DIFFERENT KINDS AND ROLES OF ENVIRONMENTAL UNCERTAINTY

In environmental psychology different roles appears to be ascribed to the concept of environmental uncertainty: in environmental aesthetics optimization of environmental uncertainty is assumed to explain prefer ences, in environmental-stress research minimization of environmental uncertainty is assumed to reduce stress, and in research on resource d ilemmas environmental uncertainty is assumed to be accurately monitore d. An analysis of the different definitions in each area of research r eveals that environmental uncertainty refers to both event-event and r esponse-consequence covariation, that it is not assumed to be inherent but to relate to ignorance or faulty information processing, and that it is multifacet subsuming the concepts of probability, vagueness and ambiguity. Although the different research areas do not seem to diffe r importantly in their definitions of environmental uncertainty, there are differences in emphasis. A possible reconciliation rests on: (1) that in research on resource dilemmas it is incorrect that people accu rately monitor environmental uncertainty but, in fact, are susceptible to a desirability bias; (2) that sensation seeking plays a role for r isk taking in resource dilemmas; and (3) that in environmental-stress research conditions of high environmental uncertainty have primarily b een investigated, thus leaving out conditions when an increase of unce rtainty would be desirable. It may be concluded then that basically pe ople are optimizers of environmental uncertainty. However, this does n ot rule out that they, under most of the prevailing conditions, want t o reduce environmental uncertainty. To help them do that seems, theref ore, more appropriate than to do the reverse. (C) 1998 Academic Press.