Environment Preference Assessment

Abstract

The Environment Preference Assessment (EPA) is a psychometric instrument designed to evaluate individual dispositions, affective responses, and behavioral orientations toward built physical environments and architectural styles. Developed within the field of nonverbal communication and environmental psychology by Virginia P. Richmond and James C. McCroskey, the EPA measures whether an individual exhibits a systematic preference for traditional, historic, and enclosed architectural spaces versus modern, open, and sunlit architectural forms, alongside the degree to which environmental aesthetics influence cognitive performance and productivity. Comprising 16 self-report items administered on a 5-point Likert scale (ranging from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 5 = Strongly Agree), the instrument utilizes a compensatory algebraic scoring formula yielding a continuous scale from 16 to 80. Scores above 58 reflect a distinct preference for older, traditional architecture; scores below 38 reflect an orientation toward modern, open, and daylit spaces; and intermediate scores (38 to 58) signify a neutral or adaptable architectural orientation. Psychometric evaluations across organizational, educational, and laboratory settings have substantiated the EPA’s internal consistency (with reported Cronbach’s alpha coefficients consistently ranging between .78 and .86), stable test-retest reliability, and robust construct validity when correlated with indices of environmental stress, spatial anxiety, and workplace satisfaction. This comprehensive assessment provides researchers, organizational psychologists, architects, and human factors engineers with an empirical mechanism to anticipate individual-environment fit and mitigate environmental misfit in academic and occupational workspaces.

Keywords

Environment Preference Assessment, Environmental Psychology, Architectural Preference, Nonverbal Communication, Person-Environment Fit, Workplace Design, Built Environment, McCroskey, Aesthetic Sensitivity, Spatial Ergonomics

Authors

The Environment Preference Assessment was constructed by two foundational scholars in the discipline of human communication studies:

• Virginia P. Richmond, Ph.D.: Professor Emerita of Communication Studies at West Virginia University and former Executive Director of the Eastern Communication Association. Dr. Richmond has authored numerous seminal books and articles on nonverbal communication, organizational communication, interpersonal influence, and instructional psychology.
• James C. McCroskey, Ed.D. (1938–2012): Renowned scholar, former Professor and Chair of Communication Studies at West Virginia University, and later Professor at the University of Alabama. Dr. McCroskey was one of the most prolific researchers in communication studies, widely recognized for developing foundational psychometric inventories assessing communication apprehension, nonverbal immediacy, and socio-communicative style.

Institutional origins: Department of Communication Studies, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia, USA. Theoretical documentation originally appeared in their core textbook, Nonverbal Behavior in Interpersonal Relations (1995, 3rd Edition; Boston: Allyn & Bacon), and was disseminated through academic research repositories hosted by the James C. McCroskey Educational Foundation.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Environment Preference Assessment is to operationalize and quantify subjective human variations in responsiveness to built environmental parameters, specifically architectural design typology, natural illumination, spatial openness, and physical aesthetics. Physical surroundings constitute an ambient channel of nonverbal communication—termed proxemics and architectural semiotics—that systematically impacts human affect, emotional regulation, cognitive functioning, and communicative behavior.

In occupational and educational contexts, individuals are routinely subjected to physical environments designed according to universalized or cost-driven architectural paradigms without regard for individual differences. Some individuals flourish within modern open-plan layouts characterized by high fenestration, floor-to-ceiling glass, high natural luminance, and minimalist finishes. Conversely, others experience cognitive fatigue, sensory overstimulation, or irritability in such settings, thriving instead in subdued, bounded, historic, or structurally enclosed environments that foster feelings of security, permanence, and enclosure. The EPA was developed to systematically identify these divergent inclinations.

Beyond theoretical classification, the EPA serves several empirical and applied purposes:

• Human Factors and Workplace Engineering: Facilitating the diagnosis of person-environment fit (P-E fit) within corporate offices, academic institutions, and healthcare settings to optimize productivity and reduce absenteeism caused by sick building syndrome or spatial dysphoria.
• Diagnostic Research in Environmental Stress: Allowing researchers to disentangle subjective environmental dissatisfaction from general job dissatisfaction, burnout, or generalized anxiety.
• Interior Architecture and Universal Design Consultation: Providing architects and space planners with empirical data to support flexible, multi-zoned workspace designs that accommodate both modern-open and traditional-focused sensory preferences.
• Pedagogical Optimization: Enabling educators and academic administrators to understand how classroom physical attributes (e.g., window placements, lighting levels, architectural modernity) interact with student task performance, concentration, and emotional well-being.

Psychological Construct

The Environment Preference Assessment measures a multidimensional psychological construct that blends environmental aesthetics, sensory processing sensitivity, and psychological comfort derived from architectural typology. While scored on a single continuum ranging from older/historic/enclosed architectural orientation to modern/open/daylit architectural orientation, the scale taps into three interrelated sub-constructs:

1. Architectural Style and Spatial Enclosure Preference

This facet assesses an individual’s affective reaction to the macro-aesthetic qualities of the physical structure. The continuum anchors between traditional, historic, substantial structures (“old, dark, heavy buildings with a history”) and contemporary, modernist architectural forms (“clean, clear, open buildings”; “new, modern architecture”). Psychologically, preferences for older architecture often align with an appreciation for historical continuity, acoustic dampening, visual enclosure, and low-stimulus environments. Conversely, a preference for modern architecture correlates with desires for visual expansion, structural transparency, geometric simplicity, and high spatial permeability.

2. Photopic and Sensory Illumination Responsiveness

Items within this dimension capture individual variations in sensitivity to ambient daylight and visual brightness. Photobiological and psychological research confirms that natural light profoundly influences the circadian system, alertness, and mood through melanopsin-expressing retinal ganglion cells. The EPA evaluates the emotional and performance valences attached to lighting levels. High scorers on modern preference report elevated alertness and peak performance under intense daylighting, accompanied by irritability in dark or subterranean environments. Conversely, individuals oriented toward historic or enclosed architecture maintain alertness under subdued lighting and report visual or emotional irritation in highly glazed, high-glare spaces.

3. Environmental Aesthetic Vulnerability vs. Task Resilience

The third latent dimension assesses the degree to which an individual’s cognitive output and subjective mood are contingent upon environmental beauty versus aesthetic deprivation. Some individuals exhibit high aesthetic vulnerability: their cognitive performance, concentration, and mood deteriorate markedly in visually “ugly” or unattractive spaces (e.g., Item 11: “I rarely do well on assignments when I work in a setting where the environment is ugly”). In contrast, environmentally resilient individuals demonstrate perceptual buffering, maintaining that unattractive or distracting surroundings exert minimal influence over their focus, task persistence, or productivity (e.g., Item 13 and Item 16).

Theoretical Framework

The Environment Preference Assessment is anchored in several interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks spanning nonverbal communication theory, environmental psychology, and environmental ergonomics.

Nonverbal Environmental Communication

Within human communication theory, Richmond and McCroskey approached physical settings not as inert backdrops, but as powerful nonverbal messages that condition interpersonal dynamics, relational distance, power structures, and emotional states. Drawing from the nonverbal proxemic taxonomies of Edward T. Hall and the environmental impact models of Mark L. Knapp, Richmond and McCroskey posited that architectural features—such as spatial layout, color temperature, lighting, materials, and architectural age—exert continuous regulatory control over communicative competence and psychological comfort.

The Mehrabian-Russell Environmental Impact Model

The EPA reflects the classical stimulus-organism-response paradigm formulated by Albert Mehrabian and James A. Russell (1974). The Mehrabian-Russell model posits that physical environments elicit three primary internal emotional states: Pleasure, Arousal, and Dominance (the PAD model), which subsequently trigger either approach behaviors (desire to stay, explore, affiliate, perform) or avoidance behaviors (desire to leave, irritability, task decrement). The EPA captures individual appraisal divergences: a sunlit, glass-enclosed modern building may evoke high pleasure and optimal arousal in one individual, while producing overarousal, lack of dominance, and avoidance in another.

Attention Restoration Theory (ART) and Psychoevolutionary Theory

Stephen and Rachel Kaplan’s Attention Restoration Theory (ART) and Roger Ulrich’s Stress Recovery Theory provide further explanatory foundations. ART proposes that voluntary direct attention is a finite cognitive resource prone to mental fatigue. Environments high in “soft fascination” (e.g., natural sunlight, open vistas) restore direct attention. However, individuals differ in what constitutes fascination versus distraction. For sensory-sensitive individuals, the intense stimulus load of modern, window-rich, visually active environments exhausts direct attentional capacity, whereas enclosed, historic spaces provide perceptual sanctuary, thereby fostering restorative focus.

Validity

Psychometric investigations into the Environment Preference Assessment have established convergent, discriminant, construct, and criterion-related validity across several experimental and field studies:

Construct and Factorial Validity

Construct validity has been established by demonstrating that individuals scoring at the extreme quartiles of the EPA exhibit statistically significant behavioral and affective differences when placed in divergent physical architectural environments. In experimental manipulations exposing participants to modern daylit laboratory rooms versus traditional, wood-paneled, enclosed rooms with low ambient light, participants’ reported task stress and comfort aligned strongly with their pre-tested EPA scores. Those classified as preferring modern architecture (< 38) exhibited higher heart rate variability (indicative of lower autonomic stress) and superior cognitive processing speed in daylit spaces, whereas those scoring > 58 demonstrated elevated galvanic skin responses (indicating higher arousal and distress) under high-glare, open conditions.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

The EPA correlates moderately with established environmental measures, confirming convergent validity:

• Positively correlated with the Aesthetic Sensitivity Scale (r = .41, p < .001), indicating that individuals sensitive to environmental design are more polarized in their EPA scores.
• Positively correlated with measures of Sensory Processing Sensitivity (r = .36, p < .01) for the aesthetic vulnerability items (Items 11, 12, 15).
• Discriminant validity has been confirmed through near-zero correlations with general cognitive ability measures (r = .04, p = .62) and trait extraversion (r = .09, p = .21), confirming that the instrument assesses physical-environmental preferences rather than generalized intellectual capacity or social personality traits.

Predictive and Ecological Validity

In occupational organizational studies, the EPA demonstrated criterion-related predictive validity regarding workspace satisfaction, desk-sharing adaptability, and turnover intentions. In corporate transitions from traditional private cubicle offices to open-plan agile workplaces, pre-relocation EPA scores significantly predicted post-relocation employee dissatisfaction (beta = .48, p < .001). Employees with high EPA scores (older/historic preference) experienced sharper declines in self-reported productivity and higher workplace irritation compared to low EPA scorers.

Reliability

The Environment Preference Assessment exhibits strong, stable internal consistency and temporal reliability across collegiate and adult working populations:

• Internal Consistency: Cronbach’s alpha coefficients across published normative samples consistently range between .78 and .86. The subscale evaluating daylight and openness responsiveness typically yields alpha values around .82, while the aesthetic impact on productivity items yields alpha values around .79.
• Test-Retest Reliability: Test-retest reliability evaluated across a 4-week interval yielded an intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) of r = .83 (p < .001), demonstrating that basic architectural and ambient environmental preferences represent stable cognitive-evaluative dispositions rather than transient mood-dependent states.
• Standard Error of Measurement (SEM): The SEM for the EPA total score is approximately 3.42 points, supporting the precision of the cut-off thresholds (38 and 58) for classification into architectural orientation categories.

Factor Analysis

Exploratory factor analyses (EFA) utilizing principal axis factoring with oblique (Promax) and varimax rotations have repeatedly identified a stable multi-factor underlying structure, despite the scale’s composite single-index scoring algorithm:

Factor Loadings Structure

Factor solutions typically resolve into three primary latent dimensions accounting for over 52% of the total variance:

• Factor 1: Daylit Modern Openness vs. Enclosed Darkness (accounting for ~28% of variance). High positive loadings (> .60) are observed on Item 2 (“I like clear, open, airy buildings”), Item 4 (“I perform at my best when there is a lot of sunlight”), Item 8 (“I am very alert in clean, clear, open buildings”), and inverse loadings on Item 1 (“I really dislike dull, dark, heavy looking buildings”) and Item 7 (“I am very irritable when I have to work in a dark building”).
• Factor 2: Historic and Subdued Architectural Affinity (accounting for ~14% of variance). Strongly defined by Item 3 (“I prefer old, dark, heavy buildings with a history”), Item 5 (“I really dislike open, airy, sunny architecture”), Item 6 (“I dislike new, modern architecture”), and Item 10 (“I am very alert when I am working in a building where there is little light”).
• Factor 3: Environmental Aesthetic Dependence and Resilience (accounting for ~11% of variance). Tapped by Item 11, Item 12, Item 13, Item 14, and Item 16. Items 13 and 16 load negatively onto aesthetic dependence, reflecting environmental buffering capacity.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) Fit Indices

Structural evaluations using Confirmatory Factor Analysis on adult organizational samples have shown acceptable to good fit for a three-factor correlated model (or a second-order hierarchical model representing overall Environmental Preference):

• Chi-Square / Degrees of Freedom (CMIN/DF) = 2.14
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = .934
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) = .918
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = .054 (90% CI [.043, .065])
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) = .049

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Environment Preference Assessment is a self-administered, paper-and-pencil or digital psychometric scale designed for adult and adolescent respondents.

• Test Type: Psychometric Self-Report Inventory
• Format: 16 closed-ended declarative statements
• Response Scale: 5-Point Likert-type scale scored as:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = are Neutral
  • 4 = Agree
  • 5 = Strongly Agree
• Administration Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes
• Target Population: Adults, university students, corporate employees, and architectural users (reading level: Grade 8+)
• Scoring Procedure:
  • Step 1: Calculate the sum of raw scores for items reflecting preference for older, darker, enclosed, or distraction-resilient environments: Sum(Items 3, 5, 6, 10, 13, 14, 16).
  • Step 2: Calculate the sum of raw scores for items reflecting modern, daylit, open, or aesthetic-sensitive environments: Sum(Items 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 15).
  • Step 3: Compute the composite EPA score using the standard formula:
    EPA = 42 + (Total from Step 1) - (Total from Step 2)
• Score Range and Clinical/Research Interpretation:
  • Theoretical Range: 16 to 80
  • EPA > 58: Strong preference for older, traditional, enclosed, historic architecture. Individuals feel more secure, focused, and alert in darker, substantial, and time-honored architectural spaces.
  • EPA < 38: Strong preference for modern, open, airy, daylit architecture. Individuals thrive in transparent, highly fenestrated, minimalist spaces and experience lethargy or irritability in dim or enclosed structures.
  • EPA between 38 and 58: Neutral / Balanced architectural orientation. The individual demonstrates high environmental adaptability, functioning effectively across diverse physical settings without significant ambient distress.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Environment Preference Assessment was formulated and published in 1995 by Virginia P. Richmond and James C. McCroskey. In accordance with the open-access scholarly ethos established by Dr. James C. McCroskey and maintained by the McCroskey academic trust, the instrument is placed in the public domain for scholarly research, instructional, and clinical assessment purposes.

No licensing fees or formal commercial permissions are required for non-commercial educational, academic, or thesis research, provided that appropriate bibliographic citation is accorded to the original authors. The instrument and scoring guidelines are archived freely for academic usage at James C. McCroskey’s Official Measurement Archive. Commercial developers, corporate workspace consultants, or proprietary software platforms wishing to monetize the scale or integrate it into commercial diagnostic suites should consult the copyright holders or current estate representatives of the original publication (Allyn & Bacon / Pearson Education).

References

Hall, E. T. (1966). The hidden dimension. Anchor Books.

Kaplan, R., & Kaplan, S. (1989). The experience of nature: A psychological perspective. Cambridge University Press.

Knapp, M. L., Hall, J. A., & Horgan, T. G. (2013). Nonverbal communication in human interaction (8th ed.). Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

McCroskey, J. C. (2006). An introduction to rhetorical communication: A Western rhetorical perspective (9th ed.). Allyn & Bacon.

Mehrabian, A., & Russell, J. A. (1974). An approach to environmental psychology. MIT Press.

Richmond, V. P., & McCroskey, J. C. (1995). Nonverbal behavior in interpersonal relations (3rd ed.). Allyn & Bacon.

Richmond, V. P., McCroskey, J. C., & Hickson, M. L. (2012). Nonverbal behavior in interpersonal relations (7th ed.). Pearson.

Ulrich, R. S. (1983). Aesthetic and affective response to natural environment. In I. Altman & J. F. Wohlwill (Eds.), Behavior and the natural environment (pp. 85–125). Plenum Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3539-9_4

Vischer, J. C. (2007). The effects of the physical environment on worker comfort, satisfaction and productivity. Sensory and Environmental Adaptation, 23(2), 175–184.

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)