Maria Johansson

Lund University | LU · Environmental Psychology Research Group, Department of Architecture and Built Environment

Stakeholder involvement in wildlife management is important and requires knowledge about factors motivating such participation. With several goose populations increasing in Europe and goose management incorporating multiple objectives, involvement of stakeholder groups with diverse interests is needed. In this study, we examined how evaluations of...

https://www.naturvardsverket.se/om-oss/publikationer/8800/978-91-620-8893-4/?fbclid=IwAR3WhtnrYrUBN24zGGGBM9e3UvBN56a5rpl15l7CElWe4MlESnMtD6fra0E

Collaborative governance regimes may be vulnerable because of dependency on stakeholders’ voluntary engagement and efforts. This study focuses on the Swedish moose management system, a multi-level collaborative governance regime inspired by the ecosystem approach. Self-determination theory is used to explore perceived prerequisites of basic needs f...

This paper explores social interaction in local public squares under different lighting conditions. At its best public squares are social spaces that engender a sense of belonging, increase the quality of life and wellbeing of individuals. It is proposed that outdoor lighting would be essential to the use of the public realm after dark, but empiric...

This paper explores social interaction in local public squares under different lighting conditions. At its best public squares are social spaces that engender a sense of belonging, increase the quality of life and wellbeing of individuals. It is proposed that outdoor lighting would be essential to the use of the public realm after dark, but empiric...

Adaptive management (AM) is one approach to manage migratory waterbirds, but obstacles to the implementation of AM require adaptive capacities in the management system (rules, institutions, action situations). This study aims to examine the adaptive capacity of participatory goose management in Sweden. Considering the biophysical and institutional...

Adaptive management (AM) is widely promoted to improve management of natural resources, yet its implementation is challenging. We show that obstacles to the implementation of AM are related not only to the AM process per se but also to external factors such as ecosystem properties and governance systems. To overcome obstacles, there is a need to bu...

The growth of Sweden’s urban population necessitates new approaches for increasing the sustainability and energy efficiency of multifamily buildings. The development of such approaches will require a holistic and integrated understanding of the factors driving the decision making of both professionals who design buildings and end-users who live in...

The socio-physical qualities of built environments are, in several ways, of imperative importance for children growing up. The Child-Friendly Cities initiative by UNICEF, an implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, has made local governments strive toward child-friendliness. The participation of children and young people is o...

Farmers who keep livestock in large carnivore areas are exposed to threat of predation directly impacting on finances and workload as well as the associated psychological stress indirectly impacting on farmers well-being. So far, little is known about such stress responses. The concept of “stress” or “stress reaction” is often used as an undifferen...

Agricultural damage by geese is a growing problem in Europe and farmers play a key role in the emerging multilevel adaptive management system. This study explored how characteristics associated with the farmer and the farm, along with experience of damage, cognitive appraisals, emotions, and management beliefs were associated with the perceived ada...

Large carnivores are controversial species, and associated conflicts between stakeholders with opposing views on large carnivores are observed across the globe. Social trust, the public’s willingness to rely on those responsible for developing policies, has gained much attention regarding the acceptance of large carnivores and large carnivore manag...

Human–wildlife interactions occur when humans and wildlife overlap in the same landscapes. Due to the growing human population, the number of interactions will continue to increase, and in some cases, develop further into social conflicts. Conflicts may occur between people disagreeing about wildlife conservation or arguing over which wildlife mana...

Children´s opportunities to contact with animals in everyday life are sparsely highlighted in research. This interdisciplinary research-based synthesis has the aim to document and analyse the literature about children's encounters with animals as a ground work for research and practice. The background to the study is an ongoing urbanization and den...

This study assessed whether methods for capturing the pedestrian experience of outdoor lighting, previously evaluated in a full-scale laboratory, were applicable in a real-world setting. It applied an approach capturing the human response to outdoor lighting in a systematic way, by assessing perception, evaluation and behaviour in the lit environme...

Many call for a broad approach to valuation of nature’s contribution to people, one that provides a contextualized understanding of what may be experienced as a value in different cultures, groups and settings. In the present paper we address contributions of nature to psychological well-being as realized through restorative processes during encoun...

There is an urgent need for radical transformations of unsustainable socio-technical systems, such as food, mobility, and housing. These transformations will not take place without new policies and research. In order to achieve these transitions, learning must be a central feature based on thorough evaluations of the actions taken. Evaluations have...

Walking as a means of transportation is a key feature in sustainable urban design, but few studies have examined the influence of micro-level environmental features, such as vegetation and street lighting, on perceived safety and people’s choice to walk. This study applied a non-explicit approach to examine the relationship between greenery, street...

Behavioural change is expected to play a significant role in the transformation to a more energy efficient built environment. Despite this, current evaluation practice of interventions often overlook behavioural aspects in their ambition of advancing our knowledge on transformative change. Moreover, little attention is paid to how different researc...

Collaborative governance approaches have been suggested as strategies to handle wicked environmental problems. Evaluations have found promising examples of effective natural resource governance, but also highlighted the importance of social-ecological context and institutional design. The aim of this study was to identify factors that contribute to...

A transition to a more sustainable energy system is called for, and to realise such a transition governments around the world have introduced various research programmes and policy instruments. In this paper, we elaborate on how the transition of the energy system could be reinforced through evaluation of research programmes and policy instruments,...

The acknowledgement of uncertainty and complexity in social-ecological systems has increased the implementation of collaborative governance regimes for environmental issues. The performance of these new regimes to deliver favourable social and ecological outcomes must therefore be evaluated. We focus on the case of Swedish wildlife governance, whic...

The gray seal (Halichoerus grypus) population in the Baltic Sea is flourishing. On the one hand, this can be interpreted as successful conservation management but, on the other, the gray seal has also become a persistent problem for small-scale coastal fisheries. Departing from the appraisal theory of emotion, this case study investigated local peo...

When daylight hours are limited, pedestrians are dependent on appropriate outdoor lighting. Although new city lighting applications must consider both energy usage and pedestrian responses, current methods used to capture pedestrian walking behaviour during dark conditions in real settings are limited. This study reports on the development and eval...

Marine mammals and coastal fisheries are two features commonly associated with thriving marine environments, but it is also a case of wildlife impact on human interests. This paper analyses the seal-fisheries encounter in a Swedish Baltic Sea fishery. The problem concerns seals eating fish from the fishing gear which causes considerable economic lo...

Background: Recent global changes have led to an increase in distribution of ticks towards higher elevation and latitude in Europe and livestock are at increasing risk of contracting tick-borne diseases, but psychological aspects of how this affects human well-being are rarely assessed. Departing from the theory on emotional appraisal coming from...

Wild geese are increasing in agricultural and urban settings across Europe, leading to widespread human – geese interactions. This study examined how the public’s acceptance of geese (attitude and acceptance capacity) varied depending on place dimensions, interactions with geese in different settings (place-based experience), and psychological fact...

Promoting resource- and energy-efficient home lighting through technology and behaviour change requires an understanding of how residents currently use lighting and what they want from it. However, users' needs and desires relating to lighting in homes are poorly understood, as research is still limited. This paper aims to provide a fuller picture...

Large carnivores elicit strong emotional reactions, which could influence consensus or social conflicts between persons promoting wildlife conservation and people who suffer from its negative consequences. Interventions to prevent carnivore attacks on domestic animals are intended to promote coexistence between people and carnivores, but could fail...

Large carnivores are prioritized in conservation, but their co-occurrence with humans and domestic animals can generate conflict. Interventions preventing carnivore attacks are central to carnivore conservation, but are only effective if implemented. This study investigates drivers of the intention to use interventions among animal owners in Sweden...

This paper is an attempt to advance research on walking at a neighborhood level of analysis for people with disabilities by proposing a theoretical model that combines the knowledge of two disciplines: traffic planning and environmental psychology. The aim is to provide guidance for a discussion and a plan for future interdisciplinary investigation...

Walking is an important transport mode for sustainable cities, but the usability of pedestrian environments for people with impaired vision is very limited after dark. This study compares the usability of a walkway, operationalized in terms of (i) the pedestrian’s ability to orient themselves and detect infrastructure elements, and (ii) the perceiv...

Addressing the biodiversity crisis requires renewed collaborative approaches. Large carnivores are ambassador species, and as such they can aid the protection of a wide range of species, including evolutionarily distinct and threatened ones, while being popular for conservation marketing. However, conflicts between carnivores and people present a c...

In 2012 Sweden implemented a collaborative governance regime for managing moose (Alces alces). This was guided by the awareness that decentralization and stakeholder participation can help to reduce conflicts, foster systematic learning, and handle complexity. However, previous research has highlighted that there are no blueprint approaches to the...

The collaborative ecosystem-based management of moose (Alces alces) in Sweden puts a strain on the involved stakeholders. Representatives have to cope with environmental uncertainty and social stress associated with goal conflicts. This article advanced the understanding of representatives’ coping strategies in response to perceived challenges and...

Communication interventions are commonly proposed as a way to address people's fear and negative attitudes to build tolerance in shared landscapes between humans and large carnivores. Therefore, managing authorities sometimes respond to people's fear of brown bears (Ursus arctos) by organizing an information meeting. This study increases the unders...

Conflicts over wildlife and their potential impacts on human practices and livelihoods are widespread. Large carnivore predation on livestock often becomes a contested topic which has led to global declines in carnivore numbers over centuries. To minimise impacts of carnivores on human livelihoods and allow conservation, various interventions are u...

Large carnivores are ambassador species, and as such they can aid the protection of a widerange of species, including evolutionarily distinct and threatened ones, while being popular for conservation marketing. However, conflicts between carnivores and people present a considerable challenge to biodiversity conservation. Our cross disciplinary essa...

Fear of large carnivores such as brown bears may restrict people’s outdoor activities regardless of experts’ estimated risk of attack. This research study empirically examined three exposure interventions in the form of guided walks intended to give people living in brown bear areas tools for coping with their fear. All interventions significantly...

Though the existence of cultural ecosystem services is dependent on people's activities and experiences, these services are still commonly assessed using top–down approaches. In this study, appraisal theory and research into human responses to natural environments formed the basis of a systematic multilevel investigation of appraisals of created we...

Wetlands in urban areas will be crucial to counteract the effects of climate change, for example, by improving flood protection and regulating local climate. To gain acceptance for larger-scale creation of wetlands, total values must be identified and revealed. Provisioning and regulating ecosystem services can be described as the quantitative effe...

Indoor lighting is known to affect people’s wellbeing, mood and behaviour. The rapid development of new energy-efficient lamp technologies has enabled new lighting applications in home environments. To investigate the prospects of introducing a personalised light emitting diode (LED)-based home lighting technology, a mixed-methods research study wa...

Experience from encounters with wolves. Fear of wolves.

This study identifies and applies methods for evaluating the human response to pedestrian lighting applications intended for future use by the municipality of Malmö, Sweden. The methods employed provide a supplementary perspective to that given by the photometric properties of the lighting applications. The study involved 89 participants from two a...

The speed-reducing effect of speed humps during darkness is important to ensure a consistent speed reduction and a decreased probability of accidents during darkness. This study examined the effects of speed humps, compared with a control location, on a residential road in Sweden with light-emitting diode (LED) street lighting and a 30 km/h posted...

I den här rapporten presenteras resultat från en undersökning om de sociala förutsättningarna för flerartsförvaltning som skickades till samtliga älgförvaltningsgrupper i Sverige 2016. Undersökningen utgör en del av forskningsprojektet ”GOVERNANCE - HUMAN RESPONSES TO MULTI-SPECIES MANAGEMENT” som studerar förutsättningarna för flerartsförvaltning...

One of the aims of outdoor lighting in public spaces, such as pathways and subsidiary roads, is to help pedestrians to evaluate the intentions of other people. This paper discusses how a pedestrians' appraisal of another persons' intentions in artificially lit outdoor environments can be studied. We review the visual cues that might be used, and th...

Passively viewing nature may promote psychological restoration relevant for office work. The objective of this paper is to explore how natural elements in the indoor work environment are experienced. An on-site assessment with between-subjects design (n = 56) and a photo-based assessment with a crossover design (n = 46) compared three interiors of...

People’s daily life has a significant effect on the outcome of any policy implemented or technology introduced with the aim to increase energy efficiency in buildings. Human behaviour should constitute a key factor in evaluations of such initiatives. This paper focuses upon how research in environmental psychology can contribute to strengthened eva...

Accurate assessment of people’s preferences for different outdoor lighting applications is increasingly considered important in the development of new urban environments. Here a new method of random environmental walking is proposed to complement current methods of assessing urban lighting applications, such as self-report questionnaires. The proce...

Finding effective ways of conserving large carnivores is widely recognised as a priority in Conservation. However, there is disagreement about the most effective way to do this, with some favouring top-down “command and control” approaches and others, collaborative approaches. Arguments for coercive top-down approaches have been presented elsewhere...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to differentiate human responses to different light switch designs to determine the effects of these common interfaces on user perceptions and use of electric lighting in public buildings. Design/methodology/approach Empirical studies were conducted to assess and examine user perceptions with regard to design...

Ecosystems contribute to human well-being and health through a variety of services. By integrating the values of ecosystem services in decision-making in municipalities and regional administration, a better basis for overall assessments is provided. There is a demand for complementary concepts and methods for describing and valuing ecosystem servic...

This study analyses psychological antecedents of feelings of fear of wolves in a proportional sample of the Swedish population (national sample, n = 545) and in a sample of people in counties with wolf presence (regional sample, n = 1,892). Structural equation modelling of survey data suggests a dual pathway to self-reported fear. One path encompas...

LED technology provides new opportunities to change the illuminance on pedestrian pathways in response to the presence of people. This study explores possible effects of dimming as such on walking, legibility and perception. In an indoor full-scale laboratory, 61 participants walked along a 19-m pathway with a motion-detection sensor 10 m before an...

Managing authorities in Scandinavia arrange public information meetings when members of the public express fear because wolves or brown bears approach human settlements. This study aimed to increase the understanding of the potential effect of information meetings on self-reported fear of wolves and brown bears. In total, 198 participants completed...

This paper reviews the peer-reviewed scientific literature on interventions aimed to reduce human fear of large carnivores in human-large carnivore conflicts. Based on psychological theories, a wide definition of fear was adopted, including fear as an emotion, as a perception and as an attitude. Four major categories of interventions were identifie...

This paper adds to the relatively few European studies on the pedestrian friendliness of urban areas, and on transport walking. Using the Human Environment Interaction (HEI) model (Küller, 1991), the study explores the associations between perceived neighbourhood spatialphysical and social environment qualities and walking to neighbourhood destinat...

People who live in brown bear areas often fear encounters with these animals. This article evaluated the potential effect of exposure to bears and their habitats on human fear of brown bears using the modeling of appropriate behavior when close to bears. In a within-subject design, 25 persons who reported to be fearful of brown bears participated i...

The increase of wolves in Scandinavia is associated with socio-ecological conflicts, and the conservation and management of this species is as much a political and socio-cultural challenge as a biological matter. One component in this conflict is people's feeling of fear, but there have been very few evaluations of management interventions aimed at...

This study investigates associations between perceived micro-level urban design qualities, the affective experience of walking, and intention to walk specific routes in the neighbourhood. A total of 106 residents assessed on-site three routes planned for walking in semi-central neighbourhoods. In the prediction of the residents’ intention to choose...

An observational approach was employed to investigate the role played by architectural characteristics of supported housing facilities (SHF) in sustaining interactional behavior among people with severe mental illness (SMI) (N = 29) and staff (N = 27). The observations were carried out in dining areas, corridors and outdoor environments of SHF (N =...

European researchers from both the natural and social sciences show growing interest in studying interactions between society and wildlife. A wealth of theoretical frameworks, concepts, and methods are used, but an integration of perspectives is lacking. This research note summarizes results from two workshops that included 63 delegates from 25 Eur...

Lighting in hospitals consumes non-negligible quantities of energy, and it would be very desirable to reduce this consumption. In shared hospital environments such as staff rooms or dayrooms, behavioural changes can reduce energy usage and support occupant satisfaction without requiring advanced technological solutions. The objective of this paper...

Street lighting is an essential feature of pedestrian paths that may increase the amount of walking. This study aimed to identify associations between perceived lighting qualities, and experience of the lit environment and performance of critical tasks. In a full-scale laboratory 89 participants walked along a pedestrian path with three different o...

Previous research on human fear of large carnivores has mainly been based on self-reports in which individual survey items and the objects of fear are measured, so whether a person fears attacks on humans or livestock and pets has not been identified. The objectives of this study were to differentiate between the objects of fear as well as capturin...

Overseeing the continued recovery, dispersal and management of large carnivore populations while simultaneously considering human viability and welfare requires delicately balancing local concerns for rural communities’ livelihood prospects and property vulnerability with international concerns for saving threatened species. In this article, we pro...

This study investigated the extent to which perceived physical and social-environment qualities of supported housing facilities (SHF) account for variations in the perceived quality of life of people with severe mental illness (SMI). Based on a user-centered approach, people with SMI (N = 72) appraised the environment of their SHF (N = 20). Moreove...