Abstract
Environmental changes such as extreme weather events become increasingly noticeable worldwide. Earth observation (EO) data provide information about such changes, but little is known about citizens’ perceptions of and responses to such changes. Across three studies, we assess whether people’s place attachment on different regional levels predicts interest in EO data, and whether perceived environmental change affects emotional responses and place attachment. Two survey studies (N = 118 students and N = 197 citizens from the Palatinate in Southern Germany) revealed that place attachment predicts interest in EO data, especially when people felt strongly attached to the region or place in question. A third experimental study (N = 600) with repeated measures (N = 203) revealed that visualized environmental change – using satellite images of local vs. non-local environmental change – did not affect place attachment but elicited stronger emotional responses than visualizing no change. Policy support measures across Studies 2 and 3 suggest that place attachment and emotional responses are important predictors for action to mitigate consequences of environmental change.
Highlights
In times of global environmental challenges affecting the qualities of many world regions (IPCC, 2018), it is critical to understand social responses to these largely anthropogenic, biophysical changes
We investigate whether place attachment on different levels predicts responses to environmental change, and whether such change affects the way people relate to place
Descriptives Correlations, means, and standard deviations of the variables are displayed in Table 3. t-tests revealed regional place attachment to be stronger than national place attachment (t[392] = 3.70, p < 0.001) but equal to global place attachment (t[392] = −1.41, p = 0.158), and global place attachment was stronger than national place attachment (t[392] = 5.20, p < 0.001)
Summary
In times of global environmental challenges affecting the qualities of many world regions (IPCC, 2018), it is critical to understand social responses to these largely anthropogenic, biophysical changes. Some of these changes can be observed directly (e.g., flooding, heat-destroyed harvests) but others cannot (e.g., amount of pollutants in the atmosphere), requiring the use of technical instruments and expertise to make these changes visible. Results of these analyses, in turn, need to be processed in a way that people can respond to. We investigate whether place attachment on different levels (regional, national, global) predicts responses to environmental change, and whether such change affects the way people relate to place
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