Environment and Social Psychology

Focus and Scope

Environmental psychologists study not only how the environment affects our behavior, thinking,  and well-being but also how our behavior (e.g., energy conservation, vandalism, activism, automobile use, recycling, water use) affects the environment that include： 1) The natural environment: is the sum of various natural elements needed for human survival, is the material premise of human survival and development. Mainly including the composition of organic matter and inorganic composition of factors, human psychological phenomena affected by the natural environment, human psychological activities and natural activities have a great relationship. 2) The social environment: is based on the natural environment, human beings through a series of conscious activities formed by the environmental system, including the economic environment, political environment, educational environment, ethical environment, cultural environment and so on. 3) The physical environment: is independent of the existence of people in the environment, in addition to the natural environment factors also include man-made physical environment factors, such as interpersonal space, buildings and so on. 4) The psychological environment: refers to people and people, people and things interacting with the formation of the environment, that is, be perceived, be understood as, be grasped as, be created by the environment. It mainly includes human behavioural thoughts, ethics, legal basis, customs and habits.

• Human behaviour in the social and natural environments

Investigates how environmental factors influence behaviors like consumption, conservation, and social interactions.

• Social-structures

Analyzes social structures, group dynamics, and cultural influences on individual and group behavior.

Considers the effects of societal changes on psychological well-being.

Objectives of Research in Environmental and Social

• Psychology and behavioural insights

To uncover the behaviors that contribute to environmental degradation and social issues.

To promote sustainable behavior and environmental stewardship through understanding motives and barriers.

• Social impact

To study how group dynamics, norms, and social influences impact individual choices and behaviors.

To explore the role of social identity in shaping perceptions and attitudes towards the environment.

• Perceptions and attitudinal changes

To examine how perceptions of environmental issues and attitudes toward social issues can be altered.

To develop effective communication strategies that foster positive behavioral changes.

• Improving quality of life

To identify factors that enhance psychological well-being in environments such as urban settings, workspaces, and nature.

• Create and evaluate interventions

To create and evaluate interventions that encourage pro-social and pro-environmental behaviors.

To assess the effectiveness of policies aimed at enhancing community engagement and sustainability.

Themes of Research in Environmental and Social Psychology

• Beliefs about environmental issues

Research on how beliefs about environmental issues (e.g., climate change) influence individual and collective actions.

• Urban planning and design

Exploration of how urban planning and design affect social interactions, community cohesion, and individual well-being.

• Sustainability and conservation

Examination of psychological factors that drive or hinder sustainable practices and conservation efforts.

• Social justice

Investigation into how environmental issues intersect with social justice, including examining the disproportionate impacts of environmental degradation on marginalized communities.

• Crisis and decision making

Understanding human reactions to crises (e.g., natural disasters) and how social support networks influence coping mechanisms and decision-making processes.

• Engagement in environmental and social initiatives

Analyses of factors that promote community involvement and civic engagement in environmental and social initiatives.

• Cultural differences

Investigation into how culture shapes attitudes and behaviors towards both the environment and social relationships.

• Technology use and influences

Exploration of how technology influences social behavior and environmental interactions, including social media's role in shaping public opinion and mobilization for social causes.

• Health and well-being

Research into the links between environmental quality (e.g., green spaces) and individual health outcomes, including mental health.

• Environmental education programs

Studies on the effectiveness of environmental education programs on shaping attitudes and behaviors towards nature and community involvement.

Including and not limited to the above, additional violence in jails; weather and altruism; the design of the built environment in relation to crime, privacy, crowding, and territoriality; the effects of noise and lighting on interpersonal relations; spatial arrangements in offices and schools; and social aspects of managing natural resources and our role in climate change all belong to the research scope. 

Section Policies

Editorials

Editorials reflect the opinion of an Editorial Board member or staff for particular Journal highlighting recent changes, concerned issues or announcements in relevance to the journal. This may include editorial management and policies.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Book reviews

Book reviews can be a review of a single book or an essay on multiple books on the same subject or multiple books from the same author.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Research Articles

Research articles should contain completely new principal research testifying major contributions to the field. The study should represent new findings or discoveries in a subject area that were not published before.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Review Articles

Review articles are summarized descriptions of recent findings and significant developments at particular subject area of research considering the Journal’s scope. They should include critical assessments of novel technologies, evaluation of subject advancement, elucidate unresolved questions, comparative analysis with a substantial coverage of previous works and highlight future prospects. Although there are no restrictions with the length and content of a review, authors should consider drawing readers’ attention and interest with quality information.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Commentaries

Commentaries are that unsolicited commentaries or analysis from reader(s) targeting specific published articles in the journal. Commentaries will be subjected to peer-review and may be published in both online and printed versions of the journal. 

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Case Reports

Case reports that summarize the execution and results of cases involving environment social psychology studies. Submissions will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and are usually solicited by the editors.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Opinions

Opinions are short articles that reflect the author’s viewpoints on a particular subject, technique, or recent findings. They should highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the topic presented in the opinion.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

All manuscripts submitted to Environment and Social Psychology undergo rigorous double blind peer review.

• The initial submission made by the author is reviewed by the editor to ensure its adherence to the editorial policies of ESP.
• The Editor-in-Chief (EIC) determines if the topic of the manuscript is within the scope of ESP. 
• On the advice of the EIC, EIC assign an editor to select and assign reviewers for the manuscript.
• After the evaluations by the reviewers have been received, the EIC makes one of the following recommendations: Accept manuscript, Accept manuscript with minor revisions, Major revisions required or Reject manuscript.
• If the decision is minor revisions, the authors have 15 days to resubmit the revised manuscript.
• If the decision is major revisions, the authors have 30 days to resubmit the revised manuscript.
• Upon resubmission, the EIC makes the final decision on whether the manuscript can proceed for production. In cases where a major revision was needed, the manuscript will be first sent to the initially assigned reviewers again for their evaluation and reassessment, before the EIC makes the final decision.
• Authors may appeal for a rejected submission. Appeal requests must be made in writing to editorial_office@as-pub.com with detailed reasons for the appeal and point by point responses to the reviewers’ remarks. Decisions on appeals are final.

editorial_office@as-pub.com

Publication Frequency

The publication frequency of Environment and Social Psychology is monthly.

Open Access Policy

Environment and Social Psychology is a Gold Open Access journal. It believes that making research freely available to the public helps promoting the research results benefiting the scholarly community.

• Higher Visibility, Availability and Citations – free and unlimited accessibility of the publication over the internet without any restrictions increases citation of the article
• Ease of Search – publications are easily searchable in search engines and indexing databases
• Rapid Publication – accepted papers are immediately published online

Manuscripts submitted to ESP are double blind peer-reviewed and if accepted for publication, are freely available without charge for readers.

ESP operates on the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) publishing license since 2023 Vol.8 No.2 that defines permitted re-use, which allows for the copying, distribution, and transmission of the published work, provided the correct attribution of the original creator is stated.

Editorial Policies

Authors should read the “Author Guidelines” before making a submission, and make sure that the manuscripts were written in accordance to the style and specifications of the journal’s policy.

All manuscripts submitted to Environment and Social Psychology are subject to rigorous peer review. Prior to the peer review process, the manuscripts will be screened for acceptable English language, novelty and relevance to the Focus and Scope of the journal.

Any manuscripts submitted to Environment and Social Psychology will be treated as confidential materials. The manuscripts will not be disclosed to anyone except individuals such as editorial staff, reviewers and editors who participate in the initial screening, review, processing and preparation of the manuscript for publication (if accepted).

The journal will not accept a manuscript that has been published or is under consideration for publication in any other journal. The author needs to notify the journal if the data presented in the manuscript has been ever presented in conferences or other similar forums. The author will need to fill up the submission checklist to ensure that these criteria are fulfilled.

After acceptance, the Publisher will have the right to edit the work for the original edition and for any revision.

Conflict of Interest

Conflicts of interest may exist when professional judgements concerning a primary interest has the possibility of being influenced by a secondary interest (e.g.,financial gains). It is to be noted that even perceptions of conflicts of interest are as important as the actual conflicts of interest.

Any agreements with study sponsors (for profit or non-profit), which interfere with the authors’ access to the study data, ability to analyse or interpret the data and publish manuscripts independently according to their own decision, should be avoided by authors at all costs.

A declaration of interests for all authors must be received before an article can be reviewed and accepted for publication.

For authors:

While submitting, authors must list all competing interests relevant to this work, including but not limited to:

• Funding sources
• The role of sponsors in the work design, data collection, and results of the analysis.
• Whether the author is serving on the editorial board of this journal submitting to.

 

For editors and reviewers:

Editors and reviewers must declare any possible conflict of interests in connection with the manuscript, and if necessary, they must avoid the peer review process. When Editorial Board Members publish articles in the served journal, the editorial office will actively emphasize it so that the authors know that they recuse the potential peer review process.

Common reasons for editors and reviewers to be replaced include but are not limited to:

• The editor or reviewer works at the same organization as one of the authors.
• The editor or reviewer is one of the authors of this work.
• The editor or reviewer is on the avoidance list from the author(s).
• The editor or reviewer has a financial relationship or personal relationship with an author.

Statement of Informed Consent

Clients have a right to their privacy and it should not be violated without informed consent. Authors should protect their clients’ right to privacy by requesting oral or written consent from the clients or client’s parents/guardians/next of kin to publish his/her data, including photographs, prior to publication. Other details such as the race, ethnicity, religion or cultural background of a subject under study should be mentioned only when it is believed to have an impact on course of the disease and/or treatment discussed in the study. If changing the biographical details and/or identifying characteristics is done in order to protect anonymity, authors should provide assurance that the changes do not falsify the scientific meaning of a manuscript/report. The informed consent form/agreement should be included as a supplementary document of a manuscript during submission.

Human and Animal Rights Statement

Humans: When the submitted manuscript involves experiments performed on human subjects, including healthy volunteers, authors should adhere to WMA Declaration of Helsinki and indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the author's Institutional Review Board or Research Ethics Committee. Any possible adverse consequences of the work for ecosystems, populations or individual organisms must be weighed against the possible gains in knowledge and its practical applications. Authors are encouraged to follow the CARE guidelines while reporting a clinical case that involves the human subject. 

Animals: When reporting experiments involving animals, authors should abide by relevant international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals. For studies involving client-owned animals, author(s) must declare that they have obtained the oral or written informed client consent during submitting and adhere to a high standard (best practice) of veterinary care. 

Authors are encouraged to follow the ARRIVE guidelines while reporting animal research. 

Experiments on non-human primates should be performed in accordance with the recommendations set out in the Weatherall report (The Use of Non-Human Primates in Research).

Publishing Ethics

This Journal requests all members involved in the journal publishing process to adhere to the Core Practices on publication ethics as stipulated by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

The publisher strictly adheres to the guidelines and best practices, which include Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals from the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (ICMJE) and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing developed by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).

The journal editors take all possible misconducts seriously. The Editors, authors or readers can forward their concerns to the journal if they find out that the description in a submitted article may constitute an academic fraud, research misconduct or publication malpractice. The concerns or complaints on the possible allegations submitted to the journal will be dealt with promptly and appropriately according to the procedure set out in the COPE flowchart on complaints. The complainant may direct all inquiries and correspondence to the Publisher at editorial_office@as-pub.com.

This Journal adopts a zero-tolerance policy concerning any academic misconducts and ethical violations in research and publication regardless of the severity of these issues. The violations include plagiarism, falsification of research, data fabrication, submitting manuscripts of others as one’s own, submission of the same manuscript to different publication venues at the same time and breached intellectual property rights. In cases of suspected misconduct and ethical violation, a panel will be formed to investigate the allegation. If the allegation is supported by evidence, the submitted manuscript in question will be declined for consideration in the journal and all authors will be informed in this regard. A retraction initiated by authors or by the journal is required to take place if the paper has already been published, and the retraction will be made public. Authors of the work in question will receive the Panel’s Decision via email and all appeals regarding the decision will have to be made to the Publisher at editorial_office@as-pub.com within 28 days of the decision date.

Language

All articles should be written in English—either British or American as long as consistency is observed. Authors whose first language is not English may want to have their manuscripts professionally edited before the final submission to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by its prospective readers.

Units of Measurement

Units of measurement should be presented using only System International (SI) units.

Misconduction Policy

Duplicate Submission

Manuscripts submitted to ESP should:

1) not have been published before;

2) not concurrently be submitted elsewhere.

If part of a manuscript has been published or will be published elsewhere, the authors must let the editors know in a cover letter. If duplicate submission is detected during peer review, the manuscript may be rejected. If it is detected after publication, the paper may be retracted.

Plagiarism

The journal will strictly not accept manuscripts that are found to be plagiarized. The journal will verify the originality of submitted manuscripts with iThenticate, the plagiarism detection software.

If a manuscript uses a text copied directly from another source, this text must be written in quotation marks and original source must be cited. If any kind of plagiarism is detected during the review process, the manuscript will be rejected.

Authors and researchers can also use iThenticate to screen their work before submission by visiting http://www.ithenticate.com.

Authorship

Authorship of a scholarly paper should be limited to individuals who have contributed substantially to its intellectual content. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or general supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. All authors should hold the responsibility of fairly evaluating their respective roles and their co-authors’ roles in the project. This is to ensure that authorship is attributed according to a fixed standard in all publications for which they will be listed as authors.

In order to be listed as an author for a paper, one should have contributed sufficiently in the project. A co-author is expected to have contributed to some component of the work which led to the paper, or be involved in interpretation of its results. All authors should have a say in the final approval of the version to be published, in addition to reviewing the final manuscript prior to submission.

Individuals who do not meet the above requirements, but have provided a valuable contribution to the work, may be acknowledged for their contribution as appropriate to the publication.

Changes to Authorship

The authors should carefully check the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript. The Editorial Office considers the authorship list is definitive by the time the original submission is received.

Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript is accepted for publication. The corresponding author should provide the reasons for the change in authorship list and the proof of written confirmation from all authors (including the existing authors, author(s) to be added and/or removed) agreeing with such change, to the Editorial Office.

The requests for authorship changes need to be approved by the Editorial Office before any changes can be made.

Erratum & Withdrawal Policy

Errata

All publisher-introduced changes are highlighted to the author at the proof stage and any errors are ideally identified by the author and corrected by the publisher before final publication. Any errors in published articles discovered by readers, authors, editors, etc., please contact the journal editor. Arts and Science Press Pte. Ltd. will only instigate a corrigendum to a published article after receiving approval and instructions from the editor.

Withdrawal

If authors change their mind and decide not to pursue publication of papers with the journal, they must write a letter addressed to our editors at editorial_office@as-pub.com, explaining the reason(s) of submission withdrawal. Consents of all co-authors must be obtained for author-initiated submission withdrawal. The decision to withdraw a submission would eventually rest with the editors, including the Editor-in-Chief.

It is relatively more difficult to withdraw a paper that has been processed for peer-review or is under peer-review compared to withdrawing a new submission because the editors and reviewers have expended much time and energy in the editorial process and manuscript evaluation, respectively. To withdraw a paper that has been processed for peer-review, authors should clearly argue their case on scientific reasons; only valid and sound reasons will be accepted. He/she would be required to pay a penalty fee (USD 200). Authors are advised to keep in mind that an article should only be withdrawn if the authors detect significant error or flaws, as it is not an acceptable practice to withdraw an article after it has been sent for peer review. Once the approval of submission withdrawal is granted, the submission will be removed from the journal’s online submission system, and a confirmation email of submission withdrawal will be sent to the authors. The withdrawal process is considered to be complete once the author receives a confirmation of withdrawal from the Journal Editorial Office.

Submission withdrawal is also possible for accepted papers that have not been formally published, including the newly accepted papers and Articles in Press.

Withdrawal of accepted papers and Articles in Press is usually editor-initiated. The reasons of withdrawing accepted papers and Articles in Press are similar to those of retracting a published article, i.e., academic misconducts and ethical violations in research and publication regardless of the severity of these issues. The misconducts and violations include plagiarism, falsification of research, data fabrication, submitting manuscripts of others as one’s own, submission of the same manuscript to different publication venues at the same time and breached intellectual property rights. Once the suspected misconduct and ethical violation is brought to our attention, the editors will organize an investigation and authors are required to cooperate in the investigation; any accepted papers or Articles in Press subject to investigation at this stage will not be arranged for article production or finalization. A Panel will be organized to investigate the allegations. If the allegations are proven true with supporting evidence, the accepted paper or Article in Press will be marked for withdrawal, and a notification email regarding the Panel’s Decision will be sent to all authors of the work. Any appeals regarding the Panel’s Decision will have to be made to the Publisher within 14 days of the decision date. In the absence of an appeal from the authors within the 14 days, the submission will be removed from the journal’s online submission system, and a confirmation email of submission withdrawal will be sent to the authors.

Authors should note that any amounts of paid Article Processing Charge will not be refunded if their accepted papers or Articles in Press are withdrawn on the grounds of academic misconducts and ethical violations in research and publication.

Preprint Policy

Authors are permitted to post their non-peer-reviewed original research manuscripts to community preprint servers such as bioRxiv, medRxiv, and PeerJ Preprint before or in parallel with the formal submission to Environment and Social Psychology. During submission, authors are obliged to declare in the cover letter if the corresponding preprint version of their submission has been deposited on a preprint server, and provide any associated accession numbers or DOIs.

Nonetheless, authors are not allowed to post any versions of articles that have been revised as a result of peer review, accepted for publication or published in the journal on a preprint server. The manuscript whose corresponding preprint version has been indexed (e.g., in MEDLINE or PubMed) will not be considered.

This policy applies to original research papers only. This journal  reserves the right not to consider for publication or publish material that has been formally published in digital media that shall not be construed as preprint servers.

We encourage formal citation of preprints in the reference list, where appropriate.

Indexing and Archiving

Disclaimer

• For authors: Once submitting a manuscript, it means that you have been aware of all publishing policies & ethics,  and will strictly abide by them.
• For reviewers: Once accepting the request to become a reviewer, it means that you must be aware of the peer review policies, and proactively disclose of all potential conflicts of interest, and guarantee that an article will be judged fairly and objectively. 
• For publisher: This journal  is not liable to the statements, perspectives, and opinions contained in the published articles. The appearance of advertisements in the journal shall not be construed as a warranty, endorsement, or approval of the products or services advertised and/or the safety thereof. This journal and the Publisher disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any ideas or products referred to in the articles or advertisements.

Advertising Policy

All advertisements are subject to approval to the Publisher. Advertisements must comply with the relevant regulations in the country where the advertisements appear. For more inquiries, please send email to editorial_office@as-pub.com.

Copyright & License

The authors shall retain the copyright of their work but allow the Publisher to publish, copy, distribute, and convey the work.

All articles published by the Environment and Social Psychology are licensed under the Creative Commons International Licenses. Without any explicit request from the corresponding author during submission stage, a paper will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) by default since 2023 Vol.8 No.2. The authors who would like to publish their work under a noncommercial license, i.e., Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0), they should express explicit request during the submission stage. Please include statement below in the Comments for the Editor column on the submission page:

The contributors or authors for this submission entitled “[MANUSCRIPT TITLE]”, i.e. [NAMES of ALL AUTHORS], have given their consents to alter the Creative Commons license to *CC BY-NC 4.0* under which this submission will be published in Environment and Social Psychology.

Ethical Oversight

Arts and Science Press Pte. Ltd. strictly abides by the Core Practice and Ethical Oversight of COPE, and all the editorial process is based on the best practice in the ethics of scholarly publishing. The Editorial Office strictly screens the originality and authenticity of every submission, and once unethical behaviors is under suspicion including but not limited to plagiarism, dishonesty, and multiple submissions, the manuscript will not go through the next step.

Arts and Science Press Pte. Ltd. usually strictly suspects the ethical problem under COPE’s guidance. If subjects involve populations or animals, all the research process must comply with local or regular international guidelines in the research field, and authors will be asked to submit the necessary information of approval identifiers or granting committee such as reference numbers. Reviewers and EiC are experts of your interest field, and they will make the objective decision based on the normality, authenticity and academic value of your research. In case of necessity, Editorial Office will contact the granting committee for further verification. Editorial Office obtains the right to reject the submission without any reference information.

Human subjects have the right of privacy, and Editorial Office advocates hiding sensitive and identifiable information of subjects such as face pictures and identical information. Informed Content Statement whether oral or written must be obtained from all the subjects at the submitting stage. If subjects are vulnerable populations, the Informed Content Statement should be obtained from their guardian or kinsfolk. All the submissions are considered to be private, and the publisher promises not to disclose it to a third party except for the normal publishing process.

Article Processing Charges

The Article Processing Charges are meant to support the journal’s associated expenses. The publication fee for each manuscript accepted for publication is US $ 1700.

Waiver Policy

ESP is committed to promoting the academic development in the world without any financial barrier to knowledge sharing and learning. There has developed a waiver policy especially for authors from low-income countries. Authors who are interested in applying for a waiver could contact editorial_office@as-pub.com. ESP reserves the right to approve or reject a waiver application.

Special Issue Policy

Guest Editors are responsible for the proposal of Special Issues, and they work with journal editors throughout the editorial process. The Special Issue Program aims to increase the visibility and citations in a certain research community. There may be many different Special Issues with different interests in the related field.

Articles accepted in one of Special Issues will be published in the regular issues of the journal. That has broad benefits:

• Earlier visibility and the vast majority of readers across the topics community.
• Be cited by peers and get more citations.
• Quickly learning about the current scientific research.

1. Ways to be a Guest Editor

• Editorial staff will search and invite experts who have outstanding achievements in the certain field. Usually, it will be a group of Guest Editors to drive a Special Issue. The group members are usually invited by the leader of Guest Editors.
• Readers or authors who have good topics could submit proposals to nancy.lim@apacsci.net. EiC or Senior Editors will evaluate the value of the proposal. If the proposal is accepted, the submitter will serve as Guest Editor of the Special Issue. Editors will cooperate to promote the development of Special Issues.

A Special Issue should include the title, keywords, introduction of the Special Issue, Guest Editors with E-mail, and submission deadline. Usually, the summary of a Special Issue should be provided by Guest Editors. The Editorial Office will make a flyer for further advertising.

2. Special Issue Ethics

Arts and Science Press Pte. Ltd. strictly abides by the  Core Practices of COPE. All the new submissions will go through a double blind peer-reviewed process. Authors should provide a list of experts who should be excluded from peer review. The editorial process should comply with the Editorial Policies of this journal. If there is any potential conflict of interest, reviewers or editors should inform the Editorial Office and avoid the whole review process. In the event of unethical behaviors during the editorial process including but not limited to plagiarism, fabrication, citation manipulation, and authorship misconduct, please do not hesitate to contact editorial_office@as-pub.com.

 

3. Workflow of a Special Issue

A new submission should be submitted through the open journal system. Guest Editors (GE) will check the relevance between the new manuscript and the scope of one of the Special Issues. Then, editorial staff will screen the originality of the new submission by iThenticate. Any manuscript without enough originality may be rejected. The Editorial Office will assign the new submission to GE or reviewers for further review comments. A strict double blind peer-reviewed process with no less than two reviewers is implemented. GE have the responsibility to oversight the whole editorial process. All the comments are collected to GE, who will make the final decision on whether it is accepted, rejected, or should be revised. Once the manuscript is accepted, the author(s) will be informed and the manuscript will go through the production stage. It will be archived in the current volume/issue with marked in a collection of the Special Issue.