depletion, climate change and societal disruption” (Walker, 2009, in reviewing the popular 2008 book Sense and Sustainability: Educating for a Low Carbon World by Ken Webster and Craig Johnson). Although the level of government support has fluctuated over time, nature (conservation) education remains in place today, in part because of new justifications stemming from concerns about the decline of public health (e.g., the rise of obesity and ADHD) for which the outdoors and contact with nature are increasingly seen as providing a part of the solution. In the 1980s, well before the age of wireless and handheld technology, Kaplan and Kaplan pointed out that experiences in nature can restore people’s ability to concentrate. They introduced attention restoration theory (ART) to help explain this phenomenon (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989). More recently this has been reaffirmed by Richard Louv (2005) in his popular book Last Child in the Woods, which details a number of additional benefits as well.
Environmental Education Environmental education is obviously related to nature conservation education, but there is an important difference in that it transcends issues of nature, biodiversity, and ecology to also and foremost include issues of environmental degradation, environmental health, pollution, and so on that have a lot to do with the way we live, produce, and consume. There are many roots of environmental education and several founding “fathers” (Gough, 1994, 1997) who can be credited with promoting concepts of environmental education both within Europe and North America. Some refer to landmark publications such as Rachel Carson’s (1962) Silent Spring or the “Limits to Growth” report of the Club of Rome (Meadows et al., 1972) and environmental disasters such as the 1952 London smog disaster and 1969 burning of the Cuyahoga River in Ohio, as key triggers of an educational response to a looming environmental crisis. In North America, Bill Stapp’s coauthored article on “the concept of environmental education” in the first volume of the Journal of Environmental Education is often referred to as the starting point of environmental education (Stapp et al., 1969). Others might refer to key international conferences organized by UNESCO and UNEP (e.g., UNESCO-UNEP, 1978, 1997) on the relationship between humans and their environment and the role of education. Many educational policies of a variety of governments across the globe call for the integration of EE in the formal education system. They stress the role of education in developing a support base for environmental policy and legislation, but also as a means to influence citizens’ environmental behaviors. At the same time business and industry have also discovered EE and, indeed, environmental communication as a public relations tool. Some sponsor the production of EE materials, some donate money to EE organizations, and some employ their own EE or environmental communication officers or consultants. It is clear that the worldwide development of EE in formal and nonformal education is ongoing. Perhaps it is useful here to make a distinction between EE and environmental communication. Whereas EE tends to focus on active learning processes, usually but not exclusively using formal education as a point of departure, that seek to engage citizens in environmental issues, environmental communication tends to focus on informing citizens about environmental issues or, more profoundly, persuading them to think or act in a certain environmental way. Environmental communication tends to take place outside of the formal education contexts. In this chapter, EE and its younger cousin, education for sustainable development, will be central. Both EE and environmental communication have their own scholarly journals and distinct but overlapping histories and conceptualizations. The relatively young Journal of Applied Environmental Education and Communication tries to bring the two fields together in one platform for both scholars and practitioners. One could argue that with the emergence of EE about 40 years ago, nature conservation education gradually became a part of EE, although in many countries nature education (e.g., Sobel, 1996, 2008), biodiversity education (e.g., Gayford, 2000), and outdoor education (e.g., Redmond et al., 2009) continue to exist as educational approaches with nature as a focal point and as a backdrop for learning. (p. 631) Outdoor education programs are somewhat distinct from nature education programs, as they tend to emphasize personal development over discovering, understanding, and connecting with nature. An analysis of the content of EE shows that there are at least two strands that differ in the emphasis placed on the importance of people’s experiences with nature (Wals, 1994). One strand closely identifies with the purposes and contents of the original nature conservation education.
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Learning Our Way Out of Unsustainability: The Role of Environmental Education Advocates of this strand maintain that without experiencing nature, people will not come to appreciate, value, and protect it. Since people are less willing to preserve or conserve what they do not appreciate or value, any environmental education program that does not provide learners with nature experiences is likely to fail. The development of values and an environmental ethic is oftentimes also considered foundational for citizens’ environmental behavior (Stern & Dietz, 1994; Palmer, 2006). Development of a sense of place and connectedness to place is considered pivotal. A related spin-off of environmental education that makes this the central theme of all its activities is so-called place-based education (Gruenewald & Smith, 2008; Smith, 2002; Hutchison, 2004; Rosenthal, 2008). Advocates of another strand hold that humanity is facing severe environmental deterioration deeply rooted in, among other things, inequity and “growth thinking” that threatens our very existence on this planet. They argue we need to act now and not shy away from addressing the root causes of environmental degradation that lie in how people, organizations, and companies behave and the kinds of values our economic systems promote at the expense of others (Huckle, 1999). Environmental education needs to focus on environmental problem-solving and has a responsibility in opening up avenues for critiquing existing value systems and economic models (see, for instance, Huckle, 1999; Plant, 1998). In this view, nature experiences are enjoyable and nature conservation is important, but if we are going to do something about things such as overpopulation, overconsumption, and runaway climate change, we need to directly address the local manifestations of these global problems in our schools and our nonformal and informal education. This strand of EE tends to be more politicized, as it often invites learners to reflect on and critique underlying, often taken-for-granted values that arguably cause these global environmental issues. In both strands, somewhat conveniently juxtaposed here, there is a danger of environmental education becoming an instrument designed to influence people’s values, moral position, and behavior in a predetermined and expertdriven direction. It is exactly this instrumental use of environmental education that is critiqued by those who emphasize that we are talking about education and not about training, conditioning, or even manipulation. Before discussing the different conceptualizations of “education” and “learning” within EE, the emergent field of education for sustainable development will be introduced, as it is increasingly seen as the modern interpretation or even the successor of EE.
Education for Sustainable Development Education for sustainable development (ESD) is not so much rooted in local contexts and traditions, but rather can be seen as a result of international policy agreements and new forms of governance that emphasize citizen involvement in visioning and decision-making. Arguably ESD has its roots in Earth summits, such as the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also referred to as The Earth Summit, which was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. and UNCED plus 10 which was held in Johannesburg in 2002, and related international documents and support structures, such as Agenda 21 (United Nations, 1992). The momentum created in the international policy arena led to the creation of the United Nations’ Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD, 2005–2014), of which UNESCO is the lead agency. The history of this emerging field is thus far shorter than nature conservation education and EE and spans just over a decade. The current emphasis on sustainability, sustainable development, and sustainable life support systems, which recognizes the link between environmental and social equity, is leading to a shift, at least in some parts of the world, from EE to education for sustainable development (ESD). In many countries ESD builds upon EE structures and policies that were already in place, sometimes well before the first Earth summit. This is especially the case in countries that interpret EE broadly to include social, economic, and political dimensions (e.g., in some Latin American and southern African countries). Lotz-Sisitka (2004) illustrated this when she wrote, “[Many African countries always have had to focus on] issues of development, survival, livelihoods, improved quality of education and improved quality of life, and more sustainable living practices. It is perhaps for this reason that environmental educators in southern (p. 632) Africa have long been concerned with environmental education processes that are processes of social change” (p. 10). Similarly Brazilian Gadotti (2008) emphasized the political nature of societal change toward sustainability when arguing that current education and educational institutions pose barriers for moving toward sustainable development (SD) as they tend to reinforce the principles and values of an unsustainable lifestyle and economy. He argued for an economy that is not centered
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Learning Our Way Out of Unsustainability: The Role of Environmental Education on free market, profit, and continuous growth. Instead he favored a “solidarity economy,” which incorporates principles of inclusion and social emancipation and identifies sustainability and solidarity are emergent and convergent themes. Gadotti proposed that without social mobilization against the current economic model, education for sustainable development (ESD) will not reach its goals. The shift from EE to ESD is not entirely without controversy, as has been documented in an entire volume of the Canadian Journal of Environmental Education (2009 ), but also in the results of the online ESDebate on education for sustainable development (Hesselink et al., 2000), and more recently in the Mid-DESD review (Wals, 2009).
Interpretations of EE and ESD There are different interpretations of ESD both in terms of content and educational process and in terms of how ESD relates to EE and indeed to other so-called adjectival educations, such as health education, citizenship education, global education, development education, consumer education, and the latest kid on the block, climate change education. There are narrow and broad interpretations of ESD, just as we have seen in the past with interpretations of EE. When viewed broadly, ESD stresses the link between the environmental and the sociocultural, between the local and the global, the past-present and future, and the human and the non-human world. Narrow interpretations tend to emphasize the environmental and ecological dimension of SD.
Figure 32.1 Different Interpretations of ESD and EE and Their Relationship from a Content Perspective.
Figure 32.1 illustrates how ESD and EE relate to each other from a content perspective. The figure shows that when both EE and ESD are interpreted broadly to include the political, social, cultural, and economic (EE+ and ESD+), they become almost synonymous. Interestingly enough, when interpreted narrowly (EE- and ESD-) to focus mainly on the environmental and the ecological, they also become almost synonymous. EE in the Tbilisi spirit (UNESCOUNEP, 1978) is generally considered EE+, while ESD as described in UNESCO documents is generally considered ESD+ especially when related to all the Millennium Development Goals (and not just to MDG number 7, which focuses on environmental sustainability). In the middle of the figure, where ESD and EE appear most distinct, we find that EE is seen as strongly emphasizing the environmental and ecological dimension content-wise (the lower part of the circle), whereas ESD is seen as strongly emphasizing the political and socio-cultural, including the economic dimension content-wise (the upper part of the circle). Indeed there are countries around the world, such as the Netherlands, where there are separate EE and ESD policies that fall under the responsibility of different ministries. Another way of looking at ESD and EE and the way they relate would be to look at the kinds of learning processes used and the type of aims pursued. A critical question that is continuously asked in EE and ESD but in other educational fields as well is: What are or should we be changing or developing in learners? Or, alternatively, how can we create optimal conditions and support mechanisms that allow citizens, young and old, to develop themselves in the face of change? The first question has instrumental connotations, whereas the second one has emancipatory ones. The difference between the questions may appear small but, as we will see, speak to a large issue (see also Wals & van der Leij, 1997; Jickling & Wals, 2008). When education in a range of settings, formal, informal, and nonformal, is employed to somehow affect citizens young and old, we need to (p. 633) ask questions about the role of education in society. There is no consensus about this role. Two perspectives are
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Learning Our Way Out of Unsustainability: The Role of Environmental Education particularly relevant here: the instrumental perspective and the emancipatory perspective. Both differ in the degree to which the learners have a say in what and how they learn but also in what they are learning for. On the one extreme, education and learning are mostly expert driven (where there is a strong sense of what is “right,” what needs to be done, and a high degree of confidence and certainty in both the current knowledge base and the kind of behavior that is needed), while on the other extreme education and learning are mostly issue and process driven (where there is a strong sense of empowering, involving, and engaging learners in issues that affect them and/or others, and less certainty about the current knowledge base and the kind of behavior that is needed). Both perspectives will be elaborated upon in the next sections.
An Instrumental Perspective Around the world EE has first and foremost gained importance because of its potential to contribute to the resolution of environmental issues and not because of its potential to contribute to democratic and emancipatory human development (Wals et al., 1999). It can be argued that the environmental justification of EE has, at least until now, outweighed the pedagogical justification. Similarly, this is the case in ESD, although some would argue that the sustainability focus in ESD assumes that issues of democracy, equity, and participation “automatically” come into play. Much EE around the world aims at changing learner behavior that often is broadly defined to include attitudes, beliefs, and values. Many EE researchers and practitioners are trying to instrumentally structure the content and process of EE by using hierarchical levels of universal goals and measurable objectives or learning outcomes (see, e.g., Hungerford & Volk, 1990). It is no surprise that within EE that seeks to change “learner behavior,” the establishment of knowledge and awareness of nature and environment, and the application of what is learned, are considered essential steps in the learning process. At the same time evaluation of the extent to which these goals are reached is considered crucial for determining the success of EE and for justifying government spending on EE. Early EE was informed by insights from behaviorist social psychology that assumed a more or less linear causality between environmental awareness and environmental behavior (Fishbein & Azjen, 1980) suggesting that an increase in environmental awareness would lead to more responsible environmental behavior. This assumed linearity between knowledge-awareness-behavior has shown to be weak (Hannigan, 1995, p. 236), and attitudebehavior models have since then been revised to include a number of additional factors and feedback loops (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Ajzen, 2008; Ajzen et al., 2009; Ajzen & Manstead, 2007; Fishbein & Azjen, 2010). Just providing information, raising awareness, and changing attitudes apparently is not enough to change people’s behavior. People’s environmental behaviors are far too complex and contextual to be captured by a simple causal model. This complexity is illustrated by Glasser (2007), who showed that even though people have a familiarity with a problems related to what he calls eco-cultural unsustainability, they still choose to not respond or to respond ineffectively. He pointed out that citizens can have different predispositions toward unsustainability, including (1) having no idea that a potentially serious problem exists; (2) honestly believing that a “problem” is not a problem; (3) denying the existence of a problem by simply wishing it away or by ignoring the information (this includes educated incapacity, an acquired or learned inability to perceive a problem); (4) accepting the existence of a problem, but perceiving it as easily surmountable; (5) accepting the existence of a problem, but perceiving other problems or issues to take a higher priority; (6) failing to generate adequate support for action; and (7) taking action, but the chosen action proves to be inadequate, mismatched to the problem, or unsuccessful (Glasser, 2007, p. 55). He called for research that can help determine what learning levers might work best in overcoming these predispositions. Two final observations about instrumental approaches to EE. First, the kind of research that takes place in this context can be called “evidence-based” for the most part, as researchers, commissioned by policy makers and funders of EE, tend to call for evidence that shows that EE is leading to more environmentally responsible behavior. Many studies have been conducted over the past 40 years or so to see how environmental education activities influence learner behavior (including knowledge, understanding, attitudes, awareness, values, actions, etc.); some examples can be found in Ramsey (1993), Ramsey & Hungerford (1989), Rickinson (2001), Hines et al. (1986), and Zelezny (1999). The number of longitudinal studies is rather limited, not in the least because of the methodological challenges (p. 634) such studies encounter, but some are based on the analysis of significant life experiences
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Learning Our Way Out of Unsustainability: The Role of Environmental Education (e.g., Tanner, 1980, 1998; Chawla, 1998a, 1998b) and on retrospective program evaluations (e.g., Kellert, 1998; Knapp & Benton, 2005, 2006). Liddicoat and Krasny (in press) discuss both strands of longitudinal research and discuss some of the methodological challenges which in part stem from the time that has passed since learners were engaged in EE activities and all that happened to them in between. A second point to be made with respect to the instrumental perspective on EE is of a more political nature. Ironically, scholars from both the Left and from the Right have criticized EE that seeks to change learner behavior in a pre- and expertly determined direction. In the late 1990s people representing conservative think tanks provided some strong criticism of EE as they claimed the field was alarmist, anti-business, catastrophic, and unscientific (Sanera & Shaw, 1996; Sanera, 1998). Greg Smith (2000) pointed out that much of the criticism at the time appeared aimed at diminishing legitimate concerns about issues such as global climate change and biodiversity loss by focusing on the alleged failure of environmental educators to present conflicting scientific evidence, a failure linked to their avowed desire to turn their students into environmental activists. The conservative voices emphasized that EE should focus on facts and not on fear and that environmental educators should be educators, not indoctrinators. The response to this criticism was in part one of denial (we are objective educators, and we don’t focus just on fear but also on love for nature, etc.) and in part one of “throwing the ball back” by arguing that these conservative voices had their own political agenda, which was to represent the interests of big business. Criticism from another corner is best captured by the emancipatory perspective introduced in the next section.
An Emancipatory Perspective Besides questions about the relationship between knowledge, awareness and understanding of environmental issues, and citizens’ environmental behavior, leading to some doubts about an instrumental focus of EE or ESD, for that matter, on these behavioral components, there are other concerns. These concerns come mostly from educators and/or critical pedagogues who challenge a focus of EE and ESD on behavioral change. They argue that education should above all be formative and focus on the kind of capacity-building and critical thinking that will help citizens understand what is going on in society, ask critical questions, and determine for themselves what needs to be done in light of inevitable uncertainty with respect to what is considered “right” (Mayer & Tschapka, 2008; Jickling & Wals, 2008). From this vantage point the idea of influencing people’s environmental behavior in a predetermined way contradicts the very foundation of education and borders on indoctrination. Education is considered more literally in its original Latin meaning of educare, which is guiding into, facilitating, helping develop, and exploring the self and personal growth and competence development. As such, education is more about equipping people to make sense of the world and to make their own judgments. If a key function of education is fostering self-determination, agency, and autonomous thinking about, among other things, environmental issues, then it would be contradictory to prescribe behavioral outcomes that a learning activity or sequence of activities needs to trigger. Instead, proponents of an emancipatory perspective argue that education, EE and ESD inclusive, has a role in developing so-called dynamic qualities (Posch, 1991): capacities or competencies that allow people to critique, construct, and act with a high degree of autonomy and selfdetermination. At the same time, such qualities are considered necessary for citizens to be able to cope with uncertainty, poorly defined situations, and conflicting or at least diverging norms, values, interests, and reality constructions. Posch (1991) wrote in an OECD-ENSI publication, “Professional, public and private life has become increasingly complex, with divergent and even contradictory demands on the individual [who lives] within an increasingly pluralistic value system. Above all, it is necessary to look beyond everyday normalities and to search for ethically acceptable options for responsible action” (p. 12). This is one of the things that sets education apart from training and conditioning and makes the prescription of particular lifestyles or (codes of) behavior problematic as it stifles creativity, homogenizes thinking, narrows choices, and limits autonomous thinking and degrees of selfdetermination. So in short, an instrumental approach assumes that a desired behavioral outcome of an EE activity is known, is more or less agreed upon, and can be influenced by carefully designed interventions. An emancipatory approach, on the other hand, assumes that the dynamics in our current world are such that citizens need to become engaged in an active dialogue to establish co-owned objectives, (p. 635) shared meanings, and a joint, self-determined plan of action to make changes they themselves consider desirable and of which the government hopes they
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Learning Our Way Out of Unsustainability: The Role of Environmental Education ultimately contribute to a more sustainable society as a whole (Wals & Jickling, 2002). In terms of education process or the type of learning promoted, conventional interpretations focus on expanding knowledge and understanding through classic forms of instruction (transmission-based), which can be more easily linked to the instrumental perspective, and more contemporary ones that stress the importance of interaction, dialogue, reflection, and moving beyond the cognitive (transformation-based). The latter interpretations have a better fit with the emancipatory perspective. Again, similar patterns can be seen in the way EE has been interpreted over time along these two distinguishing features. Figure 32.2 shows that both EE and ESD can be interpreted more instrumentally and more emancipatorily and that the more emancipatory perspective tends to open spaces for new forms of learning, whereas the more traditional instrumental perspective tends to rely more on knowledge transfer, training, and instruction. The figure also shows that both EE and ESD can be interpreted in a similar way and when they are, they become synonymous (Wals, 2010).
Figure 32.2 Different Interpretations of ESD and EE and Their Relationship from a Pedagogical Perspective
Just like within the instrumental orientation, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of EE and ESD activities is equally crucial within the emancipatory orientation. Typically M&E strategies that are appropriate for a more emancipatory orientation focus less on what changes in learners and more on the quality of the learning process and on the conditions under which the learning takes place (Wals et al., 2009). The question is not so much “How does this EE activity change the learner’s environmental behavior in all its expressions?” but rather “Are the conditions in which the learning activity takes place such that a change in learner behavior is likely in the first place?” M&E of this kind tends to be more of a formative (improving the processes and conditions) nature than of a summative nature (assessing the product of the learning). Emancipatory M&E strategies tend to be reflexive, with ample space for emerging questions, participant voices, collaborative learning, and the blurring of theory and practice (van Mierlo et al., 2010). A critique of the emancipatory orientation comes from policy makers who call for “hard” measurable results that show environmental improvement, which is not what this type of M&E tends to be after.
Post-Normal Environmental Education
The Risk Society Both within EE and ESD, the emancipatory perspective appears to be gaining momentum, not only because it is education we are talking about, but also because of the seemingly inevitable lack of clarity and the uncertainty about what the “best” behavior is from an environmental or sustainability point of view. What if citizens who are taught to behave in a particular way find out later that this was not the “right” way after all? What if a certain behavior that might appear sustainable in one part of the world turns out to be highly unsustainable in another part of the world? This sentiment gained momentum when Ulrich Beck (1992, 2008) introduced the idea of the “risk society.” Beck argued that the principles on which our modern industrial society are founded, such as the need for continuous growth fueled by materialism and related consumerism, are beginning to turn against us. He introduced the idea of the “risk society” to indicate that lifestyles, behaviors, exploitation mechanisms, and production systems associated with the industrial society lead to more and more risks. Related trends, such as globalization and individualization, are compounding these risks and amplifying the complexity of society, resulting in increased insecurity and unpredictability.
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Learning Our Way Out of Unsustainability: The Role of Environmental Education Dillon and Wals (2012) pointed out that what is typical of the risk society is that this insecurity and unpredictability stem from unintentional and (in part) unforeseen changes to (eco)systems. Society is constantly in motion and citizens are facing problems and challenges for which there are no ready-made (p. 636) solutions, such as Can organic agriculture feed the growing world population or is the use of genetically modified organisms inevitable? Is the increasing infertility in men a consequence of our modern lifestyles and eating habits? Is fertility in fact decreasing? Is there an ADHD epidemic or not? Has the Deepwater Horizon oil spill led to irreversible ecological damage or will nature heal itself? and so on, do not have single, simple, and agreed upon answers that lead to the associated desired behaviors that can be confidently prescribed (Wals & Dillon, in press). In their edited volume on education and climate change, Kagawa and Selby (2010) suggested that a risk society has consequences for the way we educate: “As a fundamental contribution to climate change [prevention and adaptation], it seems that educational spaces should build a culture of learning awash with uncertainty and in which uncertainty provokes transformative yet precautionary commitment rather than paralysis” (p. 243). Environmental and sustainability issues have a number of characteristics that can be linked to Beck’s risk society, including: - indeterminacy (the impossibility of knowing in advance what the best course of action is); - value-ladenness (the crucial position of values in affecting behaviors, lifestyles, and systems); - controversy (the lack and impossibility of full agreement or consensus among and even within all stakeholders); - uncertainty (not being able to predict the exact or even near-exact impact of a chosen strategy or action); - complexity (the messy interactions between variables or of a whole range of variables operating at different intertwined scales) (Peters & Wals, 2012).
Post-Normal Science These characteristics have consequences for education, teaching, and learning in general but perhaps for those concerned with environmental and sustainability issues in particular. Funtowicz and Ravetz (1993) have introduced the concept of post-normal science to indicate that we are entering an era in which uncertainty, contestation, complexity, and indeterminacy are becoming the norm. Whereas in “normal” science the primary goal was to reduce and control uncertainty and complexity and to unveil universal truths that could authoritatively be disseminated without questions asked, this is no longer possible, if it ever was, and not even desirable. In postnormal science, uncertainty is not banished but is managed, and values are not presupposed but are made explicit (Funtowicz & Ravetz, 1993). Funtowicz and Ravetz (1993) suggested that active involvement of citizens in postnormal science aimed at situation improvement is crucial: The dynamic of resolution of policy issues in post-normal science involves the inclusion of an evergrowing set of legitimate participants in the process of quality assurance of the scientific inputs….In postnormal science, the manifold uncertainties in both products and processes require that the relative importance of persons becomes enhanced. Hence the establishment of the legitimacy and competence of participants will inevitably involve broader societal and cultural institutions and movements. (p. 753) Agency and participation are key concepts from a post-normal science perspective. Arguably agency and participation have been central concepts in strands of education as well. We can go back to John Dewey’s work almost 100 years ago. Dewey spoke of the role of democracy in finding balance between individualization and a sense of community and belonging. According to Dewey, democracy in education is crucial in realizing a sense of self, a sense of other, and a sense of community. Democracy in education, he argued, requires and creates space for self-determination, and greater degrees of autonomous thinking in a social context (Dewey, 1916/1966). In EE, too, agency and participation have been central concepts on the more emancipatory end of the continuum. Reid et al. (2008) edited an entire volume on participation and learning in the context of education in relation to environment, health, and sustainability. The post-normal perspective, however, provides a new perspective on participation and learning as the earlier-mentioned characteristics of environmental and sustainability issues call for new forms of interactions between a whole range of stakeholders representing numerous interests, values, and perspectives.
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Learning Our Way Out of Unsustainability: The Role of Environmental Education Learning in Post-Normal Times Peters and Wals (2012) referred to a whole range of emerging forms of learning that appear highly relevant here, including trans-disciplinary learning (e.g., Klein, 2000; Somerville & Rapport, 2000), transformative learning (e.g., Cranton, 2006; Mezirow & Taylor, 2009), cross-boundary learning (e.g., Levin, 2004), anticipatory learning (e.g., Tschakert & Dietrich, 2010), action learning (e.g., Marquardt, 1999; (p. 637) Cho & Marshall Egan, 2009), and social learning (e.g., Pahl-Wostl & Hare, 2004; Keen et al., 2005; Wals, 2007). These forms of learning show a high family resemblance in that they (see also Wals et al., 2009; Wals, 2010): - consider learning as more than merely knowledge-based; - maintain that the quality of interaction with others and of the environment in which learning takes place is crucial; - focus on existentially relevant or “real” issues essential for engaging learners; - view learning as inevitably trans-disciplinary, “transperspectival” and trans-boundary in that it cannot be captured by a single discipline and by a single perspective and that it requires “boundary crossing” (Blackwell et al., 2009); - regard indeterminacy as a central feature of the learning process in that it is not and cannot be known exactly what will be learned ahead of time and that learning goals are likely to shift as learning progresses; - consider such learning as cross-boundary in that it cannot be confined to the dominant structures and spaces that have shaped education for centuries. Learning in post-normal times requires “hybridity” and synergy between multiple actors and the blurring of formal and informal education. Opportunities for this type of learning expand with an increased permeability between units, disciplines, generations, cultures, institutions, and sectors. Through this hybridity and synergy, new spaces might open up that will allow for transformation and situation improvement to take place. Such space includes space for alternative paths of development, space for new ways of thinking, valuing, and doing, space for participation minimally distorted by power relations, space for pluralism, diversity, and minority perspectives, space for deep consensus but also for respectful disagreement and differences, space for autonomous and deviant thinking, space for self-determination, and finally, space for contextual differences (Wals, 2010; Wals & Dillon, in press; Peters & Wals, in press). Learning from a post-normal perspective, much like Mezirow and Taylor’s (2009) idea of transformative learning, is a process of “becoming critically aware of one’s own tacit assumptions and expectations and those of others and assessing their relevance for making an interpretation” (p. 4), “which enables us to recognize, reassess, and modify the structures of assumptions and expectations that frame our tacit points of view and influence our thinking, beliefs, attitudes and actions” (p. 18). Post-normal environmental or, if you will, sustainability educators are beginning to pay attention to the rise of the cocreation of interactive methods and new forms of knowledge in policy-making and natural resource management involving a wide range of societal actors representing different interests, perspectives, and values but facing similar challenges. Although these differences are viewed as problematic by some, they are seen as crucial by others. Educational psychologists long have argued and shown that learning requires some form of (internal) conflict or dissonance (Berlyne, 1965; Festinger, 1957; Piaget, 1964). Exposure to alternative ways of seeing, framing, and interpreting can be a powerful way of creating such dissonance. However, for some this may lead to too much dissonance and a defensive response, which leads to a tighter hold on a person’s prior way of seeing things, while for others it might lead to a reconsidering of one’s views and the adoption or cocreation of a new one. When introduced carefully, dissonance can lead to, to borrow a key concept from Martin Scheffer (2009), a tipping point in one’s thinking. Such tipping points appear necessary to generate new thinking that can unfreeze minds and break with existing routines and systems (Wals, 2010). Recently Krasny, Plummer, and Lundholm (2010) edited a collection of papers in the journal Environmental Education Research on what the field of EE can learn from resilience in social-ecological systems. Based on a synthesis of contributions to an edited volume on social learning toward a sustainable world, Wals (2007) distills four features of social learning that appear promising in the context of learning and educating in times of uncertainty and the looming sustainability crisis: (1) the value of difference and diversity in energizing people, introducing dissonance, and unleashing creativity; (2) the importance of both reflection and reflexivity; (3)
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Learning Our Way Out of Unsustainability: The Role of Environmental Education the power of social cohesion and social capital in creating change in complex situations loaded with uncertainty, and (4) the power of collaborative action that strengthens the (unique) qualities of each individual. As sustainability and sustainable development are increasingly seen as emerging properties of collaborative learning, the creation of a more sustainable world above all requires learning, and not just any learning, but learning that leads to a new kind of thinking, alternative values, and cocreated, creative solutions, co-owned by more (p. 638) reflexive citizens, living in a more reflexive and resilient society.
Monitoring and Evaluation In this chapter a distinction has been made between instrumental and emancipatory interpretations of EE and indeed of its younger cousin ESD. Both strands are pursuing different types of goals and therefore will require different monitoring and evaluation strategies. The post-normal perspective introduced in the previous section aligns better with emancipatory interpretations of EE, as it sees sustainability and sustainable living as relational, emergent, dynamic, and inevitably indeterminate. As a result, post-normal monitoring and evaluation strategies tend to focus on the quality of the processes taking place and of the conditions under which these processes take place. The question is not so much “Are people developing the attitudes, social norms, values, behaviors, and so on that we have identified as the ones that are most desirable?” but rather “Are the conditions under which participants live, work, create, and so on together such that they become actively engaged sustainability issues and more competent in dealing addressing them?” The former, more instrumental question is of a more summative nature, whereas the latter is more of a formative nature in seeking to optimize the conditions for learning and building capacity. But how can we know whether the capacity of individuals, organizations, and networks for contributing to social learning processes that are aimed at sustainable development are actually being developed and utilized? The learning process of the actors, organizations, and networks often generates all kinds of “soft” results that, at first glance, appear to have little to do with sustainability but may be essential to creating a sustainable society (consider: social cohesion, empathy, involvement, cooperation, and the like; Wals, 2007; Wals et al., 2009). Taking these “soft” results seriously has implications for the way policies aiming to move communities, organizations, citizens, and so on toward sustainability are framed. The policy of, for example, a municipality or a company should not only include measurable and tangible outcomes using sets of indicators but also include a number of clear-cut and accountable process goals. Factors such as reducing the amount of litter in the neighborhood or saving energy within a company can be made measurable. Even matters such as “a sustainable neighborhood” and “corporate social responsibility” can be made measurable by means of checklists and indicators, particularly when these checklists and indicators are the result of an interactive process involving those who will be working with them. After all, those who have compiled the indicators and checklists have already experienced a learning process, which is possibly an essential condition for internalization and creating ownership of such indicators and checklist. Table 32.1 shows that the manner in which the results are to be achieved can be predetermined or determined interactively—that is, determined by those immediately concerned in the neighborhood or company. The same is also true for the process used in meeting some environmental or
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Learning Our Way Out of Unsustainability: The Role of Environmental Education
Table 32.1 A Typology of Evaluation Strategies Process is predetermined
Process is determined interactively
Policy results are predetermined
Type 1: Highly instrumental Information campaign “Litter in the neighborhood,” the goal of which is to reduce litter by 50% within one year.
Type 2: Mix Residents are challenged to come up with a plan to reduce litter in the neighborhood by 50% within one year.
Policy results are determined in the course of the process
Type 3: Mix The municipality, without establishing ahead of time which level of reduction is to be realized, starts a campaign against litter in the neighborhood, in the course of which (by means of waste monitoring) it becomes clear which results are feasible, in which respect variations from one neighborhood to the other are possible/acceptable/encouraged.
Type 4: Highly emancipatory The municipality, by means of neighborhood surveys and consultations with the residents, determines which aspects of liveability and/or sustainability are to be given priority in the neighborhood. These themes are then worked out interactively.
(p. 639) sustainability challenge. One can hardly call something a social learning process when both the results (goal) and the process (means) have been determined beforehand by policy makers, experts, or management. The other combinations offer more room for social learning, either aimed or not aimed at predetermined and measurable goals. Three of the four cells in Table 32.1 refer to environmental results (less litter). The fourth cell (bottom right) does not specify a concrete environmental result. That cell refers mainly to the commitment on the part of people. It is precisely this kind of result that may, in the long term, lead to social cohesion, cooperation, and a sense of community, for example. Changes of this kind are perhaps a prerequisite if one is to come to solutions for problems/challenges that are much more complex and that are oriented more toward sustainability than aimed only at reducing litter. Depending on the way an intervention is organized, there will be less or more room for social learning. The space available for social learning determines the extent to which spin-off results can be generated in a more social sphere but also in terms of collaborative cocreated, self-determined action. A number of differences between a mainly results-oriented evaluation process (results in terms of hard sustainability indicators) and a mainly process-oriented monitoring process are set alongside one another in Table 32.2. Within the field of EE, but certainly also in other fields, a range of participatory forms of research can be found, such as action research (Reason & Bradbury, 2001), citizen science (Irwin, 1995), and trans-disciplinary research (Hadorn et al., 2008). Furthermore, new forms of so-called reflexive monitoring and evaluation are sprouting across the globe that can be labeled “post-normal” and transformative. Examples include reflexive monitoring and evaluation, developed by Wageningen University and the Free University of Amsterdam (van Mierlo et al., 2010) and so-called realist evaluation, developed by Pawson and Tiley (1997). These new forms of monitoring and evaluation are also currently being introduced in the field of EE (e.g., Raven, 2006) and will need to be developed further in the years to come.
Conclusion Environmental education finds itself in a transition period. On the one had there is a reconceptualization of the focus and content of EE inspired by emergent sustainability thinking; on the other, the current risk-society calls for new forms of learning and governance that are better able to deal with risk, complexity, uncertainty, value dilemmas, and conflicting interests. Given the continued disconnect between people and their physical
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Learning Our Way Out of Unsustainability: The Role of Environmental Education environment in general and with nature in particular, the continued decline of the state of the planet, and the increase in unsustainable lifestyles, the need for EE and its younger cousin ESD remains unquestioned. There are a number of questions, though, about the field’s effectiveness in responding to environmental and sustainability challenges, and the appropriateness or adequacy of past research attempts for being able to show such effectiveness in the first place, but also about the field’s innovation capacity. The latter calls into question whether the field is sufficiently outward-looking to be able to renew itself in post-normal times. Part of this renewal will lie in shifting its learning goals from changing individual behaviors to changing lifestyles and building capacity. A postnormal perspective has been introduced to emphasize that EE has a role to play in “boundary crossing” between institutions, schools, communities, and disciplines, and in connecting a range of societal themes that all relate to sustainability (health, peace, well-being, exposure to nature and green spaces, climate, biodiversity, food safety and food security, disaster responsiveness, etc.). Such a role assumes new competencies on the part of the educator, who becomes a facilitator of social learning and a director of hybrid learning configurations consisting of likely and unlikely coalitions of societal actors.
Future Directions In this chapter a kind of evolution has been sketched from nature conservation education to environmental education to education in the context of sustainability. One commonality between them is the importance of connecting with the world (nature, environment, planet). Earlier in the chapter place-based education was referred to as a related form of education that specifically focuses on helping people ground, root, and connect with a locality, a place, a space to which they belong and feel connected, for which they care, and so on. Such contextual forms of education are receiving increased attention from educators and policy makers as a means to help people, young and old, reconnect with the physical, material, and socio-ecological world they, oftentimes unconsciously, inhabit. There is a whole body of scholarly work emerging, some of which this chapter referred to (p. 640)
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Learning Our Way Out of Unsustainability: The Role of Environmental Education
Table 32.2 Juxtaposing Two Types of Monitoring & Evaluation (Source: Wals et al., 2009, p. 27) Instrumental approach (focus on determining results)
Social approach (focus on improving the process)
Main goals
- determining the (policy) goal range - accountability toward commissioning party - accountability government toward society
- determining the course of the process - improving the quality of the project realization process - collectively learning from joint experiences
Role externals
- expert role - external observation - determining measuring system to be used - determining indicators - measuring, analyzing, and interpreting data - reporting
- role of facilitator and coach - participatory observation - determining measuring system and indicators together with actors - making the process that is being completed visible and its progress - enticing and equipping actors for selfevaluation and monitoring
Role of actors within the M&E process
- sources of information (data) for the external M&E-specialist (one-sided)
- involving participants in discussions on (perceived) changes and experiences with the process (interactive)
For whom?
- sponsors, commissioners, and ultimately the public
- all those involved in the process of change (commissioning party is also one of the actors)
Underlying worldview
- empirical-analytical/understanding through reduction, search for explanations (if—then), striving for objectivity and independence
- actors may interpret things differently - holistic: search for meaning, connections and relations - reality can be interpreted in various ways - room for subjectivity but…striving for intersubjectivity: collective interpretation of what has happened
Risks
- results are random indications and depend upon the reliability and validity of the instruments used - M&E is mainly of interest to one party only: the commissioning party, and is mainly used for strategic purposes
- commissioning party views the results as non-scientific; use of methods that yield significant stories of all of the interested parties - intensive monitoring of the process of change and aspiring after inter-subjectivity is time-consuming
Advantages
- survey able, can be well planned, relatively inexpensive, appealing to policy (particularly within the short policy cycles)
- all of the participants can benefit from the process (can contribute to the professional development of those involved) - renders possible a long-term perspective - M&E stimulates the learning process and provides insights for the benefit of other similar projects and upscaling
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Learning Our Way Out of Unsustainability: The Role of Environmental Education earlier on, that suggests that (re)discovering and (re)connecting with place can be restorative (therapeutic, healing, etc.), generative (leading to new ways of seeing, sensing, experiencing), and empowering by enabling people to shape and care for a place. In the near future the field of EE will need to consider a hegemonic trend that affects the entire globe: the exponential growth of highly invasive and, indeed, addictive hypermedia and associated information and communication technologies. Whereas place-based education, and to a lesser degree perhaps the field of EE as a whole, operates somewhere in the margins of education in the effort to reconnect people with the physical space around them, this hegemonic trend seems to do the exact opposite, only in a much more forceful way. Educators in general and environmental educators in particular need to ask themselves what the implications are of the (p. 641) age of wireless, hypermedia, and information and communication technologies (ICTs) for teaching and learning, but also for the way people “relate” to each other and to nature and the planet as a whole. Strangely, even though educators themselves are also inundated by these new ICTs in both their personal and professional lives, this question has hardly been raised so far. The field of EE will need to consider the impact of ICTs and hypermedia on people’s sense of place and the implications for teaching and learning. Only then can environmental educators begin to create educational responses that may critically take advantage of elements of the ICT revolution, which can help restore the current disconnect between people and place. Finally, the shift to capacity-building and competence for a more sustainable world raises questions about what such capacities or competencies entail, how they can be developed, and how they can be assessed. Some work has been done on what is called sustainability competence (e.g., de Haan, 2006, 2010; Wals, 2010) but this work is still in its infancy. Key components that have emerged so far include “integrative thinking” with references to systems thinking and holistic thinking; empathy for perspectives, values, and so on other than one’s own; and Gestalt-switching (Wals, 2010), which refers to the ability to switch back and forth on a number of continua: spatial (local-regional-global), temporal (past-present-future), cultural, disciplinary, ethical, and so on. More research and thinking need to be done about this type of capacity-building and competence development.
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Learning Our Way Out of Unsustainability: The Role of Environmental Education Sobel, D. (2008). Children and nature: Design principles for educators. Portland, ME: Stenhouse. Somerville, M., & Rapport, D. (Eds.). (2000). Transdisciplinarity: Recreating integrated knowledge. Oxford, UK: EOLSS. Spaargaren, G., Martens, S., & Beckers, T. (2006) Sustainable technologies and everyday life. In P. Verbeek & A. Slob, (Eds.), User behavior and technology development (pp. 107–118). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Spierenburg, M. & Wels, H. (2010). Conservative philanthropists, royalty, and business elites in nature conservation in southern Africa. Antipode, 42(3), 647–670. Stapp, W. B., et al. (1969). The concept of environmental education. Journal of Environmental Education, 1(1), 30– 31. Stern, P. C., & Dietz, T. (1994). The value basis of environmental concern. Journal of Social Issues, 50, 65–84. Swan, J. A. (1992). Nature as teacher and healer. How to reawaken your connection to nature. New York: Villard Books. Tanner, T. (1980). Significant life experiences: A new research area in environmental education. Journal of Environmental Education, 11(4), 20–24. Tanner, T. (1998). Choosing the right subjects in significant life experiences research. Environmental Education Research, 4(4), 399–417. Tschakert, P., & Dietrich, K. A. (2010). Anticipatory learning for climate change adaptation and resilience. Ecology and Society, 15(2), 11. UNESCO-UNEP. (1978). Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education. Final report, October 14–26, 1977, Tbilisi, USSR,. Paris: Author. United Nations. (1992). Agenda 21: The United Nations Programme of Action from Rio. New York: Author. Van den Bergh, J. J. C. M. (2002). Handbook of environmental and resource economics. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. van Mierlo, B. C., Regeer, B., van Amstel, M., Arkesteijn, M. C. M., Beekman, V.,…Leeuwis, C. (2010). Reflexive Monitoring in Action. A guide for monitoring system innovation projects Wageningen/Amsterdam:Communication and Innovation Studies, WUR/Athena Institute, VU. Wals, A. E. J. (1994). Pollution stinks! Young adolescents’ perceptions of nature and environmental issues with implications for education in urban settings. The Netherlands: De Lier: ABC Publishing. Wals, A. E. J. (Ed.). (2007). Social learning towards a sustainable world. Wageningen, Netherlands: Wageningen Academic Publishers. Wals, A. E. J. (2010). Message in a bottle: Learning our way out of unsustainability. Inaugural address held upon accepting a (p. 644) professorship and UNESCO Chair in Social Learning and Sustainable Development held May 27, 2010. Wageningen, Netherlands: Wageningen University. Retrieved from http://groundswellinternational.org/2010/12/14/message-in-a-bottle-learning-our-way-out-ofunsustainability. Walker, C. (2009, September/October). Nature as teacher. Resurgence, 256.Available at: http://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article2925-sense-and-sustainability.html . Wals, H. (1982). Town farms: New approaches in the use of active educational methods in the environment field. Nature and Environment Series, no. 26. Strasbourg, France: Council of Europe. Wals, A. E. J., Alblas, A. H., & Margadant-van Arcken, M. (1999). Environmental education for human development. In A. E. J. Wals (Ed.), Environmental education & biodiversity. Wageningen, Netherlands: National Reference
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Learning Our Way Out of Unsustainability: The Role of Environmental Education Centre for Nature Management. Wals, A. E. J., & Dillon, J. (2012). Conventional and emerging learning theories: Implications and choices for educational researchers with a planetary consciousness. In R. Stevenson, M. Brody, J. Dillon, & A. E. J. Wals (Eds.), International handbook of environmental education research. Washington, DC/London: AERA/Routledge. Wals, A. E. J., & Jickling, B. (2002). “Sustainability” in higher education from doublethink and newspeak to critical thinking and meaningful learning. Higher Education Policy, 15, 121–131. Wals, A. E. J., van der Hoeven, N., & Blanken, H. (2009). The acoustics of social learning: Designing learning processes that contribute to a more sustainable world. Utrecht/Wageningen, Netherlands: SenterNovem/Wageningen Academic Publishing. Retrieved from www.senternovem.nl/mmfiles/acousticsdigital%20def_tcm24–290164.pdf. Wals, A. E. J., & van der Leij, T. (1997). Alternatives to national standards for environmental education: Processbased quality assessment. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 2, 7–28. Webster, K., & Johnson, C. (2008). Sense and sustainability: Educating for a low carbon world. Preston, UK: TerraPreta. Weiss, A. S. (2005). The wind and the source: In the shadow of Mont Ventoux. New York: State University of New York Press. Young, O. R. (Ed.). (1997). Global governance: Drawing insights from the environmental experience. Boston: MIT Press. Zelezny, L. C. (1999). Educational interventions that improve environmental behaviors: A meta-analysis. Journal of Environmental Education, 31(1), 5–14. Arjen E. J. Wals Arjen E.J. Wals Education & Competence Studies Wageningen University Wageningen, The Netherlands
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions
Oxford Handbooks Online Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions Janet K. Swim, Ezra M. Markowitz, and Brittany Bloodhart The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology, Health Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0033
Abstract and Keywords A surge of psychological research on or related to global climate change has occurred since 2006. This chapter reviews research on beliefs about climate change and educational efforts to address these beliefs, impacts of climate change and adaptation to and in preparation for these impacts, and human contributions to climate change and ways to encourage mitigation behaviors. More specifically the chapter describes: (1) characteristics of and changes over time in beliefs about global climate change, who holds these beliefs, and psychological sources of these beliefs; (2) psychological, interpersonal, and intergroup impacts of global climate change, the role of appraisals in the impacts, and vulnerability, resilience, and social justice issues related to adapting to the impacts are considered; and (3) behaviors that contribute to and mitigate climate change, psychological processes that predict these behaviors, and methods to encourage mitigation behaviors based upon research on social influence processes and systems theory. Keywords: climate change beliefs, climate change impacts, adaptation, human contribution to climate change, mitigation of climate change
Introduction There is a rich history of psychological research on global climate change, reaching back to the early 1980s (Chen, Boulding, & Schneider, 1983; Fischhoff & Furby, 1983). Yet there has been a recent surge in interest in the topic by psychologists. This interest is reflected in activities in several psychological associations, such as the American Psychological Association (Benson, 2008; Swim et al., 2009), the Australian Psychological Association (2010), the Psychologists for Social Responsibility (2011), and the Society for Psychological Study of Social Issues (Swim & Clayton, 2010), which have made efforts to inform and summarize relevant psychological research and assert psychologists’ role in addressing global climate change. Consistent with these efforts, several psychologists have recently illustrated the contributions of and need for psychologists to increase their involvement in studying environmental sustainability and specifically to examine the psychological dimensions of climate change (Gifford, 2008; Kazdin, 2009; O’Hara, 2010; Uzzell, 2010). An examination of publication trends of articles tracked by PsychInfo, the American Psychological Association database of nearly 2,500 journals, illustrates the increased attention. A search for scholarly articles that included “climate change” or “global warming” in its keywords and texts and that reported research, summaries of research, or theory development reveals a surge in publications that mention climate change starting in about 2008 (see Figure 33.1). Of course, there is more psychological research on this topic than this search alone reveals. Yet, the figure illustrates the growing attention given to climate change topics, and this attention is reaching the psychological community.
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions
Figure 33.1 Search of Scholarly Articles from 1990 to 2010 Using Words “Climate Change” or “Global Warming” in PsychInfo.
(p. 646) A wide range of research is relevant to climate change, including many chapters in this handbook. Global climate change is having and will continue to have many natural impacts that affect and are affected by humans. Many of these types of impacts, such as environmental degradation and disasters, have been of concern for psychologists for several decades. Solutions to a wide range of environmental problems, ranging from individual and household behavioral changes, to community engagement, to organizational and governmental policy development and support, are relevant to responses to global climate change. Further, theoretical perspectives, such as the commons dilemma (Gifford, 2008; Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change, National Research Council, 2002; Van Vugt, 2009), used to understand human and psychological dimensions of environmental and social problems are relevant for understanding issues of global climate change. There are aspects of global climate change, however, that make it worthy of specific attention by psychologists. The complex interlocking causes and impacts of global climate change, time course of climate change impacts, and multiple solutions with unknown side effects contribute to uncertainty, ambiguity, feelings of threat, and inaction. Climate change impacts are sometimes seemingly contradictory, ranging, for instance, from too much water in some areas to too little in other areas, which can potentially cause confusion about what climate change is and what is evidence of the impacts. Climate change impacts are extensive. The impacts are not limited to those in one’s immediate neighborhood or even one’s own country but are occurring and will occur across the globe. Many individuals might not knowingly personally experience the direct impacts given the temporal and geographic patterns of climate change and given many people’s disconnection with nature. Further, some, particularly in industrialized countries, will be able to use their wealth to buffer themselves from climate change impacts. Yet, increasing globalization, which makes people much more interconnected and interdependent, means that many will indirectly experience the impacts even if they are not directly affected in their own communities. The scope of the impacts can be difficult to grasp, cope with, and know how to respond to. Responding to climate change may require cultural shifts that challenge the status quo and therefore may meet with resistance. Thus, the scope of climate change, including the types of impacts expected, the temporal and geographic patterns of change, and the connection between individual actions and impacts on nature and other people, is critical to discerning individuals’ understanding of and responses to climate change. It is impossible for us to review all relevant psychological research on climate change in this chapter, particularly because it overlaps with many other research domains. Instead, we highlight research that has specifically made connections to global climate change. We consider three primary research areas: (1) beliefs about global climate change; (2) impacts of global climate change; and (3) human contributions to global climate change. Within each of these topics we also examine responses to global climate change through educational efforts, adaptation, and mitigation, respectively. It is worth noting that much of the research we review has been done in the United States and, secondarily, in Europe. We do this because it reflects the research base. The research base may reflect the extent to which researchers are attempting to understand US residents’ beliefs about climate change and the disproportionate need to change human behaviors in industrialized countries.
Beliefs About Global Climate Change Over the past two decades, sociologists, public pollers, psychologists, and others have conducted dozens of surveys and studies examining nonexperts’ (i.e., the public’s) beliefs about, knowledge of, and concern over global climate change (for reviews, see Brewer, 2005; Nisbet & Myers, 2007), and to a lesser extent exploring how
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions those different beliefs relate to one another (e.g., Kellstedt, Zahran, & Vedlitz, 2008; Malka, Krosnick, & Langer, 2009; (p. 647) O’Connor, Bord, & Fisher, 1999). Taken together, these studies reveal both consistency and change over time with respect to the public’s understanding of and engagement with global climate change (cf. Dunlap & McCright, 2008). Moreover, as discussed below, this research reveals a significant role for psychological science in explicating beliefs about global climate change. Here we provide a general and brief review of the types of beliefs that have been assessed, partly in an attempt to reveal the broad range of issues that have been identified as critical components of the public’s understanding of global climate change. We next discuss some prominent moderators and correlates of those beliefs (e.g., demographics, individual differences, group identification) before briefly exploring the question of where beliefs about global climate change come from. Recent education and communication efforts aimed at increasing “climate literacy” are also discussed.
What Do People Believe About Global Climate Change? Researchers have examined many domains of global climate change beliefs including: whether the phenomenon is occurring; definitions of “global warming” and “climate change”; causes and mechanisms (e.g., human caused vs. naturally occurring); scientific consensus over the issue; consequences, concerns, and risk perceptions; “solutions” beliefs (including perceived self- and group-efficacy); and, beliefs about perceived responsibility to confront global climate change. Not surprisingly, the resulting body of research reveals that people’s beliefs about climate change are complex and situationally dependent (to a degree) and that members of the public disagree with one another regarding nearly every facet of the issue. In addition, extant research points to the significant, yet oftentimes unintended, effects of question wording on people’s beliefs about global climate change (cf. Yeager, Larson, Krosnick, & Tompson, 2011).
What Is Global Climate Change? Initial research on people’s beliefs about global climate change (e.g., Kempton, 1991; Bostrom, Morgan, Fischoff, & Read, 1994) began by asking respondents what the terms “greenhouse effect” and “global warming” meant to them. Kempton and his colleagues (1995) found that people’s conceptualizations of global climate change were tied to four preexisting knowledge structures (mental or cultural models) held by most respondents: ozone depletion; air pollution; plant photosynthesis and deforestation; and personally experienced weather (temperature) variation. These mental models shaped respondents’ beliefs about nearly every aspect of global climate change (Bostrom et al., 1994), from its causes (e.g., deforestation) to its potential consequences (e.g., linking the ozone hole with increased solar radiation) to seemingly plausible responses to the problem (e.g., reducing use of CFCs, chlorofluorocarbons that deplete the ozone). While some of these mental models appear to have decreased in prevalence and importance over the past 20 years (cf. Bord, Fisher, & O’Connor, 1998; Bulkeley, 2000), recent polling data suggest that many individuals continue to confound the “ozone hole” with global climate change (Leiserowitz & Smith, 2010). At the same time, there appears to be more agreement among the public that “global climate change” refers to long-term changes and trends in the climate system, although significant differences in this belief exist as a function of group membership (see below).
“Global Warming” Versus “Climate Change” Throughout the 1990s, the term “global warming” came to be the label most often used in talking about global climate change. In the early 2000s, right-leaning political consultants in the United States (most prominently Frank Luntz; see Villar & Krosnick, 2011; Weber & Stern, 2011) urged leaders, including then-president George W. Bush, to shift from using the term “global warming” to using the term “climate change” due to a belief that the latter term was less scary and therefore less motivating to members of the general public. Research conducted in the United Kingdom in 2003–2004 (Whitmarsh, 2009) suggested that, indeed, at least among Britons, the two terms did differ with respect to how people conceptualized the issue (e.g., many more individuals referred to temperature increases and melting glaciers when asked to define global warming as opposed to climate change; see also Leiserowitz, 2006). However, Villar and Krosnick (2011) found only small differences between the two terms as a function of political party identification, and in the opposite direction of the one predicted by Luntz: climate change was rated as slightly more serious among Republicans, while Democrats found global warming to be slightly more serious. Villar and Krosnick concluded that use of the two terms may have some effect on public perceptions of the issue but that such effects are likely small and inconsistent across different groups.
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions (p. 648) Is Climate Change Happening? Perhaps the most basic facet of people’s beliefs about global climate change is whether the phenomenon exists or will occur in the foreseeable future (essentially every public poll on the issue asks some form of this question). Polling in the United Kingdom and other non-US nations reveals consistently strong beliefs in the existence of climate change (e.g., Guardian/ICM, 2011). Longitudinal data collected by Gallup over the past 13 years suggest relative stability in “existence” beliefs when looking across all individuals and groups. However, as Dunlap and McCright (2008), among others (e.g., Leiserowitz, Maibach, & Roser-Renouf, 2010), have demonstrated, such apparent population-level consistency potentially masks significant and opposing trends occurring among Democrats and Republicans within the United States: in 1998, 46% of Democrats and 47% of Republicans believed the effects of global warming had already begun; by 2008, 76% of Democrats but only 41% of Republicans believed that to be the case (McCright & Dunlap, 2008. However, between 2008 and 2010, belief in the existence of climate change decreased among all groups (Leiserowitz et al., 2010). This appears to have been a temporary dip due to various events that occurred in 2008–2009 (e.g., “Climategate”; COP15; extremely cold winters in the northern hemisphere; changes in elite cues). More recently, Krosnick and MacInnis (2011) report that in 2011, a majority of Democrats (91%), Independents (84%), and Republicans (66%) believed the earth has been warming; moreover, this belief increased from 2010 to 2011 among Independents and Republicans. Differences in question wording can be important here, because, as Krosnick and MacInnis (2011) note, the political divide is greater when the question asks about whether the world’s temperature will continue to rise, with 88% of Democrats, 71% of Independents, and 53% of Republicans believing this; there has been little change in these beliefs from 2010 to 2011.
Causes and Mechanisms of Global Climate Change Much research on global climate change beliefs has focused on individuals’ attributions of causation (i.e., humans vs. nature) and understanding of the physical mechanisms responsible for the phenomenon (e.g., emissions of greenhouse gases). Although initial research examined people’s mental or cultural models (see above; Kempton et al., 1995; Bostrom et al., 1994), more recent research has focused primarily on beliefs about whether global climate change is caused by humans’ actions or by naturally occurring changes in the climate system. Unfortunately, due to the use of differently worded items across various polls and studies, it is difficult to get a clear sense of people’s beliefs on this particular facet. For example, Gallup (Newport, 2010) reports that from 2003 to 2010 the percentage of Americans who believed global climate change (GCC) was a result of “human activities” dropped from 61% to 50%, while those believing it to be naturally occurring rose from 33% to 46%. However, data from Pew (2010) suggest that as of 2010, only 34% of Americans believed GCC was caused by human behavior and roughly 20% believed it was due to “natural patterns.”1 Others have also examined perceptions of personal responsibility for climate change (Read et al., 1994; Whitmarsh, 2009). Those who report such responsibility may be especially likely to feel morally responsible for addressing climate change (Markowitz, in press). Looking somewhat more closely at people’s factual knowledge about the causes of global climate change, recent findings indicate that while many Americans now know something about certain causal mechanisms responsible for global climate change (e.g., emissions of CO2 from cars, power plants, and other sources; deforestation), misconceptions regarding other perceived causes of global climate change still exist, (e.g., many people continue to believe that CFCs from aerosols are responsible; Leiserowitz & Smith, 2010). Interestingly, these mistaken beliefs about various causes of global climate change are at least as strong if not stronger among individuals highly convinced that global climate change is happening and is a problem (Leiserowitz & Smith, 2010). Taken together, these findings suggest that many Americans’ beliefs about the etiology of global climate change remain significantly out of step with the scientific consensus on the issue, although this may be improving.
Scientific Consensus Considerable polling has also been done exploring beliefs about whether there is scientific consensus over climate change. As with the public’s beliefs about the causes of climate change, there are significant discrepancies between the actual amount of agreement among scientists (i.e., there is almost complete scientific consensus on the basic fact of whether climate change is happening; see Anderegg, Prall, Harold, & Schneider, 2010; Doran & Zimmerman, 2009, Oreskes, 200) and the public’s (p. 649) beliefs about the amount of consensus (which are all over the map). Moreover, the public’s beliefs about scientific consensus over global climate change appear to be
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions moving toward greater perceived scientific disagreement (e.g., Pew, 2010), despite a lack of any objective change in the state of scientific discourse over global climate change in the past few years in that direction.
Meta-Cognitions Meta-cognitions, reflections on primary perceptions or evaluations or attempts to control cognitions, represent a potentially important set of climate change beliefs (Scannell & Grouzet, 2010). At least three meta-cognitions are relevant to beliefs about climate change: certainty about climate change and its impacts, confidence in one’s selfassessed knowledge about climate change, and importance of climate change. Meta-cognitions can be as important or more important predictors of behaviors than lower-order beliefs. For instance, importance and certainty of beliefs predict attempts to persuade others of those beliefs (Visser, Krosnick, & Simmons, 2003) and confidence in one’s knowledge is related to more risk-taking behaviors and less information-seeking (Scannell & Grouzet, 2010). Importance assigned to climate change is related to donating more to environmental and climate change activism (Visser et al., 2003). Further, confidence in one’s knowledge of climate change is associated with being less concerned about climate change (Kellstedt et al., 2008).
Certainty Risk perceptions and concerns about climate change consequences can be considered assessments of the certainty about the impacts of climate change (Scannell & Grouzet, 2010). Considerable research addresses perceptions of the impacts of climate change and associated risks that global climate change poses to individuals, their communities, humanity, and other species (cf. Bostrom et al., 1994; Bulkeley, 2000; Read et al., 1994; Whitmarsh, 2009). Americans tend to perceive the impacts of global climate change as accruing almost exclusively to other individuals and communities, especially those living in distant nations and far in the future (Bord et al., 1998; Nisbet & Myers, 2007; Stamm, Clark, & Eblacas, 2000), although a subset of the population does believe that global climate change will have significant negative effects on them in the near future (Leiserowitz et al., 2010). For example, early research found that many individuals believed that climate change posed serious direct health risks to people, primarily through increased incidence of skin cancer and respiratory problems (Bostrom et al., 1994; Kempton et al., 1995; Stamm et al., 2000); however, more recent research has suggested that direct and nameable health consequences of climate change have become less salient to Americans (cf. Lorenzoni et al., 2006). In addition, many individuals hold widely shared beliefs about the physical consequences of climate change on the natural world, for example, warmer temperatures, melting icebergs, dying polar bears, sea level rise, changes in precipitation patterns, and “weird weather” (cf. Bostrom et al., 1994; Leiserowitz, 2006; Read et al., 1994; Stamm et al., 2000). Taken together, these findings suggest that most individuals in the United States believe (in line with experts) that the worst consequences of climate change will be borne not by themselves but rather by distant others (spatially and temporally), and it is likely the case that this basic lay understanding of climate change has had an important dampening effect on perceived risk, concern, and urgency for action (Bord et al., 1998; Weber, 2006). Indeed, as these beliefs about the perceived “otherness” of the victims of global climate change have become more widely held, concern, worry, and risk perceptions regarding global climate change appear to have weakened among Americans (e.g., Leiserowitz et al., 2010). It is important to note, however, that risk perceptions and concern over global climate change are highly differentiated among the US public, as Leiserowitz et al. (2010) have shown with their “Six Americas” research program (see also Dunlap & McCright, 2008, for differences in concern as a function of political party identification).
Confidence in Knowledge Research by Sundblad, Biel, and Gärling (2008) indicates that confidence in one’s knowledge about climate change varies across individuals and topics. These researchers found that Swedish respondents were generally certain of their knowledge about climate change, with experts being the most certain about their knowledge, followed by journalists, then politicians, and then laypeople. These Swedes tended to be more confident in their knowledge about the causes of climate change than about the state (e.g., global temperature patterns) or future consequences of climate change. Moreover, knowledge of, or confidence in, one’s knowledge about climate change is likely to be low among the least knowledgeable. Consistent with research on the role (p. 650) of preconceived beliefs about one’s ability on poor self-assessments of performance (Dunning, 2005), Sundblad et al.
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions (2008) found that the correlation between Swedish respondents’ confidence in their knowledge about climate change and actual knowledge was lowest among those who knew the least about climate change.
Importance Finally, research on importance placed upon addressing climate change partially explains discrepancies between perceiving that climate change is real and degree of support for efforts to address climate change. Although many in the United States believe that climate change exists, few volunteer it as the most important problem the public faces (Yeager et al., 2011). Yet, when the question is framed in such a way to focus on problems for the world and in the future, environmental problems and climate change are identified as much more important (Yeager et al., 2011).
Who Believes What and Why? Research conducted within the past 10 years has begun to examine the closely related questions of who believes what about global climate change as well as why people believe what they do regarding the issue. Here we first very briefly mention some of the more prominent moderators and correlates of global climate change beliefs before discussing some of the many psychological processes that likely play a role in shaping those beliefs.
Demographic and Psycho-Social Predictors Beliefs about global climate change are significantly correlated with a number of demographic and psycho-social variables. For example, McCright (2010) found that women tend to possess more accurate knowledge of climate change than men and are more concerned about the issue, but that they also are more likely to underestimate their own knowledge of the issue, while men are likely to overestimate their knowledge. O’Connor et al. (1999) found a slight positive relation between age and support for various climate mitigation policies, but other research suggests either a negative or nonsignificant relation between age and various domains of global climate change belief, including concern and knowledge (cf. Leiserowitz et al., 2010; McCright, 2010). Educational attainment generally appears to be positively but weakly related to increases in existence beliefs, concern, and preferences to confront global climate change (e.g., McCright, 2010). Not surprisingly, individuals who hold strong proenvironmental attitudes and those who hold biocentric values are generally more concerned about global climate change, report knowing more about the topic, and are more likely to believe global climate change is occurring as a result of human actions (cf. Kellstedt et al., 2008; Bord et al., 1998). As mentioned previously, beliefs about global climate change are also strongly moderated by political party identification and socioeconomic ideology more generally (cf. Dunlap & McCright, 2008; Leiserowitz et al., 2010; Malka et al., 2009; Kellstedt et al., 2008). American conservatives and Republicans are much less likely than liberals and Democrats (and moderates/Independents) to believe global climate change is happening, is due to human actions, and poses significant threats to them and others. As a result, conservatives/Republicans generally report lower levels of concern and willingness to respond proactively to the issue. Hoffman (2011) and others (e.g., Nisbet, 2009) have argued that climate change has in many ways become a highly politicized issue over the past 10 years; this is reflected not only in the public polling data on the issue but also in the vastly different and contrasting frames or “logics” that climate change advocates and skeptics utilize in talking to their bases (and largely past one another) about climate change. At a broader scale, beliefs about global climate change clearly differ between nations. For example, polling conducted by Gallup in over 125 countries in 2007–2008 revealed wide gaps between nations in basic awareness of the issue, with the populations of some nations (e.g., India) showing very low levels of familiarity with the terms “global warming” or “climate change” (Pelham, 2009). Moreover, even among individuals who have heard about global climate change, there are huge cross-national differences in public perceptions of the threat global climate change poses to individuals and humans more generally (Pugliese & Ray, 2009), although it is not clear whether education about or experience with global climate change impacts moderate this effect.
Where Do GCC Beliefs Come From? Beliefs about global climate change are shaped both by our direct experiences with climate-relevant phenomena (e.g., daily weather, extreme climatic events) as well as, and perhaps more powerfully, by our indirect experiences
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions with the issue (e.g., via social interaction and media coverage). As Weber (2006) (p. 651) and others have argued, our direct experiences of climate change are severely limited, in part by definition (i.e., global climate change is a statistical phenomenon consisting of many different events spread out temporally and spatially) and in part due to various features of the issue, for example, its slow pace of change, centuries-long time horizons, and nonlinear feedback loops (see Sterman & Booth Sweeny, 2002). Yet, regardless of whether it is objectively appropriate to use such experiences as the basis for forming beliefs about global climate change, Kempton and others have shown that individuals do come to understand global climate change in large part through personal experiences of local weather. Indeed, some recent research indicates that experiences of local weather (and especially extreme events) can have a significant effect on climate change beliefs (Egan & Mullin, in press), although Jenkins-Smith et al. (2009) suggested that this relationship may be bidirectional (i.e., beliefs about climate change shape perceptions of local weather). In general, it seems likely that direct experiences with the climaterelevant phenomena strongly shape beliefs regarding the existence of climate change, what its impacts will be (if any), and how important the issue is. Beliefs about global climate change are also strongly shaped by indirect experiences with the phenomenon, particularly interactions with close others (e.g., family and friends) and exposure to media coverage of global climate change (Boykoff & Boykoff, 2004; Iyengar & Hahn, 2009). Over the past 15 years, communications researchers, psychologists, and others have documented the ways in which global climate change is framed and talked about in both interpersonal settings (cf. Norgaard, 2006; Bulkeley, 2000) and in the media (e.g., Boykoff & Boykoff, 2004; Nisbet, 2009). This and other research suggests that global climate change is a socially constructed issue in many ways (Hulme, 2009), and the effects of this are seen in part in the polarization of the issue at the group level (e.g., Republicans vs. Democrats) as well as in the ways in which various groups and opinion leaders utilize rhetoric (and scientific findings, in some cases) to either accentuate or discredit various aspects of the issue (Hoffman, 2011). Some experimental work also suggests that media representations of certain aspects of the issue (e.g., uncertainty) can significantly impact individuals’ beliefs about global climate change (e.g., Corbett & Durfee, 2004). Work on motivated information-seeking and reasoning suggests that individuals likely seek out information about global climate change that allows them to confirm preexisting beliefs about the issue (cf. Kunda, 1990; Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979) and about how the world operates more generally (e.g., Kahan et al., 2007). At the same time, these motivated processes allow us to defend ourselves, to some degree, against the threats posed by information about global climate change. For example, Feinberg and Willer (2011) found that individuals show reactance to strongly negative portrayals of global climate change in part due to the challenge that such messages pose to deeply held beliefs about the world being a just, orderly, and stable place (see also Meijnders, Midden, & Wilke, 2001). In a similar vein, Feyigna, Jost, and Goldsmith (2010) showed that the tendency to support the status quo via justification of existing socioeconomic systems (i.e., system justifying) is negatively related to concern about global climate change and willingness to respond (behaviorally) to the issue. Similarly, Kahan et al. (2007) have argued that traditional representations of global climate change as a scary, complex problem that requires immediate change to the US economic system motivate those with hierarchical and individualistic values to reject claims about the existence and seriousness of global climate change (and conversely, to make the problem seem more important to those with egalitarian and community-oriented values). At the same time, representations of global climate change as causing significant harm to innocent others (including those not yet born) likely activate moral values that are deeply held by liberals in the United States (cf. Haidt & Graham, 2007; Markowitz, in press). Moreover, the “scariness” of global climate change and the threat it poses to our own mortality may activate existential needs, as outlined by terror management theory (Dickinson, 2009; Greenberg et al., 1992) that lead us to cling to our group identities and values. Taken together, these and other findings suggest that at least some of the political polarization in beliefs about global climate change may result from basic, underlying psychological differences between liberals and conservatives (Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003), including differences in values, system justification needs, and beliefs about how the world should operate. Political identification, basic values, and worldviews aside, beliefs about global climate change are also influenced by a wide variety of situational and attitudinal factors. For example, Malka et al. (2009) found that trust in scientists significantly moderated the relationship between knowledge about global (p. 652) climate change and concern over the issue, and that knowledge and concern were positively related only among individuals who trust scientists for information about global climate change (and many do; see Leiserowitz et al., 2010). Moreover, the recent
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions “Climategate” scandal appears to have decreased trust in scientists (Leiserowitz et al., 2010), although perhaps only or primarily among individuals already skeptical of global climate change. In a separate vein, Risen and Critcher (2011) found that individuals placed in warm settings (e.g., a heated room) report higher levels of belief in “global warming” (effects on “climate change” were not tested), suggesting that beliefs about global climate change are at least somewhat situationally dependent and mutable (see also Joireman, Truelove, & Duell, 2010). Clearly there are many other psychological constructs and processes that likely shape people’s beliefs about global climate change (e.g., temporal construal, optimistic biases, biased information recall, need for closure, numeracy, naive physics), and much research remains to be done in exploring these and other factors. At a psychological level, global climate change (and particularly how it is framed in the media) activates both affectively driven, heuristic-based processing as well as more cognitively effortful reasoned engagement with the issue. Explicating how, when, and why these systems are differentially activated in processing information about global climate change may go a long way in explaining differences between individuals and groups with respect to beliefs about global climate change; moreover, examining these issues should provide important insights for communicators, politicians, and others interested in shaping public opinion regarding global climate change.
Educational Efforts Since James Hansen’s awareness-raising 1988 congressional testimony, many environmental leaders, science communicators, and others have attempted to raise not only public awareness but also understanding of global climate change, largely in an attempt to shape people’s beliefs about the existence, causes, and importance of the issue. The field of environmental education, particularly in the kindergarten through 12th-grade curricula, has addressed many topic areas including sustainable development and biodiversity (Clayton & Myers, 2009). Consistent with these educational efforts, over the past few years climate science has become much more mainstream in many K–12 curricula around the country and further efforts are under way to increase exposure to scientific knowledge and training that will allow students and adults at all levels to better interpret global climate change data for themselves. In addition, many zoos, aquariums, and museums have dedicated programs aimed at increasing “climate literacy,” in part by attempting to link climate science with tangible effects on things people care deeply about (e.g., welfare of other humans and animals). Within the United States, many of these efforts are supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the US Global Change Research Program; together, these organizations have produced educational materials, including the document Climate Literacy: The Essential Principles of Climate Sciences (US Global Change Research Program, 2009), meant to improve the general public’s understanding of basic climate science principles and constructs. Many other researchers are also working on developing novel techniques for improving climate literacy, including apps and web based information accessible to the general public (Cook, 2012; McCaffrey & Buhr, 2008; Niepold, Herring, & McConville, 2008; see Moser, 2010, for a review of global climate change communication research and strategies). Of course, given our understanding of the ways in which individuals engage with global climate change at a psychological level, it is clear that such direct information provision efforts are likely to result in only marginal success at best with respect to increasing knowledge, and ultimately concern in the general public, about global climate change (cf. Bulkeley, 2000; Kellstedt et al., 2008; Moser, 2010). In an effort to promote effective communication with the public about global climate change, various organizations and research groups have published manuals, articles, and books (Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, 2009; Maibach, RoserRenouf, & Leiserowitz, 2008; Moser & Dilling, 2007) aimed at applying our understanding of the challenges that global climate change poses to our cognitive- and experiential-based systems (see above) to the development of education and communication strategies that increase objective knowledge about global climate change (cf. Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, 2009). These efforts reflect the insights that psychological research holds for explicating people’s understanding of the issue, as detailed above. For example, because the dynamics of stock and flow systems are highly confusing for most individuals (Sterman & Booth Sweeny, 2002), utilizing analogies from real (p. 653) life (e.g., bathtubs, bank accounts) to talk about climate dynamics may be effective in some cases. In a related vein, the ability of films to portray vivid images has been found to influence knowledge and concern about climate change (if not necessarily behavior that would address it; see Nolan, 2010), pointing to another possible route for educating nonscientists about the issue.
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions More broadly, Pidgeon and Fischhoff (2011) suggested that because of the nature of both global climate change and human psychology, climate change communicators must fundamentally rethink their approach to communicating with the public regarding the risks posed by climate change. Rather than utilize traditional, unidirectional messaging in which the public is treated as an empty slate just waiting to be told what to believe, communicators must move toward a more inclusive, engaging bidirectional approach that provides opportunities for scientists to receive meaningful feedback from members of the public; moving in this direction would not only increase public engagement, but also provide for critical recalibration of the messages communicators and scientists want to get across to nonexperts. These and other efforts to improve communication strategies attempt to minimize the sort of motivated rejection of climate science information that so often results from providing skeptical individuals information about global climate change (cf. Kellstedt et al., 2008; Malka et al., 2009). Although relatively little assessment has been conducted on these initial efforts (Moser, 2010; Pidgeon & Fischhoff, 2011), it seems likely that such psychologically informed approaches have much to offer environmental communicators interested in engaging effectively with members of the general public on this topic.
Impacts Much attention has been given to the current and impending physical effects of global climate change, in addition to increasing attention for the human dimensions of these impacts. Impacts on the earth itself include heat and drought in some areas of the world, and melting icecaps, eroding beach lines, and increased rainfall in others. These geophysical changes in turn impact animal populations and their habitat and migration, as well as leading to possible increases in the maltreatment of animals and animal welfare (e.g., increased factory farming for food production; Dawkins & Bonney, 2008). For humans, these climate change–driving ecological changes can have considerable health implications. Physical impacts include decreased access to essential resources such as food (Brown & Funk, 2008), clean air (Kinney, 2008), clean water, and energy resources; movement and migration (Reuveny & Moore, 2009); economic and occupational changes (Pereira, 2009; Galvin, 2009); increased disease and illness (Donohoe, 2010); personal loss (Randall, 2009); and decreased fertility and/or life expectancy (Lin, 2010; Tang, Petrie, & Rao, 2009). The human impacts of global climate change extend into domains often studied by psychologists (Doherty & Clayton, 2011; Swim & Clayton, 2011). These include impaired emotional well-being, stress, and anxiety. They also include extended effects into personal relationships and intergroup relations due to, for instance, increased crime and violence (e.g., due to heat-related crime, Rotton & Cohn, 2003; conflict over resources, Donahoe, 2010; or domestic violence, Enarson, 1999). Individuals and communities who then attempt to cope with and prepare for geophysical, social, and psychological impacts create subsequent effects. Below we first consider some of the psychological impacts of climate change. We then consider adaptation to climate change and associated social justice issues.
Psychological Impacts While climate change impacts can result in short-term, isolated, or discrete stressors (e.g., hurricanes or floods), long-term climate changes may be more widespread over geographic space and time (e.g., spreading of disease) and can result in chronic stress. The former has been examined in a host of literature both within and outside psychology addressing the human impacts of natural and large-scale disasters and adaptive coping techniques (see Lindell, this volume). These include the development of phobias, social anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression (Hussain, Weisaeth, & Heir, 2011). The latter, however, are less studied in direct relation to climate change, as the impacts of long-term climate changes have only recently been discussed within the psychological literature. Yet, chronic effects are likely to include anxiety, worry, grief and mourning, guilt, despair, and apathy, to name a few (Doherty & Clayton, 2011). A variety of intergroup consequences are also likely to develop. Competition over increasingly scarce resources will likely increase intergroup tensions and conflict (Zhang et al., 2007), such as the conflicts and suffering that have and will likely continue to ensue over access to water (i.e., “water wars,” (p. 654) e.g., see Shiva, 2002, 2006). Additionally, conflicts and increasing climate threats may lead to changes in identity or social categories, such as environmentalists, climate change deniers, or contributors, which may in turn lead to the formation of new stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. Impacts such as forced migration from rural areas may create indirect
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions effects, such as changes in cultural values or boundaries, which in turn may impact health, poverty, substance abuse, and community and social cohesion (Beard et al., 2009). Psychological impacts of climate change may be highly related to appraisals of the severity and risk posed by climate change (Doherty & Clayton, 2011; Reser & Swim, 2011). For many people living in much of the Global North and working in industrialized spaces, climate change can be seen as an abstract issue that does not immediately impact their livelihoods or well-being, and their only connection to climate change is through the media or discussions with others (see “Where do GCC beliefs come from” above). Appraisals of climate change may also serve as a coping strategy to diminish the negative effects of climate change stressors. The extent to which climate change is viewed as an overwhelming and unchangeable force, as opposed to one with human solutions or not even as an issue at all, will likely alter the degree of psychological impact. Thus, those who might otherwise feel psychologically burdened or overwhelmed, or have belief systems threatened by climate change may instead choose to reject the belief in its existence (e.g., Feinberg & Willer, 2011).
Adaptation Although the term “adaptation” has been used in climate change discussions largely to refer to technological and physical changes made in response to climate disasters, it is applicable to a psychological examination of climate change impacts as a way of understanding how people respond to and cope with climate change impacts. Reser and Swim (2011) have described psychological adaptation as anticipated and reactive responses to climate change in human thinking and behavior, and as a coping response to physical and social environmental changes. Some forms of adaptation focus on coping with immediate short-term consequences of climate change that emerge from natural disasters. Basic behavioral adaptation to climate change can include assistance with essential human needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter. This may also extend to financial assistance, creation of new jobs, and migration. Short-term impacts, such as natural disasters, tend to make suffering more salient or easy to identify with, which, according to the empathy-altruism hypothesis, increases helping behavior (Batson et al., 1981). In addition, psychological effects such as the low-cost situation hypothesis (e.g., Diekmann & Preisendörfer, 1992; Kempton et al., 1985) and social helping norms (Cialdini et al., 1981) may increase helping when one comes across an easily identifiable charity or witnesses others helping. These types of assisted adaptations may not be related to long-term climate change impacts. Such individual and social assistance is not usually as readily available to help with adaptation to chronic impacts of climate change, perhaps because it requires more dedicated monetary relief and behavior change rather than one-time donations of time and money. Long-term impacts are also less likely to be covered by the media, and when they are, chronic exposure may create compassion fatigue (Figley, 1995). Additionally, psychological processes such as the freerider tendency (e.g., Condie et al., 1976) and the bystander effect/diffusion of responsibility may hinder helping with adaptation to climate change impacts because individuals may assume that there are many other individuals who can take care of the problem (Frantz & Mayer, 2009; Latane et al., 1981). Those who have already experienced chronic impacts of climate change may engage in a number of methods to psychologically adapt or adjust to their current situation. These may include cognitive responses (e.g., appraisals or reframing), affective responses (e.g., worry, hope, guilt, or shame), or social responses (e.g., volunteering, social support, or social amplification or attenuation; Doherty & Clayton, 2011; Reser & Swim, 2011). A few scales specifically intended to measure coping with global environmental problems have recently emerged, which assess problem-solving, expressive coping, denial of guilt, relativization, wishful thinking, self-protection, pleasure, and resignation(Homburg, Stolberg, & Wagner, 2007). Another important type of psychological adaptation is proactive coping, in which individuals prepare for a stressful event before it occurs, to thwart or minimize its effect (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1997). When related to climate change, this may include preparing for anticipated threats and stressors, or preparing for future disasters after the experience of a previous disaster. Once again, there is a relatively large body of literature addressing proactive coping (p. 655) in relation to short-term stressors, such as disaster preparation. Some of these preparations include community building and education about mental health impacts, emotion management training, cognitive behavioral coping skills, and stress inoculation training, as well as changing threat perceptions and appraisals of the event (Morrissey & Reser, 2007). Sims and Baumann (1972) illustrated that increased locus of control led to
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions better preparedness for natural disasters, such as tornados. The proactive coping literature itself focuses largely on immediate and personally relevant health issues, such as diabetes (Thoolen et al., 2008) and physical activity (Stadler, Oettingen, & Gollwitzer, 2009). However, no research has, to our knowledge, assessed the effect of proactive coping on dealing with the chronic, uncertain, and varying impacts of climate change. While proactive coping could very well be an effective means of handling chronic stress, as determined from the health literature, numerous factors make climate change impacts less amenable to proactive coping. These factors include uncertainty of whether impacts are directly related to climate change, lack of personal control over many climate change impacts, and for many people, lack of direct current experiences with climate change impacts. Mitigation behaviors may also be used as a form of psychological adaptation. Doing “green” behaviors may help reduce guilt or other negative affective responses to climate change (e.g., worry, hopelessness). Participating in mitigation behaviors may also create a sense of self-worth or positive identity related to one’s environmental actions (Brook, 2011) or being a humanitarian. This developed “role-identity” may in turn lead to increased subsequent pro-environmental or humanitarian behaviors (Piliavin & Callero, 1991). Finally, a resistance to mitigation behaviors may follow from a psychologically adaptive need to deny climate change or reject affective feelings of guilt or worry (Gifford, 2011; Swim & Bloodhart, in preparation).
Vulnerability and Resilience An important and lately more recognized factor in the climate change discussion is that of vulnerability, or the ability of individuals or groups to cope with the impacts of climate change. Keim (2008) has described vulnerability to natural disasters as having two parts: the degree of exposure to dangers or disasters (susceptibility) and the capacity to cope with or recover from their consequences (resilience). Others equate vulnerability with susceptibility, by conceptualizing it as the inability to cope based on varying factors such as location, economics, level of industrialization, and social disadvantages, while resilience is conceptually the opposite: the personal, social, economic, and infrastructural resources that help one to cope with climate change impacts (e.g., see Reser & Swim, 2011). Due to the geophysical impacts of climate change, people in the Global South are particularly susceptible to drastic changes in their environment, such as floods, droughts, malaria, reduced water resources, destroyed crops, and land erosion. Unfortunately, due to colonization, global trade markets, and industrialization in the North, many of these areas are also left with few resources to cope (e.g., see Roberts & Parks, 2007). Many effects are also projected in the arctic regions as well, due to, for instance, average temperatures increasing nearly twice those in the rest of the world (Environmental Protection Agency, 2012). Of the many resources to cope with climate impacts, the greatest is access to financial capital, which in turn gives access to essential resources such as food, water, and shelter, but can also facilitate the ability to change or influence national policies related to climate change adaptation (e.g., see Brouwer, Akter, Brander, & Haque, 2007). Research has shown that cultural self-expression values decrease and survival values increase due to lack of wealth in high climate change–impact areas of the world (Van de Vliert, 2007) and that life expectancy in these areas is moderated by income (Tang et al., 2009).
Social Justice Implications Given issues of vulnerability and resilience, climate change has readily become a social justice issue. Groups high in socioeconomic status have both the ability to continue to contribute to climate change through the production of carbon emissions, but also the ability to protect themselves from its consequences and more easily adapt to climate changes and the associated impacts. Those who lack social power and are members of marginalized groups (e.g., women, racial minorities, the poor) are also less likely to participate in the economic market and have access to income-earning jobs (Maskia & Joekes, 1997). Terry (2009) illustrated how gender roles and expectations can play a large role in gendered experiences of climate change through examining how rural women in Africa and Asia are often more dependent on natural resources and do most of the agricultural work, while poor women are most likely to bear the brunt of health problems (p. 656) due to less access to education and health care. Gender imbalances exist in mortality rates due to disproportionate socioeconomic status, as women’s access to capital is often restricted or limited compared to men’s and can be more severely reduced based on other social identities such as race or age. Women can also be impacted based on expectations about gendered behavior and the value of women’s lives. For example,
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions women will be more negatively impacted in cultures where women receive less food than men during food shortages, and are expected to do the majority of adaptation work (e.g., take care of the household, care for elderly, participate in community building), while men return to wage-earning work (Nelson et al., 2002). Traditional gender role beliefs may also have negative impacts on men, as food shortages and lack of agricultural opportunities may cause stress or mental illness in males who are typically expected to provide for the household, or who are expected to behave heroically during natural disasters and thus make life-risking decisions (Brody, Demetriades, & Esplen, 2008). In other words, people may be pushed to the extreme margins based on gender and intersecting identities and experience profound discrimination or other consequences. Policies meant to address adaptation and mitigation to climate change also need to take into account considerations of intersectionality. Women’s and men’s social position is constructed in relation to their other forms of identity (e.g., race, class, marital status, sexual orientation), and their agency and ability for adaptation and mitigation may largely depend on cultural norms and beliefs about these different groups (both in terms of their voice in the debate and their vulnerability on the ground; e.g., see AWID, 2004). For example, people have different needs and connections to the environment based on gender, location, religion, and education. Some women are solely dependent on clean water supply and food production in their immediate area, while the wealth or education of other women allows them to bypass some climate change impacts by getting food and water from sources farther away from home. Thus, the risk of climate change may be higher for someone more connected with nature (either physically or psychologically). But risk can also be temporal and based on whether there are more immediate stressors in life. In such cases, poor women might be financially restrained from adaptation strategies, whereas wealthy women might have fewer restrictions and educated women might have better access to people and places where they can make their voices and opinions on climate change adaptation strategies heard. Similarly, the decisions made about how to enhance adaptation and mitigation of climate change need to incorporate local knowledge and worldviews. Not only do many national policies attempt to define the “best” solutions for people and cultures without asking for the viewpoint of those groups, but they may also actually harm or disproportionately penalize members of those groups (Denton, 2002). For example, agricultural technologies meant for adaptation to higher heat and drought in many areas of Africa are often more accessible to male farmers, although the majority of agricultural workers in many areas are women. Alternatively, when asked what would help them to adapt best, women in the Ganges River basin, for example, request safer living spaces and information and knowledge about agricultural practices, rather than new technologies (Brody et al., 2008). Even though many groups have begun to recognize the importance of having a “gender” policy (or a policy meant to address gender differences), without intersectional perspectives these will be based on normative (i.e., white, middle class, heterosexual, etc.) experiences rather than understanding and addressing all women’s experiences. Additionally, strategies based on an assumption about a maximum tolerable increase in temperatures are based on northern, wealthy, and industrialized perspectives about what is an acceptable amount of change. For example, while the “global” community (namely, the United Nations) has agreed that a two-degree Celsius change in global temperature is acceptable, this level of temperature increase will further harm communities that are already experiencing harmful climate impacts (Shaw, 2009). As Seager (2009) argued, “For whom is two degrees acceptable?” Climate change is creating negative impacts now for many people in the Global South and in polar regions and will only get worse as the climate continues to change. Decisions regarding climate change adaptation and mitigation need to take into consideration the viewpoints and concerns of those who do not have the ability to ward off the consequences with technology and wealth and who do not have such an invested interest in continuing to use natural resources that contribute to climate change impacts to sustain what is ever more becoming a privileged existence.
Human Behavioral Contributions Human activity is a main contributor to global climate change. It is necessary to include human (p. 657) activity, along with other natural transformations (volcanoes and solar activity), in order to explain late 20th-century warming (Meehl et al., 2004). Increases in greenhouse gases are a result of increased reliance on fossil fuels, land use that impedes the ability of the earth to absorb greenhouse gases, and exponential population growth (more precisely, the growth of the number of households; Carr, Suter, & Barbieri, 2006; Druckman & Jackson, 2009;
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions Petroni, 2010; Stern, Young, & Druckman, 1992; Swim, Clayton, & Howard, 2011). We focus here on activities that involve the use of fossil fuels and specifically the production of CO2 because this has been a primary focus of many who study increases in greenhouse gases (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007; Solomon, Plattner, Knutti, & Friedlingstein, 2009; Stern et al., 1992). Below we discuss behavioral analyses of human contributions to climate change, predictors of these behaviors, and methods of changing these behaviors.
Analyzing Human Mitigation Behaviors Practically, it is useful to understand which behaviors result in greenhouse gas emissions, but this is not always a simple deduction, in part because human activities both directly and indirectly create greenhouse gases. Direct contributions occur during the time when the activity is occurring, such as when driving a car. Indirect contributions occur behind the scenes, in preparation for an activity or after an activity. Emissions at the beginning of the life cycle of a product (upstream emissions) include the emissions created during extraction of materials and the manufacturing, assembly, and delivery of products. Emissions at the end of the life cycle (downstream emissions) include emissions created during the process of collecting, recycling, and incinerating waste (Environmental Protection Agency, 2006). Emissions from one behavior can also be linked to other behaviors. For instance, using the Internet involves the energy that runs the device (e.g., a computer, a phone), the energy used to connect to the Internet, and the energy to run the Internet, all of which contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. The distinction between direct and indirect contributions is important psychologically. One might argue that it is more fruitful to attend to direct contributions rather than indirect contributions, in part because households can monitor and control their direct contributions. For similar reasons, it might be easier to assess the success of behavioral efforts to reduce direct emissions. Plus, indirect contributions often include sources outside of a country, such as the production of material goods. Bin and Dowlatabadi (2005) noted that about 40% of UK households’ indirect contributions come from sources outside of the United Kingdom. Yet, indirect sources need to be addressed because, for example, in the United States and the United Kingdom, they account for more emissions than direct emissions (Bin & Dowlatabadi, 2005; Druckman & Jackson, 2009). Collectively, household behaviors can influence indirect contributions by creating consumer demand for environmentally sensitive products (Collins, Steg, & Koning, 2007). Further, attention to the full life cycle of a product connects consumer behavior to other ethical considerations, such as fair labor practices and the treatment of animals. Categorizing sources of emissions into types of human activities brings one closer to understanding the specific behavioral sources of climate change. In the United States, about a third of CO2 emissions come from transportation, with gasoline for personal vehicles accounting for about half of the emissions from transportation (Environmental Protection Agency, 2010). Other sources of CO2 emissions are industrial (about 27%), residential (21%), and commercial end use (19%). Attention has also been given to food production as a source of emissions, though its focus is often on methane and Nitrous Oxide (Environmental Protection Agency, 2010). For example, meat consumption, and thus factory farm animals (particularly cows), contribute to methane (Jorgenson, 2006). A functional classification of household consumption patterns reveals that recreation and leisure (25%) and food and catering (22%) contribute the most to greenhouse gases in UK households, suggesting a need to develop alternative ways to engage in leisure activities (Druckman & Jackson, 2009). It is also possible to examine regional variation in contribution to greenhouse gases. In the United Kingdom, those living in suburbs contribute substantially more emissions than those living in cities (Dietz et al., 2009). This could be a function of wealth and the tendency to purchase more products and services, but it also could be a function of the efficiency of city living, including the ability to forgo or minimize private transportation. Understanding these types of variations can point to reasons why individuals do these activities and potential ways to change behaviors. A useful alternative analysis of behavioral contributions is an assessment of the extent to which different behaviors could help reduce emissions. Dietz and colleagues (2009) estimated that, among 17 (p. 658) impactful behaviors, purchasing fuel-efficient vehicles is the most effective direct method of reducing emissions in the United States. Other impactful behaviors include carpooling and trip-chaining (e.g., combining two car trips to the store into one), weatherizing one’s home, driving more efficiently, upgrading appliances and heating and cooling systems, and setting back thermostats. Based on typical compliance rates, they calculate that a 7.4% reduction in US national emissions could occur with smart policies and social encouragement to change these 17 behaviors. To put this percentage into perspective, in November 2010, President Barack Obama proposed a goal of reducing US
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions emissions by 17% over the course of 10 years. A limitation of these assessments is our ability to measure behaviors. Sometimes behavior frequency is inferred based upon amount of money spent within a country, which, while correlated with frequency of consumption, may, for instance, overrepresent the extent to which expensive behaviors create emissions (Swim et al., 2011). Other times behavioral frequency estimates are based upon self-reports, which can be flawed (Schwarz, 2001). Emerging technologies such as smart meters can transmit household energy use to others (Wallenborn, 2011) and global positioning devices (i.e., GPS) can assess speed and distance traveled in cars (Bolderdijk, Knockaert, Steg, & Verhoef, 2011).
Predicting Human Mitigation Behaviors Understanding psycho-social predictors of behaviors that contribute to or reduce greenhouse gases is a starting point for understanding how to reduce human contributions to climate change. Darnton (2008) described nine types of predictors of pro-environmental behavior: (1) information; (2) values, beliefs, and attitudes; (3) norms and identity; (4) agency, efficacy, and control; (5) habit and routine; (6) emotions; (7) self-regulation; (8) external factors; and (9) societal factors. Some models draw on several of these variables, such as the value-belief-norm model (Stern, 2000), which references the second (value, beliefs, and attitudes) and the third (norms and identity) types of predictor. Yet the distinctions in variables from the different models are useful for an analysis of the psychological processes involved in mitigation behaviors. We discuss eight of these nine predictors (saving selfregulation for a latter section) and describe decision-making processes that influence behavioral choices.
Information The public’s lack of information about personal climate change mitigating behaviors is revealed by its underestimation of the extent to which certain behaviors produce a relatively large amount of CO2 and, to a lesser degree, the overestimation of the extent to which other behaviors produce a relatively small amount of CO2 (Attari, DeKay, Davidson, & Bruine de Bruin, 2010). Knowledge about the extent to which different behaviors produce CO2 is useful for individuals who are motivated to reduce emissions as well as policy makers who want to know which behaviors to target. However, individuals’ behavioral choices are not typically based upon energy savings (Poortinga, Steg, Vlek, & Wiersma, 2003) and, while information may be necessary for some behaviors, it alone is not likely to be sufficient to predict behaviors (see Schulz, this volume).
Values, Beliefs, and Attitudes Much attention has been given to environmental values, beliefs, and/or attitudes in the general literature on environmental behaviors. Thus, it is not too surprising that these predictors would, in general, predict personal mitigation behaviors and support for policies that would address climate change. For instance, self-transcendent values in the form of biospheric values and concerns are associated with willingness to engage in behaviors and support policies that would directly and indirectly reduce emissions, whereas self-enhancement values in the form of egoistic values and concerns are negatively related to these behaviors (DeGroot & Steg, 2007; Steg et al., 2011; Schultz, 2001; Schultz et al., 2005; Steg, Dreijerink, & Abrahamse, 2005; Swim & Becker, in press). Like selftranscendent values, intrinsic aspirations focus individuals beyond themselves and are associated with engaging in ecologically responsible behavior that would reduce emissions (Crompton, 2008; DeGroot & Steg, 2010). These distinctions are important when considering the egoistic approaches, such as financial incentives, to encouraging pro-environmental behaviors (cf. Schulz, this volume). That is, emphasizing financial returns could backfire because they reinforce extrinsic motivations (Crompton, 2008). Yet, financial considerations do influence decisions particularly in business settings, and these considerations can promote decreases in emissions. Values can play a role in business decisions while still attending to fiscal concerns when business leaders perceive, for instance, that sustainable practices are opportunities for business growth, energy savings result in cost savings, and (p. 659) early action on climate change outweighs the eventual costs (Revell, Stokes, & Chen, 2010).
Norms and Identity Much attention has been given to the predictive power of social norms over economic incentives and appeals to environmental concerns, even when people are not aware of the power of such norms (Schultz et al., 2007).
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions Group identity can also be important if it directs people toward the common good rather than gratification of immediate self-interest (Van Vugt, 2009). Consistent with this finding, a global perspective enhances support for cooperation with others who are globally distant, suggesting that a broad identification with humans would help address the global problem of climate change (Buchan et al., 2009). Yet, if identification is restricted to feeling connected with humans, animals may be treated as out-group members and this differentiation may prevent some forms of mitigation (Crompton & Kasser, 2009; Plous, 2003). These considerations are related to the importance of environmental identity and whether one’s “scope of justice,” or the breadth to which one is willing to apply roles of justice, is applied to people and animals harmed by climate change (Clayton & Opotow, 2003; Opotow, 1996).
Agency, Efficacy, & Control Agency, efficacy, and control refer to perceived and actual ability to engage in a behavior of interest and the effectiveness of behaviors to make a difference (Darnton, 2008). The importance of these perceptions provides an opportunity for public education and informational campaigns, such as information regarding the effectiveness of individual actions at reducing emissions, particularly when combined across different types of behaviors (Dietz et al., 2009). Individuals may also feel more efficacious when they engage in collective action, knowing that the effects of their behaviors are combined with others’ behaviors (Van Vugt, 2009).
Habits and Routines Habits are behaviors that are done frequently and automatically and are often cued by something in the environment (e.g., Verplanken, 1997). Climate change mitigating behaviors include both one-time behaviors, such as purchasing efficient appliances, as well as lifestyle changes (e.g., walking, biking, carpooling, or taking public transportation rather than driving one’s personal car to work), which may involve changing habits and routines. Lifestyle behaviors have to be repeatedly constrained or enacted, making them more difficult to change. Plus, individuals tend to prefer technological improvements over lifestyle changes, suggesting that it may be difficult to get individuals to adopt lifestyle changes (Poortinga et al., 2003) and therefore make them less effective at reducing emissions. Yet efforts that address lifestyles and habits are part of a larger package of obtaining behavioral changes.
Emotions Emotions can be powerful predictors of behavior and are likely to be aroused when people think about climate change. Appraisal theory of emotion suggests that those who perceive climate change to be a risk are likely to experience fear or worry and those who perceive they or their country are responsible for climate change will likely experience individual or collective guilt, respectively (Swim & Bloodhart, in preparation). These emotions can then influence behaviors such as when collective guilt predicts support for climate change policies (Ferguson & Branscombe, 2010). Other emotions (e.g., hope, empathy, pride, moral outrage, and boredom) are also likely to be important for predicting willingness to engage in climate change mitigating behaviors (Swim & Bloodhart, in preparation). For instance, volunteer behavior that benefits the environment helps people feel pride in their efforts to address climate change (Nevin, 2010). Such positive consequences can encourage individuals to change and sustain their own behaviors (Neuringer, 2010).
External Factors External factors are predictors beyond the individual that influence behaviors (Stern, 2000). It can be practically beneficial to explicitly identify external factors that are barriers, as is done within community-based social marketing (McKenzie-Mohr & Smith, 1999), and to help individuals overcome the barriers. External factors, including time, money, and responsibility to others, can hamper individuals and businesses in following through on practices that could reduce emissions (e.g., Frey, 2010; Revell et al., 2010). External factors, however, can also prompt climate change mitigation. For instance, government regulations and shareholder actions, which can be considered external to those in management, can encourage or even mandate energy reduction in businesses (Reid & Toffel, 2009).
Societal Factors Societal factors provide a backdrop for individual behavior and reflect macrolevel external predictors (p. 660) of
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions behaviors (Swim et al., 2011). Of importance to human consumption, societal factors can include the impact of culture on perceptions of what is considered a necessity versus a luxury, the relative importance of consumerism (a cultural foundation for materialistic tendencies), cultural level values such as aspirations of mastery over harmony and hierarchy over egalitarianism, and perceptions and valuing of time, which can influence willingness to plan for and address future problems now and perception of time as a resource.
Decision-Making Decision-making about climate change mitigating behaviors faces many uncertainties: when various impacts will occur; whether there will be tipping points in impacts; the extent to which individual behavioral changes will aid adaptation or mitigation; whether others will also change behaviors making one’s own behavior more meaningful; and whether undesirable or unintended effects of responses to climate change, such as threats to security, will occur, to name a few. Research on decision-making under uncertainty has been applied to understanding responses to environmental risks, and some have illustrated how it can be applied to understanding responses to climate change (e.g., Rachlinski, 2000; Weber & Stern, 2011). As one example, a preference for the certainty of the status quo over an unknown future can impede action (Rachlinski, 2000). One explanation for the status quo bias is loss aversion, where individuals are reluctant to sacrifice current benefits even for other benefits (Rachlinski, 2000). Greater concern about losses than gains suggests that individuals will be more concerned about potential losses from mitigation, such as jobs in the coal industry, than potential benefits that might arise from these mitigation efforts, such as jobs in the field of renewable energy. This example is related to asymmetric discounting where individuals discount future rewards in exchange for current consumption, even when the current consumption is worth less than the future rewards (Milch et al., 2009). Another approach to understanding decision-making is to understand how groups and not just individuals make decisions (Kempton & Neiman, 1987). Understanding group decisions can be important for understanding household decision-making. Some of the early work on household energy use and audits attended to these types of decision-making processes (Kempton & Neiman, 1987) and interest in this topic has returned in part as a result of new technologies available to monitor household energy use and renewed interest by energy companies in assisting household energy conservation (e.g., Armel et al., 2010; Herter, 2010; Karlin, 2010). It may also be important to consider how decision-making in households is done. Gender roles, for instance, may determine who has influence over different types of behaviors (Gronhoj & Olander, 2007). This also suggests that an important predictor of household decision-making will be the composition of individuals living together because most households are not composed of traditional family units of heterosexual parents with children living at home. A range of other decision-making situations are also relevant to study. These include climate change–relevant decisions made by boards of directors (Galbreath, 2010; Prado-Lorenzo & Garcia-Sanchez, 2010) and governmental bodies that form policies make decisions that influence opportunities for residents (Stern, 2011).
Limitations The models used to derive the predictors noted above have not always been tested with environmentally significant behaviors, relying instead on health behaviors or community participation (e.g., voting), and when they do test environmentally significant behaviors, the behaviors are not always those with the most impact on climate change. Further, it is likely important to differentiate between different types of behaviors, such as energy investments, lifestyle changes, and activism. A second limitation is that these models do more to describe or explain behaviors than to assist in actual behavioral change (Darnton, 2008). Models that describe predictors of behaviors can be useful for behavioral change (see, e.g., Maio et al., 2007) but tend to be linear, depicting factors that precede behaviors. Instead, models of change tend to include reciprocal relations, developmental changes, and mechanisms for deep psychological or system-wide changes, which attend to more fundamental processes of change that can be necessary for more comprehensive and long-term change.
Promoting Human Mitigation Behaviors Much research in psychology has focused on communication and diffusion instruments, such as information and persuasive appeals, and secondarily on financial incentives, as means of encouraging behavioral change (Stern,
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions 2011; see Schultz, this volume, for an extensive review). This includes practical advice on how to take advantage (p. 661) of psychological insights into decision-making and responses to persuasive messages to increase the effectiveness of climate change communications and interventions (e.g., Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, 2009). Social marketing is perhaps the most well-known application of psychological methods and findings to encourage sustainable behaviors, many of which would address climate change (McKenzie-Mohr & Smith, 1999). This method identifies behavioral barriers specific to communities via social science methods such as surveys and focus groups, applies social influence processes to help with behavioral change such as using public commitments, social norms, and behavioral prompts, and using principles from program evaluation to pilot and improve the program. A related approach takes into account factors that influence behavioral decisions when designing interventions to change behavior. This is the basis of “paternalistic libertarianism” (Thaylor & Sunstein, 2009), where contexts are designed to increase the probability that individuals will chose to do a behavior and counter decision-making processes, such as hyperbolic discounting, that would hinder individuals from doing the behavior. For instance, the website www.stickK.com applies principles of behavioral economics to help individuals change behaviors. The site provides a mechanism that encourages personal behavioral commitments for a future goal (which could include routine pro-environmental behaviors) and sets up losses in the form of monetary payments to others should users not meet this commitment. Other examples include designing roadways that encourage slower driving and financial incentives to encourage companies to regulate their emissions. There are concerns, however, about applying paternalistic libertarian approaches to climate change mitigation. One objection is that policies may be set up without the input of those affected by them, which will occur when policies affect future generations (Schlag, 2010). When this occurs, there may be reactance or unanticipated harms. A third approach to behavioral change focuses on behavioral change processes. Darnton (2008) identified five behavioral change approaches, which we review below: (1) changes in habits, (2) changes across time within individuals, (3) changes across time within and across social networks, (4) change as learning, and (5) changes in systems.
Changes in Habits Changing habits fits into a larger area of research on changing lifestyles, including changing unhealthy eating, smoking, and driving behaviors, as well as energy conservation (Maio et al., 2007). Efforts to change habits focus on individuals’ efforts to change behaviors or focus on surroundings that cue and enable behaviors. Critical selfanalysis can help “unfreeze” behavior by identifying automatic behaviors and cues that activate the behavior (Darnton, 2008). It is also possible to change environments to cue new behaviors, such as through financial incentives and structural changes (see Schultz, this volume). Once change has started, a challenge is to avoid reverting back to an old behavior or developing new habits (“refreezing behaviors”). This latter process can be aided by anticipating situations that would lead to old behavioral habits and establishing plans to address these situations should they emerge (e.g., Bloodhart, Swim, & Zawadzki, under review; Gollwitzer, 2006).
Changes Across Time Within Individuals Process models of change explicitly include a temporal dimension to change. Self-regulation models are one example of process models that take into account feedback mechanisms. For instance, self-regulation involves responding to discrepancies between one’s current state relative to a standard, attending to the consequences of these responses, and readjusting behavior should it be needed to meet one’s standard (Carver & Scheier, 2011). Self-regulation also provides a connection to emotions, because affective states (e.g., self-reflective emotions or approach and avoidance emotions) can result when one’s current state is compared to a desired state. Stage models describe the development of change over time. According to one theory, individual behavioral change occurs in six stages: pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, and termination (Grimley et al., 1994). Although criticized for various reasons, including the practical difficulty in differentiating and identifying which stage individuals are in, the model is useful in noting that individuals may be at different stages of change and, as such, may require different types of interventions. Applying a decision-making process to reducing emissions, it is potentially useful to distinguish between pre– and post–energy upgrade decisions (Wilson, 2010, 2011). When doing so, however, it is important to realize that the reasons people give after making a decision may reflect justifications, rationalizations, or realizations and not the original motivations that led to their behaviors.
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions (p. 662) Changes Across Time Within and Across Social Networks Change processes can also occur within and across social networks. The implications of social networks for health have been well researched (Smith & Christakis, 2008), including access to social support, social influence processes, social engagement, and access to resources (Berkman & Glass, 2000). These same factors are likely important for climate change mitigating behaviors and may explain the success of neighborhood interventions used to encourage pro-environmental behaviors and social movements (Staats, Harland, & Wilke, 2004). Understanding how information, attitudes, and behaviors flow through networks and how social networks adapt to changes can be important for understanding how to influence large groups of individuals. These processes that involve interpersonal channels of communication may be particularly important in a culture that is saturated with marketing campaigns, all vying for individuals’ attention. The innovation-diffusion model (Rogers, 2003) is perhaps the most well-known description of the spread of new behavioral practices through social networks, although it does not provide a full description of the different types and qualities of social networks that can be found in research on social networks (e.g., Wasserman & Faust, 1994). The innovation-diffusion model describes rates of change through a community starting with innovators and moving to the last people to adopt an innovation, and highlights the importance of key individuals to facilitate these changes. This model has frequently been used to describe or assist the acceptance of new technologies within communities. As such, this model is likely useful for understanding the diffusion of green technologies and behaviors within communities. The model is also useful for attending to key individuals who can promote change within organizations. For instance, many universities employ students to help spread pro-environmental messages through campuses and attention to processes involved in innovation diffusion can assist the success of these programs (Bloodhart, Zawadzki, Swim, & Lenz-Watson, under review). Champions can also be found in business contexts, such as when particular individuals influence sustainability investments (Lewis & Carmen, 2010). Innovation-diffusion can potentially be strengthened when combined with social marketing approaches (Dearing, Maibach, & Buller, 2006). It is important, however, to acknowledge ethical criticism of innovation-diffusion models (Lambert, 2007; Stephenson, 2003; Yappa, 1977). One criticism is that the model assumes equality within communities. When there are inequalities, wealthy individuals are likely the first to adopt and benefit from an innovation. When their success improves their ability to produce more products at a lower cost, they can gain a competitive advantage that increases the gap between the wealthy and the poor. A second criticism is applicable when the value of innovations is determined by people outside a system and not those within a system. Reactance to these efforts or lack of sensitivity to cultural concerns about the innovation can impede the success and spread of innovations.
Change as Learning Learning models focus on the processes by which individuals learn new ideas and behaviors. Learning models can involve learning what behaviors are most likely to reduce emissions as well as learning skills to accomplish behavioral goals or overcome habits. The information-motivation-behavioral skill model is an example of a learning model that has successfully been used to encourage the adoption of health behaviors (Fisher, Fisher, Bryan, & Misovich, 2002). It has also been used to examine recycling (Seacat & Northrup, 2010), has the potential for addressing climate change mitigating behaviors, and can be practically helpful for interventions. Other learning models seek to understand deeper, transformational learning, which supports complex problemsolving and engages learners in the process of change (Darnton, 2008). The double-loop learning model is an example of such transformational learning processes. In this model, learning is composed of one loop where individuals engage in efforts to change a particular behavior, and a second loop where individuals reflect upon feedback from their first-loop learning efforts. This reflection results in changes in mental models or beliefs systems that can influence behavioral assumptions, goals, and strategies (Argyris & Schon, 1996). Hall, Taplin, and Goldstein (2009) illustrated this process through an Australian community’s efforts to address climate change policy.
Changes in Systems Double-loop learning is related to a larger set of behavioral change models that are grounded in systems thinking, which attends to how feedback processes and interrelations between parts of systems predict change within a
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions system (Hutchins, 1996). When applied to behavioral change, interventions (p. 663) to assist in changing systems focus on process rather than on how to achieve a particular outcome (Chapman, 2004). As a result change is more participatory and less directed by those outside of a system. Systems theory is a component of Earth Circles (2011 ), which involve small groups of individuals who think deeply about climate change and devise their own personal responses to climate change. They reflect on the web of life and how understanding climate change requires thinking about connections across people and the planet. From these reflections participants first address their own feelings of pain about environmental problems and, after doing so, proceed to actions developed from the group context. An example of a community-based systems approach is “transition towns,” in which individuals work together to create changes in their community and connect to other communities doing the same (Hopkins, 2011; Transitionnetwork.org, 2011). A principle of these efforts is that whole systems are the source of problems and not just isolated individual behaviors (such as recycling or driving smaller cars). As a result, changes have to address the complexity of system problems and not target individuals alone, in order to bring about behavioral change at both the individual and system levels. Ecological approaches by community psychologists are consistent with systems approaches to behavioral change (Kagan, 2011). Changes in systems are particularly important to fully address climate change and its impacts. That is, it may be insufficient and unrealistic to expect individuals to alter a specific set of behaviors without also attending to larger changes in the social and physical system where that behavior resides (Moisander, 2007). Further, more radical alterations are needed in everyday lifestyles, work, and leisure activities in order to achieve the degree of change necessary to reduce emissions within high-emitting communities, improve living standards within other communities, and maintain and restore biodiversity and animal habitats. Change will require time and willingness to let go of particular mind-sets about how the world should operate and openness to new possibilities that emerge through consideration of different views that can and cannot be represented (e.g., future generations and animals). Psychologically this requires, for instance, devising methods that encourage individuals and groups to step outside of typical patterns of thought, perhaps via mindfulness training (e.g., Brown & Kasser, 2005), and attending to ways that teams and organizations make decisions (e.g., Mohammed, Ferzandi, & Hamilton, 2010). In addition, it likely requires educational efforts, noted earlier, to increase the perceptions that climate change is an important enough problem worthy of the extended effort to devise adaptation and mitigation efforts.
Conclusion and Future Directions Climate change can be understood as a symptom of a larger issue, namely, the imbalance in the relations between humans and the natural world. It goes beyond our normal senses because it requires interpretation of current and projected patterns of events. As such, it requires trust in scientists because members of the general public do not have the training to understand the data describing these patterns of events. Given the projected and anticipated impacts on people and the biosphere, it is imperative that people engage in adaptation to prepare for and cope with the impacts and mitigation to forestall even worse impacts. Additionally, considerations about differential vulnerability and resilience to global climate change need to be taken into account when adaptation and mitigation strategies are proposed, and those who are impacted need to be given a chance to voice their differential concerns and needs. Many need to be involved in this process, and psychologists play an essential role. The present review illustrates numerous ways that psychologists can participate. More research needs to be done to be able to address the divide between those who believe and those who do not believe in climate change and to activate those who are not engaged. While the divide may appear large, it is possible that the gap can be addressed by listening to the issues and beliefs expressed by all sides of the debate to learn to better communicate (Hoffman, 2011). Work needs to be done to be able to effectively change human behavior, not only in terms of household lifestyles and consumer choices, but also with respect to corporate decision- and policy-making. Individuals can go only so far in changing their behaviors. Yet, individual behaviors and consumer demands can influence larger organizations (Collins, Steg, & Koning, 2007). More research is needed to better understand the ways that systems can change to provide the context for behavior change and understand social movements needed to activate large-scale changes. Psychological tools for changing behavior will be critical for achieving these changes. However, these tools need to be integrated into changes in social systems.
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Psychology and Climate Change: Beliefs, Impacts, and Human Contributions
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Notes: (1.) These differences likely have to do with the item wording used by Gallup and Pew; Pew asks participants, “Is there solid evidence the earth is warming: Yes, because of human activities; Yes, because of natural patterns; Yes, but don’t know why; No; Don’t know,” while Gallup asks, “From what you have heard or read, do you believe increases in the earth’s temperature over the last century are due more to: the effects of pollution from human activities or natural changes in the environment that are not due to human activities?” Janet K. Swim Janet K. Swim Department of Psychology The Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA
Ezra M. Markowitz Ezra M. Markowitz Environmental Studies Program Department of Psychology University of Oregon Eugene, OR
Brittany Bloodhart Brittany Bloodhart Department of Psychology The Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA
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Conclusions: Directions for the Future
Oxford Handbooks Online Conclusions: Directions for the Future Susan D. Clayton The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Subject: Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733026.013.0034
Abstract and Keywords This final chapter builds on the preceding ones to review the current state and future prospects of environmental and conservation psychology. Areas of shared coverage and common interest are identified, including an emphasis on interdisciplinarity, applicability, and person-in-context and a set of key theories that are utilized by many of the authors. Some directions for methodological development are identified. I conclude that environmental and conservation psychology represent different but interdependent and highly overlapping approaches to the study of people in environments. Keywords: theory, health, social justice, education, methodological issues, conceptual integration, future directions
Introduction Environmental psychology stands in an interesting place. On the one hand, the environmental challenges facing society have led to greater recognition of the significance of environments in determining individual and societal well-being. On the other hand, researchers around the globe express concern that the field has not established a firmer foothold (e.g., Reser, 2008; Sautkina, 2008): there are few degree-granting programs in environmental psychology, it is often unrepresented in undergraduate curricula, and many professional psychologists know little about it as an area of study. As described in the introductory chapter, increased awareness of environmental issues and their psychological components has stimulated research and led to the publication of a number of new journals. Conservation psychology arose in response to this increased sense of urgency around maintaining a healthy natural environment. How will the emergence of this new field affect the existing one? Will it increase the visibility and effectiveness of environmental psychology, or will it lead to fragmentation and marginalization? This handbook has reviewed an extensive array of research. In addition to describing current work in environmental and conservation psychology, it was hoped that a working definition of conservation psychology and the way in which it intersects with environmental psychology would emerge from a survey of the relevant literature. With a wide range of topics and literature reviewed, the chapters present a wealth of information about current research and theory. It is impossible to provide a comprehensive review, and much relevant work is excluded; even so, the coverage provides an important picture of both the present and future state of these related areas of study. This concluding chapter will describe some of the common foci and emerging themes and questions. I close with a discussion of the future relationship between environmental and conservation psychology.
(p. 674) Shared Coverage Reading from beginning to end of this volume—should anyone do this—reveals some areas of repetition; there are topics or research that appear in more than one chapter. This overlap among the chapters is a sign of strength. It
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Conclusions: Directions for the Future indicates, firstly, that researchers are relying to some degree on a shared, integrated set of knowledge that can be considered core to environmental and conservation psychology. It also illustrates a degree of interdependence among the topics that makes it impossible to fully partition the research into mutually exclusive categories or chapters. The shared knowledge includes several theories that are commonly utilized, as well as research addressing specific topics that are broadly relevant. Together, these provide a core “canon” that helps to define the field and, indirectly, provide an argument for the existence of the field of environmental and conservation psychology as a distinct focus within the broader discipline.
Major Theoretical Perspectives Ecological Perspective Ecological theory focuses on the person and the environment as an interdependent system. It emphasizes the individual as an active perceiver, stressing that the meaning of an environment is found in the way that it affects its occupants, and occupants perceive the environment as it enables them to function within it (Gibson, 1979). This is a profoundly innovative theory, and although it is a theory of perception, it is fundamentally associated with environmental psychology because it insists on the relevance of the environment. At its core, it invalidates the generally accepted distinctions between subject and object, and between perception and reality. Rather than conceptualizing the environment and the individual as independent entities that exert influence on each other, it describes reality as a set of relationships: attributes of the physical environment are defined with reference to attributes of the perceiver, and individual experiences (both mental and behavioral) are shaped and constrained by the environment in which they occur. Thus the study of psychology has to be the study of a person within an environment. Although the ecological perspective is explicitly utilized primarily by those chapters involved with environmental perception, its emphasis on dynamic, nested systems is relevant to research on all of the topics covered here, as is further discussed below.
Social Psychology Many environmental and conservation psychologists come out of a social psychology background, which shares with environmental psychology an emphasis on factors external to the individual. Thus, it is not surprising that a great deal of social psychological theory is utilized in the research and discussed in this volume. In particular, these chapters have made extensive reference to theories of attitude-behavior relationships, such as Stern et al.’s (1999) Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) theory. There is a rich history of research within social psychology on predictors of attitude change and on the relationship between attitudes and behavior. Conservation psychologists draw on this research to understand how people might be led to develop more pro-environmental attitudes and, more important, how and when such attitudes might lead to more sustainable behavior. VBN theory integrates individual and social factors, along with the cognitive element (beliefs) that has typically been the focus of public educational interventions. Additional perspectives from social psychology emphasize other social constructs, such as stereotypes and identity, as both causal agents and potential consequences of environmentally significant behaviors.
Evolutionary Theory Explanations based on an evolutionary perspective suggest ways in which different abilities and tendencies were likely to have been selected for during an environment of early adaptation. This perspective, which is increasingly influential on the field of psychology in general, has been particularly important in environmental and conservation psychology since the development of E. O. Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis (Kellert & Wilson, 1993). The suggestion that humans have an innate, inherited tendency to have an emotional response to elements of nonhuman nature both suggests testable research hypotheses and provides a broad justification for research focused on the natural environment. The evolutionary perspective, if taken seriously, should stimulate research designed to investigate the genetic links behind responses to natural environments. However, we must be cautious about committing the naturalistic fallacy; even if the biophilia hypothesis were true, it does not by itself provide an argument for protecting natural environments.
Attention Restoration Theory
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Conclusions: Directions for the Future This theory, which describes nature as particularly useful in helping people to restore diminished (p. 675) attentional resources (Kaplan, 1995; Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989; Kaplan & Berman, 2010), has been influential in both documenting and partially explaining the benefits of natural environments. Grounded in controlled experimental research, Attention Restoration Theory (ART) incorporates psychological phenomena from attention and selfregulation to stress and social interactions. Particularly relevant to this volume is the way in which ART links internal cognitive processes to individual well-being and, by implication, to a healthy natural environment.
Health Questions of health and well-being, both individual and social, are central to psychology as a discipline. One of the contributions of environmental psychology has been to draw attention to the impacts of physical environments on well-being, as is exemplified in the chapter by Brown and Werner. In fact, as described by Fornara and Andrade, some of the first studies in the field of environmental psychology concerned the influence of physical attributes and design features of psychiatric hospitals on their inmates. The rise of conservation psychology reflects not only an increasing concern for environmental health, but also an emphasis on its interdependence with human health. Not all of the chapters highlight health to the same extent, but together they illustrate a range of ways of thinking about health, and include both positive and negative environmental impacts. Awareness of these impacts, in turn, provides an anthropocentric motivation for concern about the well-being of the natural environment.
Environmental Benefits The evidence for positive psychological effects of nature is growing. The chapters by Staats, Russell, and Wells and Rollings most explicitly describe the results of this research, which has demonstrated that exposure to elements of nature can have positive impacts on cognitive performance, affective state, and social relations. Discussion of this research can also be found in almost all of the chapters on specific environments: even within workplaces, health care settings, or correctional institutions, elements of nature can benefit the occupants. In addition, many of the other chapters feature the possibility of more diffuse or indirect environmental benefits: on sense of self, for example (Clayton; Corral-Verdugo; Myers). The chapter by Vining and Merrick, though not specifically about health, suggests the possibility that epiphanies might also be considered as contributing to human well-being and that nature has some beneficial effects that are harder to quantify than enhanced health or increased longevity. Suedfeld, too, describes the possibility of positive effects from even stressful natural events, and Brown and Werner remind us that the physical environment can have aesthetic as well as functional value.
Environmental Disbenefits The environmental movement was largely prompted by disbenefits: evidence for the harmful effects of a polluted environment. While environmental toxins in the air, soil, and water remain a concern, Stansfeld, Clark, and Crombie’s chapter focuses on the effects of an often-overlooked type of pollution: noise. Frequently all of these environmental disbenefits result reciprocally from harms that human behavior has inflicted on the environment. The chapter on climate change discusses what may be the most significant impact humans have had and are having on the environment by increasing the emission of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, and details some probable negative impacts on humans. Even well-functioning environments, however, can have negative effects on human health, as suggested by Lindell in his chapter on response to environmental disaster and by Suedfeld’s chapter on extreme environments. One of the defining characteristics of nature is that it lies outside of human control. It is misleading and disingenuous to imply that there is a perfect relationship between human and environmental health.
Justice Consideration of environmental benefits and disbenefits leads to a recognition that these are not distributed equally, and that there are social justice implications to their allocation (Swim et al.). Conflicts arise when people perceive an unjust distribution. This injustice may arise from a lack of concern for the benefits or disbenefits experienced by an out-group—a lack of concern that arises from disparities in social power and from the dynamics of group identities. Opotow’s chapter is eloquent about the mechanisms behind this sort of social injustice, and Clayton describes some of the political and psychological issues surrounding identities. However, injustice may also result from a failure to consider different sources of environmental value, or from disagreement about what
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Conclusions: Directions for the Future values should be prioritized. Thus, different human values (cf. Steg & deGroot) and even the question of nonhuman values (Syme & Nancarrow) are also relevant. Conflicts involving imbalance of power are not always easy to (p. 676) solve, but they are easy to think about. Injustice can be a powerful motivator of action, as people seek to change their own environments. Conflicts involving different conceptions of value may be intractable, and require creative management, in which the competing positions of all stakeholders coexist in uneasy tension, rather than resolution (Samuelson & Barratt).
Education In a narrow sense, education involves the transmission of knowledge and the development of competencies, traditionally in a formal learning environment. This continues to be an area of interest for environmental and conservation psychologists, who have given a great deal of attention to the environments that best facilitate learning (Sanoff & Walden) and to the types of competencies that might be required for environmentally literate citizens (Wals). In a broader sense, however, education may include attempts to modify attitudes and behavior, as discussed by Gifford and Sussman and by Schultz and Kaiser. Education can occur outside the traditional classroom, in informal learning environments and throughout the life span, which may be particularly likely to foster affective and behavioral responses (Chawla & Derr). Place-based education can both incorporate and foster the emotional ties of place attachment to encourage education that has emotional strength and significance. Although education has more typically been considered an attempt to transform the individual and maximize his or her potential, education has always also included an element of socialization into societal standards. It has a strong prescriptive component, indicating the ways in which people should behave and the things they should know. Thus, the growing governmental emphasis on environmental education is of interest not only because of its potential impact on students but also because of what it shows about societies’ expectations for their citizens, which are changing to reflect the new environmental conditions that societies face.
Common Themes In addition to shared content, a number of shared themes can be seen to emerge from these chapters. These themes suggest a common set of understandings about the ways we should be thinking about environmental and conservation psychology, as well as indicating new ideas and hypotheses to direct future research.
The Need for Methodological Precision As seen in Table 34.1, many of the chapters refer to the need for careful measurement and rigorous methodology. Several authors (e.g., Clayton, Gifford, Heft, Korpela, Lindell) point to inconsistencies in the ways that terms are used and defined. Attitudes, values, emotions, and identity are all terms that are sometimes used loosely. If psychology is to be taken seriously as a science, its methodology must be clear and precise. This does not imply exclusivity; a single attitude scale does not have to “win out” over competing scales, nor must a single measure of environmentally responsible behavior be used in every study. Rather, it requires that we think carefully about the measures we use, what they are measuring, and whether they are appropriate for a given study. It also suggests that we should rely more on established measures, when they have been carefully validated, rather than developing ad hoc new measures that offer no distinct advantage. Although qualitative methods will continue to be important in describing specific environments and individual experience, we can endeavor to identify the important attributes of these phenomena in order to make comparisons and enhance generalizability.
The Importance of Scale Psychology encompasses many different levels of analysis, from intra-individual to interpersonal to group to societal, but does not always integrate them. Many of the authors examine phenomena at multiple scales. Some (e.g., Brown & Werner) explicitly describe these as micro- or macrolevel perspectives, referring to aspects of the environment that characterize a specific individual’s experience as contrasted with those that characterize a neighborhood, community, or society. Fornara and Andrade, utilizing the language of Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) systems theory, include a “meso” perspective describing the interactions and relationships among microsystems. Others avoid specific terms, but nevertheless incorporate different levels of analysis. The chapter by Bonaiuto and
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Conclusions: Directions for the Future Alves provides a useful example of the way in which common themes can be explored from the home to the neighborhood, outdoor urban spaces, and finally the city overall. Such an exploration more fully illuminates people’s experience of their environments as well as expanding our understanding of the way such phenomena as segregation and activities emerge at different scales. Levels of analysis apply not just to research but also to individual perceivers, who may think primarily about their own outcomes and well-being (p. 677) Table 34.1 Directions for Future Research Theory • Increase use of transactional perspective. • Develop more integrated, overarching theory, for example, explaining health effects of nature. • Include more focus on positive psychology, for example, the possibility of positive effects of extreme environmental events. • Integrate work from different areas of psychology and from different disciplines, for example, utilize organizational psych and group psych frameworks to evaluate environmental activism. Measurement • Increase reliability and validity in measurement, for example, of exposure to noise. • Include more types of measures, including behavioral and observational measures. • Develop better environmental assessments, for example, their psychological resources and how they are used by children; ways of assessing residential environments; specific features that are preferred in environments. • Develop better assessments of individual competencies and experiences, including criteria for assessing quality of life, sustainability competence. • Use qualitative research to develop typologies: of environmental emotions; of responses to disasters; of environmental conflict resolution cases. Methodology • Increase usage of techniques such as fMRI, physiological arousal, and hormonal measures. • Conduct more longitudinal studies, for example, of decisions about the allocation of environmental resources, of noise exposure. • Conduct more qualitative research, for example, on children’s experience. • Conduct better controlled studies on the impacts of environmental variables, that allow us to partial out the effects of socio-demographic variables and other confounding factors. • Incorporate different subject samples, such as policy makers, non-Western samples. Pay close attention to socio-demographic variables that may moderate responses to environmental conditions. • Make more extensive use of multilevel modeling, mediation, and moderation analyses. For example, how do Page 5 of 13
Conclusions: Directions for the Future • Make more extensive use of multilevel modeling, mediation, and moderation analyses. For example, how do the activities people engage in moderate or mediate the impacts of their environments? • Consider multiplicative effects of various environmental stressors. • Conduct multi-case comparisons of naturally occurring events, such as environmental conflicts and arguments made about environmental justice, to generate hypotheses about important variables. Application • Utilize affordances to promote environmentally sustainable behavior; health. • Apply results of wayfinding research to aid in environmental navigation. • Apply results of justice research to guide environmental policy. • Apply results of emotion research to promote environmentally sustainable behavior. • Apply results of research on restorative environments to design of homes and public places. • Increase outcomes assessment, evidence-based design, and post-occupancy evaluations. Think about how to make research available to designers and to the public and how to motivate them to access it. • Increase participatory planning, for example, in cities and schools. • Think about the different needs of different users of specific environments, such as health care environments. • Encourage increased access by researchers to correctional environments. Encourage the managers of these facilities to think beyond reduced aggression to consider the possibility for positive impacts of the environment on inmates. • Consider the phenomenon of environmental epiphanies when managing natural places for human leisure. • Consider potential impact, as well as feasibility, of change when researching pro-environmental behaviors and interventions designed to increase them. (p. 678) or about the outcomes and well-being of the larger group. Justice is one construct that can appear very different at an individual level than a more collective level, and have different implications for actions: government policy may seem more suited to maximizing collective justice, while individuals may be primarily motivated to achieve personal justice (Syme & Nancarrow). Perhaps the individually focused bias toward an assessment of their own personal outcomes could be overcome by providing them with social norms that emphasize the way society has collectively chosen to act. Individuals are shaped by their cultures, and the tendency to take an individual or a collective perspective is clearly stronger in some societies than others (Milfont).
Person-in-Context Studying behavior in an environmental context is challenging, because it pulls against the goal of attaining experimental control. Although a great deal of psychological research has attempted to isolate the person from social and physical factors in order to draw generalizable conclusions about human functioning, environmental psychology questions the validity of this approach, arguing that people react to and interact with specific environmental contexts. However, contexts incorporate not only physical components, which tend to be relatively static, but also dynamically changing social components. Acknowledging the complexity, specificity, and
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Conclusions: Directions for the Future relevance of the physical environment should not require ignoring the complexity of individuals; individual differences in responses to environments are important to recognize while studying those environments. The bulk of research in environmental psychology could probably be characterized as representing an interactional or organismic perspective, in which people and environments interact but can be identified as independently existing components. The transactional approach, going further, portrays people as embedded in physical and social contexts (Altman & Rogoff, 1987; Heft, 2001). The focus of analysis is an event, characterized by interactions and relationships among people, environments, and processes. It is distinguished from a perspective that focuses solely on the person or characterizes the person as separable from his or her environment. Thus, places cannot be defined without considering the perspective of the people occupying those places. The effect of environmental stimuli cannot be separated from their interpretation by the perceiver; noise, for example, is defined not by its attributes of volume or pitch but by the fact that it is unwanted. Disorderly neighborhoods may be disliked because they are seen to indicate a social threat, the risk of crime. Time is also an aspect of these contexts, which function dynamically to maintain some level of stability and equilibrium.
Temporal Dimension Time is important to consider as an aspect of values, outcomes, and behaviors. Steg and deGroot identify the temporal dimension as particularly important in determining which of multiple valued outcomes will be prioritized. Individuals who take action to promote environmental sustainability are by definition oriented toward the future to some extent, placing greater value on future outcomes than on present comfort, while those who live an unsustainable lifestyle are more focused on the present or the past. Similarly, Syme and Nancarrow note that definitions of justice can vary depending on the time frame that is used to evaluate the distribution (p. 679) of costs and benefits. Cultures differ in their temporal orientation (Milfont); what social and psychological factors promote a future orientation? Does temporal discounting relate to social discounting? It is not just individual perceptions that assign different values to the same outcome at different points in time. As Schultz and Kaiser point out, even the determination of a behavioral outcome as good or bad varies over time. The importance of temporal change is particularly highlighted in the chapter by Swim, Markowitz, and Bloodheart: not only does the significance of an environmentally relevant behavior change over time, but behavior changes also are part of an ongoing process rather than a one-time phenomenon. Longitudinal research that examines behavior change over time would answer important questions about how changing one behavior leads to, or inhibits, other behavioral changes. Perceptions of change over time are also fundamental to how the public responds to climate change. What is the role of the temporal dimension in environmental perception, aesthetics, or wayfinding? How do seasonal changes affect environmental preferences? How does the flow of information as we move through an environment influence our perceptions? Gibson (1950) described the phenomenon of optic flow, demonstrating that the change in visual input over time has informational value; recent research on the auditory looming effect (e.g., Neuhoff, 2001) reminds us that environments are perceived through multiple sensory channels. From a systems theory approach, environments are defined by their history as well as by their attributes at a given point in time. The issue of dose-response relationships, that is, quantifying the level of exposure to environmental attributes that leads to a particular outcome, also concerns time, because duration is one determinant of the overall level of exposure. People who spend a few hours seated next to a potted plant may be getting the same dose of nature as people who spend a few minutes driving through a stand of trees. Questions about the experience of individuals with different levels of mobility, raised by Moser, relate to time in that people who traverse the city more extensively or more frequently are exposed to it for greater lengths of time. In the 1987 handbook, Proshansky encouraged greater attention to change over time, and that suggestion is implicitly or explicitly echoed in the current handbook.
Individual Versus Collective Research on the commons dilemma has been a feature of work on environmental sustainability since Garrett Hardin wrote about it in 1968. A situation in which individually rational decisions to exploit a shared resource result in collective harm is all too applicable to environmental problems, such as the collapse of fish populations, the destruction of the rainforest, and a shortage of fresh water. The key point of this work has been the difficulty of getting individuals to act to protect collective resources. In all of these social dilemmas individuals are asked to
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Conclusions: Directions for the Future modify their own behavior—for example, to use fewer resources—not primarily because of its practical implications for them personally—in most cases, we will not perceive significant restrictions on our own access to these resources—but because of the consequences for the societal collective. Thus, as Steg and deGroot argue, people need to be able to prioritize collective over individualist values. Increasingly, researchers in the area of pro-environmental behavior have recognized that in many cases it can be conceptualized as a type of altruistic behavior, motivated by the same desires to promote the well-being of others that prompt other types of helping (cf. Corral-Verdugo, 2010). But as Batson has argued (e.g., Batson, Ahmad, & Stocks, 2004), empathy can encourage a focus on another individual that actually inhibits the achievement of justice. Whether altruistic impulses are channeled toward pro-environmental behavior or are more specifically focused on ameliorating the suffering of a specific individual or animal may depend on the extent to which people are able to adopt a collective rather than an individualistic perspective. Cultural differences in individualist or collectivist orientation demonstrate that collectivism does not automatically lead to more pro-environmental behavior, but they also provide fertile territory for further examination of the relationship between collectivism and environmentalism.
Interdisciplinarity Psychology has been called a “hub” discipline, straddling the border between natural and social science (e.g., Clay, 2011). This position makes it easier for psychologists to engage in productive dialogue with a variety of other disciplines, looking outward beyond psychology to incorporate information from chemistry and biology, to sociology and political science, and even the arts and humanities. All these perspectives are valuable in attempting to understand something as complex as an environment and the ways in which people interact with it. Interdisciplinarity implies not just combining the input of different disciplines, but also working (p. 680) collaboratively with other disciplines to solve problems that can’t be encompassed within the scope of a single discipline. Environmental psychologists have traditionally interacted with architects and design professionals to create environments that better suit human needs and capacities. They have worked with educators, addressing both the context and the content of the educational process, while also providing expertise for many other applied projects. With the development of conservation psychology, there is a new emphasis on communication with biologists (to design effective conservation plans), sociologists (to understand social impacts of environmental issues), and policy makers in order to better understand, and more effectively address, the ways in which people and the environment affect each other. Interdisciplinarity is increasingly common in scientific research, and for environmental and conservation psychologists, the ability to work with other disciplines is key.
Applications One of the key tenets of environmental psychology is that relationships between people and their environments are bidirectional. The fact that environments affect people means that research applications are important. The fact that people affect environments means that research applications are possible. The applications of environmental and conservation psychology are extensive. Some of the applications are designed to address specific problems, such as providing healthy workplaces, successful schools, or functioning prisons. Others intend to address more global social problems, such as sustainability and climate change. Several of the chapters remind us that many problems can only be managed, rather than solved. Some sources of environmental conflicts reflect incompatible goals and values (Samuelson & Barratt). Climate change cannot at this point be avoided; people will have to adapt. These chapters also highlight a frequent gap between research and its application. Researchers working in these fields need to give careful consideration to the best ways to communicate their results to practitioners, as the final step in the research process.
Considerations for the Future The authors of this handbook were asked to end their chapters by identifying future directions for the field. The specific research questions are left mostly to the individual chapters, but Table 34.1 groups their more general suggestions into three separate categories: methodological concerns, theoretical concepts, and applications. Clearly the authors see great potential for the applications of this research. There is much scope for existing research to inform the design of buildings, programs, and policies. Researchers might also benefit from considering
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Conclusions: Directions for the Future potential applications while designing their studies, including concerns of feasibility, impact, and dissemination of the results to those who can make use of them (Schultz, 2011). The suggestions also reflect awareness that there is room for improvement in the methodology as well as for the development of more integrative theory. Research in conservation psychology, in particular, has not emphasized the theoretical richness that has been found in environmental psychology. Although by its nature it is more problem-oriented, it would do well to learn from the insights provided by systems theory and consider the multiple, nested levels of influence that are involved in any specific event. For example, research that is focused on addressing a specific problem related to sustainable behavior often tries to extrapolate from research in different contexts; this runs the risk of erroneously assuming that people and patterns of behavior can be isolated from their environments and simply transferred from one to the next. Finally, some of the authors’ suggestions anticipate the changes that lie ahead. These changes will include new developments in technology, new models and structures for society, and alterations in the natural environment.
Changing Technologies Brain Research Advances in neuroimaging and our understanding of brain processing allow a new window on the ways in which people perceive and respond to their environments. Changes in brain activity are no more “real” than other types of changes, but data reflecting brain activity have several advantages. In some cases they can show more subtle effects, because there are some neurological responses to stimuli that are never expressed as overt behavior and because neurological responses are not for the most part affected by self-presentational concerns. Results from fMRI studies, in combination with a growing understanding of neuroanatomy and how the brain is organized, can also help us to understand what certain effects or differences “mean.” For example, there is a great deal of research on gender differences in spatial abilities. Research using neuroimaging techniques can illuminate the extent to which these differences might really represent different strategies, or attentional tendencies, rather than abilities. (p. 681) Virtual Environments Virtual environments enable new research approaches but also raise new research questions. What is the ecological validity of a virtual environment? That is, how effective is it in simulating a real environment, and how does it differ? In what ways do they enable us to get a better understanding of how people respond to real environments, and in what ways do they represent a new type of environment that should be examined in its own right (cf. Kahn, 2011)? The use of virtual environments could allow a degree of experimental control that has been difficult to attain, enabling laboratory-based research on reactions to natural environments, but researchers should be cautious in assuming that responses to virtual environments perfectly reflect responses in the real world.
Computer-Based Measurement Computers allow us to easily assess reaction time in order to elucidate underlying attitudes and beliefs that are either inaccessible to conscious awareness or subject to self-censorship. Schultz’s work with the Implicit Association Test (e.g., Schultz & Tabanico, 2007) has measured the strength of the association between concepts of self and concepts of nature. How do implicit environmental attitudes and beliefs differ from explicit ones, and when is it methodologically preferable to use the former? What are new ways in which reaction time can be used to assess relevant cognitive constructs while circumventing the influence of social desirability? Other researchers are beginning to investigate ways to study people in real time and real environments using cellular telephones or other portable electronic devices. Combined with geographic information systems software, which enables a new specificity in identifying environments, researchers have the potential to study people-inenvironments in much more detailed ways than was previously the case (e.g., Lazer et al., 2009).
Changing Societies It is unnecessary to point out that societies are changing. What may be less obvious is the way in which these
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Conclusions: Directions for the Future changes affect, and are even defined by, the ways in which people experience their environments. One of the most dramatic changes in recent years has been the mass migration from the countryside to the city, so that the majority of people now live in urban areas (cf. Moser). Now cities themselves are changing, becoming larger and more sprawling, and arguably more like “agglomerations” of multiple distinct areas rather than places where people of different backgrounds meet together in a commonly shared public space (Moser). Migrations are also implicated in the displacement of communities from their traditional homes that is caused by climate change (Korpela; Swim et al.). So in the future group identities may be less likely to be based on shared experiences of place. The result may be a reduced emphasis on shared group identities, or it may be that group identities will be increasingly based on abstractions like ideology. Family structures have also changed, in ways that affect people’s environmental experiences. In American families, shrinking family size has meant that more children have their own rooms. Dual-career couples result in more children spending time in day care settings at an early age. Of course, the increased reliance on information technology both at home and in the schools has specific physical implications as well as more intangible psychological consequences, many of which remain to be explored. Finally, work environments are changing: average job tenure has decreased, with more temporary and short-term jobs; telecommuting is on the increase; and more and more jobs entail hours outside of the traditional workday. These sorts of changes, simultaneously social and physical, present questions that are not only new but also pressing; research can help to understand the impact of these changes as well as to distinguish better and worse ways of responding to them.
Changing Environments The environment itself is changing: getting warmer, more polluted, less biodiverse. A reflective environmental psychology will study these changes and the ways in which people adapt to them. We need more research that looks at the big picture: not just how people are affected by changes in ambient room temperature, by exposure to natural disasters, by the presence of plants, but how people are affected by changes in global temperature, increased frequency of disasters, desertification. An effective conservation psychology will anticipate the ways in which natural environments can be protected in the future. In terms of pro-environmental action, for example, behaviors like recycling or replacing incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescents may become obsolete in the Western world as recycling programs become institutionalized and incandescents are retired. What behaviors are likely to be significant 10 years from now?
(p. 682) What Lies Ahead: The Integration of Environmental and Conservation Psychology At the broadest level, it is not possible to draw a firm line between environmental and conservation psychology. This reflects a similar inability to fully distinguish between other conceptual pairings, often presented as opposites. The distinction between built and natural environments, always questionable (where does a termite mound fit?), has become increasingly hard to maintain. Zoos, parks, and other exemplars of managed nature demonstrate that something that appears “natural” can be subject to varying degrees of human design, without losing some important attributes of natural environments. Green spaces are important components of urban environments. Green buildings and other technology designed to use fewer environmental resources are completely manufactured, but pro-environmental attitudes shape their use. At its root, the attempt to compartmentalize built versus natural environments, though it is a useful methodological shortcut, reflects a broader conceptual distinction between humans and nature that is both difficult to maintain and dangerous in its implications. Related distinctions, equally problematic, are often made between human and environmental health, or between psychological and social impacts. Sustainability, the currently popular term for describing the kind of society we want to see, has multiple meanings, but overall emphasizes the integration of individual, social, and environmental well-being. The increasing popularity of the concept serves as a reminder of the many ways in which they are interdependent—as do many of the chapters in this handbook. Social and environmental impacts are intertwined. People live in environments, and in the long term healthy individuals will not thrive in an unjust society or an unhealthy environment. Taking action to protect the environment may have both direct and indirect benefits for those involved. A final distinction that this book calls into question is that between basic and applied research. Although it is
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Conclusions: Directions for the Future tempting to characterize conservation psychology as more “applied” than environmental psychology—or perhaps as an applied branch of environmental psychology—conservation psychology, despite being driven by the goal of environmental conservation, can incorporate rich theoretical discussions that will inform efforts to promote proenvironmental behavior. A problem-based foundation can be a powerful source of hypotheses and theoretical innovations. Environmental psychology has also generated important theoretical models while also working to improve the effective functioning of specific environments. It would be difficult to characterize any of the chapters in this handbook as representing a purely basic, or purely applied, perspective.
The Role and Responsibility of Psychology Environmental problems are human problems, not only because they are caused by human patterns of consumption and reproduction, but also because they are defined as problematic from a human perspective—the environment itself will adapt to whatever changing conditions are presented. There is a growing recognition that the environmental challenges we face must be seen as social as well as environmental issues, issues that have a direct relevance to human behavior and well-being and thus stand at the very center of psychology. As scientists and professionals concerned with human health and behavior, psychologists cannot be absent from this discussion. Swim et al. (2011) linked research on climate change to the Ethics Code of the American Psychological Association, arguing that the issue may present psychologists with an ethical obligation to be involved. We can broaden that charge to environmental problems in general: because environmental changes have profound implications for individual and social well-being, psychologists should be mindful of them and should consider what psychology has to offer. Environmental and conservation psychology represent the evolving psychological response to these problems. What is the relationship between them? While environmental psychology represents a topical focus of study, conservation psychology is oriented toward change. Borrowing from the chapter by Schultz and Kaiser, we might talk about them in terms of intention and impact. Work is environmental psychology when its central focus is the physical environment, how it is perceived or used by humans, or how it affects humans. Work from any area of psychology is conservation psychology when it intends to contribute to a healthy relationship between humans and the natural world, or when it has that effect. Clearly there is much overlap, and research may be categorized according to its impact even when the researcher’s intention was different. Take, as an example, research on workplace design (Veitch). Optimal workplaces will promote the productivity, efficiency, and well-being of the workers, so research may include information on the benefits (p. 683) of incorporating nature into the workplace. It may also include attempts to encourage sustainable behavior in the workplace, as this will increasingly be considered part of normal workplace functioning. So, does this represent environmental psychology or conservation psychology? Both. Environmental and conservation psychology are in a symbiotic relationship. Without environmental psychology, conservation psychology would lack the theory and the methodological tools to examine its core focus: the natural environment. Without conservation psychology, environmental psychology would lose an opportunity for relevance. In the 1987 handbook of environmental psychology, several chapters were devoted to assessing the past and predicting the future of the field. Bob Sommer laid out an agenda that encouraged environmental psychologists to examine the philosophical and moral underpinnings of the field; to conduct more research on broad issues such as resource conservation, population, pollution, and conservation of wildlife; and to address the issue of advocacy, showing a willingness to make prescriptive as well as descriptive statements. Conservation psychology may, in part, be a response to this call. Given the questions that remain unanswered about the relationship between psychological processes and the physical environment, and given the pressing need to modify that relationship in order to protect and maintain a healthy environment, the goal should be to recruit as many psychologists as possible, of all stripes and disciplinary orientations, to work alongside others interested in the human-environment nexus to confront questions and problems of common concern. (p. 684)
References Altman, I., & Rogoff, B. (1987). Worldviews in psychology: Trait, interactional, organismic, and transactional perspectives. In D. Stokols & I. Altman (Eds.), Handbook of environmental psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 7–40). New York:
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Conclusions: Directions for the Future Wiley. Batson, C. D., Ahmad, N., & Stocks, E. L. (2004). Benefits and liabilities of empathy-induced altruism. In A. G. Miller (Ed.), The social psychology of good and evil (pp. 359–385). New York: Guilford Press. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Clay, R. A. (2011). Connecting with other disciplines. Monitor on Psychology, 42(11), 41. Corral-Verdugo, V. (2010). The psychological dimensions of sustainability. In J. Valentin & L. Gamez (Eds.), Environmental psychology: New developments (pp. 1–27). New York: Nova Science. Gibson, J. (1950). The perception of the visual world. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162, 1243–1248. Heft, H. (2001). Ecological psychology in context: James Gibson, Roger Braker, and the legacy of William James’s radical empiricism. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Kahn, P. (2011). Technological nature: Adaptation and the future of human life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kaplan, R., & Kaplan, S. (1989) The experience of nature: A psychological perspective. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Kaplan, S. (1995). The restorative benefits of nature: Toward an integrative framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15, 169–182. Kaplan, S., & Berman, M. G. (2010). Directed attention as a common resource for executive functioning and selfregulation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 43–57. Kellert, S., & Wilson, E. O. (Eds.). (1993). The biophilia hypothesis. Washington, DC: Island Press. Lazer, D., Pentland, A., Adamic, L., Aral, S., Barabasi, A.,…Van Alstyne, M. (2009). Life in the network: The coming age of computational social science. Science, 323, 721–723. Neuhoff, J. G. (2001) An adaptive bias in the perception of looming auditory motion. Ecological Psychology, 13(2), 87–110. Proshansky, H. (1987). The field of environmental psychology: Securing its future. In D. Stokols & I. Altman (Eds.), Handbook of environmental psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 1467–1488). New York: Wiley. Reser, J. (2008). Environmental psychology: An endangered species? InPsych, 30(4), 18–19. Sautkina, E. (Ed.). (2008). Environmental psychology in different parts of the world. Bulletin of People-Environment Studies, 34. Schultz, P. W. (2011). Conservation means behavior. Conservation Biology, 25, 1080–1083. Schultz, P. W., & Tabanico, J. (2007). Self, identity, and the natural environment: Exploring implicit connections with nature. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 37(6), 1219–1247. Sommer, R. (1987). Dreams, reality, and the future of environmental psychology. In D. Stokols & I. Altman (Eds.), Handbook of environmental psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 1489–1511). New York: Wiley. Stern, P., Dietz, T., Abel, T., Guagnano, G., & Kalof, L. (1999). A value-belief-norm theory of support for social movements: The case of environmentalism. Human Ecology Review, 6(2), 81–97. Swim, J., Stern, P., Doherty, T., Clayton, S., Reser, J.,…Howard, G. (2011). Psychology’s contribution to understanding and addressing global climate change. American Psychologist, 66, 241–250.
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Conclusions: Directions for the Future
Susan D. Clayton Susan D. Clayton is Whitmore-Williams Professor of Psychology at the College of Wooster in Ohio. With a PhD in social psychology from Yale, she is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and a past president of the Society for Environmental, Population, and Conservation Psychology. Her research addresses the social context surrounding people’s relationship with the natural environment.
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Index
Oxford Handbooks Online Index The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology Edited by Susan D. Clayton Print Publication Date: Sep 2012 Subject: Psychology Online Publication Date: Nov 2012
Index A accessibility food environments, 472–474 perception, 469 physical activity, 466–467 accessible identity model, 108 accidents, 380 accountability, equity, 96 accreditation, wilderness experience programs (WEPs), 438–439 action. See environmental action action competence, 528 Active Living Research (ALR), 515 active self, wilderness experience program, 432, 433, 434–435 activity reflection, wilderness experience program, 432, 433, 435–436 activity theory, bettering environment, 422 acute mountain sickness (AMS), 353–354 Adams, Scott, 250 adaptation, climate change, 654–655 adaptive behaviors, city life, 207–208 adaptive management, policy dialogues, 615 Adler, Albert, 165 adolescents place attachments, 118, 153–154 wilderness experience programs (WEPs), 437–441 advocacy coalition framework (ACF), collaborative partnership, 602–604 aesthetic epiphanies, 498–499, 502–503 aesthetics
Page 1 of 62
Index children’s drawings, 120 environmental perception and, 28–29, 37 natural landscapes, 333–334 physical activity, 468–469, 470 student experiences in outdoors, 494 walkability, 465 affective connection, humans to nature, 133, 139 affordances, 12 direct perception and environmental psychology, 26–27 environment, 116 environmental, 221 evaluations and actions, 224 everyday life, 222 Gibsonian concept, 25–27, 34 investigations and extensions of, 26 model for examining, 223, 225 tool for evaluation and design, 27–28 water misuse, 586 Against All Odds: Holocaust Survivors and the Successful Lives They Made in America, 348 Age, environmental concern, 68 aggregation. See segregation and aggregation air pollution, Harlem, 419–420 Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM), 423–424 Alaska, Mt. McKinley, 354 allocation environmental, 93–94 resources, 422–423 alternative dispute resolution (ADR), 604 altitude sickness, 353 altruistic values, 84–86 Alzheimer’s disease (AD), 50, 51 American Camping Association, 439 American dream potential health threats, 460 scenario, 459–460 upstream approach, 475–476 American Journal of Insanity, 430 American Psychological Association, 4, 645 American Psychologist, 2, 4 American Recovery and Reinvest Act of 2009, 564 Amnesty International, 88 amotivation, 67 Amsterdam, air disaster and noise annoyance, 383 analysis and deliberation (A&D) collaborative processes, 606–607 Page 2 of 62
Index empirical studies, 616–617 anchor-point theory of spatial cognition, 48 Anholt-GfK Roper City Brands Index (CBI), 241 Annan, Kofi, 416 annoyance, noise exposure and, 383–384 anonymity, privacy, 318 Antarctic stations extreme environment, 355–357 psychological effects, 355–357 anxiety emotional burdens and worries, 132, 138 gender and wayfinding, 52 anxiety disorder not otherwise specified, 379 appropriation home to neighborhood, 214 spatial extension of, 214–215 aquariums, children’s development, 122 architecture correctional environments, 324 health care design research, 305 health care environments, 298–300 archival analysis, water conservation, 588 art, health care environment, 306 The Art and Science of Negotiation, Raiffa, 604 articulation index (AI), 254 Association of Experiential Education, 438, 439 asthma, Harlem, 419–420 Atlanta, Georgia, social environment, 471 attachment theory. See also place attachment children and nature, 120–121 interplay between social and physical attachments, 153–154 attention, work environment, 253–254 attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), 380, 440, 513, 630, 636 attention restoration theory (ART), 120, 446–447, 630, 674–675 comparison to psycho–evolutionary theory, 448–449 human health and nature, 511–513 integration, 449 natural landscapes, 336–338, 343 attitude object, 65 attitudes construct, 65–66 human mitigation behavior, 658–659 natural landscapes, natural resources and social dilemmas, 342–343 urban green areas, 222 urban green areas and natural landscapes, 341–342 Page 3 of 62
Index See also environmental attitudes auditory distraction work environment, 253–254 Australia cross-cultural model, 105 environmental policy, 98 justice, 109 natural landscape preference, 339 neighborhood design, 476 place-making, 158 (p. 686) pro-environmental behaviors, 157 school technology trends, 288 Australian Psychological Society, 4 auto maintenance, 380 autonomy, 166, 168, 185, 186 awakening epiphanies, 499, 503 awareness, water conservation, 588 B baby boom, school buildings, 278 Bacon, Stephen, 430–431 bananas, fair trade, 421–422 Barker, Roger G., 11, 12, 14, 34–35 behavior settings, 31–33 behavior stream, 30–31 eco-behavioral science, 29–34 Beagle, voyage of, 13–14 beef production, 473 behavior. See also disaster responses; human mitigation behavior; pro-environmental behavior correctional settings, 318–324 domains, 557, 559 environmental identity, 174–175, 175 myths about disaster victims, 391–392 natural landscapes, 340–341 noise effects, 376 prisons trying to change, with force, 317–318 transactional and ecological models to healthy, 461–463 types of consequences, 563 urban life, 207–208 values and, 87–89 water conservation, 586–588 behavioral intentions, water conservation, 589 behavioral interventions, water conservation, 590–591 behavioral plasticity, 574 behavior settings, 12, 31–33 Page 4 of 62
Index behavior stream, 30–31 beliefs global climate change, 646–653 human mitigation behavior, 658–659 water conservation, 589 belonging, environmental epiphany, 489 Berry, Wendell, 23 bias issues, cross-cultural research, 195–196 bike paths, cycling, 466 biocentrism vs. anthropocentrism, natural landscapes, 340 biological processes, relational, 18 biophilia hypothesis natural landscapes, 336 restoration theories, 448 biospheric approaches, pro-environmental behavior, 569–571 biospheric values, 84–86 Black American Earth Day, 414 Boal, Augusto, 419 BOSTI books work environment, 248 workplace privacy, 251 bottle bills, 563–564 Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Putnam, 602 brain photobiology, 256–258 research, 680 wayfinding, 44–46 branding and reputation city, 240–242 neighborhood, 240 residential ecological system, 239–240 residential place, 226 brandscape, 239 BREEAM, 267 Bronfenbrenner, Urie, 11, 13 ecological theory, 224, 296 hospital environment, 301, 302 Brundtland Report, 340 building-related symptoms (BRS), work environment, 261 bull pen, work environment, 250 Bush, George W., 647 C Caerphilly Collaborative Heart Disease Study, 379 California earthquakes, 393–394 Page 5 of 62
Index FlexYourPower campaign, 561 green schools, 286 outdoor science schools, 544 polluted neighborhoods, 417 San Francisco Estuary Project, 599–600 toxic air and industry in L.A., 420 California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG), 616 Camp Ahmek, 430 Campbell paradigm, 570 Camp Chocorua, 429 Camp Wawokiye-1926, 430 Camp Wediko-1935, 430 Canada innovative work arrangements, 265 International Children’s Environment Conference, 534 nature attachment, 157 One Tonne Challenge, 561 school technology trends, 288 wilderness programs, 432, 437–439 carbon emissions, household actions, 558 caregivers, health care environment, 309–310 Carnegie Corporation’s Council on Adolescent Development, 279 Carson, Rachel, 530, 630 “cash-for-clunkers” program, 564 cathode-ray tube (CRT), 255 CATWOE, human activity system, 604–605 Center for Health Design, 300, 311 Center for the Built Environment, UC Berkeley, 252 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 460 Central African Republic, 367 centrality, city dwellers, 213 certainty, climate change, 649 Charcot, Jean–Baptiste, 348 Chavis, Benjamin Jr., 414 Chesapeake Bay, nature programs, 544 Chicago housing quality, 512 public housing, 514–515 Chicago Zoological Society, 3 child-care, neighborhood, 234 children. See also children and nature activities in nature, 118–119 activity in outdoors, 117–118 affective experience of nature, 119–121 attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), 380 Page 6 of 62
Index benefits of nature to, 124 emotional attachment to nature, 133, 139 evolution and development, 115 experiences in outdoors, 494 health care environments, 308–309, 311–312 human health and nature, 516–517 involvement with nature, 155–156 nature-deficit disorder, 115, 284, 428 nature-oriented education, 629 noise and mental health in, 380–381 outdoor play spaces, 517 outdoor spaces, 235 place attachment, 118, 153–154 play in nature for environmental action, 530–531 reaction to loss of natural area, 535–536 relationships to nature, 113–114 term, 114 wilderness experience programs (WEPs), 437–441 Children, Youth and Environments, 115 children and nature activities, 118–119 future directions, 124–125 history and culture, 114–116 play, 119 psychological methods and theoretical traditions of study, 116–117 Children and Nature Network, 115 Chilean miners, cave-in, 348–349, 352 China culture, 183 environmental concern, 69 mass murder, 367 pollution, 192 social identity, 169 starvation under Mao, 361 church, restorative environment, 453 cities, 217n. 1. See also urban environment adaptive behaviors, 207–208 appropriation, 214–215 attachment and place of identity, 214–215 attitudes toward natural landscapes, 341–342 behavioral adaptations, 207–209 branding and reputation, 240–242 characteristics, 204, 205 feeling of insecurity, 206–207 from city dwellers to citizens, 215–216 Page 7 of 62
Index future directions, 216 inhabitants, 203–204, 209–212 living in, 207–212 perception, evaluation, and satisfaction, 233 role of centrality, 213 role of proximity, 212–213 segregation and aggregation, 238–239 social behavior in, 208–209 as specific environments, 204–206 urban civilities, 208 urban environment, 204–207 urbanites’ relationships, 210–211 urban sociability, 211–212 urban spatial investments, 212–213 uses and activities, 235–236 (p. 687) vandalism, criminality, and insecurity, 206–207 citizens environmental stress factors, 206 from city dwellers to, 215–216 civilities, urban life, 208 Civil War, slavery, 416 classroom curricula, environmental education, 539 Clean Water Act, 599 climate change, 645, 646. See also global climate change global warming vs., 647 Climategate scandal, 648, 652 Climate Literacy: The Essential Principles of Climate Sciences, 652 Clinton, Bill, 416 coastal estuary partnerships, 609–610 cognition human health and nature, 511–513 work environments, 265 cognitive development psychology, 116 cognitive dissonance theory, 72 cognitive emotion models, 130–131 cognitive-experiential self–theory (CEST), 151, 154–155 cognitive impairments, wayfinding, 50–51 cognitive map historical perspective, 42–44 legibility of place, 43–44 Lynch’s contribution, 43–44 wayfinding, 28 cognitive revolution, 35 Coleman, James, 602 collaboration Page 8 of 62
Index environmental inclusion, 422–423 environmental injustice, 418–422 forming effective partnerships, 420–421 human health and nature, 520 work environment, 252–253 Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS), 286 collaborative learning (CL) ecosystem management, 607–609 processes and outcomes, 617–619 project phases and process stages, 608 collaborative partnership advocacy coalition framework (ACF), 602–604 future directions, 620–622 institutional analysis and development (IAD), 601–602 social capital theory, 602 stakeholder, 609–610 color correctional environment, 323–324 health care environment, 306 comfort integrated models of, 259–260 thermal, 258–259 ventilation, 259 work environments, 258–260 commitments, pro-environmental behavior, 565–566 communication, work environment, 252–253 communities, scope of justice, 415 Communities for a Better Environment, 420 communities of color environmental racism, 417 pollution, 416 Communities Organized Against Asthma & Lead (COAAL), Texas, 419 compatibility, 447, 512 competence, water conservation, 588 comprehensive conservation and management plan (CCMP), 599–600, 623n. 4 Comstock, Anna Botsford, 115 concentration camp syndrome, 365 concern, environmental attitudes, 65–66 Concord Academy, Thoreau, 115 confidence gender and wayfinding, 52 knowledge of climate change, 649–650 conflict resolution downstream, 598 emotions, 141–142 Page 9 of 62
Index upstream, 598 Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 622 connectedness epiphanies, 499, 503 Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS), 172 Connectivity With Nature Scale, 171 The Conscious Use of Metaphor, Bacon, 430–431 Consensus Building Handbook, Susskind, 604 consensus building theory, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and, 604 conservation, 3. See also pro-environmental behavior; water conservation biology, 3 emotion, 130 nature, education, 629–630 Conservation Biology, 4 Conservation Letters, 4 conservation psychology, 3–4 expanding interest, 4–5 integration with environmental psychology, 5–6, 682, 683 water, 581, 582, 592–593 Conservation Psychology, 4 conservatism, Schwartz, 83–84, 185, 186 constrained action, 530 constructivism, children and nature, 122 consumerism, water misuse, 585 continental philosophy, 16 contingencies, pro-environmental behavior, 562–565 control, work environment, 261–263 Cooley, Charles Horton, 165 Copenhagen, 241 Cornell Medical Index, 379 Cornell University Lab of Ornithology, 123 correctional environments architectural issues, 324 color, 323–324 crowding, 319–320, 326 environment-behavior issues in, 318–324 future directions, 326–327 history of forcing behavior change, 317–318 isolation, 320–321 lighting, 322–323 nature views, 323 noise, 321–322 personal space, 319 physical conditions, 316–317, 321–324 privacy, 318–319, 326 proxemics, 318–319 Page 10 of 62
Index sleep, 326 social conditions, 319–321 territoriality, 319 violence model, 325–326 visual aspects of setting, 322–324 windows, 323 correlated color temperature (CCT), 255–256 Cost-effective Open-Plan Environments, 259 creative play, children, 124 crime safety perception, 469–470 physical activity, 465, 467 criminality, city life, 206 crisis of culture, 128 crisis of maladapted behavior, 128 crowding, correctional environment, 319–320, 326 cube farm, 250 cultural differences. See also environmental engagement; human-environment interactions culture as independent or moderating variable, 194 ecological fallacy, 194 emic vs. etic approaches, 194–195 equivalence and bias issues, 195–196 evaluating and designing cross-cultural studies, 194–196 future directions, 196 history of human-environment interactions, 181–182 human-environment interactions, 181–182 natural landscape preference, 339–340 cultural theory, 185–187 culture, independent or moderating variable, 194 culture-level studies, environmental engagement, 190–192 cycling, bike paths, 466 D Dallas Salesmanship Club, 430 Darfur, 367 Dartmouth Medical School, 431 Darwin, Charles, 13–14 daylight glare probability (DGP), 255 daylighting green schools, 287 workplace, 255 decision making human mitigation behavior, 660 long-term justice principles, 106 procedural justice, 97–98 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, 636 Page 11 of 62
Index demand-control model, work, 262 demand response, systems, 267 democide, 364 Democratic Republic of the Congo, 367 Democrats, climate change, 648, 650, 651 demographics climate change, 650 hurricane evacuation, 400 density classroom privacy, 283–284 correctional environment, 319–320 personal work space, 253 Department of Transportation, hurricane reentry, 401 Deukmejian, George, 599 developmental behaviors, wayfinding, 49–50 (p. 688) developmental psychology, social and physical attachments, 153–154 developmental theories, wayfinding, 47–49 Dewey, John, 14, 18, 21, 23, 26, 277, 278 digestion, relational properties, 18 Dilbert, Adams, 250 directed attention fatigue, 512 direct observations, water conservation, 588 direct perception, environment, 26–27 direct supervision model, correctional setting, 324, 325–326 disaster responses antecedents of core perceptions, 404–406 demographic characteristics, 406 earthquakes, 393–394 future directions, 407–409 hazard adjustment attributes, 403–404 hazard adjustment behaviors, 407 hazard education, 404–405 hazard proximity, 406 hurricanes, 397–401 measuring antecedent variables, 408 measuring core perceptions, 407–408 methodological directions, 408–409 myths about victims, 391–392 personal hazard experience, 405–406 pre-impact preparedness actions, 402–406 Protective Action Decision Model (PADM), 392, 393 risk perception, 402–403 stakeholder characteristics, 403 theoretical directions, 407–408 tornadoes, 394–397 Page 12 of 62
Index typologies of, 407 warnings and education programs, 406–407 distraction, work environment, 253–254 distress, 349 distributive justice, environment, 98–99 dominant social paradigm (DSP), 340 dose-response relationships, human health and nature, 518–519 Douglas, Mary, 185 dynamic experience, environment, 29 E Earth Day, 416, 532 earthquakes, disaster response, 393–394 Eastern State Penitentiary, 317 eating. See also healthy weight food environments, 471–474 plate sizes, 473, 475 team science research, 477 transactional and ecological approaches to healthy, 461–463 upstream choices to health, 475 eco-behavioral science Barker, 11, 12, 29–34 behavior settings, 31–33 behavior stream, 30–31 ecological psychology and, 34–35 ecocentrism-anthropocentrism distinctions, natural landscapes, 340–341 ecological, 456n. 2 ecological approach Bronfenbrenner, 224, 296, 302 environmental psychology, 35–36 James’ radical empiricism, 19–21 Lewin’s field theory, 21–23 lifestyles, 461–463 The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Gibson, 24 ecological environment, 128 ecological fallacy, cross-cultural studies, 194 ecological intelligence, 630 ecological optics, 27 ecological psychology designation, 11–12 eco-behavioral science, 34–35 future directions, 36–37 Gibson, 11, 12, 24–29 ecological science historical considerations, 13–14 primary attributes, 12–13 Page 13 of 62
Index ecological theory, 674 ecology, 12, 318–319 ecopsychology, 3. See also therapeutic uses of nature relationship to nature, 428–429 Ecopsychology, 4, 431 ecosystem management analysis and deliberation (A&D), 606–607 collaborative learning (CL), 607–609 collaborative partnership formation and success, 600–604 future directions, 620–622 policy dialogue, 605–606 San Francisco Estuary Project, 599–600 ecosystems, 12–13, 94–96 educated incapacity, 633 education. See also environmental education; school environments classroom-based curricula, 539 classroom design, 282–284 climate science, 652–653 environmental, and emotions, 139–141 environmental concern, 70–71 environmental psychology, 676 hazard programs, 404–405 influencing environmental attitudes, 71–72 information technology classroom, 284 nature centers and forest schools, 543–544 nature conservation, 629–630 open-space, 278–279 place-based, 541–542 pro-environmental behavior, 570–571 school size, 279–280 schools of future, 289–290 school trends, 287–289 sustainable development, 631–632 wilderness experience programs (WEPs), 437 efficiency, 100–101 egalitarianism cultural theory dimension, 186, 187 Schwartz dimension, 185, 186 social solidarity, 188 egoistic approach, pro-environmental behavior, 562–565 egoistic values, 85 elderly people health care environments, 308–309, 312 loss of economic resources, 362 wayfinding, 50 Page 14 of 62
Index electronic media, children, 117–118 emancipatory perspective, environmental education, 634–635 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 114 emic approach, cross-cultural research, 194–195 emissions, human mitigation behavior, 657–658 Emotional Affinity Toward Nature scale, 172 emotions affective connection to nature, 133, 139 burdens and worries, 132, 138 classification of, 132–133 cognitive emotion models, 130–131 environmental conflicts, 141–142 environmental education and, 139–141 environmentally relevant, 130–132, 138–139, 142 from environmental protection to sustainable development, 134–135 future directions, 142–144 general action theories, 136–137 human mitigation behavior, 659 measuring, 131–132 models of pro-environmental behavior, 137 models of sustainable behavior, 135–139 moral, 133, 139 moral outrage, 131 neuropsychology of, 143 rational choice models, 135–136 role in environmental epiphanies, 487–490, 497, 500 role in environmental psychology, 128–129 self-interest vs. social responsibility, 129 socio-ecological dilemma, 134 understanding moral, in social trap, 133–135 empirical studies, environmental epiphanies, 492–495 energy consumption, workplace, 255 Energy Policy Act of 1992, 584 environment bettering the, 422–423 cities as specific, 204–206 psychological consideration, 23–24 environmental, 93 environmental action agency and motivation for, 528–530 development through significant experiences, 534–536 extended mixed-method research program, 531–532 factors, 529 goal, 527–528 memory research, 536 Page 15 of 62
Index play in nature as foundation for, 530–531 significant life experiences, 531–537 strengths and weakness of significant life experiences, 536–537 surveys of significant experiences, 532–533 environmental affordances, 221 environmental agencies, procedural justice, 97 environmental allocation future, 105–106 past, 106–107 resources, 422–423 Environmental and Behavior, 2 environmental attitudes education, 71–72 factors inhibiting behavior, 73–74 (p. 689) future directions, 74 importance of studying, 66 measuring, 66–67 media and messages, 71 predicting behavior, 569 pro-environmental behavior, 72–73 structure, 67 theories for, influencing behavior, 72 Environmental Attitudes Inventory, 67 Environmental Attitudes Scale (EAS), 172–173 Environmental Communication, 4 environmental concern age, 68 challenge-response model, 188 comparing values, ecological worldviews and, 89 direct experience with nature, 70 education, 70–71 factors affecting, 67–71 gender, 68 international differences, 68–69 levels of concern, 67–68 personality and values, 70 religion and politics, 69–70 socioeconomic status, 68 urban-rural residence, 69 environmental conflict resolution (ECR), 598 alternative dispute resolution (ADR), 604 analysis and deliberation framework, 616–617 assessment studies and dispute resolution programs, 614–616 collaborative engagement processes, 605–609 collaborative learning processes and outcomes, 617–619 Page 16 of 62
Index collaborative stakeholder partnerships, 609–610 conceptual design of ECR evaluation, 612 consensus building theory, 604 evaluation criteria and research, 610–619 future directions, 620–622 multiagency ECR evaluation, 614–615 National Estuary Program (NEP) coastal partnerships, 614 policy dialogues, 615–616 process and outcome criteria, 611 soft systems methodology, 604–605 theoretical foundations, 604–605 watershed partnership project, 612–614 environmental conflicts, emotions, 141–142 environmental degradation environmental racism, 417–418 human activities, 415–418 Environmental Design Research Association, 2 environmental disasters. See also disaster responses behavioral responses, 391–393 environmental education, 630–631. See also education classroom-based curricula, 539 emancipatory perspective, 634–635 environmental service learning, 542–543 forest schools, 543–544 formal programs for learning, 537–545 future directions, 549–551, 639–641 implications for education, planning and design, 548–549 ingredients of effective programs, 544–545 instrumental perspective, 633–634 interpretations, 632–635 Issue Investigation and Action Training (IIAT), 539–541 learning in post-normal times, 636–638 monitoring and evaluation, 635, 638–639, 640 nature centers, 543–544 place-based, 541–542 post-normal, 635–638 post-normal science, 636 pro-environmental behavior, 570–571 research and practice, 548–551 review of, research, 537–538 risk society, 635–636 Environmental Education Research, 637 environmental educators, epiphany research, 491 environmental engagement. See also cultural differences cross-cultural studies, 189–194 Page 17 of 62
Index culture-level studies, 190–192 future directions, 196 individual-level studies, 190 linking findings, 193–194 multilevel studies, 192–193 environmental epiphanies, 486, 497 applications, 490–491 descriptive results, 498 discussion of findings, 501–502 empirical studies, 492–495 environmental meaning, 495–497 epiphany types, 498–499 future directions, 505–507 implications of initial study, 504–505 importance of emotion, 487–490 initial data of, 498–501 literature review, 491–497 managing natural areas for, 505–506 nature of, 505 need for and potential of, 490 participants, 487 phenomenon, 485–486 place attachment, 495–497 procedures, 487 psychological approaches, 491–492 purposes and description, 486–487 studying, 497–505 thematic trends in descriptions, 499–501 typology, 502–503 environmental fit, residential, 222, 224–226 environmental generational amnesia, 122 environmental identity behavior, 88–89 behavioral implications, 174–175 creating, 169–170 ethical implications, 173–174 impact of, 173–176 measures, 157, 170–173 politics of identity, 175–176 self-presentation, 175 values and behavior, 175 Environmental Identity (EID) scale, 170, 171 environmental injustice, 168 air pollution and asthma in Harlem, 419–420 bananas and fair trade, 421–422 Page 18 of 62
Index bettering the environment, 422–423 collaboration and environmental inclusion, 422–423 collaborations to redress, 418–422 community-based participatory research, 419–421 environmental awareness and theater of oppressed, 419 forming partnerships, 420–421 from moral exclusion to moral inclusion, 422–423 future directions for research, 424–425 inclusionary change over time, 423–424 lead contamination in Oklahoma, 420 opposing polluting industries, 421 social movement groups, 418–419 toxic air and industry in Los Angeles, 420 Environmentalism Scale, 67 environmental management epiphany research, 490–491 justice, 93–94 environmental meaning, epiphanies, 495–497 environmental noise, 375. See also noise environmental perception analytical tools, 54 applying wayfinding research, 55–56 brain areas underlying wayfinding, 44–46 cognitive impairments, 50–51 cognitive map, 42–44 developmental behaviors, 49–50 developmental theories, 47–49 evolutionary models, 152–153 future direction, 57 gender differences, 51–54 methods, 28–29 spatial cognition, 42 verisimilitude in wayfinding tasks, 46–47 visual impairments, 51 wayfinding, 42, 56–57 Environmental Performance Index, 191, 192 Environmental Problems and Human Behavior, 4 environmental protection, change to sustainability, 129, 134–135 environmental psychology, 1–3 affordances, direct perception and, 26–27 attention restoration theory (ART), 674–675 city, 216 common themes, 676–680 consideration for future, 677–678, 680–681 design of health care, 297 Page 19 of 62
Index ecological approach, 27–29, 35–36 ecological theory, 674 education, 676 environment-person relations, 19–20 evolutionary theory, 674 experience as function of individual, 20–21 health, 675 importance of scale, 676, 678 individual vs. collective, 679 integration with conservation psychology, 5–6, 682, 683 interdisciplinarity, 679–680 justice, 675–676 measuring emotions, 131–132 (p. 690) person-in-context, 678 pro-environmental behavior, 556, 575 restorative environments, 445 role of emotions, 128–129 social psychology, 674 temporal dimension, 678–679 Environmental Psychology: Man and His Physical Setting, 2 environmental racism, 414–415, 417 environmental regulations, US-Canadian management of Great Lakes, 174 environmental research, natural landscapes, 334 environmental stressors, prisoners, 317 environmental values affecting behavior, 87–89 biospheric values, 84–86 comparing values, ecological worldviews, and environmental concern, 89 definition, 82 future directions, 89–90 hedonic values, 86–87 pro-environmental actions, 81 Schwartz’s value theory, 83–84 social value orientations, 82–83 value theories, 82–87 Environment and Behavior, 2, 54, 164 environment and identity, 164–165, 167–170. See also environmental identity future directions, 177 identity, 165–167 measuring, 170–173 Environment Identity Scale, 171 epiphanies, 485. See also environmental epiphanies thematic trends, 499–501 types, 498–499 equality, 96 Page 20 of 62
Index equity, environment, 96–97 equivalence, cross-cultural research, 195–196 ergonomists, comfort and discomfort, 260 Erikson, Erik, 165, 366 ethics, environmental identity, 173–174 Ethiopia, 367 ethnicity, identity, 165–166 etic approach, cross-cultural research, 194–195 Euclidean information, gender and wayfinding, 53–54 European Values Study, 192 eustress, 349 evacuation decisions hurricanes, 397 information sources and message content, 398–399 logistics, 400–401 protective–action perceptions, 399 reentry, 401 threat perceptions, 399 evaluation. See perception, evaluation and satisfaction everyday life, 221, 222 evidence-based design (EBD), health care, 300–301, 304 evolution child development, 115 connection to nature, 518 responses to natural landscapes, 335–338 restoration theories, 448–449 therapeutic camping movement, 429 evolutionary psychology, water misuse, 585 evolutionary theory, 674 executive order, Clinton, 416 exosystem hospital environment, 302 residential environment, 224 experience environmental concern, 70 function of individual, 20–21 nature, 119–121 experts, hazard adjustments, 403 external factors, human mitigation behavior, 659 extreme and unusual environments (EUEs) Antarctic stations, 355–357 future directions, 367–368 general definition, 350–352 genocides, 364–367 literature and media depicting, 348–350 Page 21 of 62
Index mountains, 353–355 natural and human-made, 351–352 natural disasters, 361–364 physical and psychological characteristics, 353–367 sampling, 353 space stations, 357–360 traumatic, 360–361 extremeness, 350 eye-as-camera metaphor, visual perception, 29 F fairness cross-cultural model, 105 environmental collaboration, 422 justice outcome, 99–100 labeling judgments, 104 water and justice, 94 fair trade, bananas, 421–422 family involvement, treatment, 439 fascination, 447, 512 fatalism cultural theory dimension, 186, 187 social solidarity, 188 favorite places, restorative environment, 453 Federal Facilities Council (FFC), 281 Federal Wilderness Act (1964), 548 feelings, 130, 140 fields of constrained action, 530 fields of free action, 530 fields of promoted action, 530 field theory, Lewin, 21–23 Finland, inmate suicides, 321 fit, 221, 222 flaky environmentalists, 165 FlexYourPower, California, 561 Florida, hurricane reentry, 401 flow of information environmental fit, 225 wayfinding, 28 fluency, restorative quality of nature, 454–455 food environments eating, 471–474 macro-, 472–473 micro-, 473–474 food production, climate change, 656 forested environment, 495 Page 22 of 62
Index forest schools, learning at, 543–544 fractals, restorative quality of nature, 454–455 free action, 530 Fresh Air Camp, 430 freshwater. See water conservation Froebel, Friedrich, 114 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 44–45, 57 function of individual, experience, 20–21 future orientation, water conservation, 589–590 G Gagarin, Yuri. 357 Gallup polling, 648, 650, 664n. 1 Gans, Herbert, 210 Ganser’s syndrome, 321 gasoline prices, 563 gender anxiety and confidence, 52 children and nature, 120 climate change, 656 environmental concern, 68 identity, 165–166 mental rotation, 51–52 wayfinding, 51–54 wayfinding measures, 52–54 gene, 37n. 3 general action theories, sustainable behavior, 136–137 General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), 378–379, 384 General Health Survey, 381 generalized anxiety disorder, 379 genocides psychological effects, 365–367 traumatic environments, 364–367 geographic information system (GIS), 54, 463, 465, 517 Geothermal Research, 409 Germany cross-cultural model, 105 emotional affinity to nature, 532–533 environmental concern, 68–69 Hereros, 364 outdoor ecology program, 544 Gestalt psychology, 22 Gestalt psychotherapy, 432 Gibson, James J., 11, 12, 14, 34, 35 affordances, 25–27 ecological approach to environmental psychology, 27–29 Page 23 of 62
Index ecological psychology, 24–29 global climate change. See also human mitigation behavior adaptation, 654–655 beliefs about, 646–653 causes and mechanisms, 648 certainty, 649 confidence in knowledge, 649–650 demographic and psycho-social predictors, 650 educational efforts, 652–653 future directions, 663 “global warming” vs. “climate change,” 647 impacts, 653–656 importance, 650 meta-cognitions, 649–650 psychological impacts, 653–654 (p. 691) scientific consensus, 648–649 social justice implications, 655–656 source of beliefs, 650–652 vulnerability and resilience, 655–656 global positioning system (GPS), 123 global warming, 645, 646, 647, 650. See also global climate change vs. climate change, 647 goal-directed behavior, 569–570 Golden Gate Bridge, 241 Goodall, Jane, 543 Great Lakes, US-Canadian management, 174 Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 543 green, 285 Green Globes, 267 greenhouse effect, 647 greenhouse gas emissions, 473 green psychology, 3 green schools, 286–287, 542 groups, model of work environment effects, 249 Gunnery School, 429 H habit, human mitigation behavior, 659, 661 habit discontinuity model, 572–573 Haeckel, Ernst, 13–14 Hahn, Kurt, 430 Hall, G. Stanley, 115 Handbook of Environmental Psychology, 14, 54, 249, 349 Handbook of Identity Theory and Research, 164 Handbook of Nature Study, Comstock, 115 Handbook of Self and Identity, 164 Page 24 of 62
Index Hansen, James, 652 Happiness, environmental epiphany, 489 hard fascination, attention restoration theory (ART), 447 Harlem, air pollution and asthma, 419–420 harmony, Schwartz dimension, 185, 186 hazard adjustment adoption attributes, 403–404 risk perception, 402–403 stakeholder characteristics, 403 hazard education, disaster preparedness, 404–405 hazard experience, 405–406, 408 hazard mitigation, 392–393 hazard proximity, hurricanes, 399–400 head-mounted displays (HMD), 56 healing restorative environment, 451 wilderness experience programs (WEPs), 437 health activity levels, 37 comfort, 259 environmental psychology, 675 green schools, 286–287 noise effects, 376, 385–386 noise exposure and medication use, 378 upstream choices, 475–476 work environment, 260–261 Health and Care Infrastructure Research and Innovation Centre, 301, 311 health benefits home, 233–234 nature to children, 124 neighborhood, 234–235 outdoor spaces, 237–238 health care environments ambient features, 306–307 architectural features, 305 Bronfenbrenner’s systematic view, 301, 302 caregivers, 309–310 children, 308–309, 311–312 dimensions of architectural humanization, 298–300 elderly patients, 308–309, 312 environmental humanization, 299 future directions, 312–313 influence of design on users, 303–304 “inhuman” image of hospitals, 297–298 interior design features, 306 Page 25 of 62
Index interplay between users and spatial–physical seating, 299 multi-place system, 301–303, 313 multiple environmental features, 307–308 nature of hospital spaces and roles, 302–303 promoting evidence-based design, 300–301 single environmental features, 305–307 spatial-physical humanization of, 297–300 studying generic patients, 305–308 trends in design research, 304–311 user-centered design, 296–297 visitors, 310–311 Health Council of the Netherlands (HCN), 382 Health of the Planet Survey, 184 healthy weight food environments, 471–474 macro-environmental supports, 463–465 micro-environmental supports, 465–469 multiple levels of support, 476–477 Heathrow airport, children’s health, 380 heating, ventilation and air–conditioning (HVAC), 266 hedonic values, 83–84, 86–87 Herzog, Maurice, 350, 354 hierarchy cultural theory dimension, 186, 187 Schwartz dimension, 185, 186 social solidarity, 188 high-performance schools design guides, 285–286 green schools, 286–287 school environments, 285–287 Himalayas, 354 hippocampus, brain and wayfinding, 45 The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map, O’Keefe and Nadel, 45 historical event, transactionalism, 17 Hofstede, Geert, 183–185, 189 Holocaust Nazis, 364–367 psychology, 366 survivors, 366–367 home natural landscapes, 334 perception, evaluation, and satisfaction, 227–228 restorative environment, 452 segregation and aggregation, 236 uses and activities, 233–234 Page 26 of 62
Index Hood River project, 564 hospital, 295. See also health care environments caregivers, 309–310 children and elderly patients, 308–309, 311–312 inhuman image of, 297–298 nature of, spaces and roles, 302–303 noise and admission rates, 377–378 restorative environment, 453 visitors, 310–311 host neighborhoods, 417 household actions, carbon emissions, 558 house of worship, restorative environment, 453 housing, public, in Chicago, 512, 514–515 Howard, John, 317 human activity, soft systems, 604–605 Human Behavior and Environment, 149 Human Development Index, 191, 192, 193 Human Ecology Review, 3 human-environment interactions. See also environmental engagement cultural theory, 185–187 Hofstede, 183–185 Inglehart, 187–189 Kluckhohn, 182–183 linking models, 189 Schwartz, 185, 186 social solidarity, 186–187, 188 human exception paradigm (HEP), 340 human health attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), 513 attention restoration theory (ART), 511–513 cognitive functioning, 511–513 dose-response relationships, 518–519 explanatory mechanisms, 519–520 future research directions, 518–520 integration and collaboration, 520 large-scale epidemiological studies, 511 mediators, 519–520 mental health and psychological well-being, 513–514 moderators, 519 natural environment, 509–510 physical activity and obesity, 515–518 physical health and physiological stress, 510–511 social connection, 514–515 social interaction, 514–515 humanization, 296 Page 27 of 62
Index dimensions of architectural, 298–300 environmental, 299 health care environment, 296–301 spatial-physical, of health care places, 297–300 human-made environments, 353 space stations, 357–360 human mitigation behavior analyzing, 657–658 global climate change, 656–663 predicting, 658–660 promoting, 660–663 human-nature relationships, epiphanies, 485–486, 491–492, 501 human territoriality, 295 hunting-gathering economy, 181 Hurricane Island Outward Bound, 431 Hurricane Katrina, 363 (p. 692) hurricanes antecedents of evacuation decisions, 398–399 antecedents of situational perceptions, 399–400 demographic characteristics, 400 disaster responses, 397–401 evacuation decisions, 397 evacuation logistics, 400–401 evacuation reentry, 401 hazard experience, 399 hazard proximity, 399–400 information sources, 398–399 message content, 398–399 preparation time distributions, 398 protective-action perceptions, 399 response-time distributions, 397–398 threat perceptions, 399 warning-time distributions, 398 hyperbolic discounting, 106 Hypertension and Exposure to Noise near Airports (HYENA) Study, 378 I Identity. See also environment and identity; place attachment attachment and place of, 214–215 content, 166–167 creating environmental, 169–170 groupings, 166 human mitigation behavior, 659 personal and social, 166 politics of, 175–176 process or function, 167 Page 28 of 62
Index self focus, 165 social, 168–169 ideology, politics of identity, 175–176 illuminance, 269n. 1 Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IES), 255 Image & Environment: Cognitive Mapping and Spatial Behavior, 43 The Image of the City, Lynch, 41, 43, 44 impact orientation, pro-environmental behavior, 557–558 Implicit Association Test (IAT), 121 iNaturalist.org, 123 Inclusion of Nature in Self (INS) scale, 157, 171 India knowledge of local nature, 122 Watershed Development (WSD) policy, 101–102 indirect realism, 26 individualism cultural theory dimension, 186, 187 social solidarity, 188 individualism vs. collectivism, Hofstede, 183, 184 individualistic values, Schwartz value theory, 83–84 individual-level studies, environmental engagement, 190 individual resource use, workplace behavior, 266–267 individuals, model of work environment effects, 249 Indonesia, 122 indoor plants, health care environment, 306 information, human mitigation behavior, 658 information and communications technologies (ICT) environmental education, 641 work environments, 265–266 information campaigns, pro-environmental, 560–561 information-processing mechanism, preference, 334–335 information technology classroom, 284 schools of future, 289–290 information variables, natural landscapes, 335 Inglehart, Ronald, 187–189, 191, 192 inhabitants cities, 203–204, 209–212 perception, conception and evaluation, 230 sociability, 211–212 spontaneous evaluation, 230–231 urbanites’ relationships, 210–211 injustice perceptions, 98 innovative work arrangements, 265–266 insecurity Page 29 of 62
Index city life, 206 feeling of, 206–207 institutional analysis and development (IAD), collaborative partnership, 601–602 institutional rational choice, 601 institutional violence, environmental model, 325–326 instrumental perspective, environmental education, 633–634 integration, human health and nature, 520 intellectual epiphanies, 499, 503 intensive care unit (ICU), 310 intention orientation, pro-environmental, 558–559 interactionist approaches, environmental and conservation psychology, 36 interactionist meta-theory, 14–16, 25 interdependence, ecosystems, 13 interdisciplinarity, psychology, 679–680 interior design, health care environment, 306 International Association for Applied Psychology, 4 International Association for People-Environment Studies, 4 International Children’s Environment Conference, 534 International Commission on Illumination (CIE), 256, 257 international differences, environmental concern, 68–69 International Social Survey Programme, 189, 191, 192, 193 International Space Station (ISS), 358–360 intersection density, walking, 463–464 interventions environmentally relevant emotions, 140, 141 human mitigation behavior, 662–663 natural environments, 476 practical programs, 142–143 resource management, 568 water conservation, 590–591 interviews environmental action, 533–534 water conservation, 587 intrinsically photoreceptive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs), 256–258 Iowa, flood, 362 Irvine Minnesota Inventory (IMI), 466 isolated, confined environments (ICEs), 350–351 isolation correctional environment, 320–321 Eastern State Penitentiary, 317 Issue Investigation and Action Training (IIAT), 71, 539–541, 542, 545, 549 J Jaegerpris Project, Denmark, 541 jail. See correctional environments James, William, 14, 35, 165, 446 Page 30 of 62
Index emotion, 487–488 mystical experiences, 492, 501–502 radical empiricism, 19–21 Japan environmental concern, 68, 69 military aircraft, 380 noise at air bases in Okinawa, 379 volcano eruption, 362 Jim Crow laws, 418 job satisfaction, control, 262–263 Johnson, Philip, 297 joint fact-finding procedures, 623n. 7 Journal of Applied Environmental Education and Communication, 630 Journal of Environmental Education, 630, 632 Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2, 55, 164 Journal of Fostering Sustainable Behavior, 4 Journal of Volcanology, 409 Judeo-Christian religion. environmental concern, 69–70 justice allocation of resources, 422–423 distributive justice, 98–99 environmental management, 93–94 environmental psychology, 675–676 equity, 96–97 fairness, 99–100, 422 future directions, 108–109 procedural justice, 97–98 scale and dimensions of decisions, 100–102 scope of, 415 social discounting, 108, 109 society and, 107–108 space and, 103–105 time and, 105–107 understanding and evaluating, 96–100 water and, 94–96 water management, 95–96 Watershed Development (WSD) policy, 101–102 K Kant, moral imperative, 98 Kaplan, Rachel, 446 Kaplan, Stephen, 446 Kaplan’s model, cognitive map, 43 Kershensteiner, Georg, 277 Khmer Rouge, 364, 367 Kluckhohn, Florence, 182–183 (p. 693) Page 31 of 62
Index knowing function of mind, 20 spectator theory of, 26 knowledge children and nature, 121–122 climate change, 649–650 environmental concern, 70–71 natural landscapes, 334 pro-environmental behavior, 129 water conservation, 588 knowledge-deficit model, pro-environmental, 560–561 Kyoto protocol, 71 KZ syndrome, 365 L land management, epiphany research, 491 Last Child in the Woods, Louv, 115, 428, 530, 630 Latin America, bananas and fair trade, 421–422 lead contamination, Oklahoma, 420 Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), 267, 268 learning environment human mitigation behavior, 662 nature centers and forest schools, 543–544 schools, 280–282 service, 542–543 legibility of place, wayfinding, 43–44, 55–56 Lewin, Kurt, 12, 16, 21–23 Lexis-Nexis database, 93 licensure, wilderness experience programs (WEPs), 438–439 lifestyle environmental behavior, 560 transactional and ecological models to healthy, 462 lighting correctional environment, 322–323 green schools, 287 individual resource use, 266–267 North American workplaces, 255 photobiology, 256–258 workplace behavior, 266 liquid-crystal displays (LCD) monitors, 255 literature extreme environment stories, 348–350 response to tornadoes, 396 Lithuania, 533 living conditions, urban environment, 205–206 local ecological knowledge (LEK), 121 Page 32 of 62
Index logistical preparation, evacuation, 398 logistics, hurricane evacuation, 400–401 long-term vs. short-term orientation, 184 Los Angeles, 420 Loughmiller, Campbell, 430 Louisiana, Hurricane Katrina, 363 Louv, Richard, 115, 117, 284, 428, 530, 630 Love and Care for Nature scale, 172 luminance, 269n. 1 Lynch, legibility of place, 43–44 M macro-justice fairness, 99–100 future, 105 macrophysical environments food, 472–473 physical activity and healthy weight, 463–465 transactional and ecological models, 461 macrosystem hospital environment, 302 residential environment, 224 Malaguzzi, Loris, 280 Maloney-Ward Ecology Inventory, 67 managed nature, restorer, 450–452 maps, virtual environments, 47 Marine Life Protection Act, 616 Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), 616 marketing theme, neighborhood, 240 Mars voyage, 359 masculinity vs. femininity, 183, 184 Maslow, Abraham, 493, 501 Massachusetts Department of Youth Services, 431 mastery, Schwartz, 185, 186 Mead, George Herbert, 165 Mead, G. H., 18 meaning, 20, 495–497 measurement antecedent variables, 408 computer-based, 681 core perceptions, 407–408 emotions, 131–132 environmental attitudes, 66–67 environmental identity, 170–173 neighborhood cognitions, affects and activities, 229–233 wayfinding, 52–54 Page 33 of 62
Index media extreme environment stories, 348–350 pro-environmental attitudes, 71 tornado warning, 395–396 mediators environmental attitudes, 73 human health and nature, 519–520 medication caregivers in health care, 309–310 noise exposure and health, 378 memory research, life experiences, 536 mental health noise and, in children, 380–381 psychological well-being, 513–514 mental hospital, noise exposure, 377–378 mental illness, inmates, 321 mental rotation, wayfinding and gender, 51–52 Mental Rotations Test (MRT), 42 mere-exposure hypothesis, place attachment, 151–152 mesosystem hospital environment, 302 residential environment, 224 messages, media and environmental attitudes, 71 meta-cognitions, climate change, 649–650 meta-theories assumptions, 12 interactionist, 14–16 organismic, 16 trait, 14 transactional, 16–17 metering, water consumption, 587–588 Metropolitan Correctional Centers, 324 micro-justice, fairness, 99–100 microphysical environments accessibility features, 466–467 crime safety features, 467 food, 473–474 physical activity and healthy weight, 463, 465–469 pleasurability features, 468–469 social environmental indicators, 469 traffic safety features, 467–468 transactional and ecological models, 461 microsystem hospital environment, 302 residential environment, 224 Page 34 of 62
Index milling, psychological preparation, 398 Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory (MACI), 440 Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), 357 Mir space station, 358–360 mitigation behavior. See human mitigation behavior moderators human health and nature, 519 pro-environmental attitudes, 73 monitoring and evaluation, environmental education, 635, 638–639, 640 Montessori, Maria, 114, 277–278 moral emotions, 132, 133–135, 139 moral exclusion, 415, 422 moral inclusion, 415, 422, 423–424 Motivation Toward the Environment Scale, 67 Motives, resource management, 568 mountains extreme environment, 353–355 psychological effects, 354–355 Mount St. Helens, volcano threat, 403 Mt. Everest, extreme environment, 353–354 Muir, John, 429 Multiagency ECR Evaluation Study (MAES), 614–615 multilevel modeling (MLM), 615 multilevel studies, environmental engagement, 192–193 multi-place system, health care environment, 301–303, 313 multiple, nested levels of organization, ecosystems, 13 Munich Study, 381 museums, restorative environment, 453 music, health care environment, 307 mystical experiences, James, 492, 501–502 N Namibia, 169 National Association of Secondary School Principals, 278 National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs, 438 National Association of Therapeutic Wilderness Camps, 438 National Estuary Program (NEP), 599, 614 National Institute of Corrections Information Center, 324 National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Environmental Justice Project, 419 National Kids Survey, 117 National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), 437, 545–548 National Weather Service (NWS), 395–396 (p. 694) Native American culture, social identity, 168–169 natural disasters, 353. See also disaster responses extreme environments, 361–364 psychological effects, 361–364 Page 35 of 62
Index survivors, 363–364 natural environments Antarctic stations, 355–357 definition, 128 environmental epiphanies, 505–506 evaluating interventions, 476 human health and well-being, 509–510 mountains, 353–355 physical characteristics of restorative, 449 wayfinding, 56–57 natural landscapes attention restoration theory (ART), 336–338, 343 attitudes toward, natural resources and social dilemmas, 342–343 attitudes toward urban green areas, 341–342 biophilia hypothesis, 336 cross-cultural comparisons of preference, 339–340 environmental research, 334 evolutionary models, 335–338 future directions, 343–344 history of movement to view, 429–432 human landscape preferences, 338–339 human relations with, 332–333 people-environment transactions, 335 perceived environmental properties and preference, 333–335 prospect and refuge model, 335–336, 343 restoration environment, 450–452 savanna hypothesis, 338 sociocultural models of preference, 338–343 stress reduction theory (SRT), 336–338, 343 worldviews, values and behaviors, 340–341 natural materials, schoolyards, 285 natural resources attitudes, 342–343 management cycle, 102, 109 water and justice, 94–96 nature. See also children and nature; therapeutic uses of nature affective connection to, 133, 139 affective experience of, 119–121 benefits to children, 124 children involvement, 155–156 concepts of and knowledge about, 121–122 connectivity to, 171, 518 correctional environment and views of, 323 environmental epiphanies, 505 green exercise, 513–514 Page 36 of 62
Index human ideological positions, 340–341 implicit connections to, 171–172 managed, 450–452 play in, as foundation for environmental action, 530–531 as restorer, 450–452 technologically mediated, 122–124 wild, 450 wilderness experience program, 432, 433–434 nature centers, learning at, 543–544 nature conservation, education, 629–630, 639 nature deficit disorder, 115, 284, 428 Nature Game, 533 nature-related experience, concern, 70 nature vs. nurture question, 116 Nazis, Holocaust, 364–367 neighborhood branding and reputation, 240 children’s maps, 118–119 measuring cognitions, affects, and activities, 229–233 perception, evaluation, and satisfaction, 228–233 residential attachment, 228, 231–232 segregation and aggregation, 236–237 uses and activities, 234–235 Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale (NEWS), 469 neighborhood walk, children and nature, 116 neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), 310 nested organization, ecosystems, 13 nesting of processes, transactionalism, 17 Netherlands epidemiological study, 511 lighting scheme, 258 nature-oriented education, 629 network, ecosystems, 13 neuroimaging studies, noise, 385 neuropsychology, emotions, 143 neuroticism, noise sensitivity and, 384 New Ecological Paradigm Scale, 67 New Environmental Paradigm (NEP), 67, 87, 89, 172, 191, 340 new human interdependence paradigm (NHIP), 341 New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, 363 New Zealand Scott Base, 355 niches, schoolyards, 285 Nigeria, 340 noise annoyance, 383–384 Page 37 of 62
Index correctional environment, 321–322 definition, 375–376 exposure and symptoms, 376–377 future directions, 386 health and behavior, 376, 385–386 health care environment, 306–307 mental health in children, 380–381 mental hospital admission rates, 377–378 physical environmental stressors, 376 potential mechanisms, 385 psychiatric morbidity, 378–380 quality of life, 381, 386 road traffic study, 379–380 sensitivity and vulnerability to psychiatric disorder, 384 work environment, 260–261 noise and number index (NNI), 377 norm-activation model, sustainable behavior, 136–137 Norway, 339 not in my backyard (NIMBY) syndrome, 607 nuclear facilities, Sweden, 97 O Oakland, CA fires, 364 obesity food environments, 471–474 physical activity and, 515–518 public health, 630 United States, 460 objects of interest, environmental epiphanies, 500 occupational environment, 353 Antarctic stations, 355–357 space stations, 357–360 OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), 190 offices, work environments, 248, 250–251 Oklahoma, lead contamination in, 420 Olsen, Larry Dean, 429 One Tonne Challenge campaign, Canada, 561 open-ended questionnaires, environmental action, 533–534 openness to change, Schwartz’s value theory, 83–84 open-space education, school buildings, 278–279 optic flow, perceptual information, 28 Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area (ODNRA), 618 organismic meta-theory, worldview, 16 organizations ecosystems, 13 environmental psychologists, 267–268 Page 38 of 62
Index model of work environment effects, 249 Osmond, Humphrey, 295 Ottoman Turkey, Armenians, 364 Outdoor Challenge Program, 494 outdoors children’s activities in, 117–118 crime safety and physical activity, 467 natural landscapes, 334 school environments, 284–285 outdoor spaces segregation and aggregation, 237–238 uses and activities, 235 Outward Bound, 429–431, 437, 440, 545 P path integration, wayfinding, 28 pathogenic, 349 patients, health care design research, 305–308 peace, environmental epiphany, 489–490 peak experiences, Maslow, 493, 501 Pebble Project, 300, 311 pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), 311 Peirce, C. S., 14 Pepper, Stephen, 14, 15, 37n. 2 perceived behavioral control (PBC), water conservation, 589 perceived hospital environment quality indicators (PHEQIs), 300 perceived residential environmental quality indicators (PREQIs), 228, 231–232, 235 perception antecedents of core, 404–406 environmental, 28–29 environments for physical activity, 469–471 hazard education, 404–405 (p. 695) hurricanes, 399–400 measures of core perceptions, 407–408 personal hazard experience, 405–406 risk, for earthquakes, 402–403 water conservation, 589 perception, evaluation, and satisfaction city, 233 home, 227–228 neighborhood, 228–233 residential place, 226 The Perception of the Visual World, Gibson, 27 perceptual system, 27 performance, green schools, 286–287 persecution syndrome, 365 Page 39 of 62
Index personal experience, hazards, 405–406, 408 personal growth, wilderness experience programs (WEPs), 437 personality environmental concern, 70 traits vs. attitudes, 65 water misuse, 583–584 personal norms predicting behavior, 569 water conservation, 589–590 Personal Orientation Inventory, 357 personal space, 295 correctional environment, 319 density, 253 privacy, 251–252 work environments, 250–253 person-environment system behavior, 222 environmental fit, 224–226 environmental psychology, 678 Lewin’s transactionalism, 22–23 natural landscapes, 335 transactional view of processes, 17–19 transaction meta-theory, 16–17 Pestalozzi, 114 Petersen, Peter, 277 PET scans, brain and wayfinding, 44–45, 57 Pew polling, 648, 664n. 1 Photobiology, work environment, 256–258 photographs relationships to actual, 37n. 4 wayfinding, 46 physical activity. See also walking environmental epiphanies, 500 environment and behavior, 463 green exercise, 513–514 historical decreases in, 461 macro-environmental support, 463–465 micro-environmental supports, 465–469 multiple levels of support, 476–477 obesity, 515–518 problems of obesity and insufficient, 460 social environmental indicators, 469 supports encouraging healthy weight and, 461 team science research, 477 transactional and ecological approaches to healthy, 461–463 Page 40 of 62
Index upstream choices to health, 475–476 PISA (Program for International Student Assessment), 280 place attachment antecedent process, 151–153 consequences, 156–158 definition, 148–150 development, 153–156 disruptions in place relationships, 157–158 dynamics of, 150–158 ecological and conservation behavior, 156–157 environmental epiphanies, 495–497 environmental perception, 152–153 future directions, 159 interplay between self-regulation and, 154–156 interplay between social and physical attachments, 153–154 literature, 502 mere-exposure hypothesis, 151–152 neighborhood, 228 tripartite framework, 149–150 Place-based Education Evaluation Collaborative (PEEC), 541–542 place identity, environmental and, 170 place theory, health care environment, 302 planet, freshwater scarcity, 582–583 Planetree, hospital model, 300, 311 play children and nature, 119 creative, 124 pleasurability perception, 470 physical activity, 468–469 policy dialogues, dispute resolutions, 615–616 political context, disaster response, 392 politics climate change, 648 environmental concern, 69–70 identity, 175–176 pollution air, and asthma in Harlem, 419–420 communities of color, 416 education and emotions, 139 environmental concern, 188 worldwide, 128 polysomnography (PGS), sleep disturbance, 383 positive affect, work environments, 264–265 positive behavior change, prisons, 317–318 Page 41 of 62
Index Positive Effects of Being in Space Questionnaire (PEBS), 360 positive psychology, 349 post-materialistic values, 85–86, 192, 340 post-materialist values thesis, 187–189 post-normal environmental education learning in post-normal times, 636–638 post-normal science, 636 risk society, 635–636 post-occupancy evaluation (POE) buildings, 281 health care environment, 299 neighborhood, 232 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 361, 362, 366 power distance, 183, 184 pragmatists, 14 Predicted Mean Vote–Predicted Percent Dissatisfied (PMV–PPD), thermal comfort, 258–259 preference design of health care environment, 296–297 natural landscapes, 333–335 sociocultural models for natural landscapes, 338–343 preparation time, hurricane evacuation, 398 Present State Examination, 384 present-time perspective (PTP), water misuse, 584 The Principles of Psychology, James, 19, 20 prison. See correctional environments privacy classroom, in schools, 283–284 correctional environment, 318–319, 326 work environments, 251–252 procedural justice, environment, 97–98 pro-environmental attitudes, 65–66 actions, 81 beliefs, norms, and choices, 85 constructs leading to behavior, 72–73 pro-environmental behavior, 557–559 behavioral spillover, 574–575 behavioral wedge, 556–557 biospheric approaches, 561–562, 569–571 considerations, 573–575 context, 571–573 domains, 559 egotistic approaches, 561, 562–565 emotional affinity toward nature, 532 emotional valence, 138–139 environmental education and emotions, 139–141 Page 42 of 62
Index household actions and carbon emissions, 558 impact-oriented approach, 557–558 information campaigns, 560–561 intention-orientation, 558–559 knowledge about motivation, 129 limitations, 564–565 means of travel, 132 models of, 137 opposite, 144n. 1 person, 560–571 person or context, 559–560 place attachment, 157 rebound effects, 574 self-interest, 562–565 social-altruistic approaches, 561–562, 565–569 socio-ecological dilemma, 134 sustainable development, 129, 134–135 targets, 573–574 willingness to sacrifice, 423 progressive movement, school buildings, 278–279 promoted action, 530 prompts, behavior, 562 proportionality, equity, 96 prospect and refuge model, natural landscapes, 335–336, 343 protective-action perceptions, hurricane, 399 Protective Action Decision Model (PADM), 392, 393 proxemics, correctional environment, 318–319 proximity city dwellers, 212–213 hazard, 406 human health and nature, 516 hurricane hazard, 399–400 psychiatric disorder, noise sensitivity and vulnerability to, 384 (p. 696) psychiatric morbidity, noise exposure and, 378–380 PsychInfo, 189, 645 psycho-evolutionary theory comparison to attention restoration theory, 448–449 integration, 449 stress reduction, 447–448 psychological approach, environmental epiphanies, 491–492 psychological consequences, water conservation, 591–592 psychological effects Antarctic stations, 355–357 climate change, 653–654 genocides, 365–367 Page 43 of 62
Index mountains, 354–355 natural disasters, 361–364 space stations, 358–360 psychological preparation, evacuation, 398 psychological resources, environment, 36 psychology environment, 23–24 importance of scale, 676, 678 integration of environmental and conservation, 682–683 mental health and well–being, 513–514 place attachment, 149 role and responsibility of, 682–683 worldview in, 14–19 Psychology and Environmental Change, 4 The Psychology of Environmental Problems, 4 psychology of sustainability, 3 Psychology of Sustainable Development, 4 The Psychology of Vandalism, Goldstein, 282 PsyEcology, 4 public commitments, pro-environment, 565–566 public housing, Chicago, 512, 514–515 “Publicolor” school design, Shuman, 281 public policy, fairness, 99–100 Putnam, Robert, 602 Q quality of life environmental fit, 225 model for examining, 223, 225 noise, 381, 386 outdoor spaces, 238 quantum change, elements of, 493–494 quasi-stable systems, ecosystems, 12 Quebec, 227, 542 questionnaires environmental action, 533–534 water conservation, 587 R radical empiricism, James, 19–21 RAER (realistically achievable emissions reductions), 557, 558 Ralston, Aron Lee, 348, 352 rational choice models, sustainable behavior, 135–136 reality, people and environment, 225–226 realization epiphanies, 499, 503 recreation, restorative environment, 452 recreational environment, 353–355 Page 44 of 62
Index recycling behavior, 136, 572 rehabilitation centers, 453 relationships, urban dwellers, 210–211 relativistic field theories, 14 religion, environmental concern, 69–70 representational realism, 26 Rep Trak, 241 Republicans, climate change, 648, 650, 651 reputation. See branding and reputation Reputation Institute, 241 residence (urban-rural), environmental concern, 69 residential environments branding and reputation, 239–242 definition, 221 ecological theory, 224 ecological view and affordances, 222–224 explaining environmental fit, 224–226 future directions, 242 matrix of, by topic, 226 model for examining, 223, 225 perception, evaluation, and satisfaction, 227–233 place-specific approach, 222–224 quality of life, 223–224 segregation and aggregation, 236–239 theoretical framework, 221–222 traditional research, 226–227 uses and activities, 233–236 residential ethnography, 230 residential quality (RQ) evaluation and satisfaction, 232–233 urban, 228–229 residential satisfaction, neighborhood, 228 resilience, 368 climate change, 655–656 Holocaust survivors, 366–367 resource management, motives and interventions, 568 respiration, relational properties, 18 response-time, hurricane evacuation, 397–398 responsibility, equity, 96 restoration, work environments, 263–264 restorative environments attention restoration theory (ART), 446–447 favorite places, 453 fluency and fractals, 454–455 future, 455 Page 45 of 62
Index home, 452 hospitals, 453 managed nature, 450–452 museums, 453 nature as restorer, 450–452 perceived restorativeness, 454 psycho-evolutionary theory of stress reduction, 447–448 rehabilitation centers, 453 similarities and differences between ART and stress reduction, 448–449 social context of restoration, 455 specific concepts of interest, 453–455 spiritual environments, 453 theories on restoration, 445–446 wild nature, 450 workplace, 452–453 restricted environmental stimulation therapy (REST), 321 risk characterization, analysis and deliberation, 606–607 risk perception hazard adjustment, 402–403 measures of, 407 Road Traffic and Aircraft Noise Exposure and Children’s Cognition and Health (RANCH) study, 380 road traffic noise study, 379–380 Robert Taylor Homes (RTH), public housing, 514 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 515 Roots and Shoots clubs, Tanzania, 543 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 114 Rwanda genocide, 364, 367 S salutogenesis, 366 salutogenic, 349 Salyut program, 358 San Antonio, TX, urban watersheds, 618–619 San Francisco, 241 San Francisco Estuary Project, 599–600 satisfaction. See also perception, evaluation, and satisfaction workplace, 251–252 savanna hypothesis, natural landscapes, 338 Scenic Beauty Estimation (SBE), 333 school design classroom design, 282–284 future, 288–290 guides for high-performance, 285–286 open-space, 278–279 “Publicolor” by Shuman, 281 Page 46 of 62
Index school environments classroom design, 282–284 classroom privacy, 283–284 classroom seating, 283 design guides, 285–286 future directions, 290 green schools impact on health and performance, 286–287 high-performance schools, 285–287 historical evolution of American buildings, 276–279 information technology classroom, 284 learning, 280–282 natural materials, niches and paths, 285 outdoor environment, 284–285 progressive movement, 278–279 reform pedagogy (1890–1932), 277–278 school condition, 281–282 school size, 279–280 schools of future, 289–290 school trends, 287–289 user evaluation of school buildings, 280–281 visual appearance, 282 School of Lost Borders, 437 School of Natural Resources, 446 Schools Health & Environment Study, 380 Schwartz, Shalom, 185, 186, 189, 190–191 Schwartz’s value theory, 83–84 ScienceDirect, 148 scientific consensus, climate change, 648–649 scope of justice, 107 Scope of Justice Scale, 415, 422 Scopus, 189 Scott-Amundsen South Pole Station, 355 Seabourne, Malcolm, 283 segregation and aggregation city, 238–239 home, 236 (p. 697) neighborhood, 236–237 outdoor spaces, 237–238 residential place, 226 self, identity, 165 Self and Identity, 164 self-centered, 297 self-concept, wilderness programs, 435 Self-Determination Theory, 166, 168 Self-enhancement, Schwartz, 83–84, 87 Page 47 of 62
Index self-esteem, 366 self-evaluation, privacy supporting, 318 self-interest fairness, 99, 100 pro-environmental behavior, 562–565 self-limiting, ecosystems, 13 self-organizing consensus–building process, 610 ecosystems, 12–13 self-presentation, environmental identity, 175 self-regulation, cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST), 154–155 self-reported behavior, 66 self-reports, water conservation, 587 self-transcendence, Schwartz, 83–84, 85, 87 Senge, Peter, 623n. 5 Sense and Sustainability: Educating for a Low Carbon World, Webster and Johnson, 630 The Sense of Wonder, Carson, 530 The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, Gibson, 24 sensitivity, noise, 384 Service Experiences Survey, 543 service learning, environmental, 542–543 Shepard, Paul, 428 Shuman, Ruth Lande, 281 Shuttle/Mir, 359 sick building syndrome (SBS), work environment, 261 Sierra Club, 532 signage, wayfinding, 50, 55–56 significant life experiences. See also environmental action environmental activism developing through, 534–536 environmentally active citizens, 531–537 extended mixed-method research program, 531–532 memory research, 536 questionnaires and interviews, 533–534 strengths and weaknesses of research, 536–537 surveys, 532–533 Silent Spring, Carson, 630 Silvadon, Paul, 295 simulations, nature, 123 site attachment, space and justice, 103–105 situational context disaster response, 392 hurricanes, 399–400 water conservation, 590 skills, water conservation, 588 Skinner, B. F., 562 Page 48 of 62
Index Skylab, space station program, 359 slavery, Civil War, 416 sleep correctional environment, 323, 326 health care environment, 306–307 noise exposure and, disturbance, 381–383 sleeping pills, noise exposure and health, 378 slipping baseline syndrome, 122 SMART Boards, information technology, 284 sociability, urban inhabitants, 211–212 sociable introversion, 357 social-altruistic approach, pro-environmental behavior, 565–569 social behavior noise, 385 urban life, 208–209 social capital theory, collaborative partnership, 602 social conditions, correctional environment, 319–321 social connections environmental epiphanies, 500–501 prison environment, 321 social context, restoration, 455 social density, work, 253 social deprivation, isolated inmates, 321 social design, health care environment, 296–297 social dilemmas attitudes, 342–343 environmental conflict resolution (ECR), 620 pro-environmental behavior, 567–569 social discounting, justice, 108, 109 social environment indicators for physical activity, 469 perception, 470–471 social group children in nature, 119 wilderness experience program, 432, 433, 435 social identities, environment, 168–169 social interaction, city, 217n. 1 social justice research climate change, 655–656 public, 425 society and justice, 107–108 space and justice, 103–105 time and justice, 105–107 social justice theory, benefits approach, 95 social learning theory (SLT), wilderness experience, 435 Page 49 of 62
Index social movements, environmental justice and, 418–419 social networks, human mitigation behavior, 662 social norms human mitigation behavior, 659 pro-environmental behavior, 566–567 social psychology, 674 The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice, Lind and Tyler, 97 social relations, work environments, 250–253 Social Science Quarterly, 188 social solidarity, human-environment interactions, 186–187, 188 social trap, water misuse, 586 social values orientations, 82–83 Schwartz, 83–84 societal factors, human mitigation behavior, 659–660 society, socio-ecological dilemma, 134 Society for Environmental, Population, and Conservation Psychology, 4 Society for Psychological Study of Social Issues, 645 socio-ecological dilemma, emotions, 134 socioeconomic status children’s access to nature, 118 climate change, 656 environmental concern, 68 environmental degradation, 415–417 natural disasters, 362–363 nature and human health, 511 sociofugal spatial settings, 295 sociopetal settings, 295 soft fascination attention restoration theory (ART), 447 notion of, 434 soft systems methodology, environmental conflict resolution (ECR), 604–605 soroche, 353–354 South Africa, segregation, 238 Southern California Environmental Justice Collaborative, 420 Soviet Union, mass murder, 367 space. See also personal space correctional environment, 318–319 justice and, 103–105 space stations extreme environment, 357–360 psychological effects, 358–360 space stupids, 358 space syntax, 54 Spain, water management, 94 Page 50 of 62
Index Spanish-American cultures, 182–183 spatial cognition definition, 42 Garling’s model, 48 spatial density, work, 253 spatial orientation, gender differences, 53 special housing unit syndrome, 321 specificity, environmental behavior, 66 spectator theory, knowing, 26 speech intelligibility index (SII), 254 sphere of needs (SON), water, 94, 95 spillover, behavioral, 574–575 spiritual places, restorative environment, 453 stakeholder characteristics, hazard adjustment, 403 state conservation agreements (SCAs), 615 Steiner, Rudolf, 114 strangers, city inhabitants, 210 stress health care environment, 304–305, 306 noise, 376 noise in prisons, 322 physical health and physiological, 510–511 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 362 prisoners, 317 work environment, 260–261 stressors, urban environment, 205–206 stress reduction theory (SRT) natural landscapes, 336–338, 343 psycho-evolutionary, 447–448 structure, environmental attitudes, 67 Student Conservation Association (SCA), 545, 547–548 student motivation to participate (SMP), 283 student/teacher participatory interaction (STPI), 283 subcultures, city inhabitants, 210 (p. 698) subjective norm (SN), water conservation, 589 Superfund site, Oklahoma, 420 Supermax prisons, 320 Survey of Environmental Issue Attitudes, 67 surveys environmental educators, 534 significant experiences, 532–533 survivors Holocaust, 366–367 natural disasters, 363–364 survivor syndrome, 365 Page 51 of 62
Index sustainability, from environmental protection to, 129, 134–135 sustainability competence, 641 sustainable, 285 sustainable behavior general action theories, 136–137 models of pro-environmental behavior, 137 rational choice models, 135–136 sustainable development (SD) cities, 203–204 education for, 631–632 emancipatory perspective, 634–635 instrumental perspective, 633–634 interpretations of education for, 632–635 monitoring and evaluation, 638–639 Sweden, nuclear facilities, 97 system justification, environmentalism and, 176 systems thinking research, 103 T Tanzania, 543, 551 Taylor County No Coal Coalition, 421, 423 Tbilisi Declaration of UNESCO, 527, 528, 529, 537 Technological Nature, Kahn, 550 technologies access to nature, 122–124 school trends, 288–289 telegarden, 123 territoriality correctional environment, 319 work environment, 253 terror management theory, 173 Theater of the Oppressed, Boal, 419 theory of affordances, water misuse, 586 theory of moral exclusion, space and justice, 103–104 theory of planned behavior (TPB), 72, 589 theory of reasoned action, 136 therapeutic uses of nature ecopsychology, 428–429 education, 437 family involvement in treatment, 439 framework for understanding, 432–436 future directions, 442 healing, 437 history, 429–432 licensure and accreditation, 438–439 Outward Bound, 429–431, 437, 440 Page 52 of 62
Index personal growth, 437 program models, 438 programs, 436–437 wilderness experience concurrent model, 432–436 wilderness therapy client characteristics, 439–440 wilderness therapy program controversy, 441 wilderness therapy program outcomes, 440 youth and adolescents, 437–441 thermal comfort green schools, 287 work environment, 258–259 Thompson, Michael, 185 Thoreau, Henry David, 114–115, 429, 509 threat perception, hurricane, 399 time changing human mitigation behavior, 661–662 children and nature, 117–118 discounting, 109 environmental fit, 225 environmental psychology, 678–679 evacuation preparation, 398 inclusionary change over, 423–424 justice and past, 106–107 justice in future, 105–106 perceiving path, 28 psychological events, 23 warning distributions, 398 Todai Health Index, 379 tornadoes behavioral response, 396 disaster response, 394–397 National Weather Service (NWS), 395–396 toxic waste, environmental racism, 416–417 traffic, 380 traffic safety perception, 470 physical activity, 467–468 traffic stress, 380 tragedy of commons, water misuse, 586 trait meta-theory, worldview, 14 transactional approach healthy behavior, 476–477 lifestyles, 461–463 transactionalism, 22–23, 29 transactional meta-theory Page 53 of 62
Index person-environment processes, 17–19 worldview, 16–17 transportation car driving, 140 environmental behavior, 560, 572 environmentally relevant behavior, 132 walking, 464–465 trash collection, 560, 564 traumatic environment, 353, 360–361 travel, environmental epiphanies, 500 treatment, family involvement, 439 Tribal Efforts Against Lead (TEAL), Oklahoma, 420 tripartite framework, place attachment, 149–150 Trout Unlimited, 532 Trump, J. Lloyd, 278 Turner, Fredrick Jackson, 429 Twenty Statements Test, 170 U Uganda, 543, 551 Ukrainians, starvation under Stalin, 361 Ulrich, Roger, 447–448, 510 uncertainty avoidance, 183, 184 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 527 United Church of Christ, toxic waste and race, 417 United Kingdom children and nature, 118 children’s exposure to nature, 122 home perception, 227 hospital bed space, 301 hospital design, 301, 311 knowledge of local nature, 122 older population, 238 United Nations, 340, 341 Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD), 631 ecosystems and human well-being report, 416 genocides, 364 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), 631 United States children and nature, 118 children’s activities outdoors, 117 Energy Policy Act of 1992, 584 environmental concern, 69 environmental degradation, 416 history of school buildings, 276–279 home perception, 227 Page 54 of 62
Index innovative work arrangements, 265 obesity and insufficient physical activity, 460 pleasurability features, 468 public health challenges, 474 social identity, 169 traffic safety, 467–468 wilderness programs, 432, 437–439 United States National Institute of Mental Health, 295 University of Idaho, Wilderness Research Center, 436 University of Michigan Fresh Air Camp-1944, 430 unusualness, 350 urban diversity city, 238–239 home, 236 neighborhood, 236–237 outdoor spaces, 237–238 segregation and aggregation, 236 urban environment adaptive behaviors, 207–208 characteristics, 204, 205 design and planning, 240 environmental stressors and living conditions, 205–206 social behavior, 208–209 urban civilities, 208 vandalism, criminality, and insecurity, 206–207 See also 204–207; cities urban green areas, attitudes, 222, 341–342 urban identity attachment and place of identity, 214–215 centrality, 213 proximity, 212–213 spatial extension of appropriation, 214–215 urban spatial investments, 212–213 urban-rural residence, environmental concern, 69 (p. 699) urban watersheds, San Antonio, 618–619 US Bureau of Prisons (BOP), 324 US Department of Education, school size, 279 US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 583, 657 user-centered design environmental humanization, 299 health care environment, 296–297 influence on health care users, 303–304 user evaluation, school buildings, 280–281 uses and activities city, 235–236 Page 55 of 62
Index home, 233–234 neighborhood, 234–235 outdoor spaces, 235 residential place, 226 US McMurdo Station, 355 V value-belief-norm theory (VBN), 72, 137 values affecting behavior, 87–89 environmental concern, 70 environmental identity, 175 human mitigation behavior, 658–659 natural landscapes, 340–341 predicting behavior, 569 water conservation, 589–590 See also environmental values value-sensitive design, children and nature, 123–124 vandalism, 206, 282 Vandenberg and Kuse Mental Rotations Test (MRT), 42 Varieties of Religious Experiences, James, 492 ventilation, work environment, 259 vicarious nature, category, 122 videophilia, 117 video-viewing, wayfinding, 49 Vietnam War, 363 violence, environmental model, 325–326 virtual environment (VE) new research, 681 wayfinding, 47 virtual reality, wayfinding, 46–47 visitor environment relationship, 496 visitors, health care environment, 310–311 visual impairments, wayfinding, 51 visual perception correctional environments, 322–324 work environments, 254–256 vulnerability climate change, 655–656 noise, 384 vulnerability hypothesis, noise annoyance, 383 W waiting area, health care environment, 307 walkability environmental behavior, 572 macro-environment, 463–465 Page 56 of 62
Index walking. See also physical activity accessibility features, 466–467 crime safety, 467 perceived environments, 469–471 pleasurability features, 468–469 social environmental indicators, 469 traffic safety, 467–468 transportation vs. leisure, 464–465 warning time, natural disasters, 398 waste disposal, environmental behavior, 560, 564 wastewater program, procedural justice, 97 water conservation behavior, 586–588 contextual factors, 584–585 freshwater scarcity, 582–583 justice, 94–96 management cycle, 102, 109 managing systems, 102–103 psychological determinants of, misuse, 583–584 psychological explanatory theories of, misuse, 585–586 sphere of needs (SON), 94, 95 water conservation, 586–588 archival analysis, 588 awareness, knowledge, skills and competence, 588 behavioral intentions, 589 behavioral interventions, 590–591 beliefs and perceptions, 589 consumption metering, 587–588 direct observations, 588 future directions, 593–594 methods for studying behaviors, 587–588 model, 594 personal norms, values and future orientation, 589–590 positive psychological consequences, 591–592 practices, 587 self-reports, 587 situational factors, 590 water management, justice, 95–96 water problems, psychology of, 582 watershed development (WSD) evaluation, 101–102 future, 108–109 managing systems, 102–103 storm-water, 104 watershed partnership, 609 Page 57 of 62
Index National Estuary Program (NEP), 614 processes and outcomes, 612–614 wayfinding, 49 applying research, 55–56 brain areas underlying, 44–46 cognitive impairments, 50–51 definition, 42 head-mounted displays (HMD), 56 legibility of place, 43–44, 55–56 perceiving path, 28, 37 research in natural environments, 56–57 signage, 50, 55–56 verisimilitude in, 46–47 visual impairments, 51 Wayfinding Strategy Scale, 52 Web of Science, 189 Weigel Environmental Concern Scale, 67 weight. See healthy weight Wenatchee National Forest (WNF), 617–618 Wenchuan earthquake, 363–364 West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT), 419–420 West London Schools Study, 380 West London survey, noise, 377 West London Survey of Psychiatric Morbidity, 379 Wildavsky, Aaron, 185 wilderness, restorer, 450 wilderness effect, 434 wilderness experience, 432, 495 wilderness experience concurrent model active self, 432, 433, 434–435 activity reflection, 432, 433, 435–436 factors, 433 nature, 432, 433–434 social group, 432, 433, 435 therapeutic use of nature, 432–436 wilderness experience programs (WEPs) education, 437 healing, 437 nature as therapeutic tool, 436–437 personal growth, 437 stewardship outcomes from, 545–548 See also therapeutic uses of nature Wilderness Research Center, 436, 442n. 1 Wilderness Road, Loughmiller, 430 wilderness therapy programs Page 58 of 62
Index client characteristics, 439–440 controversy, 441 family involvement in treatment, 439 licensure and accreditation, 438–439 outcomes, 440 program models, 438 therapeutic use of nature, 437–441, 441–442 youth and adolescents, 437–441 Wildlife Clubs, Uganda, 543 Wild Rockies Field Institute (WRFI), 546 Williams, Suni, 359 Wilson, Pete, 600 windows, correctional environment, 323 winter-over syndrome, 358 Wisconsin Trappers Association, 532 Wordsworth, 114, 509 work environments attention and distraction, 253–254 behavioral consequences, 250–266 BOSTI books, 248 BOSTI study of productivity, 251 cognition, 265 comfort, 258–260 communication and collaboration, 252–253 conceptual model, 249 control, 261–263 density, 253 future directions, 268–269 innovative work arrangements, 265–266 integrated models of comfort, 259–260 noise, 260–261 ocular light-initiated processes, 254–258 office type, 248, 250–251 personal space, 253 photobiology, 256–258 positive affect, 264–265 privacy, 251–252 restoration, 263–264 school conditions, 281–282 sick building syndrome, 261 social relations and personal space, 250–253 stress and health, 260–261 territoriality, 253 thermal comfort, 258–259 ventilation, 259 Page 59 of 62
Index visual perception, 254–256 (p. 700) workplace environmental consequences of, behavior, 266–268 restorative environment, 452–453 work space stress, 262 World Commission on Environment and Development, 105 World Health Organization (WHO), 260, 467 World Hypotheses, Pepper, 14, 37n. 2 world of strangers, city inhabitants, 210 worlds in miniature (WIM), wayfinding, 47 World Values Survey, 187, 189, 192 worldviews comparing values and environmental concern to, 89 interactionist meta-theory, 14–16 natural landscapes, 340–341 organismic meta-theory, 16 psychology, 14–19 trait meta-theory, 14 transactional meta-theory, 16–17 World Wildlife Fund-UK, 5 wrist-actimetry, sleep disturbance, 383 Y Yellowstone National Park, 629 youth, wilderness experience programs (WEPs), 437–441 Youth Conservation Corps, 545 Youth-Outcome Questionnaire, 440 Yugoslavia, mass murder, 367 Z Zimbabwe, 367 zone of proximal development, 422 zoos, 122, 169–170
Notes: (1.) The city, as a fundamental place for social interaction, must be recognised as the pivotal human settlement which provides a focal point for growth and sustainable development, for the well-being and social cohesion of the majority of the population, for its capacity to adapt and to innovate technically, socially, culturally and politically, for the creation of our future and a renewed vision of the progress of humanity and for the evolution of our civilisation. (1.) These differences likely have to do with the item wording used by Gallup and Pew; Pew asks participants, “Is there solid evidence the earth is warming: Yes, because of human activities; Yes, because of natural patterns; Yes, but don’t know why; No; Don’t know,” while Gallup asks, “From what you have heard or read, do you believe increases in the earth’s
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Index temperature over the last century are due more to: the effects of pollution from human activities or natural changes in the environment that are not due to human activities?” (1.) The quantity of light falling on a surface is the illuminance of the surface. The SI unit for illuminance is lumens/m2 , abbreviated lx. The quantity of light emitted from a surface or a light source is its luminance. The SI unit for luminance is the candela/m2 , abbreviated cd/m2 . (1.) In this text the opposite of pro-environmental behavior is not called contra-environmental behavior, but this form of behavior is circumscribed (e.g., “behavior that sets the protection of nature at risk”). These behavioral decisions do not intend to set ecological aims at risk, but these risks are more or less consciously accepted as negative side effects of enjoyable or profitable activities. This is the case for private behavior (e.g., car driving) but also for political decision-making or industrial production. (1.) The author of this publication was a research assistant, research associate, and the associate director of the Wilderness Research Center from 1995 to 2003 and was involved in much of the research and report writing on a major research agenda examining the use of wilderness for personal growth, education, and therapy. (2.) The original term used by Berlyne is not categorical but ecological. Because of the different meaning of “ecological” in common use, we choose to use a different term that more intuitively grasps the content of the concept. (2.) Readers may be more familiar with Kuhn’s later notion of paradigms than with Pepper’s world hypotheses. They are broadly similar, although Kuhn placed far more attention on the practices of scientific communities in his analysis and how scientific paradigms sustain particular approaches to a domain of inquiry. (3.) The very concept of a gene is hotly contested in the developmental biology literature, and many of these critiques operate in the spirit of the transactional worldview being examined here (Moss, 2003; Oyama, 1985). (4.) Additional provisions included: (1) new revenue sources would not be provided for implementation; (2) clarification that CCMP “neither requires nor recommends” use of the salinity index as a water quality “standard”; and (3) the Bay-Delta Oversight Council (governor-appointed group consisting of stakeholder majority representing farming and urban water interests in Southern California) would “revisit” SFEP proposals on flows and water quality (Innes & Connick, 1999). (4.) Meta-analyses showing a positive relationship between preference for photographs of buildings and for “actual buildings” (cited in Stamps, 1994) amass such a diverse set of studies that employ a wide variety of procedures and viewing conditions that, in my assessment, it is impossible to state with any precision what relationships are operating or judge the comparability of the studies. (5.) Interested readers should consult original sources (Checkland, 1981; Checkland & Scoles, 1990; Wilson & Morren, 1990) for expanded coverage of SSM. Systems thinking principles were introduced to the general business community by Peter Senge’s (1990) best-selling book, Page 61 of 62
Index The Fifth Discipline. The first formal application, however, of open systems theory to organizational behavior can be traced to Katz and Kahn’s (1966) text, The Social Psychology of Organizations. (7.) McCreary, Gamman, and Brooks (2001) presented joint fact-finding procedures for integrating scientific expertise in complex public policy disputes. This joint fact-finding process represents further progress by ECR practitioners in integrating A&D processes within established consensus-building methods.
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