ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the role knowledge of the environment play in spatial decision-making. It examines the process of making spatial decisions. A crude representation of this process includes the stages of generating the decision alternatives by: retrieving information about the environment which is externally accessible or is accessible in a cognitive map, representing the decision alternatives in memory, evaluating the decision alternatives, applying a decision strategy or rule, and implementing the decision. A deliberate selection is made at later stages when information is stored and organized in different memory systems. The end product is a memory representation or cognitive map of a particular environment. Environmental elements represented in cognitive maps primarily constitute inanimate objects with some permanency in spatial location. Research on the effect of cognitive distance on spatial choices has focused on the role played by systematic errors but largely neglected the role of unsystematic errors or fuzziness.
