The Concept of Choice and Cognitive Explanations of Spatial Behavior

Abstract

As concepts and terminology from various branches of psychology have been assimilated by behavioral geographers, the paradigm of psychology has proved particularly attractive [3; 6; 7; 22; 39; 42; 43; 49]. The following concerns are characteristic of this approach: i. An emphasis on the acquisition, processing, and storage of information, and its growth by learning. ii. A concern with mental content: schemata, images, knowledge, concepts, habits, motives, and drives. iii. A teleological account of action in terms of motivated intents and purposes. iv. A structural decomposition of the continuum of behavior into actions defined by inferred purpose and not by publicly-observable topography. v. An account of ongoing behavior with reference to shortand long-term integrations of internal schemata and external stimuli under the central control of attention. vi. A hierarchic structure of longand short-term goals in which individual acts may serve multiple purposes, governed by a system of interrupts which define priorities [60]. Several programmatic statements by behavioral geographers adopt a paradigm explicitly [27]. Work has focused on such themes as the schemata (mental images and maps) presumed to guide behavior [18; 19], developmental processes, search, learning [28], and distance cognition [9]. In much of this literature explicitly formulated choice models (in the style of consumer theory) are absent. But in one large class of models, choice concepts figure in a dominant and mathematically explicit way [11; 56]. These models provide psychologically-oriented accounts of the destination choice process in repetitive urban travel. In principle, at least, this varying emphasis on choice in different areas of geography is not to be accounted for by a simple dichotomy between (nonchoice related) and affective (choice related) components of image and behavior. Preference and information are inextricably linked, as Lewin's field theory suggests or as Downs and Stea imply: cognitive mapping can only be understood as purpose and goal directed activity [19, p. 69]. The dominance of explicitly formulated choice concepts in studies of repetitive travel may be more convincingly explained as a legacy from non-cognitive theories, including gravity models of interaction and central place theory. Although many of the emerging themes of behavioral geography appear remote from the traditional concerns of economic geography, a close point of contact is provided by such models of urban travel. For example, an evident evolutionary continuity links the consumer-theoretic account of shopping behavior implicit in central place theory with the reformulations of the late nineteen sixties [13; 14] and with more recent and overtly psychological accounts of store choice [11]. This evolution has been strongly influenced by work in disaggregate travel demand modelling. It has culminated in a consensus on the form of explanations of destination choice. The result is termed here the