BEHAVIORAL AND PERCEPTION GEOGRAPHY - CRITICAL-APPRAISAL

The results of behavioral and perception research are of little value in the explanation of real-world human geographical activity. The idea behind behavioral and perception geography that people behave in the real world on the basis of subjective images, not objective knowledge, is not new. A strong quantitative and theoretical dimension and interdisciplinary orientation distinguishes recent research from earlier work. The main thrust of modern research has been on the composition of images and their relationships to socioeconomic and other attributes of subjects. Behavioral and perception geographers have assumed that environmental images can be measured accurately and that there are strong relationships between environmental images and actual behavior. These assumptions are questionable and so is the status of research based upon them. A new emphasis on actual behavior is needed in behavioral and perception research as a first step towards the investigation of the behavioral consequences of images in real-world geographical contexts. © 1979, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.