Qi Jun, Dong Yuping, Tim Townshend

Keywords： Affordance; Ecological Psychology; Environment and Behaviour; Human-Environment Interaction; Planning and Design

Abstract：

Affordance theory is an ecological psychology approach to implement the evidence-based planning and design in environmental discipline. After a comprehensive demonstration for the notion of affordance, this paper reviewes the applications and development of affordance theory in western environment planning and design studies since 1980s. Result reveales the contemporary environmental affordance research mainly followed the environmental users paradigm and the environmental features paradigm. On the aspect of research perspective, current studies respectively adopted four term: behaviour, experience, personality, and (environmental) attribute, as agential concepts for the measurement of environmental affordance. Referring to the theoretical framework of affordance theory, previous studies have underestimated the sociocultural affordance, negative affordance and potential affordance as three different dimensions. The analysis made in this paper provides an academic reference and suggestion to the implement of affordance theory in Chinese environmental constructions.

Funds：

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