Climate change mitigation:The influencing chain of place attachment o...

Abstract

Environmental risks such as climate change have a detrimental effect on our lives and our planet. Thus, climate change mitigation is an urgent endeavour. Both, place attachment and pro-environmental behaviour have been well investigated during the past decade in various disciplines. However, there is a lack of research linking both in the realm of climate change mitigation, and investigating the influencing chain of place attachment on public and private pro-environmental behaviour intention by including a mediating effect of environmental risk perception and environmental concern. The authors report on an empirical study conducted between April and May 2022 with 240 respondents, thereof n=132 Austrian and n=108 Indonesian drawn from the students’ database of two universities by using an online survey in Qualtrics. The results derived from SEM emphasise the importance of place identity on pro-environmental behaviour intention by confirming a mediating effect of environmental concern in the influencing chain. Possible moderator effects have been investigated. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.