Robert Gifford

Personal and social factors that influence pro-environmental concern and behaviour: A review

We review the personal and social influences on pro-environmental concern and behaviour, with an emphasis on recent research. The number of these influences suggests that understanding pro-environmental concern and behaviour is far more complex than previously thought. The influences are grouped into 18 personal and social factors. The personal factors include childhood experience, knowledge and education, personality and self-construal, sense of control, values, political and world views, goals, felt responsibility, cognitive biases, place attachment, age, gender and chosen activities. The social factors include religion, urban-rural differences, norms, social class, proximity to problematic environmental sites and cultural and ethnic variations We also recognize that pro-environmental behaviour often is undertaken based on none of the above influences, but because individuals have non-environmental goals such as to save money or to improve their health. Finally, environmental outcomes that are a result of these influences undoubtedly are determined by combinations of the 18 categories. Therefore, a primary goal of researchers now should be to learn more about how these many influences moderate and mediate one another to determine pro-environmental behaviour.

Personally Relevant Climate Change: The Role of Place Attachment and Local Versus Global Message Framing in Engagement

To help mitigate the negative effects of climate change, citizens’ attitudes and behaviors must be better understood. However, little is known about which factors predict engagement with climate change, and which messaging strategies are most effective. A community sample of 324 residents from three regions in British Columbia read information either about a climate change impact relevant to their local area, a more global one, or, in a control condition, no message. Participants indicated the extent of their climate change engagement, the strength of their attachment to their local area, and demographic information. Three significant unique predictors of climate change engagement emerged: place attachment, receiving the local message, and gender (female). These results provide empirical support for some previously proposed barriers to climate action and suggest guidelines for effective climate change communication.

Environmental Psychology Matters

Environmental psychology examines transactions between individuals and their built and natural environments. This includes investigating behaviors that inhibit or foster sustainable, climate-healthy, and nature-enhancing choices, the antecedents and correlates of those behaviors, and interventions to increase proenvironmental behavior. It also includes transactions in which nature provides restoration or inflicts stress, and transactions that are more mutual, such as the development of place attachment and identity and the impacts on and from important physical settings such as home, workplaces, schools, and public spaces. As people spend more time in virtual environments, online transactions are coming under increasing research attention. Every aspect of human existence occurs in one environment or another, and the transactions with and within them have important consequences both for people and their natural and built worlds. Environmental psychology matters.

Light, decor, arousal, comfort and communication

Abstract The effect of lighting level and room decor on interpersonal communication was investigated. Arousal and comfort models were invoked to generate hypotheses that (a) brighter lighting would stimulate more general communication, (b) lower lighting levels would encourage more intimate communication, (c) over time, lower light levels would dampen both general and intimate communication, and (d) home-like decor would encourage more general and more intimate communication. In a 2 × 2 between-subjects design, pairs of female friends wrote two letters to one another in bright vs. soft lighting and office-like vs. home-like decor. All the hypotheses were confirmed, except that brighter light encouraged more rather than less intimate communication.

Decoding Modern Architecture A Lens Model Approach for Understanding the Aesthetic Differences of Architects and Laypersons

The physical and affective bases of the differences between architects’ and laypersons’ aesthetic evaluations of building facades were examined. Fifty-nine objective features of 42 large modern office buildings were related to ratings of the buildings’ emotional impact and global aesthetic quality made by architects and laypersons. Both groups strongly based their global assessments on elicited pleasure (and not on elicited arousal), but the two groups based their emotional assessments on almost entirely different sets of objective building features, which may help to explain why the aesthetic evaluations of architects and lay persons are virtually unrelated.

Assessing Beliefs about Lighting Effects on Health, Performance, Mood, and Social Behavior

Energy conservation through the adoption of new, energy-efficient technologies will succeed only to the extent that the new technologies are not themselves perceived as risk sources. Previous research has found that beliefs about the health effects of fluorescent lighting predict compact fluorescent lamp use in homes. This paper describes the development and validation of a questionnaire to assess beliefs about the effects of common types of interior lighting on human health, work performance, mood, and social behavior. Principal components analysis of the 32-item Lighting Beliefs Questionnaire revealed 6 interpretable components: Lighting Importance, Brightness, Major Health Effects: Fluorescent Lighting, Minor Health Effects: Fluorescent Lighting, Social Setting, and Daylighting. The questionnaire may be used to explore responses to interior lighting and to discover what beliefs are held by end users. This information will assist in allaying unwarranted fears and concerns about new lighting technologies.

Fear Appeals, Individual Differences, and Environmental Concern

Abstract In this study, the authors examined the effect of a brief but intense antipollution message on verbal commitment (stated willingness to act) and on three forms of immediate behavioral commitment (donating money, donating time, and signing a petition). Exposure to the antipollution message produced significantly more verbal commitment and financial donations but not more time donations than did exposure to a control message. Nearly every participant signed the petition. To determine whether environmental fear appeals should be targeted at specific audiences, the authors computed correlations between seven individual difference variables and environmental concern. None of the individual difference variables were significantly related to financial or time donations. However, political orientation was significantly correlated with verbal commitment.

Effects of warm white, cool white and full-spectrum fluorescent lighting on simple cognitive performance, mood and ratings of others

Abstract Fluorescent illumination has become common, but its alleged effects on behavior are still controversial. This experiment was designed to determine whether warm white, cool white, and full-spectrum fluorescent spectra at approximately equal illuminances differentially affect performance on simple verbal and quantitative tasks, salary recommendations, rated attractiveness and friendliness of others, judged room attractiveness, estimated room size, and self-reported pleasure and arousal. The results showed no significant differences among the three lighting types on any of the dependent measures. A subsequent power analysis indicated that if differences actually do exist, they are quite small. Cool white or warm white lamps are recommended because they are much less expensive than full-spectrum lamps.

Territorial cues and defensible space theory: The burglar's point of view

This study tests the defensible space hypotheses that surveillability and evidence of territorial concern will deter burglars. Fifty photographs of single-family dwellings were assessed for many individual cues, five cue categories, and for economic value. Forty-three male subjects (20 youths, 23 adults), who had been convicted of residential breaking and entering, sorted the photographs along a 7-point scale of Vulnerability (likelihood of being a burglary target). As the theory predicts, easily surveillable houses were rated as the least vulnerable targets. Contrary to the theory, evidence of territorial concern had no effect (traces of occupany, actual barriers) or actually increased vulnerability (symbolic barriers). Burglars apparently assume that occupants who care for the exterior of their house possess goods that make the house a profitable target. Concept-based cue categories were more useful in predicting Vulnerability than were individual cues or cue category scores based on simple summations of individual cues. Over half of the variance in Vulnerability could be accounted for by a revised model of defensible space for burglary in single-family dwellings.

The Sounds and Sights of Intelligence: A Lens Model Channel Analysis

The links between 13 auditory and visual behavioral cues, measured intelligence, and observer judgments of intelligence in a zero-acquaintance context were examined in a lens model study. Auditory-plus-visual, auditory-only, and visual-only information conditions, in addition to a transcript-only control condition, were employed to determine whether auditory or visual cues encode measured intelligence more strongly and which are used more in judgments of intelligence. Five cues (of both types) accounted for nearly half the variance in measured intelligence, but it was much more strongly associated with auditory than visual cues. Observers’ judgments of intelligence were also much more strongly related to auditory than visual cues. Visual cues may even depress accuracy; accuracy was higher in an auditory-only condition than in an auditory-plus-visual condition.