psych 372 environmental psychology (5 env att, app, ass)

8/11/2019 Psych 372 Environmental Psychology (5 Env Att, App, Ass)

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Environmental Attitudes, Appraisals and Assessments



Overview

• Attitudes towards the environment

• The current morass of data

• How do we encourage pro-environmental behaviour?

• Environmental Appraisal

• What do we like?

• How do we measure preference?

• Environmental Assessment

• Trying to objectify properties of the environment



Environmental attitudes

• When you read the first part of the chapteryou’ll discover a wild array of findings related toenvironmental attitudes

• What’s most important?

• Attitudes vary with gender, age, income, nationality,culture, time period, occurrence of environmentalcatastrophes



Environmental attitudes

• In other words, attitudes are neither stable norpredictable

• What matters more is that pro-environmental

attitudes are not strong predictors of pro-environmental behaviour

• Generally, and unsurprisingly, we are more likely toengage in low-cost pro-environmental behavioursthan in high-cost ones

• Our behaviour is also inconsistent – we may recyclebut not carpool, re-use grocery bags but fill them withpackaged foods



How to increase pro-environmentalbehaviour?

• Applied behavioural analysis is the method du jour

• It’s a combination of principled application of operant

conditioning methods and principles of motivation



Step 1: What behaviours to target?

• Environmental scientists need to compute thepro-environmental value of behaviour change

• -eg relative benefits of turning down thermostat or

buying an energy efficient water heater

• Using re-usable grocery bags vs. proper tire inflationin automobiles



Step 3: Identify motivational and otherfactors that influence behaviour

• Hedonic factors “what feels good right now?”

• These are usually the strongest drivers of behaviourand may play a role in, for example, choice of travel

mode




• Gain factors “what protects my resources?”

• Weighing costs and benefits – using alternativelightbulbs, composting, recycling

• These factors appear to motivate relatively low-costpro-environmental behaviours




• Normative factors “what is sociallyacceptable?”

• What are others doing?

• Again, normative factors can account for low-costbehaviours




• Contextual factors

• What alternatives are available and how convenientare they?

• Eg. Car sharing




• Habits

• Ingrained habits may involve misperceptions

• Garling et al studied drivers in Osaka before and afteran 8 day freeway closure.

• More frequent drivers had larger misperceptions

• Frequency of freeway use dropped



Step 4: Interventions

• Informational/Antecedent

• Structural/Consequence



Step 4: Interventions

• Informational strategies

• Direct persuasion, as used in advertising, is usuallyonly effective with very low-cost behaviours

• Structural strategies

• Required for larger cost change

• Reward typically more effective than sanction(but not too big areward unless you can keep it up forever)



Step 5: Assessment

• This is not often done

• Interventions perceived as “fair” are more likely towork

• Interventions that target one-time-only behaviourmuch more successful than those that requiresustained effort



Environmental Appraisals

• Involves measurements of preference

• But where do preferences come from?



Which do you prefer?



What does it mean that we don’t allagree?

• Not everyone applies the same set of “rules” toassess preference

• In environmental appraisal, we are interestedin understanding what underlying rules mightcome into play and how individuals vary



Most research in this area is basedon the picture proxy method

• Fundamental assumption is that we willrespond the same way to pictures as we do tothe “real thing”

• New technology like VR allows us to gobeyond picture proxy method



Virtual Shibuya



Remember Berlyne’s collativeproperties

• Complexity –much detail

• Congruity – is anything out of place?

• Coherence – overall order of a scene

• Novelty – unusualness of appearance

• People seem to prefer moderate rather than extremevalues of these, and different types of observersshow different preferences



Nasar’s approach

• Formal qualities – relate to Berlyne’s collativeproperties

• Symbolic qualities – style

• Schemas – typicality (is it unusual)

• Different types of appraisals will load ondifferent factors

• Eg Pleasant buildings will be high in typicality whereasexciting buildings probably not



Appleton’s approach

• We are biologically disposed to like locationswith high prospect and high refuge

• Like the edge of the savannah



All such approaches have 1 thing incommon

• They treat a setting and a person as twoseparate things

• Physical properties like the shape and appearance of

a setting influence assessment• We all might agree that an unspoiled natural vista is beautiful

• Personal properties influence preference

• Mumbai marketplace may be preferred by men

• Malaysian jungle may be downright scary



The Mumbai marketplace



Kaplan & Kaplan’s preferenceframework

• Borrowing from Gibson, they talk about“cognitive affordances”

• Properties of environments that allow us to meet

goals• Neither “in” the setting nor “in” our heads, but involve

both

• Rooted in the same kinds of biological considerations

as prospect and refuge



Kaplan’s preference framework

Availability of

information

Needs

Making sense Involvement

Immediate Coherence Complexity

Future Legibility Mystery

So far, one of the most successful, theoretically grounded approaches to

environmental appraisal



Let’s look at a detailed example ofenvironmental appraisal



An important example ofenvironmental appraisal

• Much research suggests that architects do notknow what we like



Gifford et al (2002) set out tounderstand why

Modified lens model



Step 1: Measure distal cues

Modified lens model



Long list of building cues (rated bytrained expert observers)

• Examples

• Number of sides

• Number of stories

• Fenestration (windows)

• Proportion of glass

• Proportion of metal

• Canopies• Balconies



Step 2: Measure cognitive propertiesof buildings

Modified lens model



List of cognitive properties

• Complexity (complex vs simple)

• Sociability (sociable, warm, friendly vs unsociable,cold, unfriendly)

• Ruggedness (rugged, strong, potent, vs weak, delicate,wimpy)

• Originality (unique, original, creative vs. typicalunoriginal, uncreative)

• Clarity (clear, coherent, unified vs. disorganized,confusing, ambiguous)

• Meaningfulness (meaningful, symbolic, expressive, vs.meaningless, messageless, unexpressive)



Step 3: Collect global assessments

Modified lens model



This one’s easy

• Rate the building from 1 (terrible) to 10(excellent)



Participants

• For step 1, university undergraduate studentstrained to use The Architectural Coding System(TACS)

• For steps 2 and 3, a sample both recruitedfrom the community and also uni undergrads

• For steps 2 and 3, a sample of local (British

Columbia, mostly Victoria) practising architects



Global assessment

• Measured correlation between overallassessment of architecture in laypersons andin architects



Global assessment

• R=0.14

• This confirms previous findings that the globalassessments of buildings of lay people and architects

do not agree strongly.

Relationships between preference



Relationships between preferenceand cognitive variables

Middle values indicate level of agreement



Middle values indicate level of agreementbetween architects and laypersons on cognitiveproperties



But here lack of agreement on relation betweencog property and evaluation

Some but not great agreement on



Some but not great agreement onrelation of physical properties andcognitive properties

Here there’s agreement about the



Here there s agreement about thecontribution of meaningfulness



But no agreement on what it is.



Some other points

• Architects paid much more attention to buildingmaterials whereas laypersons paid attention tobuilding form

• Hardly any of the physical cues alonecorrelated with overall aesthetic, so the layer ofcognitive properties seems necessary

• Some cognitive properties didn’t correlate withany physical properties (originality), so thestory isn’t complete



Should architects pander to publictaste?

• My experience is that architects jealously protecttheir freedom to create

• Gifford says:

“The pedagogical goal suggested by the presentstudy is a broader form of architectural educationor socialization that stresses both the creativeextension of the great aesthetic trends and abetter understanding of public taste. The greatestarchitects will be those with the creativity to designbuildings that are delightful to design professionalsand the public.”



A few things I haven’t mentioned

• Appraisal vs Assessment

• Assessments are meant to be objective measuresbased on expert advisors

• Can inform policy

• Other kinds of appraisals than those based onsimple affect are important

• For example, risk

psych 372 environmental psychology (5 env att, app, ass)

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