Environmental Concern in a Local Context: The Significance of Place Attachment

To improve the understanding of environmental concern, considering the context within which individuals develop environmental concerns may be important. One salient contextual variable related to local environmental issues is place attachment, which deals with human bonding to a specific physical environment. In a study in a rural community in Norway, the local attitudes toward a proposal of a major hydropower development, which will cause major environmental impacts, were examined in relation to sociodemographic variables and place attachment. The results from a postal survey show that place attachment explained more of the variances in attitudes than the sociodemographic variables all together.