The environmental psychology of research

The paper addresses three issues: (1) the possibility of a unified description of environment–behaviour (EB) relationships and the place of environmental psychology therein. The points of departure are sets of, respectively, behaviours and environments. In an analogy to canonical correlation, groups of variables that describe behaviour/subjective experiences and groups of variables that describe environments are joined through setting variates that constitute instances of environment behaviour studies. (2) The research act is conceptualised as a setting variate, which allows for turning the circumstances that constitute the research act, that is behaviour (researcher in social context) and environment (research objects in research space) into objects of scrutiny in their own right. (3) Implications for the emic–etic paradox and the future of environmental psychology are considered in light of the growing globalisation of environmental challenges and ways of addressing them.