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GÖTEBORGS UNIVERSITET
Psykologiska institutionen March 13, 2000
GÖTEBORG
UNIVERSITY
Department of Psychology
Professor Charles D. Spielberger
College of Social and Behavioral Science
University of South Florida
Tampa, FL 33620
USA
Biennial
Report of Activities of Division 4 (Environmental Psychology)
1.
Appointment/election
of officers to the Executive Board
One of my very first tasks was to appoint Terry Hartig as the Divison´s
Newletter Editor. Later I found it very much to be in the interest of the division
to propose Terry for the position as secretary (the division has not formally
had a secretary before) given Terry´s excellent administrative talents and
mastery of the English language. He is certainly also a candidate for higher
positions in the future. The job as secretary is therefore a valuable
experience for him personally. I am happy to say that my proposal was approved
by the members.
After the tragic death of the former treasurer, Joost van Andel, in San
Francisco 1998, the division did not have a treasurer. After some search Terry
and I were able to secure the candidacy of Einar Strumse from Lillehammar
College in Norway. Einar graduated in 1996 and has been a postdoc with Rachel
and Stephen Kaplan at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I know him
personally from University of Bergen, where I have been a frequent visitor. (I
was actually the outside opponent at his public dissertation defence.) I found
him to be an excellent person with whom I am sure we can establish good working
relations. Einar was elected unanimously in an email ballot, and he has now
started his term.
It appears that the division has until now operated without a variety
of formal rules and without procedures for electing officers. We are doing
something about this. We are trying to engage the past division president, Gary
W. Evans, in our activities, and we will soon start a search for a
President-Elect. The idea is to have a full board of President, Past President,
President-Elect, Secretary/Newsletter Editor, and Treasurer. We also want to
establish, during our term, some more formal procedures that can be taken over
by the next board. Although the division is small and has perhaps not been very
active in the past, we hope this will change and indeed we see what we plan to
do as instrumental in such a change process.
On recommendations from Mirilia Bonnes, Gabriel Moser and myself were
appointed to the program committee for the Singapore Congress n 2002. Mirilia
was appointed on my recommendation. Gary Evans is now appointed as the chair of
the division´s program committee.
2.
Information
Dissemination
Terry and I have been engaged in several activities to increase the
division´s visibility, communication with members, and communication with some
other organizations (something which was expressed as a desire at the
membership meeting in SF 1998). We list these activities below.
·
2.1. Creating and maintaining a division home page
One of my former grad students, now a collaborator in a research
project, Mathias Gustafsson, has done an excellent job in creating and
maintaining the division´s home page (http://www.psy.gu.se/iaap/envpsych.htm). We intended
to create a home page that would present basic information useful to old
members and potential members, and at the same time a homepage that would be
relatively easy to maintain. We think that we have achieved this objective. The
home page now contains a general definition of environmental psychology, a
little division history*,
references to related organizations and relevant journals, many useful links,
including of course a link to the IAAP home page with “how to become a member”
information, and, finally, we each time post the Newsletter material before it
goes to print. This is also when update the home page.
·
2.2 Newsletter submissions
Terry and I decided at an early stage to try to bring members into
discussions around topics in environmental psychology. The plan was to write a
short editorial for each Newsletter and solicit commentaries from select
members. So, for the first editorial we asked Gary Evans and the president of
the APA environmental psychology division, Robert Gifford, to comment on the
relationship of environmental psychology to psychological science (plugging for
the IUPS congress in Stockholm). The second editorial concerned applications of
environmental psychology in environmental design activities, and we obtained
comments by David Uzzel, president of the related organization International
Association of People-Environment Studies (IAPS), and Gabriel Moser, president
of the IAPS conference next summer. We now plan an editorial for the last
Newsletter issue this year on new applications of environmental psychology in
the area of sustainable development. We will have comments from two persons
working in that area who are not environmental psychologists (Henk Staats,
Charles Vlek, both of The Netherlands).
Our plan is then to do a related editorial about applications of environmental
psychology in developing countries. In addition to this, Terry has invested
much effort to solicit and edit materials for a news section which I hope and
think the members are pleased with. I would also like to note that to my great
satisfaction, Terry took the initiative to and actually produced for the
Newsletter a very well written obituary of Joost.
·
2.3 Electronic mail
Terry has collected email addresses for both members and non-members
whom we know of. This has made it possible for us to obtain direct comments
from members on a few important issues including two elections. However, this
does not yet work as smoothly as we would like. The problem is that the member
information we have obtained from IAAP is in many cases incomplete or
inaccurate. We hope this will be rectified with the transition to Blackwells.
As I will mention below, it is also an obstacle to our efforts at recruiting
new members.
·
2.4 Establishing a relationship with Journal of
Environmental Psychology
Terry and I approached the editor of Journal of Environmental
Psychology (JEP), David Canter, with the goal of establishing a closer
relationship with the journal. JEP is the only journal in the area which
publishes high-quality articles primarily focusing on psychological aspects of
human-environment relations. Other leading journals such as Environment and Behavior are more
interdisciplinary. (Also, Environment and
Behavior is sponsored by a North American organization for environmental
design researchers.) Both David Canter and the publisher, Academic Press, were
enthusiastic about our proposal, so beginning in 2000 the journal will be
published with the following text printed on the front cover: “Published with
the support of the Division of Environmental Psychology of the International
Association of Applied Psychology.”
David Canter is also writing an editorial in which he calls attention to
the journal’s strengthened relationship with the division, and provides
historical background information about the division. In the future the
division will have the opportunity to publish division materials/announcements
in the journal, and members who subscribe will receive a discount rate. For
several good reasons, however, we decided against making subscription a
mandatory part of becoming a member. Finally, members will also have the opportunity
to make proposals concerning policy issues; however, of course, the final
decisions will remain with the editor and publisher.
·
2.5 Increasing contacts with other organizations
There are several other organizations that count as members environment
psychologists. These are the Environmental Design Research Association in North
America, IAPS (mentioned above), Man-Environment Relations Association (MERA)
in Japan, and People and Physical Environment Research (PAPER) in Australia. However, all of these are interdisciplinary
and a majority of their members come from disciplines other than psychology.
Therefore, we believe the division fulfills a valuable function in providing
the connection to the mother discipline. It is also the case that economic psychologists,
health psychologists, social psychologists, and traffic psychologists may want
to be associated with the division, although not with any of the other
organizations. A desire expressed at the SF membership meeting was anyway to
establish more contact with these other organizations, in particular IAPS. In
accordance with the decision then made, Terry and I are organizing a
division-sponsored symposium at the upcoming IAPS conference in Paris next
summer. Several well known environmental psychologists have been invited to
discuss the future of environmental psychology, a topic which many of the
non-psychologists at the conference may want to hear.
3.
Membership
Recruitment
We have tried through numerous personal contacts to encourage
colleagues and students to consider joining IAAP. However, a more systematic
general approach, based on reference to the membership list that was made
available to us, has been hampered by incomplete and in accurate member
information. We think that there may be several current IAAP members who are
not currently affiliated with our division but who would be interested in
having such an affiliation. More importantly, we are certain that many of our
colleagues are not members. Therefore, we want to approach them with an appeal
to become members and to encourage their students to join. In the spirit of the
suggestions from the IAAP board, we also want to send out an appeal to known
members to ask them to recruit colleagues and students. Accurate membership
information is clearly essential to do this. It is also important that we can
find out from such information how successful we are in our efforts.
4.
Economy
Since a new treasurer was only recently elected, we have not fully
performed the tasks required from us. In fact, it was impossible for to me send
in a report of economic transaction before my term. I did receive from Joost´s
widow appr. US$ 1,300 which Joost kept in a bank account. (We assume that
almost no money has been spent over the years, but we would nonetheless appreciate
having documentation that the executive committee may have concerning division
spending). I have informed Raymond Fowler about this. Right now I have the
money in my bank account which he approved. When Einar now starts his term, I
will transfer the money to him. Einar will also promptly get in contact with
Raymond concerning his obligations. We have formulated a few policy principles
for spending the money we have as well as future income.
The first principle is that we will only spend a portion of the
accumulated sum.
Secondly, we want to establish as a principle to be followed in the
future that the money is NOT to be used by officers for covering their costs.
We rely here on the willingness of the executive officer’s departments to cover
these (rather small) costs. We think this should be understood by anyone
accepting the role of executive officer.
In accordance with suggestions
at the SF 1998 membership meeting, a third principle is that the money should
be used to benefit students and in particular those who are economically
disadvantaged. In line with this we have proposed to David Canter that we want
to give an award for the best published JEP article based on a dissertation.
The award will take the form of a reduced membership or congress fee. We are
also thinking of reducing congress fees for students solely based on economic
disadvantages. Here we will however coordinate this with the IAAP activities
for the congress.
Yours sincerely,
Tommy Gärling, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology