The Intervened effect of place attachment on the relationship between community attachment and environmental behaviors (case study: Tajrish neighborhood)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Department of Environmental Education, Management and Planning, School of Environment, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Introduction:
Place attachment is an emotional connection to a specific location or perspective where usually includes physical and social elements (Devine-Wright, 2013). From Hummon's point of view, the community attachment is defined as an emotional investment in one place (Buta et al., 2014). Today, environmental concepts deeply have social implications, and a large part of the people’s environmental beliefs and behaviors changes under the influence of cultural and social systems (Kalantari et al., 2016). The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between community attachment and environmental behaviors considering the role of mediating attachment of the place among residents of Tajrish neighbourhood located in the district One of Tehran.
Material and methods:
The present research was a descriptive, analytical-correlational survey. A sample of 284 was selected from inhabitants of Tajrish neighbourhood based on random sampling method. The participants were asked to fill out the research questionnaire whose reliability and validity were confirmed. The obtained data were statistically analyzed using the correlation analysis and structural equation modeling in SPSS-21 and AMOS-21.
Results and discussion:
The results of standard coefficients obtained from structural equation modeling showed that community attachment can directly and positively predict place attachment (p < 0.01, β=0.65) and place attachment also can directly and positively predict pro-environmental civic participation (p < 0.01, β=0.48). Finally, the study findings revealed that community attachment affects pro-environmental civic participation both directly (p < 0.01, β=0.41) and indirectly, through the mediating role of place attachment, (p < 0.01, β=0.31). In order to assess the fitness of the model, in this research, fit indices from eight main indicators were utilized. In this study, the relative Chi-square, (CMIN/Df) was estimated at 1.375, indicating the acceptable condition of the model. The Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) of 0.036 also demonstrated the validity of the model developed in this study. The GFI and AGFI indices, absolute fit indices, should be in the range of zero to one, and values greater than 0.9 for the GFI index and 0.85 for the AGFI index indicate the optimal fit of the model. In the model measured in the present study, the value of 0.990 for the GFI index and 0.965 for the AGFI index showed a highly favorable fit of the model. For the Increasing Fitting Index (IFI), the Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI), and the Comparative Fit Index (CFI), values greater than 0.9 represent the ideal fit of the model. IFI, TLI, and CFI were, respectively, 0.996, 0.990, and 0.996 in this study. The (Bentler-Bonett) Normed Fit Index (NFI) is based on the correlation between the present variables in the model in a way that the coefficients of correlation between them would lead to high values of the adaptive fit index. The acceptable value of this index should be greater than 0.9 which was obtained in the present study and is an indication of the confirmation of the research model.
Conclusions:
The present study demonstrated that community attachment has a direct and significant effect on the place attachment and the environmental behavior. On the other hand, community attachment indirectly affects the creation of environmental behaviors in citizens through involving the sense of attachment to the .place; hence, place attachment is considered as an intermediary factor in creating environmentalist behaviors

Keywords


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