A pro-environmental behavior model for investigating the roles of social norm, risk perception, and place attachment on adaptation strategies of climate change

Abstract

Today’s climate change is a major problem and challenge for the global environment and human civilization, and it can lead to dramatical floods over specific regions. As climate change intensifies, climate change adaptation strategies, such as flood insurance, energy taxes, and other risky financial strategies, have drawn worldwide attention and discussion. Risk control methods have been widely used to mitigate the impact of climate change on past flood losses, but past risk control strategies on climate change have not focused on the exploration of the relationship between environment, society, and humans. Based on the theoretical model of pro-environmental behavior, this study compares and analyzes four theoretical models and proposes a modified competitiveness model to effectively predict the pro-environmental behavior of college students with partial least squares (PLS) manner. Social norm could play a dominant role of mediator between risk perception, place attachment, and pro-environmental behavior. Although risk perception and local attachment are positively related to risk financial strategy, the promotion of social norms will increase the intention of risk financial strategy. For intention of risk financial strategies within pro-environmental behavior, the efficiency of enhancing local attachment was higher than that of risk perception.