Dr. Lindsay McCunn

Biography

Dr. Lindsay McCunn is a Professor of psychology at Vancouver Island University and Director of the Environmental Psychology Research Lab at VIU. Her research concerning sense of place, organizational commitment, and other psychosocial constructs has been published in interdisciplinary journals, such as Cities, Architectural Science Review, the Journal of Management in Engineering, the Journal of Library Administration, the Seniors Housing & Care Journal, and the Health Environments Research & Design Journal. She has also co-authored book chapters about the research methods used in environmental psychology and presented research at national and international conferences.

Currently, Lindsay is working on a project taking place with a team of architects, business scholars, and criminal justice researchers in California in conjunction with the non-profit organization Designing Justice+Designing Spaces. Generously funded by the James Irvine Foundation, the research concerns the creation of pop-up resource villages in disadvantaged communities and encourages place-making and local entrepreneurship opportunities. She has also been funded by Island Health to complete two projects investigating the extent to which recent sustainable design alterations to parts of each hospital (e.g., biophilic mural installments; circadian lighting programmes) affect staff experiences at work.

Lindsay has won institutional funding to complete a follow-up study concerning teachers’ reactions to the learning commons model in BC secondary schools. Dr. McCunn published results from three initial studies with School District 63 in 2013 and is now continuing this line of inquiry by making design recommendations to transition traditional secondary school libraries to learning commons and measuring how teachers perceive their levels of professional collaboration, productivity, and engagement at work.

Lindsay is also working with faculty members and post-doctoral fellows in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington on a series of studies concerning the impacts of LED lighting programs on office employee satisfaction, perceived productivity, and controllability in the UW Tower on campus in Seattle, WA. These projects have been funded by UW’s Green Seed Fund grant program. Two of the three studies have been published in peer reviewed journals; the third study is currently being completed. This team also works with the City of Bellevue, WA conducting technical and observer-based environmental assessments of air quality in the first certified Fitwel government building in the Puget Sound region.

Chairs/ Chaires

Chair-Elect for the Environmental Psychology section of the Canadian Psychology Association
Co-Chair of Vancouver Island University’s Sustainability Advisory Committee

Leadership Roles/ Rôles de leadership

Principal, McCunn & Associates Consulting
Commissioning Editor for the journal Cities & Health
Co-editor of the upcoming special issue of the Taylor and Francis journal Cities & Health, titled “Sound and the Healthy City”
Board member of the Journal of Environmental Psychology
Contributor to the International Energy Agency’s Energy in Buildings and Community Programme Annex on Occupant-centric building design and operation

Awards/ Prix

Past-holder of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canadian Graduate Scholarship (doctoral)Selected Publications/ Publications sélectionnées

Jason Thistlethwaite; Andrea Minano; Jordan A. Blake; Daniel Henstra; Daniel Scott.  Application of Re/insurance Models to Estimate Increases in Flood Risk Due to Climate Change. Geoenvironmental Disasters. (2018-accepted).

Scott, D., Rutty, M, Peister, C.  Climate variability and water use in golf tourism: optimization opportunities for a warmer future. Journal of Sustainable Tourism. (2018).

Henstra, D., Thistlethwaite, J., Brown, C., Scott, D. Flood risk management and shared responsibility: Exploring Canadian public attitudes and expectations. Journal of Flood Risk Management. (2018).

Scott, D., Steiger, R., Rutty, M., Fang, Y. The changing geography of the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in a warmer world. Current Issues in Tourism. (2018).

Hewer, M. Scott, D., Gough, W. Differential temperature preferences and thresholds among summer campers in Ontario’s southern provincial parks: A Canadian case study in tourism climatology. Theoretical and Applied Climatology. (2018).

Selected Publications/ Publications sélectionnées

Peer-Reviewed Articles/ Articles révisés par des pairs

McCunn, L. J., Kim, A., & Lew, J. (2017). Office Workers’ Reactions to a Lighting Retrofit: Exploring Perceptions of Productivity, Controllability, and Affective Organizational Commitment.
Journal of Energy Research and Social Science, 37, 154-164.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2018.02.002

McCunn, L. J. & Gifford, R. (2017). Spatial Navigation and Place Imageability in Sense of Place.
Cities, 74, 208-218.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2017.12.006

Kim, A., McCunn, L. J., & Lew, J. (2017). Successful facility change management practices for retrofit projects: A case study in lighting.
Journal of Management in Engineering, 33, 1-8.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)ME.1943-5479.0000519#sthash.xTUgbXYc.dpuf

McCunn, L. J. (2017). Surveying a special population: Understanding accessible design in the subsidized housing sector.
In SAGE Research Methods Cases: Health.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781526409225

McCunn, L. J. (2017). Surveying teachers’ responses to library design: Lessons from the learning commons model.
In SAGE Research Methods Cases: Education.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781526402677

McCunn, L. J. (2017). Studying environmental design in acute care settings: Interviews, walkthroughs, and transferability in literature.
In SAGE Research Methods Cases: Health.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781473981072

McCunn, L. J., & Gifford, R. (2016). Choosing between modern and heritage
buildings for professional services.
International Journal of the Built Environment and Asset Management, 2, 80-98.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.1504/IJBEAM.2016.10001627

McCunn, L. J., & Gifford, R. (2015). Teachers’ reactions to learning commons in secondary schools.
Journal of Library Administration, 55, 435-458.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2015.1054760

McCunn, L. J., & Gifford, R. (2014). Accessibility and aging in place in
subsidized housing.
Seniors Housing & Care Journal, 22, 18-29.
ISSN: 1941 7187

McCunn, L. J., & Gifford, R. (2014). Interrelations between sense of place,
organizational commitment, and green neighborhoods.
Cities, 41, 20-29.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2014.04.008

McCunn, L. J., & Gifford, R. (2013). Environmental Design in Acute Care Settings: A Case Study of a Neurological Rehabilitation Unit.
Health Environments Research & Design Journal, 7, 102-113.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/193758671300700109

McCunn, L. J., & Gifford, R. (2012). Do green offices affect employee engagement and environmental motivation?
Architectural Science Review, 55, 128-134.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.1080/00038628.2012.667939

Book Chapters/ Chapitres de livres

Gifford, R., & McCunn, L. J. (In press). Appraisals of built environments and
approaches to building design that promote well-being and healthy behaviour.
In L. Steg, A. van den Berg, & J. de Groot (Eds.), Environmental psychology: An introduction, 2ed ed.

Farbstein, J., Wener, R., & McCunn, L. J. (2015). Planning the built environment: Programming.
In R. Gifford (Ed.). Research methods for environmental psychology (pp. 221-248). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. ISBN: 978-1-118-79545-3.

Zeisel, J., Gifford, R., Martin, M., & McCunn, L. J. (2015). Researching special populations.
In R. Gifford (Ed.). Research methods for environmental psychology (pp. 345-368). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. ISBN: 978-1-118-79545-3.

Wener, R., McCunn, L. J., & Senick, J. (2015). Did that plan work? Post-occupancy evaluation.
In R. Gifford (Ed.). Research methods for environmental psychology (pp. 249-270). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. ISBN: 978-1-118-79545-3.

Gosling, S. D., Gifford, R., & McCunn, L. J. (2013). The selection, creation, and perception of interior spaces: An environmental psychology approach.
In Brooker, G, & Weinthal, L. (Eds.), The Handbook of Interior Architecture and Design (pp. 278-290). Oxford, UK: Berg. ISBN: 9781847887450.

Gifford, R., & McCunn, L. J. (2012). Appraisals of built environments and approaches to building design that promote well-being and healthy behaviour.
In L. Steg, A. van den Berg, & J. de Groot (Eds.), Environmental psychology: An introduction, 1st ed. (pp. 87-95). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. ISBN: 978-0-470-97638-8.

Encyclopaedia Entries/ Encyclopédie

Gifford, R., & McCunn, L. J. (2012). Behavioral aspects.
In A. T. Carswell (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Housing, 2nd ed. (pp. 35-37). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. ISBN: 9781412989572.