Abstract
This study aims to review the research trends concerning environmental psychology. The scope of review is limited to the papers that dealt with theoretical and case-directed investigation research about the relationship between socio-physical environments and human beings. The relationship has been investigated by diverse human reactions such as cognitive, emotional, analytical, behavioral, and comprehensive. 219 papers were reviewed in two steps. In the first step, the ratio of the papers in the field of environmental psychology to the total papers published in the Journal from 1973 to 2004 was analyzed. Second, all the 219 papers were classified by such three criteria as the type of the paper(theoretical, review, case investigation), the methodology taken, and the main theme of the paper. The main findings from the review are summarized as follows; 1. Out of the 219 papers, the number of the theoretical papers was 4 (1.8%), whereas the number of the case investigation papers was 185 (84.5%). 2. Out of the 30 review papers, the main methodology used was simple introduction (15 papers, 50%) and the main theme was research methodology (36%), whereas analytic comparison was used only in 10 papers (33%) and theory review was only found in 6 papers (20%). 3. Out of the 185 case investigation papers, experimental method was found in 34 papers (18%), whereas 99 papers used correlational method (54%). Based on the findings, it was suggested that both theoretical and case-directed research should be performed in order to enhance the state of art in environmental psychology. Theoretical research as a framework to understand the empirical findings are as important as the case-investigation research peformed by scientific experimental method.
