A review of research and theory on transactions between people and physical environments emphasizes new contributions to theory and empirical research published in major journals of environmental psychology, 1989-1994. Theories focused on arousal, load, stress, privacy-regulation, behavior settings, and transactional analysis; new theory increasingly incorporated situational and contextual variables. Empirical research emphasized field settings over the laboratory and employed increasingly diverse methods, populations, and cultures. Environmental design studies integrated scientific and applied goals through post-occupancy evaluation. New findings concerned features of residences, work places, hospitals, schools, prisons, and larger community environments. New studies also addressed environmental stressors (e.g., temperature, noise); effects of attitudes and behaviors on conservation, crime, pollution, and hazards; and issues for neighborhoods, public places, and natural environments. Directions for the future include integrated theory to guide research, more design experiments, and development of conventions for case studies.

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We estimate adults' willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce health risks to their own or other families' infants to test for altruism. A conjoint analysis of adults paying for bottled water found marginal WTP for reduction in risk of shock, brain damage, and mortality in the cash treatment of $2, $3.70, and $9.43, respectively. In the hypothetical market these amounts were $14, $26, and $66, indicating substantial hypothetical bias, although not unexpected due to the topic of infant health. Statistical tests confirm a high degree of altruism in our WTP results, and altruism held even when real money was involved.

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Trait coping, state anger, perceived arousal, blood pressure, negative affect, and escape behavior were measured in a sample of 240 undergraduate males and females exposed to 1 of 4 foul-odor conditions or to a no-odor condition. Consistent with Baron and Bell's (1976) negative-affect-escape model, it was hypothesized that people exposed to noxious odors would experience increased negative affect and heightened motivation to escape the situation. Results showed that negative affect and motivation to escape, but not anger or arousal, increased significantly as odor became more noxious. In addition, anger and motivation to escape significantly predicted negative affect. Variances in anger and perceived arousal, but not discomfort and escape, were accounted for mainly by trait coping styles and gender differences. Variances in discomfort and escape were accounted for mainly by odor alone.