Constitution of the Core Concepts in Behavioral Geography--A Content Analysis of Textbooks

Abstract

Behavioral researches in geography that emerged in the mid 1960s are termed behavioral geography, although its domain and definition have been ambiguous (Wakabayashi, 1985). The recent publication of several textbooks on this subject, however, indicates that behavioral geography has received wide recognition from geographers. The aim of this paper is to clarify the domain and the internal structure of this field by analyzing the content of the three textbooks of Gold (1980), Walmsley and Lewis (1984) and Golledge and Stimson (1987). A content analysis was made in terms of the following two units: the books and their chapters. The former unit was used to identify the core concepts in behavioral geography, while the latter enables us to examine the constitution of these textbooks. Each textbook was analyzed in terms of its senders (or authors), messages (or content), and receivers (or readers) by focusing upon the differences between the books. The analysis of each chapter, by contrast, was mainly focused upon the similarity between the books. With regard to the background of the sender, it seemed that the publication of each book reflected the situation of behavioral geography in its author's country. In order to discriminate the similarity and difference between the books, I classified both the concepts listed in the index and the literature cited on the basis of their frequency of occurrence. The numbers of concepts and references which appeared commonly in all the books amounted to 29 and 52, respectively. It turns out that most of them were derived from behavioral sciences, indicating the interdisciplinary nature of behavioral geography. The content of the book, however, differed in the emphasis on methodology, the treatment of time geography and humanistic research, and the choice of case studies. About one third of the literature cited were published in the mid 1970s, suggesting that behavioral geography flourished in this period. In addition, a lot of them were published in specialized journals newly started since the late 1960s. Publication of these journals is indicative of the "institutionalization" of behavioral geography. The receivers' response to these books was examined by analyzing the contents of the bookreviews. The comments in them revealed that the views on behavioral geography differed with the researchers' specialty rather than their countries. By recording the chapters that contain the concepts and references appeared commonly in all these books, an incidence matrix of 81 concepts/references by 43 chapters was obtained. Factor analysis was applied to this matrix, using the standardized crossproduct method. The analysis produced eight factors corresponding to research topics in behavioral geography, accounting for 58.8% of the total variance. These factors showed that behavioral geography was made up of the conceptual basis (e. g., environmental perception and decision-making models) and the case studies (e. g., residential movement, shopping behavior, urban problems and planning, mental maps, hazard perception). In addition, the humanistic research constituted one of these factors, although treatment of it varied between the books. This may be due to the difference in researchers' views on behavioral geography. The result of the analysis can be applied to further investigations into the social network of behavioral geographers as well as thesaurus making or curriculum development.