SEARCH THE DATABASE

The purpose of this study was to explore the ability of place attachment to predict place-specific and general pro-environment behavioural intentions. The study sample (n 1⁄4 355) consisted of visitors to a Canadian national park, Point Pelee National Park. The place attachment scale utilized in this study was designed to measure three subdimensions: place identity, place dependence, and place affect. Explor- atory factor analysis of data measured by these scales revealed two place attachment subdimensions. Place affect, an individual’s emotions and feelings for a place, acted as a more generalized or pervasive phenomenon. Place affect items loaded on both the place identity (an individual’s cognitive assessment of a place) and place dependence (an individual’s functional assessment of a place). Structural equation modeling confirmed the strength of place attachment’s ability to predict place-related pro-environment intentions. It also identified place attachment’s prediction of pro-environment behavioural intensions related to everyday life. Place identity mediated the effects of place dependence in predicting pro- environment intentions. Further research which utilizes in-depth and longitudinal case studies is sug- gested to explore the role of place-specific emotion and feelings, as well as place identity in fostering environmentally-responsible action as these factors are theorized to play an important role in promoting pro-environmental behaviour. Studies of place attachment to everyday settings rather than iconic national parks are also called for.

Although a number of environmental and policy interventions to pro- mote physical activity are being widely used, there is sparse systematic information on the most effective approaches to guide population-wide interventions. Methods: We reviewed studies that addressed the following environmental and policy strat- egies to promote physical activity: community-scale urban design and land use policies and practices to increase physical activity; street-scale urban design and land use policies to increase physical activity; and transportation and travel policies and practices. These systematic reviews were based on the methods of the inde- pendent Task Force on Community Preventive Services. Exposure variables were classified according to the types of infrastructures/policies present in each study. Measures of physical activity behavior were used to assess effectiveness. Results: Two interventions were effective in promoting physical activity (community-scale and street-scale urban design and land use policies and practices). Additional information about applicability, other effects, and barriers to implementation are provided for these interventions. Evidence is insufficient to assess transportation policy and practices to promote physical activity. Conclusions: Because com- munity- and street-scale urban design and land-use policies and practices met the Community Guide criteria for being effective physical activity interventions, implementing these policies and practices at the community-level should be a priority of public health practitioners and community decision makers.

Urban designers are interested in the environmental qualities of places that make them better for walking, not only as settings for physical activity, but also as sensorial and social settings. Research in walkability lacks qualitative studies that address the microscale analyses of the environment. This paper is an empirical examination of the relationship of the physical, land-use, and social characteristics of the environment at the microscale to people’s behavior and perceptions toward walking. Using the data from surveys and interviews, this research emphasizes the integration of user perceptions and subjective measures to understand the impact of environmental characteristics on walking behavior on Main Streets. Adding to previous research, this study demonstrates the significance of social qualities in supporting walking. The findings expand our understanding of the hierarchy and criteria of walking needs and suggest that, given a safe and comfortable setting, people look for usefulness, sense of belonging and pleasurability as additional and distinct needs to enhance their walking experience.

Increasingly, scholars suggest thinking of the street as a social space, rather than just a channel for movement. Studies that address the relationships between social behavior and environmental quality of the street tend to separate the study of physical features from land uses and hence do not address the interrelationships between behavioral patterns and physical features of the street and its sociability. This article is an empirical examination of behavioral responses of people to the environmental quality of neighborhood commercial streets. Structured and semistructured observations are used to study stationary, lingering, and social activities on three neighborhood commercial streets. Eleven land use and physical characteristics of buildings and the street are identified based on the literature review and extensive observations. These are measured and tested to understand which characteristics support stationary, lingering, and social activities. The findings reveal that people are equally concerned with the social, land use, and physical aspects of the street. Seating provided by businesses, seating provided by the public authorities, businesses that are community places, personalized street fronts, and sidewalk width particularly contribute to stationary and social activities on neighborhood commercial streets.

What determines whether people consider an environment to be safe or unsafe? In two studies, we employed a multi-level model to examine how safety-related environmental characteristics and individual characteristics influence people's perception of the safety of night-time urban environments. Both studies support previous findings highlighting a key role for environmental appraisals of entrapment (perceived escape possibilities), prospect (perceived overview over a scene), and concealment (perceived environmental affordance of hiding places). More importantly, the studies provide a systematic investigation of person-environment interaction in the safety appraisal process. Our results reveal substantial individual variability in susceptibility to safety-related environmental characteristics (Study 1) and identify an interaction between individual characteristics and appraisals of environmental characteristics (Study 2). Additionally, while both studies replicate an effect of biological sex on safety appraisals, we show that this effect is mediated by trait anxiety, a psychological variable reflecting the propensity to experience anxiety.

The Irvine Minnesota Inventory (IMI) was designed to measure environ- mental features that may be associated with physical activity and particularly walking. This study assesses how well the IMI predicts physical activity and walking behavior and develops shortened, validated audit tools. A version of the IMI was used in the Twin Cities Walking Study, a research project measuring how density, street pattern, mixed use, pedestrian infrastructure, and a variety of social and economic factors affect walking. Both bivariate and multivariate analyses were used to assess the predictive value of the IMI. We find that while this inventory provides reliable measurement of urban design features, only some of these features present associations with increased or decreased walking. This article presents two versions of shortened scales—a prudent scale, requiring association with two separate measures of a physical activity or walking behavior, and a moderate scale, requiring association with one measure of physical activity or walking. The shortened scales provide built environment audit instruments that have been tested both for inter- rater reliability and for associations with physical activity and walking. The results are also useful in showing which built environment variables are more reliably associated with walking for travel—characteristics of the sidewalk infrastructure, street crossings and traffic speeds, and land use are more strongly associated with walking for travel, while factors that measure aesthetics are typically less strongly associated with walking for travel.

Tourists and others who are unfamiliar with an environment may be sensitive to environmental cues when choosing their walking routes. In this study, we combined inductive and deductive approaches to evaluate walkability cues. We defined a set of walkability variables by analyzing the narratives of par- ticipants, who walked along one of 19 diverse routes. These cues were then supplemented with environmental and walkability variables from Mehrabian and Russel scales (Russel et al., 1981) and SPACES (Pikora, 2003), resulting in a total of 48 descriptors. Using the 48 descriptors, 60 diverse photos of streetscape views were rated, and we identified 14 relevant walkability corre- lates. Using principal component analysis, we identified six components that best predicted walking decisions: safety from traffic, comfort of walking area, environmental appearance, activity potential, shade and exploration. These results suggest that real walkers make more finely grained walking judgments than those measured by current, conceptualized walkability scales.

In the last ten years environmental sociologists have started to explore the relations between human behavior and the physical environment. This study tests some of the ideas of Jane Jacobs on how neighboring and crime are affected by physical diversity in cities. While neighboring and crime are found to be related to diversity as defined by Jacobs, neighboring is not related to crime, which is also predicted by her theory. The implications for urban planning are considered.

This research examined the effect of concealment (environmental cues), presence or absence of people recreating (social cues), and gender on individuals’ fear of crime in a community park setting. Using a 7-point single- item indicator, 732 participants from two samples (540 park visitors and 192 college students) rated their estimates of fear of crime to 24 photographic representations of a community park. All three, two-factor interaction effects were significant in the park visitor sample, but in the student sample, only the Presence of People Recreating × Gender effect was significant. These results suggest that social and environmental cues may jointly affect fear experiences and that the presence of other people recreating in a park environment and the gender of an individual may influence fear of crime when recreating alone in a park setting. Implications include design and management techniques that promote safe park environments.

N/A

Few studies have explicitly examined the importance of cultural settings to children's environmental awareness, especially in a non-Western context. In this paper, the author reviews those studies which have drawn attention to how culture affects children's behaviour in large-scale environments and refers to an empirical study of a group of young Kenyan children which examines the relationship between environmental experience and environmental awareness. The findings are interesting for three principal reasons. First, they demonstrate that children who are without formal training and with limited access to maps are able to draw relatively sophisticated place representations and to recall their local environment in vivid terms. Secondly, these maps and place descriptions are different to those of their age-sex-counterparts from Britain, which suggests that culture influences expressive style if not cognitive ability. Thirdly, they suggest that further studies, set within other cross-cultural contexts, are needed, if the importance of culture to environmental capability is to be understood. The author argues that although geographers are well-placed to carry out this kind of investigation little geographical research on children's place relationships has been undertaken. In this sense, geographers are particularly remiss and are guilty of forgetting their 'roots.'

Records on recovery after cholecystectomy of patients in a suburban Pennsylvania hospital between 1972 and 1981 were examined to determine whether assignment to a room with a window view of a natural setting might have restorative influences. Twenty-three surgical patients assigned to rooms with windows looking out on a natural scene had shorter postoperative hospital stays, received fewer negative evaluative comments in nurses' notes, and took fewer potent analgesics than 23 matched patients in similar rooms with windows facing a brick building wall.

Women's use of public space has been the subject of much recent research. Existing theory in environment-behavior studies is inadequate to explain these findings. This paper proposes the adoption of the feminist theory of the 'ethic of care' to synthesize and explain much existing research on women's experience of public space. The ethic of care is a model of moral development in which the highest moral imperative requires taking care of needs and sustaining relationships. This paper examines how the ethic of care creates constraints for women's use of public space, by encouraging women to put others first and by reinforcing women's primary responsibility for care-giving. The ethic of care constrains women's use of public space through the association of women with low status `caring' occupations, and through actions that extend restrictive caring to women. At the same time, through women's use of public space, the ethic of care generates possibilities for women to give and receive care from others and themselves, and creates possibilities for extending care to encompass public spaces. The ethic of care is explored in detail in light of two areas of environment-behavior research on women and public spaces: preference and fear of crime. In conclusion, the paper advocates the ethic of care as a framework for future activism, design, and scholarship concerning public spaces.

The main objective of the present quasi-experi- mental study was to examine the influence of culture (Swedish vs Japanese) and environmental attitude (urban vs open-air person) on participants’ thermal, emotional and perceptual assessments of a square, within the PET (physiological equivalent temperature) comfortable inter- val of 18–23°C. It was predicted that persons living in different cultures with different environmental attitudes would psychologically evaluate a square differently despite similar thermal conditions. Consistent with this prediction, Japanese participants estimated the current weather as warmer than did Swedish participants and, consistent with this, they felt less thermally comfortable on the site, although participants in both countries perceived similar comfortable thermal outdoor conditions according to the PET index. Compared to the Japanese, the Swedes estimated both the current weather and the site as windier and colder, indicating a consistency in weather assessment on calm-windy and warm-cold scales in participants in both cultures. Furthermore, Swedish participants felt more glad and calm on the site and, in line with their character (more glad than gloomy), they estimated the square as more beautiful and pleasant than did Japanese participants. All this indicates that thermal, emotional and perceptual assessments of a physical place may be intertwined with psychological schema-based and socio-cultural processes, rather than fixed by general thermal indices developed in line with physiological heat balance models. In conse- quence, this implies that thermal comfort indices may not be applicable in different cultural/climate zones without modifications, and that they may not be appropriate if we do not take into account the psychological processes involved in environmental assessment.

Many people fail to achieve recommended levels of physical activity. Neighborhood parks serve as locations in which physical activity often occurs, and walking to parks provides added opportunity for leisure-time activity. The authors examine environmental characteristics of shortest pedestrian routes to parks to determine how route walkability affects park use. Using an objective environmental audit, the authors found that routes of park users were measurably more walkable than those of nonpark users and that each unit increase in total walkability score associated with a 20% increase in the likelihood of walking to the park, controlling for education and route length (odds ratio = 1.20; 95% confidence interval = [1.07, 1.34]). The most significant elements measured in- cluded route distance, traffic, neighborhood maintenance, street maintenance, safety, and aesthetics. Pedestrian scale environmental characteristics are associated with individuals’ use of neighborhoods for physical activity. Understanding these relationships can contribute to evidence-based design interventions to increase physical activity.

The aim of this paper is to study how women’s privacy needs are met through the physical form of public spaces in both old and new urban designs, using as a case study the city of Nablus, Palestine, which has been significantly influenced by the culture of gender separation. The findings will help develop a better understanding of the relationship between women’s privacy and the physical form of public spaces and will enhance the development of public spaces that women can use comfortably and actively to participate in the urban life. An environmental approach based on the concept of behavioural setting was used to examine women’s privacy issues in the chosen public spaces. Direct observations and questionnaires were used in the fieldwork, in addition to interviews with women and relevant people who influence the women’s privacy. Maps (GIS), sketches and SPSS techniques were used to interpret the data.

Guided walks near a light rail stop in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, were examined using a 2 (gender) × 3 (route walkability: low- mixed-, or high- walkability features) design. Trained raters confirmed that more walkable segments had more traffic, environmental, and social safety; pleasing aesthetics; natural features; pedestrian amenities; and land use diversity (using the Irvine-Minnesota physical environment audit) and a superior social milieu rating. According to tape-recorded open-ended descriptions, university student participants experienced walkable route segments as noticeably safer, with a more positive social environment, fewer social and physical incivilities, and more attractive natural and built environment features. According to closed-ended scales, walkable route segments had more pleas- ant social and/or environmental atmosphere and better traffic safety. Few gender differences were found. Results highlight the importance of under- standing subjective experiences of walkability and suggest that these experiences should be an additional focus of urban design.

Existing research typically examines fear in public space from women’s perspectives. To date, environment–behavior researchers have largely overlooked men’s fear in public space, and the role of masculinity in shaping men’s perceptions of fear and safety. This paper investigates the intersections of traditional, dominant masculinity—or masculinism—and men’s fear in public space, based on interviews with 82 undergraduate men students. Masculinism features qualities such as control, competition, aggression, and physical strength. We argue that, for many men, public spaces and situations that challenge this masculinist identity may generate fear. Similarly, spaces and situations that promote feelings of safety do so, in part, by bolstering this identity. We employ the lens of masculinity to explore men’s feelings of fear of the unknown, heightened awareness and safety, fear of confrontation, and safety in numbers. Conclusions examine implications for the development of masculinity and recommendations for future research.

This study examined whether locally felt weather had a measurable effect on the amount of walking occurring in a given locale, by examining the observed walking rate in relation to air temperature, sunlight, and precipitation. Web- based cameras in nine cities were used to collect 6,255 observations over 7 months. Walking volumes and levels of precipitation and sunlight were cap- tured by visual inspection; air temperature was obtained from local meteo- rological stations. A quasi-Poisson regression model to test the relationship between counts of pedestrians and weather conditions revealed that all three weather variables had significant associations with fluctuations in volumes of pedestrians, when controlling for city and elapsed time. A 5°C increase in temperature was associated with a 14% increase in pedestrians. A shift from snow to dry conditions was associated with an increase of 23%, and a 5% increase in sunlit area was associated with a 2% increase.

This study examines how the availability of nature influences the use of outdoor public spaces in two Chicago public housing developments. Ninety-six observations were collected of the presence and location of trees and the presence and location of youth and adults in semiprivate spaces at one high-rise and one low-rise public housing development. Results consistently indicated that natural landscaping encourages greater use of outdoor areas by residents. Spaces with trees attracted larger groups of people, as well as more mixed groups of youth and adults, than did spaces devoid of nature. In addition, more dense groupings of trees and trees that are located close to public housing buildings attracted larger groups of people. These findings suggest that natural elements such as trees promote increased opportunities for social interactions, monitoring of outdoor areas, and supervision of children in impoverished urban neighborhoods.