Translational Issues in Psychological Science, Vol 8(4), Dec 2022, 461-472; doi:10.1037/tps0000347
Place attachment is an important factor that may influence migration decisions, although how it relates to environmental change and mobility is poorly understood. This article uses survey data from 1,695 household heads in 13 villages in southwestern Bangladesh to examine how place attachment, demographics, perceptions of environmental change, and mobility interact. We begin by asking how place attachment and mobility are related in this context. We then ask what individual demographics are important for predicting place attachment; how trust in one’s neighbors correlate with place attachment; and how perceptions about environmental change in communities influence place attachment. Results indicate that mobility and place attachment are significantly correlated, though more work is needed to understand the nature of the relationship. We find that education and religion are important predictors of place attachment at the individual level. At the community level, trust in one’s neighbors is also a strong predictor. In this context, several perceived changes in environmental conditions are also significant, including groundwater salinity and riverbank erosion. In this way, the analysis draws empirical connections among individual perceptions of place, community dynamics, environmental change, and mobility with implications for policies to support communities impacted by environmental stress. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)