Person-environment Relationships Research Articles

Home Through Their Eyes: A Qualitative Exploration of the Meaning of Home for Persons With Dementia and Impact of Physical Environment During Meaning-Making.

This study aimed to examine the meaning of home for persons with dementia and the role of the physical environment during their meaning-making process. In response to a growing number of persons with dementia, there has been a strong advocacy for prioritizing the development of dementia-friendly environments within design practice and research agendas, for which "home" has become one of the important loci. However, of the limited studies on the meaning of home from the perspective of those individuals who continue to live in their own homes after developing dementia, even fewer addressed this issue within the Chinese context. Five dyads, persons with dementia and their family caregivers, participated in the qualitative phenomenology study. Ten home visits-2 visits per dyad-were conducted, during which interview data, photographs, and field notes were collected. Phenomenological analysis was applied within and across the data sets. Three key themes emerged-"Three Dimensions of Home" revealed that "home" goes beyond physical residence and immediate family connections, including meaningful objects and places, enduring relationships, self-identity, and lived experiences.; "The Impact of Physical Environment" and "The Impact of Cognitive Impairment" showed the complex interactions between the environment, cognitive impairment, and meaning-making. An exploration of the essence of meaning of home within the Chinese context, in person-environment relationships with dementia progression, and implications for future research and practice on dementia-related environments and care were further discussed. This study contributes insights into enhancing the well-being of persons with dementia and benefiting their caregivers.

Person Environment Relationships to Health and Wellbeing

It is widely acknowledged that a strong relationship exists between physical environments and human health and wellbeing. More specifically, various dimensions of person environment (PE) relationships have been studied relating to the psychological, physical and social aspects of human interactions and transactions. However, health aspects relating to human psychological and physiological relationships and such factors acting upon PE relationships are not well investigated. This paper emerges from a larger study and presents the approach undertaken to investigate the complexities of PE relationships to health and wellbeing for the purpose of reviewing literature. The study attempts to understand how outcomes of health and wellbeing are interrelated to PE relationships when influences of the various systems of the human body are considered. Central to this study is the psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) model that proposes that the person's psychological health is internally related to the neurological and immunological systems. the PNI model was used as a basis to look at the various interrelationships of human environment interactions and transactions to health and wellbeing. This provided the study with an integrative inquiry method for exploring literature which looked at such relationships singularly or collectively.

Creating an Innovative Blueprint for Barangay Development

This study is focused on the augmentation, extension, and enrichment of knowledge pertaining to the design of a new development plan for Barangay Babuyan in Carrascal, Surigao Del Sur. The central emphasis is placed on the intricate interplay between person-environment relationships, particularly concerning the innovative facilities being designed, notably housing. Through a comprehensive approach, the researchers executed a survey in line with the guidelines established by the Municipal Planning and Development Council (MPDC) of Carrascal. As per the MPDC, the designated relocation site encompasses a total area of 100,000 square meters, with each unit boasting a floor space of 48 square meters and an accompanying lot area of 100 square meters. The proposed project involves multifaceted considerations encompassing critical elements such as road network layout, housing design, electrical and water storage tank plans, drainage systems, and provisions for open spaces. This endeavor integrates a range of methodologies including surveying, on-site investigation, data collection, formulation of a novel barangay development plan, and comprehensive cost estimations. The development of a meticulously designed plan stands as a pivotal solution that addresses various aspects of community growth. This design, projected to efficiently accommodate the entire barangay, is rooted in the observation of a positive 2.33% average population growth rate from 1990 to 2015. Furthermore, the chosen relocation site holds the advantage of being hazard-free, exhibiting low susceptibility to landslides. The newly conceptualized barangay development plan is characterized by an easily accessible road network featuring a width of 6 meters. This network is illuminated by energy-efficient 100W solar LED street lights. In tandem, the plan includes a 3.50m x 3.50m water storage tank and an 8m x 6m house design encompassing a bedroom, living area, kitchen, and shared bathroom. The culmination of this proposed study is marked by its high level of acceptance, as it fulfills the requisites set forth by the Local Government Unit (LGU) and is aligned with the aspirations of the residents

Geographies of Encounter, Public Space, and Social Cohesion: Reviewing Knowledge at the Intersection of Social Sciences and Built Environment Disciplines

This article seeks to address long-standing questions in academia, practice, and policymaking regarding the role public spaces might have in promoting cross-cultural encounters and experiences of social cohesion in socially and culturally diverse urban contexts, and what theories and methods researchers and practitioners might use to objectively evaluate this. To answer these questions, this article carries out a systematic literature review of theories and methods for studying person-environment relationships from a range of social science and built-environment disciplines. The review provides a basis for interdisciplinary knowledge exchange to develop an innovative theoretical and methodological framework that draws together key analyses of social cohesion with recent urban design literature, to hypothesize how key social dimensions that characterise intercultural encounter and their social experience of cohesion link to physical, management, and use attributes of public space design. The proposed framework provides a multi-dimensional account of how public spaces with different design approaches are connected to different experiences of social encounters, which in turn impact varied experiences of social cohesion, paving the way for new knowledge about the geographies of encounters.

Children's physical activity and active travel: a cross-sectional study of activity spaces, sociodemographic and neighborhood associations

ABSTRACT Measures of individual mobility, such as activity space, have been previously used to help improve our understanding of individuals’ interactions with their everyday environments. However, such methods have rarely been adopted in studying children's physical activity and active travel behavior. In this study, we use a combination of participatory mapping and accelerometer data collected from children aged 8–13 years living in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand, to describe children's travel behavior and explore associations of active travel, physical activity, and socio-demographic characteristics with environmental attributes. The results from this study reveal complex associations between these different layers. Density of cycling routes was consistently associated with higher levels of physical activity captured via moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), prevalence of active travel, and total activity space exposure. Nevertheless, population density, greenspace, and land-use mix revealed varying associations across different activity behaviors including MVPA, number of steps, and prevalence of active travel. The results from this study not only reassert the complexity of person–environment relationships, but also highlight the potential impacts of measurement and analytical methods on the study results. The novel combination of participatory mapping and accelerometer data together with activity space analysis provided new analytical insights which we discuss in this paper. This study concludes by reporting its observations and envisioning future research directions.

Mobility as a response to environmental hazards in the urban context: A new perspective on mobility and inequality

In view of the increasing occurrence of urban environmental hazards which can threaten our quality of life and health outcomes, how citizens react to adverse environmental impacts is of great concern. Mobility, as an important part of urban everyday life, is a key concept in understanding individuals’ experience in cities and the society; however, this notion has long been understudied with regard to avoiding the harmful effects of environmental hazards. By highlighting the research perspective of averting behavior, we conceptualize mobility as a response (MaaR) to environmental hazards to inform a new interdisciplinary dialogue for transportation, urban planning, and environmental health research. We review a variety of literature in environmental hazards, (im)mobility, and inequality and reveal the challenges posed by MaaR. MaaR would provide empirical evidence on whether, how, and to what extent the effects and social costs of environmental hazards are underestimated and existing environmental inequality are exacerbated. This article puts forward that MaaR is a promising analytical framework through which we can enrich our knowledge on the person-environment relationships.

Use of participatory mapping approaches for activity space studies: a brief overview of pros and cons

Participatory mapping approaches have raised increasing interest in a variety of fields of research and practice during the past two decades. However, their use in modeling and studying individual mobility and activity spaces is rather recent and limited. This paper focuses on the use of public participation GIS (PPGIS) data in activity space modeling and analysis and aims to draw more scholarly attention to the existing research potentials in this area. While reviewing the pros of using PPGIS for activity space studies, this paper also discusses the existing limitations and outlines how they can be addressed in future research. PPGIS effectively enables collecting data from larger samples, making it possible to conduct more comprehensive geospatial and statistical analyses on the data. Additionally, the strong link between individuals and places in PPGIS data facilitates more person-based approaches in investigating person-environment relationships. However, use of PPGIS for activity space studies comes with analytical and data quality challenges that need to be thoroughly taken into consideration. Particularly, future research needs to seek new ways of including the temporal dimension in PPGIS and find new methods of using the data for activity space modeling and analysis.

Psychosocial Predispositions Towards Sustainability and Their Relationship with Environmental Identity

Environmental psychology is a particular area or subfield of psychology, especially involved in the delimitation of the causes and solutions of environmental problems. This area deals with the study of the interactions between human behavior and the socio-physical components of the environment. The emphasis on the interrelationship of environment and behavior is important; not only physical settings affect people’s behavior, individuals actively influence the environment. Thus, several studies have proposed the existence of a series of predispositions which allow the appreciation of diversity and the interdependence of person–environment relationships, making it possible to adopt lifestyles that can guarantee the sustainability of socio-ecological systems for present and future generations. Therefore, in order to work towards the goals of sustainability, it is necessary to know which are the inclinations or dispositions that people present when caring for the environment. The objective of this research was to identify the association between the variables of psychosocial predispositions towards sustainability with environmental identity in a sample of higher education students from southern Sonora. Nine different scales to measure these predispositions were applied to 417 students, considering emotions towards the environment, environmental and socio-environmental actions, as well as a scale to measure environmental identity. Results revealed, on the one hand, that first-order factors emerged consistently, indicating the presence of a higher-order factor (psychosocial predispositions towards sustainability). On the other hand, we found this construct is related in a bidirectional way with environmental identity, that is, that both the emotions and actions carried out by the students in favor of the environment are related to the degree of identification they have with it, and vice versa, thereby demonstrating an interdependence relationship between these two variables. These findings suggest that the presence of certain psychological characteristics in people would promote a closer relationship with nature, which could encourage participation in caring for the environment.

Understanding Persistence Using a Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory

Objective: Despite significant enrollment in community colleges, persistence and graduation rates are quite low. This study aims to better understand how students’ person–environment relationships and self-organization together contribute to the persistence decisions of community college students. Using Spencer et al.’s phenomenological variant on ecological systems theory (PVEST) framework, we aim to clarify the psychological functioning behind students’ persistence that is impacted by diverse systems, including the community college itself, family, and the broader community. Method: This study utilized qualitative interviews with 66 participants across two community colleges. Findings: We find that when participants’ experiences were analyzed through a PVEST frame, a majority of students described having phenomenological experiences around their student/learner identities. The feedback from these experiences prompted participants to negatively or positively reorganize their self-perceptions in regard to how they saw themselves as students and learners; this reorganization led to behaviors that influenced persistence plans. When participants’ microsystems (e.g., family, work, college) intersected, patterns emerged regarding how participants processed environmental feedback that resulted in a cyclical feedback loop, suggesting a more dynamic relationship with environments than previously presented. Contributions: Using PVEST as a framework allows for a more in-depth examination of the interface between students’ psychological foundations, processing of environmental feedback, and the resulting reorganization of self in regard to how role identities (e.g., student) provide greater insight into students’ persistence decisions. This study offers PVEST as an important framework for rethinking previous models of researching and supporting community college student persistence.

How Should Clinical Ethics Consultants Support Parents' Decision Making?

Clinical ethics consultants (CECs) frequently provide guidance to parents feeling grief and uncertainty. In response to a case in which a CEC works with parents making end-of-life decisions for their child, we argue that CECs should use insights from decision science to consider how emotional distress, information-processing heuristics, and person-environment relationships can influence decision making. Rather than rely on decision aids, CECs should take a personalized, values-based approach to facilitating decision making that acknowledges context and a plurality of possible "right" answers. By using this approach and insights from decision science to support parental decision making, the consultation itself becomes a decision aid, as consultants and parents engage in shared decision making through facilitated discussion and reflection.

The Impact of NOLS Rocky Mountain on the Development of a Sense of Place

Background: One of the core environmental studies learning objectives at NOLS is for students to develop a “sense of place” by experiencing wilderness and exploring relationships with their surroundings. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore how students report developing a sense of place after completing a course based out of NOLS Rocky Mountain in Lander, Wyoming. A secondary focus of this study was to understand sense-of-place development through past NOLS research on learning mechanisms. Methodology/Approach: Data were analyzed from 511 NOLS students who answered the open-ended question: Did NOLS help you develop a personal relationship to the places you visited? If so, how? This study utilized a grounded theory approach to design and analysis. Findings/Conclusions: Analyses revealed nine core categories related to developing an expeditionary and wilderness-focused sense of place. The two predominant themes supporting a sense of place were the ability of a NOLS course to facilitate nature appreciation and specific instructor-oriented and NOLS structure-oriented learning mechanisms. Implications: This article offers insights into how NOLS supports a sense of place, clarifies related learning mechanisms, and discusses curricular considerations related to facilitating person–environment relationships within landscapes understood as wilderness.

Disability and Otherization: Readings on Cinema in the Light of UD Principles

Cinema and architecture are universal with their inclusiveness in the mental process. The mental process is often generated by the sense of sight in modern times. In this sense, cinema, as a visual art, has started to take an active role in the intellectual, conceptual and creative actions of modern man. With the cinema, the realities of the virtual world have become more convincing than the dreams of the real world. It involves person-environment relationships which might not be ours but “look like ours”. Universal Design (UD) also puts forward a proactive interaction in-between man and environment. UD is based on equitable, flexible, intuitive, perceptible, tolerant-to-error access with appropriate size and space. While its conceptual basis with its guidelines are commonly constructed on the spatial needs of people with disabilities, it highlights disability does not focus on only permanent, visible, bodily or intellectual (dis)abilities. Every kind of otherization creates disability in society. This study aims to investigate how the relationship between architecture and disability in cinema is portrayed by reading through films that are masterpieces covering experiences of different disability groups. Using Visual Analysis method in the study, the codes and categories generated based on the UD Principles are associated with selected visual images and dialogues according to the frames of meaning of the scenes in the films. In this way, this study aims to question the location of UD parameters in physical and social environment through cinema.

Affordances guiding Forest School practice: the application of the ecological dynamics approach

Forest School focuses on child development underlining nature-connection and play pedagogy. Practitioners facilitate child-led learning through a deep observation approach. However, challenges and assumptions exist in such approaches. Additionally, a critical examination of the practice reveals that it may be lacking a solid theoretical underpinning that can respond to diverse contexts and participants while escaping a one-size-fits-all approach encouraged by commercialisation. Ecological Dynamics offers a theoretical framework that has the potential to guide Forest School practice and clarify its effectiveness. Specifically, notions of affordances combined with analysis at the level of person-environment relationships could guide future design and implementation of activities. Benefits could include realising and attuning to affordances which have sociocultural and individual connotations, thereby respecting local cultures and their community resources. The role of the Forest School practitioner becomes one of facilitating diverse populations in their perception of affordances in nature for individualised benefits, including well-being.

Restorative wildscapes at work: an investigation of the wellbeing benefits of greenspace at urban fringe business sites using ‘go-along’ interviews

The potential well-being benefits associated with the use of privately owned greenspaces in working environments have received little research attention. Given the growing evidence on the restorative benefits of urban greenspace, and the fact that many people spend most of their daily hours at the workplace, the question of whether physical access to green environments from workplaces can promote well-being is a pertinent one. Person–environment relationships in peri-urban business sites were investigated in a series of semi-structured ‘go-along’ interviews with employees at Scottish science parks. Workers described a range of well-being benefits from outdoor breaks and associated these with qualities of the environment. Semi-natural and informally landscaped areas were most strongly associated with restoration during the working day. The implications of the findings for the planning and design of business sites at the urban fringe are explored.

Workplace settings and wellbeing: Greenspace use and views contribute to employee wellbeing at peri-urban business sites

Low density business developments are a near ubiquitous feature of peri-urban landscapes in the UK and in other developed countries, however little is known about how workers relate to open space in this particular type of working environment. Person–environment relationships in five urban fringe science parks in central Scotland were investigated through a survey of employees (N=366). Specifically, the study sought to explore the impact of viewing and using greenspace at these knowledge-sector workplaces on employee wellbeing. The results of a series of multiple regression analyses indicated that both use of the open space and views of some vegetation types, namely trees, lawn and shrubs or flowering plants, were positively and independently associated with self-reported wellbeing levels. This research provides new insight into the extent to which workplace greenspace contributes to employee wellbeing, whilst controlling for exposure to greenspace outside of the workplace context. Also, by investigating relationships between wellbeing and the particular physical features seen in views, the research provides evidence on how workplaces might be designed to incorporate restorative window views. These findings have relevance both for the planning and design of peri-urban business sites and for the design of interventions to promote employee wellbeing.

Resilience in the face of changing living conditions in Guangzhou, China – insights and perspectives from psychology

To respond to increasing intercity competition and to improve its leading role as the regional centre in southern China, the Guangzhou government has been constructing the South Railway Station in Shibi Village, the largest passenger railway station in Asia. This paper explores and reflects upon how the inhabitants of this village appraise and deal with the project's impacts on their living conditions. In this regard, the question is particularly considered as to why some individuals show adaptive functioning in. the face of significant risk or adversity while others do not. Which risk and protective fac tors play a role in modifying the quality of stress experience and interface with the phenomenon of individual resilience? The purpose of this article is twofold. Firstly, it aims to enrich the geographical discourse on vulnerability and resilience by taking a psychological perspective and presenting and applying aspects of the transactional stress model of LAZARUS and of current psychological research on individual resilience. Secondly, it seeks to analyze the effect of risk and protective factors especially in relation to complex person-environment relationships that seem neither amenable to modification nor controllable by visible action. Problem-based interviews (including narrative sequences) with Shibi's inhabitants and auto photography reveal that, in particular, intrapsychological problemand emotion-focussed coping modes and person-related dispositions such as an internal locus of control or optimism contribute to features of individual resilience.

On the Quantitative Assessment of Perceived Housing in Later Life

Person-environment relationships become particularly important in later life. Our discussion of challenges in the assessment of experiential person-environment exchange processes is grounded on a four-domain model of perceived housing. We present empirical findings from an iterative process of instrument revision seeking optimization of both reliability and validity issues regarding control-related and meaning-oriented domains of perceived housing. Our initial reconstruction, however, was not confirmed to represent a consistent and reliable measure for the suggested dimensions of housing-related identity, privacy, and autonomy. Exploratory post-hoc analyses of the pilot pool of indicators suggests six holistic facets, such as “daily independence” “neighborhood belonging”, “mirror of self”, “continuity and remaining in place” and “being alone and at peace”. Plausible content-related interpretation and relations to major background characteristics encourage the continuous task of tailoring assessment instruments to meet the holistic character of housing experiences in later life.

Everyday life in the context of outdoor spaces for older people

This paper addresses older people's outdoor activities by taking an everyday life perspective to research. Everyday life refers to daily pursuits undertaken by different individuals. Everyday life is also a model for conceptualising person-environment relationships and for proposing practice-related actions to improve quality of life. This article argues for the need to give ‘everyday life’ a more prominent role in environmental psychology in the examination of what social and environmental factors contribute to health and wellbeing of older adults. As such, quality of life needs to be placed in the realm of one's existence and everyday environment. I define everyday life and place it in the context of ageing research. Next, I present some research tools for everyday life—derived from the Inclusive Design for Getting Outdoors (I'DGO) research project—which are useful to measure everyday patterns of outdoor activities. The article concludes by arguing for the use of an everyday life model to integrate research and practice in ageing research.

Invited Editor's Introduction

This special issue, dedicated to the study of ageing and environment relationships, presents research conducted both in North America and Europe examining the role of urban and rural places on older people's health and psychological wellbeing. The articles in this special issue reveal how urban and rural environments in different cultural contexts either restrict or promote older people's quality of life and wellbeing. The articles include the examination of an everyday life model for conceptualising person-environment relationships, the vulnerability to climate change in coastal areas, the community support among urban and rural residents, presence of a disability type (e.g. mobility, vision) or an enduring emotional problem (e.g. depression) and its relation to engagement in activities, and lastly psycho-social and environmental attitudes of the elderly in relation to environmental relocation

Core Self-Evaluations and Job Burnout: The Test of Alternative Models.

Research on job burnout has traditionally focused on contextual antecedent conditions, although a theoretically appropriate conception implicates person-environment relationships. The authors tested several models featuring various combinations of personal and contextual influences on burnout and job satisfaction. Measures of core self-evaluations, organizational constraints, burnout, and job satisfaction were collected from 859 health care employees. Results from structural equations modeling analyses revealed an influence of core self-evaluations and perceived organizational constraints on job burnout and satisfaction, suggesting personal and contextual contributions. These results favor a broadening of current thinking about the impact of situational constraints on the expression of job burnout, as well as for the role of disposition for affective responding to effectively address occupational health problems.