Toward an environmental psychology of the Internet

Abstract

Notes that the premise that people's transactions with their place-based environments are psychologically important and influential has historically been prominent in the discipline of environmental psychology. However, the authors argue that increases in technology in the 1980s and the proliferation of the Internet, World Wide Web, and computers into many aspects of life not only altered the physical landscape of interior environments, but also made possible the establishment of high-speed digital communication networks that have substantially eased the constraints of physical distance and time on many forms of social interaction. This chapter considers whether "foundational" findings from earlier programs of environment behavior research are generalizable to the Internet Society of the 21st century. The authors examine key features of the Internet and Web and document their growth during the 1990s. Next, the authors consider conceptual questions posed by the rise of the Internet and sketch the broad contours of an emerging field, the environmental psychology of the Internet. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved) (from the chapter)