“Behaviour change is indispensable for achieving a CO2-neutral society”
Emeritus professor Charles Vlek has written a memorandum (book report) spanning four decades of research done by what is now known as Environmental Psychology Groningen (EP).
The publication – “Historical Development of Environmental Psychology Groningen 1977-2011: A Reconstructive Memorandum and a modest look forward” – provides an insider’s account of the first 35 years of the expanded research group.
Professor Vlek decided to write about the EP group, whose work he described as challenging and rewarding, for the benefit of present and future environmental psychologists in Groningen and elsewhere.
Some recurring research themes, like private car use, quality of urban living environments, and factors influencing sustainable behaviour, are laid out alongside a timeline of local and international developments, like the publication of ‘Our Common Future’ by the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987 and the first report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1990.
While the academic teaching course “Behaviour and Environment” began at the University of Groningen in 1989, Vlek reports that the seeds of what grew into Environmental Psychology Groningen were planted back in 1977 around a TNO applied-science conference about the external safety risks of industrial sites like nuclear-energy and petrochemical plants.
The book is coming out against the backdrop of a steady decline in environmental quality and natural biodiversity, and a rising demand for useful environmental psychology over recent decades. What has changed over the years, as awareness of the severity of climate change and its consequences has grown?
Professor Vlek says that environmental psychologists have become more cognizant of their scientific responsibility to provide “useful public information and policy advice about environmental degradation, stress and risks.”
Over the past 50 years, the field has also expanded in its scope. Where it originally focused on the environmental conditions of individual task performance, the discipline has now extended its interest to our wider living environments and collective quality of life.
“Nowadays, ‘saving the planet’, especially from disastrous climate change, attracts more research attention than optimizing the local quality of school, factory, nursing-home and prison environments”, Vlek writes.
“However, as society further develops and new technology, infrastructure and products emerge, the psychological quality and effects of local living environments will keep demanding researchers’ and teachers’ attention.”
At the end of the book, Vlek wonders how the discipline of environmental psychology itself may be further developed: “Well-embedded research and integrative teaching may prove to be essential for improving environmental quality and human well-being. One urgent topic is the environmental and psychosocial effects of warfare.”
