Friday, July 01, 2005

Mission Statement

Welcome to the Environmental Perception and Behavioral Geography Specialty Group Homepage. Our mission is to advance the theoretical and applied interests of environmental perception and behavioral geography within the discipline of geography, developing links to related disciplines through communication and organization. Environmental perception and behavior geography (EPBG) is a broad subarea within human geography that takes a disaggregate approach to the study of human activity, culture, and society. It is concerned with a diverse set of issues about human behavior, perception, attitudes, beliefs, memory, language, intentions, reasoning and problem-solving involving space and place. EPBG research is motivated by two premises, that understanding these issues will help improve traditional models in human geography, and that these issues constitute geographic problems in their own right. Furthermore, to an EPBG researcher, people are not interchangeable parts for study but may differ as a function of their culture, socioeconomic status, age, gender, education, travel experiences, differing abilities, and more. EPBG researchers employ a wide array of research methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative, and have interdisciplinary contact with psychology, anthropology, history, phenomenology, micro-economics, computer science, literature, and other disciplines.