August 22, 2008
Enviromental Psychology: Environment, Perception & Behaviour
Mihaela Chraif
EJOP Editor
Ricardo García Mira, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Social and Environmental Psychology at the Department of Psychology of the University of A Coruña, Spain, where he teaches Social Psychology at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, and contributes to a Environmental Psychology module at PhD's level. He currently leads the People-Environment Research Unit in this University, and he is also a Visiting Reader at the University of Surrey (United Kingdom), during 2003-2006. He was a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Geography in Texas State University, USA (2001), the Department of Psychology in the University of Tallinn, Estonia (2002) and the Institute of Psychology in the West University of Timisoara, Romania (2004).
Member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Environmental Psychology, Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, and “InsCight”. He was adviser of the Committee for Research and Technological Development of the Government of Galicia, Spain. He also was the organizer of a number of national and international scientific events. He was recently the President of the 17th Conference of the International Association for People-Environment Studies, which was held in Corunna, Spain, in July 2002, and allowed the meeting of more than 400 scientists from all over the world. He was elected for being a member of the IAPS Board during 2004-2008. Currently he is the Editor of the IAPS Bulletin of People-Environment Studies.
Relevant publications and other activities
Author/editor of more than 100 papers and research reports on environmental evaluation, environmental attitudes and methodology issues. In addition, he is the author or editor of the texts: “La ciudad percibida” (The Perceived City); “Responsabilidad Ecológica y Gestión de los Recursos Ambientales” (Ecological Responsibility and Environmental Resources Management); "Environment-Behaviour Studies in Spain"; "Psicología y Medio Ambiente" (Psychology and the Environment); "Culture, Environmental Action and Sustainability"; "Housing, Space and Quality of Life"; "Environmental perception and cognitive maps".
He gave lectures and participated in scientifc seminars in Universities all over the World: University of Surrey (United Kingdom), Université de Paris V "Renè Descartes" (France), Universitá Degli Studi Di Roma "La Sapienza" (Italy), University of Groningen (The Netherlands), University of Tallinn (Estonia), West University of Timisoara (Rumanía), Universidade de Sao Paulo (Brasil), Universidad de Monterrey (México), Texas State University (USA) e University of Texas A&M (USA).
Other interests:
His research is part of the applied field of social and environmental psychology, and his more important contributions are related to the analysis of predicting models of ecological behaviour. He has conducted research projects on “Environment and Sustainable Local Development”, “Psychosocial Impact Evaluation of the Prestige disaster”, or the “Evaluation of Social Perception of Risk”, among the more recent research, under the support of the European Union, the Ministry of Education and Science, and the Government of Galicia, as well as the multi-national companies Albada and REPSOL-YPF.
In the field of journalism, he carries out collaborating activities with the newspaper “La Voz de Galicia” and Radiovoz as a political commentator.
Since human behavior lies at the core of most current environmental problems, changing society towards (more) sustainability requires behavior modifications by various actors and in many domains (e.g., energy use, mobility).
People not only contribute to environmental problems, they are also potential victims of environmental deterioration. For instance, in urban neighbourhoods people are exposed to a variety of environmental stressors (e.g., noise, malodour, litter, safety risks, and soil, air or water pollution). To understand the effects of such stressors on human health and well-being, it is necessary to gain insight in the way people perceive and assess the "quality" of their residential environment. In a recently completed research project, the relative importance of different dwelling and neighbourhood characteristics for the "perceived quality" of urban neighbourhoods was assessed.
To optimize the effectiveness of policy measures aimed at behavior change, we need a clear understanding of the characteristics of the target group and of the mechanisms and motives that underlay the target behavior.
EJOP: Professor García Mira, what do the environment-behavior studies explore?
Professor García: The environment-behavior studies explore our interaction with the environment, both natural and built (the later being where human beings pass most of their lives). The research within the field called “Environmental Psychology” aims at understanding the interactions between the experiences and actions of individuals, on the one hand, and different aspects of the socio-physical environment, on the other. Some of the areas of interest in Environmental Psychology are: environmental attitudes, environmental bahvior, perception of space etc. It is worth mentioning though that the interest in exploting the environment and human behaviour does not belong exclusively to the discipline of psychology. There are other disciplines that have looked at this relationship, particularly architecture, urban studies or sociology, to cite only a few. All of them try to work in collaboration from inter- and trans-disciplinarity points of view.
EJOP: What kinds of methods are useful for evaluation in environment-behaviour research?
Professor García: The choice of method depends on the characteristics and objectives of the research, or of the aspect to be evaluated. Many researchers support the use of quantitative methods, and that is because when it is possible to reliably measure the variables we use, quantitative methods offer powerful measurement and evaluation tools. I must say, though, that when we explore the human mind in order to better understand how environmental information is processed, to measure is not necessarily easy, because the measurement instrument is the human being and the only way to enter the mind is through questions asked of people. For this reason, other researchers prefer the use of qualitative methods, which are very well developed in our days and allows the exploration of human ways of perceiving and interacting through cognitive maps and representations.
EJOP: have heard about your research on children´s ways of perceiving distances and the city in general. You mentioned some differences between children that normally walk to school and children that go by car. Could you explain this? What does this mean?
Professor García : Some of the areas that most interest raise in the field are the urban life, quality of life, environmental perception etc. The presence of architects in our research group has made us curious about the ways in which human beings analyze spatial information and the way they organize urban environmental information. We started with the children and interviewed children between the ages of 8 and 12, by inviting them to perform two tasks. The first consisted in drawing all they could remember on their way from their house to school. The second task consisted in estimating distances in a straight line between different well-known locations in the city. The data was used to perform a multidimensional scaling (MDS) of individual differences, which permits the representation, in an Euclidian space, a series of objects and the relationships among them, which form a mental representation, a mental map of the city. We discovered that children that walk to school structure information better than those that go by car, and that the mental maps of the former are more exact than the mental maps of the ones going by car. These results should generate reflection on the behaviours we promote in our children, when we do not allow them to explore the city space, which affects their spatial structuring of the city.
EJOP: What does a mental map mean in environment-behavior research?
Professor García: Mental maps are also known as “cognitive maps”. Downs and Stea (1977) define a cognitive map is an organized representation of certain part of the spatial environment. The ability to build cognitive maps is developed very early in life. They are vital because they give us information on the environment around us and serve as guiding lines for our actions in the environment.
EJOP: What other modern methods of research are most commonly used in environment-behavior research? What kind of applications do these methods have?
Professor García: The research methods in the field of environment-behaviour studies, as I mentioned above, consist of a series of techniques which take into account the influence of multiple variables on human behaviour. The study of the relationship between the environment and human behaviour has to be done from a multidimensional perspective. That is why we use multidimensional techniques in order to at least approximate the way to mentally know and analyze information, like the environmental perception of nature, of buildings, of colours, of the relationships between people and places, of how place- appropriate behaviour is developed etc. Among the applications of these methods, we find all the studies of social and environmental impact evaluation of disasters – fires, floods, earthquakes…-or the exploration of the social representations of environmental problems.
EJOP: Why are multivariate techniques important in modern environment-behavior research?
Professor García: If we recognize that human behaviour is multidimensional, it is necessary to explore it with multivariate techniques which can analyze a massive volume of information, expressed in multiple variables and reduce it to a number of factors or dimensions that are more manageable, thus favouring explanations. For scientific research, a simple model is always more valuable than a complicated one. Multivariate techniques help us precisely to simplify environment-behaviour information. When we work with human beings, this is very useful.
EJOP: What do you think about the need of cooperation among universities?
Professor García: Cooperation is and has always been a necessary tool for the advancement of knowledge. Cultural diversity, and the necessity to control the more negative consequences of globalization, require efforts to cooperate in forming networks of researchers in all Europe and outside it, in order to achieve a real progress and not just an accumulation of research from unique perspectives. The European Union is now promoting the constitution of such networks, in order also to advance in the effective application of this knowledge to real-life problems. It is then important to become aware of this fact, because nowadays it is impossible to manage European research funds without being part of one of these research networks.