Environmental and Architectural Psychology: The Basics 2022 PDF

i “It is really exciting to see this book. At a time when environmental psychology is moving more towards addressing important and chal- lenging issues of sustainability some of the felds critical contributions to architectural psychology can sometimes be left behind. This book...

i “It is really exciting to see this book. At a time when environmental psychology is moving more towards addressing important and chal- lenging issues of sustainability some of the felds critical contributions to architectural psychology can sometimes be left behind. This book brings some of the key concepts, models and theories within the feld of Architectural Psychology into the 21st century and shows that these are still key concepts with signifcant importance in today’s world – both from a scientifc and practical perspective. This book is an important read for psychologists, architects, designers and environmentalists alike. I will certainly recommend it as essential reading to our Environmental Psychology masters and PhD students”. —Professor Birgitta Gatersleben, Professor of Environmental Psychology, Director of Environmental Psychology Research Group, Programme Leader for MSc Environmental Psychology, University of Surrey, UK “This book provides the ingredients for understanding human behav- iour in its broadest social and spatial dimensions. The author draws on his years of accumulated scientifc experience, presenting environ- mental psychology’s interpretation of human behaviour in many set- tings. Each topic opens a conversation in which the meanings of spatial behaviour in diferent contexts are discussed. In doing this, the reader is given a harmonious, pertinent and challenging analysis of current environmental and urban issues. This is an expertly constructed refer- ence book for both present and future generations of environmental psychologists”. —Professor Ricardo García Mira, Professor of Social Psychology, Leader of the People-Environment Research Group, Universidade da Coruña, Spain ii iii ENVIRONMENTAL AND ARCHITECTURAL PSYCHOLOGY Environmental and Architectural Psychology:The Basics is a jargon-free and accessible introduction to the relationship between people and their natural and built environment. Exploring everything from the efectiveness of open plan ofces to how people respond to life-threatening disasters, the book addresses issues around sustainability, climate change, and behaviour, and is grounded in theory and ideas drawn from psychology, geography, and architecture. Author Ian Donald introduces both the theoreti- cal underpinnings and the applications of environment-behaviour research to solving real world problems, encouraging readers to refect on the role of design and policy in shaping the environments in which they live and work.With chapters considering the impact of environment on identity, wellbeing, crime, and spatial behaviour, Donald shows us not only how people shape and afect the envi- ronment, but also in turn how the environment shapes and afects people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Addressing some of the most important questions of our time, including how behaviour drives climate change, and what we can do about it, this is the ideal book for anyone interested in the inter- actions between architecture, the environment, and psychology. Ian Donald is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Liverpool, UK, where he was previously Head of the School of Psychology. He was International Co-editor of the Journal of Environmental Psychology for ten years and on the Editorial Advisory Board for 25 years. Ian is an active researcher and has taught Environmental Psychology at undergraduate and postgraduate level in the UK and abroad. iv The Basics Series The Basics is a highly successful series of accessible guidebooks which provide an overview of the fundamental principles of a subject area in a jargon-free and undaunting format. Intended for students approaching a subject for the frst time, the books both introduce the essentials of a subject and provide an ideal springboard for further study. With over 50 titles span- ning subjects from artifcial intelligence (AI) to women’s stud- ies, The Basics are an ideal starting point for students seeking to understand a subject area. Each text comes with recommendations for further study and gradually introduces the complexities and nuances within a subject. COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY: THE BASICS ARCHAEOLOGY (FOURTH EDITION) SANDIE TAYLOR AND LANCE WORKMAN BRIAN M. FAGAN AND NADIA DURRANI SOCIOLOGY (THIRD EDITION) REAL ESTATE KEN PLUMMER JAN WILCOX AND JANE FORSYTH MUSIC COGNITION: THE BASICS MANAGEMENT (SECOND EDITION) HENKJAN HONING MORGEN WITZEL PERFORMANCE STUDIES SEMIOTICS (FOURTH EDITION) ANDREEA S. MICU DANIEL CHANDLER AMERICAN STUDIES CHOREOGRAPHY ANDREW DIX JENNY ROCHE AND STEPHANIE BURRIDGE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY (SECOND EDITION) LANGUAGE ACQUISITION JOSEPH HOLDEN PAUL IBBOTSON WORLD PREHISTORY AIR POLLUTION AND CLIMATE CHANGE BRIAN M. FAGAN AND NADIA DURRANI JOHN PEARSON AND RICHARD DERWENT FRENCH REVOLUTION INFANCY DARIUS VON GÜTTNER MARC H. BORNSTEIN AND MARTHA E. ARTERBERRY RESEARCH METHODS (THIRD EDITION) NICHOLAS WALLIMAN Other titles in the series can be found at: www.routledge.com/ The-Basics/book-series/B v ENVIRONMENTAL AND ARCHITECTURAL PSYCHOLOGY THE BASICS Ian Donald vi Cover image: Getty First published 2022 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Ian Donald The right of Ian Donald to be identifed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-22367-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-22368-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-27454-1 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9780429274541 Typeset in Bembo by codeMantra vii For Oliver, of course. ii ix CONTENTS List of fgures x Preface xi Acknowledgements xvi 1 Introduction and Brief History of Environmental and Architectural Psychology 1 2 Place, Place Identity, and Place Attachment 29 3 Spatial Behaviour: Crowding, Privacy, Personal Space, and Territoriality 57 4 Behaviour During Disasters and Emergencies 81 5 Crime, Environment, and Geographical Profling 109 6 Therapeutic, Supportive, and Restorative Environments 134 7 Ofce Environments 167 8 Environmental Sustainability and Pro-Environmental Behaviour 197 Index 241 x FIGURES 4.1 General Model of Behaviour during Fires 97 8.1 Dimensions of curtailment and efciency 206 8.2 Representation of Value-Belief-Norm theory 211 8.3 Representation of the theory of planned behaviour 218 xi PREFACE Environmental psychology is why I became a psychologist. At the time I was an undergraduate, psychology was not the popular sub- ject it is now, and many people had little idea what it entailed before they began to study it. So it was for me. I enrolled on a broad applied social science BA, with psychology as a minor subsidiary subject. I thought a little psychology might be useful, mainly because it would tell me about things like body language, which would come in handy at parties. Instead I was faced with lectures on perception, cognition, and the other mainstream experimental psychology sub- jects.This is not psychology I thought. But it was. In my fnal year, I chose a module in environmental psychology, for timetabling reasons as much as an interest in the subject. It was immediately apparent that environmental psychology ftted with what I thought psychology should be about, and how I thought it should be done. Instead of putting subjects in laboratories and studying isolated variables, environmental psychologists were study- ing real people, in their real habitats, and trying to solve real prob- lems.This was interesting, even exciting, and it was what I wanted to do. A year later I arrived at the University of Surrey to study for an MSc in Environmental Psychology, and exactly 40 years to the month after that, I am writing this preface. Naturally, a fair bit has happened to me and to environmental psychology during those intervening years. In writing this book, one of the things that has struck me is how early in the development of environmental psychology it was at that time I was studying. It meant that I had the privilege to study with xii xii PREFACE some of the frst generation of environmental psychologists in the UK, including Terrance Lee and David Canter. Surrey also attracted international visitors who generously gave their time to us students. Of the top of my head, I can recall visits from David Stea, Henry Sanof, and Claude Levy-Leboyer.At the same time, the frst edition of the Journal of Environmental Psychology was being planned in the ofce next to our seminar room. Unfortunately it is only in retro- spect that I can appreciate what a formative period this was. Early on in writing this volume, I fxed a bright yellow sticky note to the edge of my computer screen. It is still there, and on it is scribbled ‘THIS IS NOT A COMPREHENSIVE TEXTBOOK’. It was to remind me that I couldn’t cover the entire body of research that has been published in the discipline. Instead, this volume is a specifc, perhaps idiosyncratic, take on environmental psychology by someone who has worked in and out of the feld for many years. It gives a favour of what environmental psychology is and what environmental psychologists do. In writing the book, I have tried to provide the basics of environmental psychology, but also give a feel for some of the deeper questions. Unusually, I have chosen to title this book Environmental and Architectural Psychology. In the early days of the discipline the terms architectural and environmental psychology were used pretty much interchangeably, refecting the focus on the built (architec- tural) environment. Eventually environmental won out, probably because it was more all-encompassing and was the favoured term in North America. In recent years, there has been a signifcant shift in the emphasis of the discipline towards the natural environment and ‘green’ issues. That is completely appropriate and welcome. The focus on nature not buildings, and on changing behaviour not design, has led some to speculate that environmental psychol- ogy has fundamentally shifted and is now a discipline solely about conservation, sustainability, and pro-environmental behaviour.That, of course, is not the case. These subjects are the primary current focus of interest, as other areas of research have been in the past. Environmental psychology is doing what it has always done, which is researching and trying to help solve the pressing issues of the day. However, it does not hurt to remind people explicitly that buildings are still a part of the discipline, and so including architectural in the title of this book serves as that reminder. xiii PREFACE xiii In a feld as broad as environmental psychology, the choice of areas for inclusion in a volume like this is always going to involve difcult decisions.The book could easily have been about schools, homes, and tourism, rather than about disasters, therapeutic envi- ronments, and ofces. In making my choices I have tried to ensure that they cover many of the basic underlying processes that link people with their environment. I have attempted to write about quite a broad range of areas of research. I have also had an eye to what is available in existing texts in environmental psychology. I have left out several topics that are extensively covered elsewhere – the most obvious being environmental cognition and perception. I also do not include specifc sections on research methods in environmental psychology. Those subjects are well considered in most environmental psychology texts. At the end of Chapter 1, I particularly recommend Bob Giford’s textbook for its cover- age of those areas. I have also tried to include topics not avail- able in other environmental psychology texts, such as behaviour during emergencies, and geographic profling, along with more architecturally orientated subjects such as ofce design, which are not included in recent overviews. The inclusion of those subjects complements what is found in, for instance, Linda Steg and her colleague’s recent edited textbook on environmental psychology, which I also recommend. In Chapter 1 I begin with an overview of the feld, what it is and how it works. In the section describing key developments I have limited the description primarily to the UK, with a focus on parts of the history and people that do not always appear in the major environmental texts. I also wanted the chapter to establish at the outset the diferent ways of thinking about person-environment relations, which, in my view, shapes the questions we ask and the way in which we think about them. Chapter 2, on place, continues the discussion about how peo- ple and environments are related. Place is an important concept, but does not always get the coverage it deserves in introductory books. Although the concept of place can seem abstract, it has important applied implications that take us beyond the simple ques- tions that most people tend to think of when they ask about the environment. For instance, it has something to say about resilience xiv xiv PREFACE to environmental risk and threat, how we treat immigrants to our country, and the location of infrastructure. Crowding, territoriality, and personal space are classic areas of study and were once central to environmental psychology.They are the focus of Chapter 3. Although they are less researched today as subjects in their own right, they are still important concepts in many applied areas of study, including crime prevention and ofce design. Psychologists are often involved in studying the circumstances that precede various kinds of disasters, or in working with survivors after an event. Chapter 4 focuses on behaviour during life-threaten- ing events, with a particular focus on fres.This is an area in which it is readily possible to claim that environmental psychology has led to changes that have saved lives. Despite this, it is often not covered in any detail in general environmental psychology books. In Chapter 5, I consider crime and the environment from three diferent angles.The frst two of these are found in earlier textbooks on environmental psychology. They are the idea that the weather causes crime, or at least facilitates it, and that the design of the envi- ronment can do the same. The third perspective looks at the way in which the environment can be used to help the investigation of crime and to identify potential ofenders through geographical profling. Some of the earliest environmental psychology studies in the 1950s looked ways of improving ward and hospital design. The range of ways in which the environment can contribute to thera- peutic settings and support their inhabitants has changed consider- ably since those early days. In Chapter 8 we look at the relationship between ideas of therapeutic support and the design of the settings in which people live or are treated. The second part of the chap- ter shifts to examine the idea of restorative environments and the theories that underlie them. In a sense, restoration is therapy for everyone. Chapter 7 focuses on the built environment of ofces – places in which millions of people spend large periods of their lives. In this chapter, I try to show again how the environment refects prevailing theories from other disciplines, such as management theory. In this case, how theories about organisations and workers infuence the design and management of the ofce, with particular emphasis on open plan designs. xv PREFACE xv The fnal chapter, Chapter 8, is about sustainability and pro- environmental behaviour. This represents the current largest and most active area of research endeavour in environmental psychol- ogy. In this chapter, I have covered the basic theoretical foundations of behaviour change, along with the practical interventions that are based on those theories. Although the research fndings are varied, and sometimes contradictory, on the whole they present a reason- ably coherent picture of the factors that underlie behaviour and how we could go about changing those behaviours. As I write this preface, COP26 is about to take place in Glasgow, during which climate change and the fate of the world will be infuenced by decisions made by world leaders. Fifty or more years of environmental psychology research on sustainability means that the tools to bring about change are available to politicians and pol- icy makers, if they choose to make that change. In writing this book, my aim has been to give people an insight into the nature of environmental psychology and perhaps even into their own relationship with the environment. I want to show that there is a lot more to environmental psychology than what colour we should paint the walls (a question that I do not answer in the text). Our relationship with the environment is much more subtle than that, as I hope I have conveyed. As I have been writing this book, I have been reminded of many of the things that I found so interesting back when I was an undergraduate. If, in these pages, I can communicate just a fraction of the excitement and enthusiasm I felt for environmental psychology when I frst encountered it, I will be happy with what I have achieved here. xvi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Oliver Donald for putting up with me writing this book. He is, as I type this, watching a flm we are supposed to be watching together. I’m grateful to him for taking the time every day, including today, to ask how it is going.At last I can tell him, it’s gone. It is completely unreasonable to ask a friend and colleague to read and comment on a complete draft manuscript within two weeks of it needing to be submitted.As that is exactly what I have done, I am especially grateful to Dr Margaret Wilson for responding to such an unreasonable request and for still managing to laugh about it. Margaret is that rare person, a friend who can be an honest, some- times ruthless critic.This book is signifcantly better because of her input. I could not write acknowledgements for a book on environmen- tal psychology without mentioning David Canter, whose infuence on my thinking in psychology is clearly evident in this volume. Eleanor Taylor at Routledge initially suggested the book and has been patient and supportive well beyond the call of duty. I am very grateful. I would like to acknowledge and thank the University of Liverpool for its continued support.Without access to their library and other facilities this book would have been very much more dif- fcult to write. 1 1 INTRODUCTION AND BRIEF HISTORY OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND ARCHITECTURAL PSYCHOLOGY THE BEGINNING Let’s begin our exploration of environmental and architectural psy- chology with two observations.The frst is that: A person’s behaviour can be more accurately predicted from knowing where they are than knowing who they are. To psychologists who have spent a lot of time developing measures of individual diferences and personality tests from which to predict behaviour that might come as a worrying surprise. Nonetheless, it is the case that a person will behave very diferently in a religious building, a sports stadium, or an ofce.The same group of students will act diferently in a lecture theatre, an exam room, or when they are out for an evening together.There will, of course, be individual diferences on display within each of those settings, but overall the framework for behaviour is provided by the place someone is in more than it is by their scores on the dimensions of a personality test.This obvious and basic observation has many implications, but for now we will stick with what it means for psychology. Frequently, experimental psychologists see the environment as a hindrance.They spend a lot of time, thought, and energy designing experiments that remove as much of the environment as possible. The environment is controlled for and cancelled out, rather than DOI: 10.4324/9780429274541-1 2 2 INTRODUCTION studied and understood as something intrinsic to behaviour.There is a very nice comment from Helen Ross (1974) in which she makes the point that “We know a great deal about the perception of a one- eyed man with his head in a clamp watching glowing lights in a dark room but surprisingly little about his perceptual ability in a real-life situation” (quoted in Canter, 1975, p. 5).Another way of saying this is that we know a lot about what people do in psychology laborato- ries, but much less about what they do in real environments. If experimental psychology removes the environmental from research, environmental psychology puts it back. To understand behaviour, we need to situate it in its environment. That means, amongst other things, we need to know where the behaviour is, what the rules of that place are, how they are understood, what people are trying to achieve in that place, and who else is there. This takes us beyond the physical environment to a more com- plex understanding of a world that brings together many other ele- ments, including social, physical, cultural, and cognitive phenomena. Complex as it may be, we understand how these components work together. We construct the environment in our minds and share a comprehension of it with others who use that place. If that were not the case, the places and settings we inhabit would not func- tion. Interestingly, it is when one of the components does not work, or when we do not share an understanding with those around us, that we notice our environment. One instance of this is when we travel to diferent cultures. We soon discover that many places do not operate in the same ways as we are used to. Rarely in the West, for instance, are you asked to remove your shoes when you enter a restaurant.Western visitors can also, for example, fnd the proximity at which people stand in the Middle East uncomfortable.Therefore, if you remove all the elements that comprise our environment, and then try to understand how someone behaves, it is likely that you will have a very poor understanding of what people do when they leave the laboratory. The second observation is that: The environment is not random. Everything you see around you is the product of human thought and decision-making. What that means is that someone somewhere has made a decision that has produced the environment that surrounds us, all the time. 3 INTRODUCTION 3 Each bit of our surroundings is the result of a conscious thought. The decisions may have resulted from social processes and move- ments, habits, fashions, or a host of other factors, but at the root will be found people making decisions.Very often those making the decisions will have a theory, implicit or explicit, about how people will perceive that environment and how they will behave in it.This might be small scale, such as when someone decorates their house, and assume their friends will like it, or a teacher rearranging a class- room to achieve a particular learning environment and change the way pupils interact. It can also be large scale, planning a city, or a country’s transport infrastructure. One of the challenges that we face in making these decisions is whether our theories about how others will relate to those setting are correct or not.Through testing theories and rigorous empirical research, environmental psychology aims to provide a sound and valid basis for making those decisions and understanding the implications of those that have already been made. It is worth pointing out that, although less obvious, the same is true for the natural environment, which is rarely the outcome of natural processes. The typical English landscape, for instance, of felds and dry stonewalls, or heather covered moors are the prod- uct of human decision-making.The choices people have made for agriculture, ownership, and commercial purposes have shaped our landscape. Forests have disappeared because tress have been felled, but less obviously more trees never get beyond a few inches because we graze animals that eat small shoots that will never grow and together form forests. It is quite possible that in some parts of the world there are large areas of wilderness or unspoiled forest that are devoid of human infuence. These might be found in the large regions of rainfor- est, or North American wilderness. But now even areas devoid of local human infuence are being changed as human activity has a signifcant and detrimental impact on the planet’s climate.The polar region’s shrinking ice caps, and the fres and the droughts being seen around the world are the result of our choices. Understanding that the environment is the product of our deci- sion-making can lead to a great number of questions about why environments are the way they are and how they impact on the peo- ple who use them. Psychology, of course, is not alone in examining 4 4 INTRODUCTION the environment and our relationship with it. One of the central claims of environmental psychology has always been that it is an interdisciplinary endeavour. In the next section, we will very briefy mention some of the other disciples and professions that have an interest in our surroundings. DISCIPLINES WITH A STRONG INTEREST IN THE ENVIRONMENT There are several disciplines that consider the environment and its relationship to behaviour. Some of these disciplines are directly related to psychology while others are not. As a multidisciplinary feld environmental and architectural psychology is happy to draw on all of them. Psychophysics is a discipline that is closely tied to mainstream perceptual psychology and could be argued to be the root of exper- imental psychology. Psychophysics tends to be concerned with the relationship between very specifc, discrete environmental stimuli, such as a sound or light, and the resulting sensation or perception of that stimuli.The discipline therefore works at a reductionist level. In contrast, environmental and architectural psychology usually exam- ines the environment at a molar level as well as including more subjective elements.That is not to say, however, that psychophysics is irrelevant to environmental psychology. It would perhaps be more accurate to say that it occupies a relatively small, specialised corner of the discipline. Ergonomics or human factors is the design of products, systems, and processes to ft the physical capabilities of people. Its aim is to ensure that the environment fts the person, physically and psycho- logically, rather than the person having to adapt to the environment. The Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors char- acterises the practice as bringing together knowledge from several disciplines including physiology, anatomy, engineering, and psychol- ogy.Traditionally focused on work environments and products, the feld has expanded to incorporate cognitive ergonomics. It has also moved out of the workplace and is now applied in broader settings including in the design of household objects, cars, and an array of machines and appliances that we encounter every day. 5 INTRODUCTION 5 Environmental sociology is focused on the interaction between societal issues and broader social movements (Lockie, 2015). It is less concerned with individual responses than psychophysics and ergonomics. Knight (2018) identifes four broad areas of interest to environmental sociologists: the social causes of environmental prob- lems, the societal impacts and infuences of the natural environment, how environmental threats and challenges are reacted to, and under- standing social processes that can lead to environmental change and sustainability. While environmental sociology operates at a societal level, many of the areas of interest are shared with environmental psychology, which is more than happy to draw on and use the work and methods of sociologists. Behavioural geography is perhaps, of all the other disciplines outside of psychology, the one that has most contributed to envi- ronmental psychology. There would even be an argument for the idea that it has contributed more to the development of the dis- cipline than mainstream psychology. Behavioural geography texts often resemble the content of psychology books on environmen- tal cognition. A geographer might put that the other way around. The history of behavioural geography in many ways parallels that of environmental psychology. Its development in earnest began in the 1960s, as a reaction against what has been characterised as descrip- tive geography and was an attempt to move towards a more theory- driven part of the discipline. It has made a signifcant contribution to our thinking and understanding of place, especially from a phe- nomenological perspective, as we will see in Chapter 2. Another major focus of geographers is environmental cognition. In this they borrow from psychology but also make a considerable contribution to it. As well as environmental cognition, behavioural geographers look at such things as the cognitive basis of spatial decision-making. While sociology tends to operate at a molar level, and psychophysics at a micro-level, like environmental psychology, behavioural geogra- phy works across the whole spectrum. Some years ago, geographer John Gold (1980) characterised behavioural geography. Described by Gold, behavioural geography distinguishes between and examines both the ‘objective’ world and ‘the world of the mind’. It recognises that people shape the world as well as respond to it. It focuses on the individual rather than 6 6 INTRODUCTION on social groups or societies. Finally, behavioural geography has a multidisciplinary approach. Comparing Gold’s description with Giford’s (2002) description of environmental psychology that we discuss below shows them to be at least siblings, if not twins. Many geographers have made contributions to environmental psychology and are an integral part of it (Kitchen, Blades & Golledge, 1997). Planning is one of the main disciplines that create our environ- ments. It is generally concerned with the large-scale locations or facilities and the routes between them. These include the layout of cities, neighbourhoods, and university campuses, for instance. Planning is often based on assumptions and data about how people move around, use information, navigate, make decisions, and inter- act socially. Planners are therefore interested in how people under- stand their environments and how they cognitively structure them. Planners have made some signifcant contributions to our under- standing of person-environment relations and environmental psy- chology. The US planner Kevin Lynch was one of the pioneers of ideas behind mental mapping studies in relation to large-scale urban environments. His book Image of the City is one of the most infuential writings on the topic of cognitive maps ever published (Lynch, 1960). It is worth noting that psychologists have made contributions to planning. Notable amongst those is pioneering environmental psychologist Terrence Lee in the UK, who infu- enced thinking on neighbourhood forms and school locations. Architecture has provided a lot of material and raised many questions for psychologists to address. The impact of architects on environmental psychology and our understanding of person-envi- ronment relations have been relatively limited in recent times.That is not to say they have made no contribution. Especially in the UK architects such as Manning and Markus were highly infuential, as were architecture schools at Liverpool, Strathclyde, Kingston, and Portsmouth, where several leading environmental psychologists began their research careers. Alan Lipman in academia and, in pri- vate practice, Frank Dufy also spring to mind. However, today the infuence is perhaps less than would be expected for the discipline that designs, plans, and constructs buildings.There has however been a signifcant indirect contribution to our discipline. Because many of the buildings that environmental psychologists study are created by architects, their intentions and assumptions in 7 INTRODUCTION 7 the designs they have produced are of course the subject of much research. Architects also have a signifcant focus on the aesthetics, raising questions about how people understand the styles and design of buildings. Several researchers have examined perception and understanding of meaning in architecture (e.g., Groat, 1982; Nasar, Stamps & Hanyu, 2005; Wilson & Canter, 1990), as well as how architects’ training comes to shape their design styles (e.g., Wilson, 1996;Wilson & Canter, 1990).Although architects consider people’s use of and responses to their settings, the direct infuence of archi- tectural psychology on architecture has been less than may have been hoped in the early days of the discipline. BECOMING AN ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGIST Unlike clinical, forensic, or occupational psychology, for example, there is no registration, licenced or chartered status for environmen- tal psychologists. Although the American Psychological Association has a division of environmental psychology, it is not a protected title in the same way other areas of psychology practice are. In some ways an environmental psychologist is a person who does environmental psychology. Terrance Lee made a similar point in 1976 when he wrote, “To understand the specie ‘environmental psychologist’, the frst point to make is that the label derives from what he (sic) actu- ally does and not from his (sic) university degree” (p. 17). Of course, that applies to most of the pioneers of the subject, who were rec- ognised as environmental psychologists, but whose original training was often in a very diferent area.As researchers from other areas of psychology, including social psychology, start to notice the environ- ment and publish their research on what are essentially traditional environmental psychology topics, we ought to add to the defnition of an environmental psychologist as someone who does environ- mental psychology and identifes as an environmental psychologist. Some environmental psychologists gain experience working with consultancies, large organisations, architecture practices, or in aca- demia. They might set out to work on environmental issues or it may just happen as part of their role. For instance, working within a large organisation as a human relations specialist, someone might be tasked with facilitating design participation and a move to a new 8 8 INTRODUCTION ofce building. More formally, and more usefully, the route to envi- ronmental psychology would be via postgraduate training in the subject.At masters level there is only one course in the UK that has environmental psychology in its title, but there are courses in ergo- nomics or social psychology that can be relevant. In most European countries, including Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, and elsewhere, there are programmes that have signifcant environmental psychology content, even if they are not called that. In the USA there are programmes in many universities including the University of California, Irvine, and City University New York. It is also possible to pursue an interest in environmental psychology via doctoral research. In that case there is an even wider choice of universities as there are potential supervisors who work in envi- ronmental psychology but are not part of a large enough group to provide taught postgraduate courses. DEFINITIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY Defnitions put boundaries around a disciple, identifying what it is concerned with and how it might go about its business. There are several defnitions of environmental psychology, which have changed over the years, recognising advances in research and in the complexity with which the environment is conceptualised. Despite the dynamic nature of the discipline, the defnitions identify a con- sistent set of characteristics, some of which we will consider in more detail later. At the start of the 1980s, David Canter and Ken Craik, in their opening introduction to the frst issue of the Journal of Environmental Psychology, described the discipline as, that area of psychology that brings into conjunction and analyzes the transactions and interrelationships of human experience and actions with pertinent aspects of the socio-physical surroundings. (Canter & Craik, 1981, p. 2) Canadian environmental psychologist Bob Giford, who has written one of the best comprehensive textbooks in environmental psychology, now in its ffth edition, defned environmental psychology simply as, 9 INTRODUCTION 9 the study of transactions between individuals and their physical settings. (Giford, 1987. p. 2) Finally, one of the most recent good texts in environmental psychol- ogy, edited by Linda Steg and her colleagues in the Netherlands, describes environmental psychology as, the discipline that studies the interplay between individuals and their built and natural environment. (Steg, Van Den Berg & De Groot, 2013, p. 2) There are some features of these defnitions that are worth draw- ing out. Canter and Craik’s, and Giford’s defnitions highlight that the discipline is concerned with transactions with the environment. In the early days of environmental psychology many researchers assumed that there was a clear one-way relationship between the environment and people. This has gradually evolved to the point where the relationship is conceptualised as a transaction in which the environment and people mutually act on one another in a con- tinuous cycle of change and infuence. While Giford talks of physical settings, Canter and Craik, by specifying socio-physical surroundings, draw attention to the social environment as well the physical. Other people are part of our environment and so need to be considered along with the physical surroundings. As French environmental psychologist Claude Levy-Leboyer describes,“... in reality, the social dimension is always there, because it constitutes the web of relationships between man and environment...The physical environment simultaneously symbolizes, makes concrete, and conditions the social environment” (Levy-Leboyer, 1982, p. 15). As soon as we start to discuss the social relationships in an environment, and the social systems that give rise to them, the importance of other disciplines, such as sociology and anthro- pology, becomes more obvious. Finally, it is worth emphasising Linda Steg and her colleagues’ defnition that highlights the built environment and the natu- ral environment. This distinction was evident very early on in the development of the discipline. In what is perhaps the frst text on environmental psychology, Ittelson et al. (1974) devote considerable attention to the natural, as well as the built environment. 10 10 INTRODUCTION CHARACTERISTICS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY To understand environmental psychology further, it is helpful to elaborate the discipline beyond the confnes of the defnitions we have seen. Within environmental psychology, there is a remarkable constancy in the characterisation of the feld across writers and over time. Comparing the frst texts on environmental psychol- ogy (Ittleson et al., 1974; Proshansky, Ittelson & Rivlin, 1976) with more contemporary volumes (Giford, 1987, 2002; Steg, Van den Berg & De Groot, 2019) shows a consensus unusual in academic social science. Giford’s (2002) description of the discipline is perhaps the best characterisation available. He argues that what sets environmental psychology apart is its commitment to research that subscribes to the following principles: Environmental psychology “is ultimately capable of improving the built environment and our stewardship of natural resources”. (p. 4) General and mainstream psychology has many everyday applications, but application is not always the central aim of research, and the way in which it can be applied is not always evident from the original experiments. This is like many scientifc disciplines. In physics, for example, research on the atom was not aimed at a specifc applica- tion and was only later used to develop atomic bombs and atomic power. Environmental psychology is not unique amongst other sub- areas of psychology, such as occupational and industrial psychology, and clinical, forensic, and health psychology, in being applied. Like those felds, environmental psychology research is strongly oriented to address challenges and, more uniquely, improving the environ- ment.This is consistent with Ittleson et al.’s (1974) description writ- ten almost 50 years ago, in which they identifed environmental psychology’s aim as being to solve social problems. Proshansky et al. echoed this point at a similar time, when they wrote that the discipline directly grew out of attempts to answer pressing social challenges (Proshansky et al., 1976). It is important to note, however, that the applied nature of environmental psychology does not mean that it is without theory. That was a criticism in its early days, but 11 INTRODUCTION 11 today it can be characterised as a theory-based discipline, though it aims to use that theory to change the world.As Giford makes clear, environmental psychology includes theory, research, and practice: Environmental psychology “is carried out in everyday settings (or close simulations of them)” (p. 4) Earlier the point was made that it is possible to predict a person’s behaviour more accurately from knowing where they are than who they are.Therefore, to understand people’s behaviour in a particular environment, you need to study them in that environment.After all, a psychology laboratory is an environment. Consequently, studying behaviour in a laboratory will tell you about how people behave in a laboratory. It will not necessarily tell you about their behaviour in other environments. As soon as a person goes into a laboratory, they already have expectations that will infuence their behaviour. If it is not possible to study people in the target environment, then they should be studied in an environment that is, in all important respects, a very close approximation of it. In traditional experimen- tal psychology, researchers attempt to remove most of the infu- ences on behaviour, but when environmental psychologists have to use a laboratory, they try to preserve them.This poses some unique challenges for environmental psychologists who have developed an array of research techniques, which are typically described in comprehensive textbooks on the discipline, or in texts devoted to research methods in environmental psychology (Giford, 2016). The third of Giford’s principles is: Environmental psychology “considers the person and the setting to be a holistic entity”. (p. 4) When examining people’s behaviour in the world outside the laboratory we are usually looking at the whole environment. The holistic approach to studying the environment goes back to the beginning of environmental psychology and is commented on in the early work of Ittleson et al. (1974) and Proshansky et al. (1976). As Proshansky (1976) noted many years ago, environmen- tal psychologists study people as part of their milieu. Beyond their physical and social qualities, environments come with a set of rules, 12 12 INTRODUCTION expectations, and scripts that guide what people will do.These form part of their feld’s subject matter. The fourth principle suggested by Giford is: Environmental psychology “recognizes that individuals actively cope with and shape settings, rather than passively absorb environmental forces”. (p. 4) Although most areas of psychology have been moving away from the notion that people are passive responders to stimuli, it has long been central in environmental psychology that people do not just respond to the environment, they actively engage with it, adjusting the way they interact and changing the environment itself. Ittleson et al. (1974) referred to this as the “dynamic interchange” (p. 5). Slightly more fundamentally, within environmental psychology people are seen as having agency. In contrast to determinism in which a person’s behaviour is a response directly determined or caused by the environment, agency has people acting on their world rather than simply responding to it. Without an external stimulus people do not remain passive and inert.They have goals and inten- tions, they make decisions and choices, and they carry out actions related to those choices. From this perspective the environment might help shape behaviour, but it does not cause it. Giford’s fnal principle is: Environmental psychology “is often performed in conjunction with other disciplines and professions”. (p. 4) Because environmental psychologists tend to be problem-solving and work with real environments they often work alongside practi- tioners from other disciplines.These may include some of those we have already briefy mentioned, such as planners and architects, but can also include, amongst others, facilities managers, safety experts, and the police. Further, as environmental psychologists are dealing with a wide variety of environments and environmental issues, they will be one of an array of environmental scientists. Consequently, they are likely to fnd theories and ideas from other environmental disciplines more useful than would be the case if they were work- ing in isolation. On top of that, they are also likely to fnd theories from disciplines not concerned with the environment to be helpful. 13 INTRODUCTION 13 For instance, organisational theory may assist environmental psy- chologists in their understanding of the way in which work settings contribute to workers’ experience and organisational functioning. While this sounds very collaborative and ideal, working with dif- ferent disciplines is not without its challenges.These can be as basic as language, for instance, what a psychologist means by objective data might not be what an architect or computer scientist means by that term. Sometimes the difculties are deeper.The basic ways in which various disciplines conceive of and think about the world may also be diferent. Scientists for example often struggle with arts disciplines, where the reliance on empirical data is less impor- tant. Environmental psychology therefore requires an understanding not only of diferent technical languages but also of multiple per- spectives and ways of conceptualising.They require a willingness to work in worlds that do not immediately ft with their own training and thinking. Overall, this is probably a positive feature. A SKETCH OF THE (UK) ORIGINS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY It is impossible to do more than scratch the surface of the history of environmental and architectural psychology here.This is true for its development in just one country, for the feld as a whole it is impossible. Therefore, in this very brief account we will focus on the UK, and even then, only a handful of the many people who cre- ated the discipline can be mentioned. However, help is at hand for those who want a more representative and comprehensive account. Almost all environmental psychology textbooks include detailed information about the history and development of the discipline. As they are accounts of historic events what they describe has not changed in any signifcant ways over the years, though some people and studies get added and others seem to disappear. Each account usually includes developments in North America, which domi- nated the discipline for 60 or so years. If the writer is from outside the USA, further details usually refect the author’s own country. Stokols and Altman’s Handbook of Environmental Psychology (1986) has extensive descriptions of the history of the discipline in ten countries or regions including Australia, Japan, France, Germany, the 14 14 INTRODUCTION Netherlands, Sweden, Soviet Union, Latin America, North America, and the UK. Spanish environmental psychologist Enric Pol provides a broader international view of the contributions that researchers have made to the discipline than is often found in accounts given from an Anglo-American perspective (Pol, 2006, 2007). Bonnes and Secchiaroli (1995) also provide a wider account that includes detail on developments in Europe and elsewhere. Further, reviews of other disciplines are worth considering, especially behavioural geography (Gold, 1980; Kitchen et al., 1997). The work of several psychologists at the start of the twentieth century, or even earlier, can be seen as foreshadowing research that later became part of environmental psychology. The frst time the term environmental psychology (pschologie der umwelt) was used in a publication was probably by German psychologist Hellpach in 1924 (Kruse & Graumann, 1987; Pol, 2006). There were others working at this time and later that could be seen as pioneers; how- ever, as Steg et al. (2013) contend, at that point it is too early to speak of an independent feld of systematic research in environmental psy- chology. It is also probably too early to speak of these researchers as environmental psychologists in any real sense. However, that is not to deny their groundbreaking work, which laid foundations, infuenced later eminent environmental psychologists, and included topics we would recognise as part of the discipline today. Fleury-Bahi, Pol, and Navarro (2017) draw attention to the “con- tributions of Terrence Lee, David Canter and Harold Proshansky and those who founded ‘the golden age’ of architectural psychology in the 1960s and 1970s” (p. 3). At this time, environmental psychology as a discipline can more clearly be seen to emerge out of a collection of unrelated studies carried out primarily in Europe and North America, though an interest in Japan was visible too.The research began to coa- lesce during the 1960s with the emergence of the infrastructure of an academic discipline, including conferences, professional associations, texts, and university courses. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the discipline had consolidated and been named. The applied and problem-solving orientation of environmen- tal psychology was perhaps set at this time. In most countries where the feld began to emerge, it was the result of research into some of the pressing social issues of the time. In some countries, 15 INTRODUCTION 15 including the Netherlands, it may have been a lack of interest in applied psychology in favour of more traditional experimental and theoretical approaches to psychology that delayed the emergence of the discipline in them (Stringer & Kremer, 1987). Incidentally, the Netherlands is now a country with a very strong presence in environmental psychology. Because of its applied nature, environ- mental psychology also often emerged from research collaboration between diferent disciplines or professions. In the USA that was often with clinical psychologists and designers. In the UK psycholo- gists tended to be involved with planners, architects, engineers, and others involved in the design of buildings. Like much of the rest of Europe, the UK in the 1960s was deal- ing with the aftermath of the Second World War, which, we some- times forget, had ended only 15–20 years before. During the 1950s and into the 1960s ‘slum’ housing and bomb-damaged buildings were being cleared and new towns were being consciously planned. Terrance Lee, a founder and pioneer of British environmental psy- chology, had carried out infuential PhD research on the concept of neighbourhood at Cambridge, under the supervision of Sir Fred Bartlett. Lee, in the 1950s, applied Bartlett’s innovative work on cognitive schema to the environment in what can be considered one of the earliest studies of both modern environmental psychol- ogy and environmental cognition (Lee, 1968). Lee’s work went on to infuence town planning and the development of new towns in the UK. His work also fed into ideas that had started in the pre- vious century with the Garden Cities movement, which were an attempt to get away from the crowded cities that had evolved from the industrial revolution and throughout the Victorian era.With the reorganisation of education in the country, Lee also worked on a variety of topics to do with schools, including the impact of journey time on pupil learning. Lee eventually moved, via other universities, to the University of Surrey where he became its frst professor of psychology and head of the newly formed psychology department. David Canter was invited by Terrence Lee to move to Surrey University, where they established the UK’s frst masters course in environmental psychol- ogy, which took its frst students in 1973.The course continues to run today, and several of its graduates can be found cited in the pages 16 16 INTRODUCTION of this volume. Had the course been established a few years earlier it would probably have been called architectural psychology. Lee and Canter were later joined by Peter Stringer, a psychologist working in the Bartlett School of Architecture (part of University College, the University of London), and Ian Grifths, who was working for the consulting frm Atkins. Surrey University consequently became perhaps the leading centre for environmental psychology outside of the USA at that time.The department remains an important hub of environmental psychology today. As an aside, the course at Surrey provides an interesting micro- cosm of the multidisciplinary and multinational nature of environ- mental psychology. Originally the course was directed by David Canter, a psychologist, who had moved from a school of architecture. Directorship then moved to David Uzzell, originally a geographer, and most recently to Birgitta Gatersleben, a Dutch psychologist with a PhD from the University of Groningen, another European hub of environmental psychology. In the UK architectural psychology was the prevailing term used for the emergent discipline. This probably refected a focus on the built environment because many of the early environmental psychologists, such as Canter, could be found in the architecture departments of UK universities. Changes in design and the require- ments for gaining an understanding of user needs, and a push by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) to include evaluations and feedback as part of the management of design, led to architects and social scientists working together. For instance, Brian Wells was undertaking studies of ofces based in the architecture department at Liverpool University. David Canter was Brian Wells’ PhD stu- dent working within the Pilkington Research Unit at Liverpool. Canter later moved to the school of architecture at Strathclyde University, along with the Pilkington Research Unit, which became the Building Performance Research Unit (BPRU), led by architect Tom Markus. The unit conducted several multidisciplinary studies into building types including ofces, hospitals, and schools. The Pilkington Research Unit at Liverpool was sponsored by a glass manufacturer interested in the role of natural lighting in build- ings.The group conducted important research and developed ideas about people-environment interactions. For instance, Manning, an 17 INTRODUCTION 17 architect, published one of the most important studies of its time into ofce buildings. Manning was part of a movement arguing for greater notice to be taken of users and for systematic research to be incorporated into architectural design stages, something taken for granted now.Writing in 1965, Manning made the point that “design decisions afecting the social environment of ofce buildings are made entirely on the basis of expectations or personal prejudice rather than knowledge” (Manning, 1965, p. 41).The BPRU (1972) book on building performance was signifcant in including discus- sion on the nature of agency, human action, and the goal-directed nature of behaviour.That was not something typical in publications on building performance at the time. There were symposia on architectural psychology at British Psychological Society conferences in the 1960s, the frst being in 1963 at Reading University (Lee, 1976). The frst signifcant full conference on architectural psychology was organised by the RIBA and Strathclyde School of Architecture and took place at Dalandhui near Glasgow. The meeting resulted in a book, edited by David Canter, entitled Architectural Psychology (Canter, 1970), which appeared the same year as Proshansky et al.’s (1970) edited volume, Environmental Psychology. Conferences followed at Kingston Polytechnic and Shefeld University, eventually evolving into the bi-annual IAPS conferences. For disciplines to become established they need to have an infra- structure that maintains them and disseminates ideas and research. We have already seen that university departments established research groups and postgraduate courses.There are also research associations in several regions of the world. In the USA, the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) was established in 1968 and has held an annual conference since 1969, usually in North America. Interestingly, the EDRA grew out of a multidisciplinary session at the 1965 conference of the Association of American Geographers. In Europe the International Association for People-Environment Studies (IAPS), which has its roots in the Architectural Psychology Conferences that began in the 1960s and continued to use the term Architectural Psychology until IAPS, was founded in 1981. In agreeing the name of the association, the ‘AP’ of the Architectural Psychology Newsletter, edited by Sue-Ann Lee, was consciously 18 18 INTRODUCTION preserved. In Asia and Australia, there is the People and Physical Environment Research (PAPER) association (1980) and the Man- Environment Research Association (MERA) was created in 1982 at the Architecture Department in the University of Osaka, Japan. As well as associations there are journals publishing peer-reviewed research. Although there is a plethora of these, often covering spe- cifc research areas such as transport or sustainability, there are two primary environmental psychology focused journals. Environment and Behavior was established in the USA in 1969 as a multidiscipli- nary publication.The other is the Journal of Environmental Psychology established by David Canter and Ken Craik in 1981. Of the regions that pioneered environmental psychology at its inception, arguably the USA, followed by the UK and Sweden, where architectural psychology conferences were being organised in the 1960s, were perhaps at the forefront. Researchers in North America however have dominated the feld since its beginnings. That may well have changed in more recent years. Giford (2017) has observed that there is now more environmental psychology research conducted in other countries than is carried out in the USA. Comparing a new handbook of environmental psychology (Fleury-Bahi, Pol & Navarro, 2017) to that by Altman and Stokols published in 1987, he notes that the recent volume includes 73 authors from 14 countries, with only two from the USA.The 1987 handbook included 66 authors from 11 countries with 43 of them being from the USA.Whether this represents a shift in the volume of work generated in diferent regions is open to question. Even if that is the case, we are still comparing the work of one country with the rest of the world. But all of that aside, there are now researchers working in environmental psychology in most European countries and throughout the world, and the discipline we have today is the product of all of them. PERSON-ENVIRONMENT RELATIONS: FROM REACTING TO TRANSACTING Having set the scene of what environmental psychology is and where it came from, in the next chapters we will examine some conceptual issues and start to see what it is that environmental psychologists do. First we need to lay some groundwork for understanding the 19 INTRODUCTION 19 relationship between people and their environments.The fnal part of this chapter will consider the fundamental way in which the environment impacts on people and vice versa. The nature of that relationship has been the subject of debate throughout the history and development of the discipline. It is important to engage with that discussion because the way we think about how the environ- ment and people relate to one another will strongly infuence how we design environments, the policy we make about environments, and the research we do on environments. There are several diferent ways of thinking about how people and the environment relate, but generally they can be distilled into the three main categories of determinism, interactionism, and trans- actionism (Canter, 1984). There are other ways of conceptualising person-environment relationships; however, these provide a useful, good, and broad categorisation that is reasonably easy to grasp. ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINISM The clue to the meaning of environmental determinism is very much in the name; the physical environment determines behaviour. Strong determinism is the simplest, most basic way of viewing the person-environment relationship. It is also, and probably for that very reason, the way most people initially think about the con- nection. Within this approach, the environment is a simple stim- ulus, with behaviour being the direct, usually predictable, specifc response.The response might be a behaviour, thought or feeling, but the path from stimulus to response will be direct.The environment directly causes the behaviour, thought, or feeling. Some of the most common questions asked about the environ- ment and its impact on people are often framed within a strong deterministic framework. This is especially true when the press or other media are seeking a comment on some environmental ques- tion or other. It is a way of thinking that tends to be visible in most media portrayals of environmental issues, as well as many of the questions and statements from politicians. If we look at some of these questions closely, we can see that often the deterministic conceptualisation does not hold up as an adequate explanation.Take for example the apparently simple question of how loud must noise be to be annoying. Within a deterministic framework it should be 20 20 INTRODUCTION quite straightforward to answer that question, it is just a matter of establishing the decibel level at which people report being annoyed. We will then know that as long as sound is kept below that level, everyone will be happy.We hear the equivalent of this when people are reassured that the noise from trafc or a new airport runway is acceptable because it will not be above a certain level. However, it is, of course, not that simple, because it is not just the level or volume of the sound that is important. Many other characteristics of the noise play a role in determining if it is annoying or not. For instance, who is making the noise, what the qualities of the noise are, how much control is there over the noise, what the noise means, and how frequent and intermittent the sound is, are all important in determining how annoying it is (Giford, 2013). If the noise is meaningful, predictable, and can be controlled, it will be less annoy- ing than if it does not have these characteristics, even if the decibel level is the same (Evans & Cohen, 1987). Throughout this book we will see many instances where researchers and others have assumed a direct and simple relationship between person and environment, only to be disappointed or con- fused when the relationship turns out not to be that straightforward. The Hawthorne studies (Roethlisberger and Dickson, 1949), which many psychologists are aware of because of the Hawthorne Efect, began by conceptualising research in terms of a direct relationship between lighting levels and work performance. As we will see in Chapter 7, when we look at work environments, the results revealed that such simple ideas cannot account for behaviour and that many other factors were involved. Interestingly, rather than abandoning determinism, the researchers involved in that study initially aban- doned the environment as irrelevant to worker performance. Other, more insightful researchers realised that it is important, but that its infuences are subtler. Less extreme versions of determinism give a slightly more active role to people in their relationship with the environment. From a weak determinist perspective, it is recognised that people will have a set of experiences that will mediate between the environment and a person’s reaction to it. Behaviour is therefore not the pure, direct result of the stimulus. However, the reasons why or how things come to have meaning are often ignored.The approach typically assumes that meaning is static; so does not take change and development 21 INTRODUCTION 21 into account. That is important because as meanings change, the same physical environment will have diferent efects over time. For instance, the site of a disaster will have very signifcant meaning for some people.Their response to the physical qualities of the site will be diferent pre- and post-disaster, even though those qualities have not changed. ENVIRONMENTAL INTERACTIONISM Once we move along the continuum from strong determinism to a weaker version, we are beginning to recognise interactionist ideas. An interactionist approach is a little more complex and better able to account for the relationships observed between people and their physical setting. The same approach can be found in Kurt Lewin’s famous equation: B=f (P, E), where B=behaviour, P=person, and E=environment (Lewin, 1936). The equation simply states that any behaviour will be the result, or function, of an interaction between the person and their environment. In this, Lewin was emphasising that the environment plays an important role in behaviour but that there is an interaction between the characteristics of the environ- ment and the characteristics of the person. As he wrote, “... one can hope to understand the forces that govern behavior only if one includes in the representation the whole psychological situation” (Lewin, 1936, p. 12). This approach contrasts with the simple stimulus-response model, which ignores characteristics of the individual, such as personality traits, or personal experience and history. Research showing that the impact of the environment may vary dramatically from one person to the other, with the same environmental stimuli resulting in very diferent behaviours, supports this perspective. ENVIRONMENTAL TRANSACTIONISM It is not only the case that settings impact on people, but also peo- ple change their settings. There is an evolution of the relationship between the people and the environment.The idea that the environ- ment shapes behaviour and that the environment is shaped by our decision-making refects a famous quote from Winston Churchill, reproduced in almost all environmental psychology texts, in which 22 22 INTRODUCTION he said,“We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us” (Hansard, 1943). He was talking about the rebuilding of the chamber of the House of Commons in the British parliament and pointing out that the nature of British politics and parliamentary debate is shaped by the characteristics of the House, including it being too small and spatially organised to facilitate confrontation rather than cooperation, though he did not necessarily express it in that way. Churchill’s statement leads us to the third of the approaches that we will consider.The transactionist perspective recognises that peo- ple can change the physical nature of their surroundings and the meanings they have. Equally the experience of the environment can change those people.There is a mutual transaction between people and the environment. In some versions of this approach, it would be argued that to make a distinction between a person and their environment is a false dichotomy. Because people change their physical environments to meet their needs and goals, it can be difcult for designers, managers, or owners to dictate how people will behave within an environ- ment. Whenever you see employees reorganising ofce furniture, or shoppers going in through the out door, what we are seeing are people who are not simply responding to their environment, they are transacting with it. Strong transactionalism is the most complex of the Person- Environment models we will consider. Here, people are defned by the environments they are in and they and their actions, in return, defne that environment.The strong transactionist approach argues that to distinguish between action and context, and to assume that past relationships people have with their settings are the same as they have with them in the present, is illogical because both the per- son and the environment are evolving together. To understand the relationship we need to look at the objectives and goals people have and the way in which they are structured by the social processes of which an individual is a part. The transaction between the environment and people has physi- cal form but can also be virtual or imaginary. As Canter (1977) argues, when dealing with the environment, people have ‘mental models’ of it and of the implications of their surroundings for them and what they are trying to do.The image people create can be the 23 INTRODUCTION 23 basis of how they act in relation to the environment. In that sense people really do create the environment that they are acting in, because they are acting on the basis of a cognitive or psychologi- cal model or concept of the environment, or place, they are in. At this point you might say that the environment has become ‘place’. We will go on to discuss the concept of place in the next chapter, but for now place can be described as a function of the synthesis of people, activities, conceptualisation, and meanings, along with pro- grammes of action (Canter, 1977). IMPLICATIONS OF THE PERSON-ENVIRONMENT MODEL It is often useful when dealing with slightly abstract concepts such as these to look at an example that provides an illustration of the implications of adopting one or other of these models. One example that we will come back to in detail in Chapter 4 is how people behave during life-threatening events such as fres. Getting this right can, literally, be a matter of life and death. Much regulation and planning has traditionally been based on a strong determinist model. It assumes that there will be an environmental stimulus, such as smoke or an alarm, to which people will immediately or rapidly respond. Most often it is assumed that the direct response will be panic. What research has consistently shown is that when faced with indicators that there might be a threat, say a fre, people try to make sense of the environment, ftting it into existing conceptualisations (Canter, Breaux & Sime, 1990). They may ignore or reinterpret alarms, often based on previous experience. They will try to con- struct a narrative for the events they are caught up in, and, without signifcant guidance from others, will act upon that narrative and the world they have actively constructed. In establishing their image or conceptualisation of the event, they will include the environ- ment, but also observe others, consider their own experience and how the current situation relates to it, think about their original goals or reasons for being in the environment, and then make a plan of action based on interpretations and scripts (Donald & Canter, 1990, 1992).This can be a rapid process, or can take time, delaying their response to the threat. Further, the evidence is that this process can continue to the very end of a life-threatening event (Donald & Canter, 1992). 24 24 INTRODUCTION This example shows us that rather than simply responding to environmental stimuli in the mechanical and automatic way pre- dicted by determinist models, people will construct a reality of their own, and then act based on that reality. Of course, the physical envi- ronment will be part of that construction, but it will be shaped and altered by many other factors related to the individual. The model used to make decisions about the relationship between the environ- ment and behaviour is, then, central to what we do, how we design, and how we manage environments. FINALLY Environmental psychology, as we know it, is a relatively young dis- cipline. Over its 70-year history, it has made signifcant progress, becoming an international disciple and generating a major body of original research. As an applied and interdisciplinary feld of study, environmental psychology has drawn on a wide range of theory and literature and contributed to understanding and solving many problems. In the rest of this book, a selection of that work will be examined. First, in the next chapter we will look at the idea of place. Although it is a quite abstract concept, we will see that it helps us to understand many issues and has important practical implications. REFERENCES Bonnes, M., & Secchiaroli, G. (1995). Environmental Psychology: A Psycho-social Introduction. London: Sage. Building Performance Research Unit (1972). Building Performance. London: Applied Science. Canter, D. (1970). Architectural Psychology. London: RIBA. Canter, D. (1975). An introduction to environmental psychology. In D. Canter and P. Stringer (eds.), Environmental Interaction: Psychological Approaches to our Physical Surroundings (pp. 1–19). London: Surrey University Press. Canter, D. (1977). The Psychology of Place. London:Architectural Press. 25 INTRODUCTION 25 Canter, D. (1985). Applying Psychology. Inaugural Lecture. Guildford: University of Surrey. Canter, D., Breaux J., & Sime J. (1980). Domestic, multiple occupancy and hospital fres. In D. Canter (ed.), Fires and Human Behaviour (pp. 117–136). Chichester: Wiley. Canter, D., & Craik, K. (1981). Environmental psychology.Journal of Environmental Psychology, 1, 1–11. Donald, I., & Canter, D. (1990). Behavioural aspects of the King’s Cross Disaster. In D. Canter (ed.), Fires and Human Behaviour, Second Edition (pp. 15–30). London: David Fulton. Donald, I., & Canter, D. (1992). Intentionality and fatality during the King’s Cross Underground fre. European Journal of Social Psychology, 22, 203–218. Evans, G. W., & Cohen, S. (1987). Environmental stress. In D. Stokols & I. Altman (eds.), Handbook of Environmental Psychology,Volume 1 (pp. 571–610). Chichester: Wiley. Fleury-Bahi, G., Pol, E., & Navarro, O. (2017). Introduction: Environmental psychology and quality of life. In G. Fleury-Bahi, E. Pol & O. Navarro (eds.), Handbook of Environmental Psychology and Quality of Life Research (pp. 1–9). New York: Springer. Giford, R. (1987).Environmental Psychology: Principles and Practice. London:Allyn & Bacon. Giford, R. (2002). Environmental Psychology: Principles and Practice,Third Edition. Colville,WA: Optimal Books. Giford, R. (Ed.) (2016). Research Methods for Environmental Psychology. Chichester: Wiley. Giford, R. (2017). Preface. In G. Fleury-Bahi, E. Pol & O. Navarro (eds.), Handbook of Environmental Psychology and Quality of Life Research (pp. v–vi). New York: Springer. Gold, J. R. (1980). An Introduction to Behavioural Geography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 26 26 INTRODUCTION Groat, L. (1982). Meaning in post modern architecture: An examination using the multiple sorting task. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2, 2–22. Hansard (1943). House of commons rebuilding. Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 393(114), 403–407. London: HMSO. Ittelson, W. H., Proshansky, H. M., Rivilin, L. G., & Winkel, G. (1974). An Introduction to Environmental Psychology. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston. Kitchen, R. M., Blades, M., & Golledge, R. G. (1997). Relations between psy- chology and geography. Environment and Behavior, 29, 554–573. Knight, K. W. (2018). Environmental Sociology. Oxford Bibliographies in Environmental Science. doi: 10.1093/obo/9780199363445-0100 Kruse, L., & Graumann, C. F. (1987). Environmental psychology in Germany. In D. Stokols & I. Altman (eds.), Handbook of Environmental Psychology,Volume 2 (pp. 1195–1225). New York: John Wiley and Sons. Küller, R. (1987). Environmental psychology from a Swedish perspective. In D. Stokols & I.Altman (eds.), Handbook of Environmental Psychology,Volume 2 (pp. 1243–1279). New York: John Wiley and Sons. Lee,T. (1968). Urban neighbourhood as a socio-spatial scheme. Human Relations, 21, 241–267. Lee, T. (1976). Psychology and the Environment. London: Methuen. Levy-Leboyer, C. (1982). Psychology and Environment. London: Sage. Lewin, K. (1936). Principles of Topological Psychology. New York: McGraw Hill. Lockie, S. (2015).What is environmental sociology? Environmental Sociology, 1(3), 139–142. Lynch, K. (1960). The Image of the City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Manning, P. (Ed.) (1965). Ofce Design: A Study of Environment. Pilkington Research Unit, University of Liverpool. https://fles.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ ED033529.pdf 27 INTRODUCTION 27 Nasar, J., Stamps,A., & Hanyu, K. (2005). Form and function in public buildings. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 25, 159–165. Pol, E. (2006). Blueprints for a history of environmental psychology (I): From frst birth to American transition. Medio Ambiente y Comportamiento Humano, 7(2), 95–113. Pol, E. (2007). Blueprints for a history of environmental psychology (II): From architectural psychology to the challenge of sustainability. Medio Ambiente y Comportamiento Humano, 8, 1–28. Proshansky, H. M., Ittelson, W. H., & Rivlin, L. G. (Eds.) (1970). Environmental Psychology: Man and His Physical Settings. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston. Proshansky, H. M., Ittelson,W. H., & Rivlin, L. G. (Eds.) (1976). Environmental Psychology: People and Their Physical Settings, Second Edition. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston. Roethlisberger, F. J., & Dickson, W. J. (1949). Management and the Worker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ross, H. (1974). Behaviour and Perception in Strange Environments. London: Allen and Unwin. Steg, L.,Van den Berg, A. E., & De Groot, J. I. M. (2013). Environmental psy- chology: History, scope and methods. In L. Steg,A. E.Van den Berg, & J. I. M. De Groot (eds.), Environmental Psychology:An Introduction (pp. 1–11). Oxford: BPS Blackwell. Steg, L.,Van den Berg, A. E., & De Groot, J. I. M. (Eds.) (2019). Environmental Psychology:An Introduction, Second Edition. Oxford: BPS Blackwell. Stringer, P., & Kremer,A. (1987). Environmental psychology in the Netherlands. In D. Stokols & I.Altman (eds.), Handbook of Environmental Psychology,Volume 2 (pp. 1227–1241). New York: John Wiley and Sons. Wilson, M. A. (1996). The socialization of architectural preference. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 16, 33–44. Wilson, M.A., & Canter, D. (1990).The development of central concepts during professional education: An example of a multivariate model of the concept of architectural style. Applied Psychology:An International Review, 39, 431–455. 28 28 INTRODUCTION SUGGESTED READING Almost any introductory text in environmental psychology will provide a good overview of the history and nature of the discipline.Two can be particularly recommended. Giford, R. (2013). Environmental Psychology: Principles and Practice, Fifth Edition. Victoria, BC: Optimal Books. Steg, L.,Van den Berg, A. E., & De Groot, J. I. M. (Eds.) (2019). Environmental Psychology:An Introduction, Second Edition. Oxford: BPS Blackwell. There have been several accounts of the discipline included in the Annual Review of Psychology series. Each summaries the research since the previous review, and are all worth looking at. However the most recent is Giford, R. (2014). Environmental psychology matters. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 541–579. For the history of environmental psychology any environmental text will pro- vide details. Particular useful from a European perspective is Pol’s account. Pol, E. (2006). Blueprints for a history of environmental psychology (I): From frst birth to American transition. Medio Ambiente y Comportamiento Humano, 7(2), 95–113. Pol, E. (2007). Blueprints for a history of environmental psychology (II): From architectural psychology to the challenge of sustainability. Medio Ambiente y Comportamiento Humano, 8, 1–28. 29 2 PLACE, PLACE IDENTITY, AND PLACE ATTACHMENT INTRODUCTION In this chapter we explore the concepts of place, place identity, and place attachment. These may seem quite abstract and sometimes philosophical ideas, but they do relate directly to some of the fun- damental elements of our own lives and identity.They also provide concepts to explain how we interact with the environment. These ideas help us answer questions such as why people resist changes to their neighbourhood, why they get homesick, why some choose to live on the side of an active volcano despite the risks, and why some people, but not others, object to power stations and wind farms being built near to them. Understanding the concepts in this chapter will, more generally, help our understanding of how people are part of place, and how place forms a part of them. PLACE AND APPROACHES TO PLACE Of all the disciplines that are concerned with the environment, the one that has had the greatest focus on place, and perhaps made the greatest contribution to it, is geography. Cresswell, in his excellent book Place, writes, “Place is one of the two or three most important terms for my discipline – geography. If pushed, I would argue that it is the most important of them all”. He goes on to add, “...But place is not the property of geography – it is a concept that travels quite freely between dis- ciplines and the study of place benefts from an interdisciplinary approach” (Cresswell, 2015. p. 1). He also quotes the Australian philosopher and writer on place Malpas (e.g., 2018), as saying, “it is perhaps the DOI: 10.4324/9780429274541-2 30 30 PLACE, PLACE IDENTITY, PLACE ATTACHMENT key term for interdisciplinary research in the arts, humanities and social sciences in the twenty-frst century” (Malpas, 2010, cited in Cresswell, 2015, p. 1). It may be the disciplinary ubiquity of place as a concept, along with the philosophical orientations of the diferent disciplines that have led to some of the ambiguity in defning what it is. For instance, within geography two of the most infuential writers on place,Yi Fu Tuan and Edward Relph, set much of the theoretical agenda, and both write from a phenomenological tradition (Relph, 1976;Tuan, 1974a,b). Psychologists, in contrast, have tended to take a positiv- ist or empiricist perspective (Canter, 1997; Graumann, 2002), often focusing on hypothesis testing and the measurement of the psycho- logical processes related to place. Stedman (2002) has discussed the difculties these two positions create for place research. We are thus left with a paradox: On one hand are interesting statements that sound like testable hypotheses but are derived from the phenom- enological tradition that avoids positivistic hypothesis testing; on the other hand are quantitative treatments of place that have often failed to engage these important theoretical tenets. (p. 562) Some authors consider the diversity of approaches to place to be a beneft, arguing that “rather than being a single body of literature, research on place attachment forms, and benefts from, a diverse multiplicity of inquiry” (Williams & Miller, 2021, p. 13). Others consider attempts to try to unify the diferent perspectives as a ‘false quest’ (Patterson & Williams, 2005). Whether the diferences are benefcial or not, there are, in fact, some strong similarities between the ideas of many writers on what place is. Looking at the basic idea of place, Cresswell (2015) provides a very succinct summary, describing it as “a meaningful location” (p. 12). Though a simple statement, this brings together the two primary components of place, which are physical existence and attributed meaning. Several writers have elaborated on this dichotomy.Agnew, a political geographer, for instance argues that a place has a location (where it is), a locale (what its physical properties are), and a sense of place – usually how it is experienced (Agnew, 1987). Canter, an environmental psychologist, proposed a similar model, suggest- ing that place exists at the conjunction of three facets: the physical 31 PLACE, PLACE IDENTITY, PLACE ATTACHMENT 31 properties of the setting (location and locale, in Agnew’s terms), the activities that happen in the setting or the goals that people have for being in that setting, and people’s conceptualisations of that environment or place (similar to Agnew’s sense of place) (Canter, 1977). Later Canter added other facets to his model, but essentially the core remains the same (Canter, 1997). As sociologist Richard Stedman (2003) summarises, common to defnitions of place “is a three component view that weaves together the physical environ- ment, human behaviours, and social and/or psychological processes” (p. 671). Beyond this basic idea, there is a lot of complex and subtle discus- sion around the nature of place. Here we will limit that discussion and briefy examine two issues.The frst is whether it is possible to have a ‘placeless place’, and the second, whether meaning is intrin- si