Behavioral Geography Primarily wanted to change 2 aspects of QR
- Laws should be made not on Spatial patterns but the patterns of Human cognitive decision making
- It disputed the normative economic rational man assumption
Patterns of Human cognitive decision making
Laws should be made not on Spatial patterns but seek reasons for the patterns of the phenomenon in Human cognitive decision making. Making laws on the spatial pattern was only another type of description and not the analysis of the pattern
Normative economic rational man🤔assumption
Behavioral Geography disputed the normative economic rational assumption about the man. Man is capable of thinking and evaluating nature based on his perceptions. So a man was defined as satisficer not a maximizer and man's rationality was bonded because man operated on on a perceived environment and not real objective environment.
Focus back to man.
The behavioral geography was not against quantification and positivist methods but wanted to bring the focus on geography back to the man and change the objective of quantification and generalization.
Stochastic laws - Probabilistic and not exact
One of the important insights in behavioral geography was that the generalizations can only be probabilistic and not exact. Hence the laws are called stochastic laws.
This idea is based on the idea that even though the perceptions are subjective and the decisions are based on mental images the response to the perceived reality can be consistent and therefore can be quantified at least by the probabilistic laws. While the influence during the quantitative revolution was Economics 📈, the influence in the Behavioral revolution was cognitive sciences like Psychology 🔱.
Influences that inspired behavioral geography
Julian Wolpert. 👨🌾
he studied the behavior of farmers where the decisions are not taken on the basis of rational economic objectives in his theory species the decision-making process in special context 1964
Simon 👨🤑💰 - Bounded rationality
Simon who had questioned the basic postulate of economic man as a rational profit-maximizing individual according to Simon decision-maker had bounded rationality.
Gilbert White. ⛈️🌊
Wolpert's conclusion was are also influenced by Gilbert white's thesis on human responses to floods. According to Gilbert people don't make rational decisions while evaluating hazards. They respond according to their subjective perceptions of hazard.
Gould and Downs - mental maps 🧠🗺️
one of the innovations in behavioral geography is the concept of mental maps. Mental maps are objective depictions of the subjective perceived world plotted on a paper. Based on such maps and depictions generalizations of the behavioral response of individuals can be made. The concept was given by Gould and improvise by downs.
- Mental maps have been used extensively in studying the response to natural hazards special behavior in urban areas such as shopping behavior and the role of neighborhood preferences in intra-urban migration.
- The techniques and methods in the regional Chorological approach were descriptive. The technique and methods in the QR phase where's positivist based on new technique systems analysis locational analysis and statistical methods
- the technique and methods in behavioral geography was also positivist. The used tools were mental maps
- The method in humanistic geography was anti-positivist that used tools like Verstehen and hermeneutics which are subjective descriptive and vague in their application.