Environment and Behavior

Research in open office design has shown that it is negatively related to workers’ satisfaction with their physical environment and perceived productivity. A longitudinal study was conducted within a large private organization to investigatethe effects of relocating employees from traditional offices to open offices. A measure was constructed that assessed employees’satisfaction with the physical environment, physical stress, coworker relations, perceived job performance, and the use of open office protocols. The sample consisted of 21 employees who completed the surveys at all three measurement intervals: prior to the move, 4 weeks after the move, and 6 months after the move. Results indicated decreased employee satisfaction with all of the dependent measures following the relocation. Moreover, the employees’dissatisfaction did not abate, even after an adjustment period. Reasons for these findings are discussed and recommendations are presented.

Approximately 70% of American workers personalize their workspaces. However, some employees personalize more than others, such as managers and employees with enclosed offices. Studies examining personality traits suggest that employees who personalize the most tend to be creative and have a high need for affiliation and a low need for privacy. However, major personality factors have not been examined. This study examines the relationships between workspace personalization and the Big Five personality factors by surveying 234 employees from 33 companies. Results indicate that personality is only indirectly related to personalization through employee characteristics such as status and type of workspace. Personalization is primarily predicted by the company’s personalization policy and an employee’s status and workspace.

This study provides baseline data from a nationwide sample of telecommuting programs in organizations with facility managers. Based on Rogers’ Adoption/Diffusion Theory, the two-phase study revealed a 38% telework adoption rate. The data describe the telecommuting programs, their attributes, and resultant off-site work environments and central office changes. In conclusion, among U.S. organizations that employ facility managers, the rate of adoption of telecommuting is growing steadily, primarily in large, reengineered, and services-oriented firms. The perceived attributes of these programs are (a) their relative advantage as an effective informal method for organizations to attract and retain valued employees and (b) their compatibility with theorganization’s corporateculture. Thus far, thesamplefacility managers’limited involvement in the corporate decision to adopt telecommuting and in evaluating work environment outcomes may constrain their potential effectiveness as telework change agents.

Measures of proenvironmental behavior in psychological studies do not always reflect the actual environmental impact of a person or household. Therefore, the results of these studies provide little insight into variables that could be helpful in reducing household environmental impact. In this article, an environmentally significant measure of household consumer behavior (i.e., combined direct and indirect energy use) is presented and compared with a common social science measure of proenvironmental behavior (based on popular notions of environmentally significant behavior). Two large-scale field studies were conducted among representative samples of Dutch households. The results showed respondents who indicate they behave more proenvironmentally do not necessarily use less energy. Also, proenvironmental behavior is more strongly related to attitudinal variables, whereas household energy use is primarily related to variables such as income and household size. More multidisciplinary research seems necessary to identify variables that influence the actual environmental impact of household consumer behavior.

This article aims to identify the variables that appear to be most influential in motivating individuals to participate in environmentally responsible behavior in a western city of Turkey. The model of Hines, Hungerford, and Tomera (1986-1987) on responsible environmental behavior has been used in this research, and its findings are compared, discussed, and interpreted. The “contradictory” findings of our work could be considered to be involved in challenging and/or contributing to the referenced meta-analysis. The analysis is thought to extend its exploratory power by incorporating cross-cultural variables and conditions.

The authors examined the willingness of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to support public species conservation measures as a function of species characteristics, NGOs’interests, and interests harmed by the measures. In an experiment, 39 policy makers from nature conservation, mobility and recreation, and agriculture NGOs read 16 illustrated descriptions of indigenous animal species, which systematically varied across taxon, relative size, and rarity. The representatives rated the importance of species’ continued existence to their NGOs and their NGO’s support for hypothetical conservation measures for the species. The measures were either described as (a) harmful to the interests of representatives’own NGOs or (b) harmful to the interests of other NGOs. The judgments regarding the importance of species’ continued existence and support for conservation measures were found to differ across representatives’NGOs and to depend on taxon and relative size. Support for the measures also depended on the interests harmed (own versus another’s).