The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of choice and environmental control on perceived control. A paired associate choice task was presented to all subjects and they were allowed to choose the response terms to be learned. When each of the response words was chosen aloud, the screen on which the words were printed went blank in the 100% implicit control and 100% explicit control groups. In the latter group, the subjects were informed a priori that the words would be removed from the screen, while in the no-control group, the screen did not go blank when the subjects responded. In the 50% implicit control and 50% explicit control groups, the screen went blank upon responding on a random half of the decision trials. Half of the subjects received an uncontrollable continuous white noise (90 dB) throughout the decision trials, while no noise was presented to the remainder. Upon completion of the choice task, subjects were presented with a dice game, which measured the generalized effects of perceived control. The relationships between environmental control and perceived control were different in the explicit control and implicit control conditions. In the presence of noise, environmental control produced an increment in the perception of control. Finally, consistent environmental control produces greater perceived control than does random control. The motivation model and applications of environmental control were discussed. / Ph. D.

In the field of urban planning, environmental psychology studies human relationship to places and settings, which are then categorized as the public's identities, attachments, and dependencies. Of interest to city planning, these findings can also be utilized in a design methodology. By giving particular attention to civic programs, this thesis presents a model for multi-scalar architecture and construction of place meanings. With urban, political, and historic networks contributing to place categories, ecological evolution provides developmental trajectories that can then be manifested through architectural design in civic and cultural institutions within city centers. From site selection through the design and execution of the project, the precedence is led by the people of past, present, and future, and the spaces they celebrate. The following is about the County of Arlington Civic Center, a multi-scalar perspective and design. / Master of Architecture

Immigration has continuously been an evident part of the human history. Throughout time, for one reason or another people have left the place they call home. Whether voluntarily seeking better opportunities in other cities/countries/continents, or forcefully being asked to leave due to political, social, or natural issues, resettlement continues to be a difficult challenge for those who are displaced. The issue, human displacement, whether caused by natural disasters or political/social issues, is rather serious, especially in our world today. Whether the wildfires of California, the hurricanes of Louisiana, or political issues of Syria, there is a massive population who choose to or have to leave the place they call him. Despite many psychological and physical challenges, trauma, and difficulties that these individuals have to face, where they go next does not have to be a tough adjustment. Restorative environments, namely landscapes, allow for recovery of these individuals through its components of mystery, coherence, complexity, and texture. In the case of immigrants and refugees, the time of adjustment and adaptation heightens the absence of sense of belonging and potential social injustice; however, design and very particularly throughout this thesis, landscape architecture can help. Improvisation has one rule, "yes, and...". The notion of acceptance and addition allows for the involved individuals to not only be creative regarding their surroundings, but encourages them to become a part of evolving of the space. This, increases the sense of belonging, and therefore, makes for a more positive experience in a given space. This becomes specifically important for a displaced/detached group of individuals. / Master of Landscape Architecture

The aims of the present study were twofold: (1) to determine the effectiveness of various map formats in presenting mass transit information; and (2) to assess subjects’ internal representation of spatial features of the environment. It was hypothesized that bus route selection would be a function of both the amount of detail and the road structure presented in maps and that the effect of detail and road structure would depend upon the familiarity of the mapped area. A 2 X 2 X 2 (Familiarity x Detail x Road Structure) factorial design was employed in the experiment. The familiarity factor was manipulated by mapping a familiar area (Blacksburg, Virginia) and an unfamiliar area (an altered section of London, England). Detail was manipulated by including or not including roads and landmarks on the maps. Road Structure was manipulated by presenting roads in either a veridical or a simplified manner. Performance on a map reading task was used to assess the effects of the independent variables. Fourty undergraduate subjects were required to first locate two intersections on a bus route map and second, to determine a bus route between the two intersections. Five dependent measures of map reading ability were obtained. Results indicated that, for both familiar and unfamiliar areas, a veridical road structure yielded less errors and faster times for determining a bus route than did a simplified road structure, and that detail lengthened the time to perform the task. / Master of Science

This study investigated several facets of the environmental coping process. Environmental coping was defined as any behavioral or cognitive attempt to reduce annoyance resulting from bothersome environmental conditions. In this study, library patrons using study carrels were observed while two people talked nearby. The library patron's behaviors in response to this event were recorded. In addition, self-report data were collected by means of follow-up questionnaires. Drawing on the literature from areas of research such as environmental stress, the coping process, and the effects of perceived control, four hypotheses were proposed. In summary, these hypotheses proposed that people would attempt to deal with the intrusion created by others talking nearby through indirect means first, and that people would attempt to"make do" (satisfice) rather than exert control over environmental events (optimize). Due to methodological difficulties, no definite conclusions could be drawn. Suggestions for methodological refinement in this area of research were offered and conceptual issues discussed. / M.S.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

The UK is required to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent from 1990 levels, by 2050. Greenhouse gas emissions attributed to the UK higher education sector have increased by 34.5 per cent from 1990 to 2005. Higher education institutions have a unique role in the UK greenhouse gas emissions inventory, beyond management of their own estates and compliance with policy and legislation, higher education institutions have responsibilities as innovators and educators, inspiring students and employees through example and best practice. This study sought to understand acceptability of greenhouse gas emissions reduction policies among employees of a higher education institution. The value-belief-norm theory was used in a questionnaire to understand individual attitudinal factors thought to influence policy acceptability (N=405). Recognising that an employee's attitudinal factors may be influenced by their work colleagues, this study used social network analysis to understand the social context within which individual attitudinal factors sit. Support was found for higher education institutions to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Employees found policies that encouraged desired behaviours, such as assistance with train travel costs and working from home, to be more acceptable than policies that discouraged undesired behaviours, such as doubling the price of a car-parking permit. Support was found for the structure and content of the value-belief-norm theory, but logistic regression suggested that it provided a weak explanation of employee policy acceptability, indicating that other factors may have a greater role. Analysis of workplace social networks suggested that employees have small social groups (x̄=8) and do not select to be close to colleagues that reflect their own perspectives. Practitioners and policymakers should seek to address this void in environmental social norms through recruitment of more environmental champions to deliver strong and persuasive pro-environmental messages.

The communication of anthropogenic climate change presents many challenges, for communicators, scientists, policymakers and publics alike. Particularly difficult is the issue of uncertainty, which can include ambiguity around the phenomenon of climate change, the possible impacts of this, and the timeframe within which such impacts will be seen. Previous research has established that audiences are often averse to uncertainty, and will disregard or ignore messages that contain it. This raises a theoretical and practical question of how best to manage uncertainty in climate change communication in order to maintain audience engagement. This question was the focus of this PhD research. Specifically, the aim of this thesis was to explore the process of climate change communication from the perspectives of the scientists, communicators, and the recipient. I achieved this research goal by utilising a mixed methods design. I firstly interviewed the originators (i.e., scientists) and professional communicators of climate change information to explore the process from their side (Chapter 2). This revealed a number of themes connecting to the different ways scientists and communicators understand the process of communication (e.g., as information exchange versus relationship building), the challenges of climate change communication and uncertainty in particular, and the (appropriate) role of scientists when communicating with the public about climate change. Next, in a series of studies I experimentally explored how audiences respond to variations in the informational content of climate change messages (such as the level of uncertainty) and the role of different communicative styles in further shaping audience engagement (Chapter 3). Broadly, the results of these studies suggest that while uncertainty can undermine audience engagement with climate change communications, the negative effects of uncertainty are buffered when the communicator is perceived to be high in morality and/ or when they use an open communication style. Interestingly, these effects of communication style were particularly evident among women, whereas men tended to react against this. Together, these studies show how relational factors (e.g., communication styles and perceptions of communication sources) can moderate the impact of informational content on audience responses. Finally, I ended this programme of research by looking in more detail at how audiences perceive a real scientific organisation engaged in climate change communication and the bases of their beliefs about organisation competence and morality (Chapter 4). This study combined qualitative and quantitative data to delve deeper into some of the insights gained in the experimental work, and to reconnect this to the real-world organisation context I began with. This study again showed how perceptions of communicator morality moderate responses to uncertainty, but also provide useful insights into the different origins of perceptions of morality and competence. Chapter 5 concludes by summarising the research presented in this thesis, discussing its strengths, limitations and ways forward. Here, I also consider the theoretical, methodological and practical implications of the thesis’ research findings. Briefly, it is argued that addressing the scientific uncertainties of climate change may not necessarily mean altering the form of information itself. Rather, modifying the language peripheral to the information that contains uncertainty, attending to the ways in which audiences perceive the sources of uncertainty, and considering variations amongst publics, may help to engage in effective communication around the complex issue of climate change.

Measurement of relative near-view scenic beauty and prediction of changes in scenic beauty with timber stand management, grazing, and downed wood management are necessary to integrate scenic beauty into the multiple use decision-making framework. Although traditional landscape quality assessment procedures are of limited use in measuring or predicting the relative scenic beauty of near-view forest scenes, extension of psychophysical methods to measurement of forest scenic beauty offers an approach to effectively incorporate scenic beauty into forest management. Biological and physical variables were inventoried at sites within ponderosa pine timber stands in northern Arizona. Four color slides, also taken at those sites, were later rated for scenic beauty by groups of people, and the ratings were scaled to provide scenic beauty estimates per site. Highly significant multiple regression models, expressing scenic beauty as a function of the biophysical variables, accounted for up to 60, 50, and 80 percent of the variance in scenic beauty for pre-harvest sites, post-harvest sites, and pre-harvest timber stands, respectively. It seems possible at this point to specify a general ponderosa pine model, to be calibrated for specific damage-free areas within the Southwest. Herbage and large ponderosa pine contribute to scenic beauty, while numbers of small pine trees, mechanical ground disturbance, and downed wood, especially as slash, detract from scenic beauty. Areas of northerly aspect, lower overstory density, and less tree clumping were preferred. Moderate harvest tends to improve scenic beauty once the stand has recovered from obvious harvest effects. The recovery period can be greatly reduced by slash cleanup. Grazing can seriously detract from scenic beauty. Up to a point, over the range of practical timber stocking levels, increasing stocking results in greater net present worth from timber, forage, and water yields minus management costs, and lower scenic beauty. Beyond that point both net present worth and scenic beauty decline.

The main aim of this thesis is to investigate how environmental preference for the built environment, either in-situ or based on visual representations (e.g. visualisations of final architectural design), may be affected by three distinct variables. One of them is emotion, operationalised as the mood people are in at the time of the evaluation and the way people feel with regards to the environment. A second variable considers the participants' attention and how they may be influenced by task instructions. The third variable, intrinsically related to the second one, is how environmental preference may be influenced depending on the perspective taken at the time of the evaluation. The main research questions in this thesis are: a) How does emotion influence environmental preference? b) What is the impact of perspective-taking on environmental preference? c) What are the benefits of using emotional reactions to the environment as predictors of preference? These main research questions are addressed using both quantitative and qualitative methods, mainly quantitative, underpinned by a pragmatic approach. The unit of analysis in this thesis is the person who evaluates or judges an environment or a representation of it. Five studies are presented in this thesis. Study 1 (n=10) reports the results from interviews with practising architects in the city of Aberdeen. These results show that when designing architects take two distinct perspectives: a prescriptive inferential perspective and a self, referential perspective. These interviews are used to set the context within which this thesis operates: the presentation of design to people with no expertise in architecture and built environment disciplines. The remaining four studies directly address this thesis' main research questions. In Study 2 (n=133), Study 3 (n=146) and Study 5 (n=64) the effects of perspective-taking on different dependent variables are experimentally tested. The dependent variables are: perceived restorativeness (Study 2), environmental preference as measured via informational variables (Study 3), and the emotional reactions people have to representations of the environment (Study 5). Results of these studies show that perspective-taking carries an interpersonal perception bias whereby taking a perspective other than the self results in different environmental evaluation outcomes, but that this process can also be affected by formal training. The influences of emotion on environmental preference are directly explored in Studies 4 (n=32) and 5 (n=64). The results show that mood can have an influence on environmental preference by influencing the emotional reactions people have to the environment, but that these influences vary over time. Overall the thesis shows that perspective-taking and emotion have a range of influences on environmental preference in a built environment context, that these are important at the point at which architecture and built environment professionals design environments, and that timing of environmental evaluations in longitudinal assessments can make the difference between positive and less positive evaluations. This thesis' results are discussed in light of existing knowledge and some recommendations are made for future research and practitioners in architecture and built environment disciplines.