Environmental Development 47 (2023) 100897 Available online 26 July 2023 2211-4645/© 2023 Published by Elsevier B.V. Investigating the link between place attachment, civic engagement, and pro-environmental behaviors Mazdak Irani a , Samad Rasoulzadeh Aghdam d, e, ** , Behnam Ghasemzadeh b, c, d, * a School of Engineering, Design and Built Environment, Western Sydney University, Australia b Visiting Research Fellow at Western Sydney University, Australia c Envirowise Research Associate, Christchurch, 8053, New Zealand d Institute for Psycho-social Health Research, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Iran e Department of Family Studies, Faculty of Education and Psychology, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Iran A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Place attachment Civic engagement Pro-environmental behavior Confrmatory factor analysis Eram neighborhood ABSTRACT This study aimed to investigate the impact of place attachment and civic engagement on pro- environmental behavior, with place attachment being examined from an individual perspec- tive, and civic engagement being examined from a social perspective. Therefore, in addition to assessing the degree of place attachment, we also examined its effect on residents’ civic engagement and pro-environmental behavior the study was conducted using a questionnaire to collect data from people over 18 years of age living in the Eram neighborhood, with 240 re- sponses being used for analysis after removing 25 incomplete or biased answers. The results of the confrmatory factor analysis revealed that place attachment is a second-order construct composed of place dependence, place identity, emotional attachment, and social attachment, and that pro- environmental behavior is a second-order factor composed of household behavior, information seeking, and transportation. The results showed that all four dimensions of place attachment have good means and that place attachment and civic engagement positively affect pro-environmental behavior. The Sobel test confrms that the effect of place attachment on pro-environmental behavior is signifcant through the mediation of civic engagement. This study confrms that feeling attached to the local area encourages participating in voluntary social activities in line with pro-environmental behaviors. 1. Introduction Rapid population growth is resulting in major environmental issues in urban areas (Jiang et al., 2018; Song and Soopramanien, 2019; Bradshaw and Brook, 2014; Donmez-Turan and Kiliclar, 2021), with a substantial portion of the problem caused by human behavior (für Fahrzeuge, 2021; Savari et al., 2021; Riedel et al., 2021). However, a positive relationship between humans and the environment can provide an opportunity to solve environmental problems (Abun et al., 2021; Bondarenko et al., 2019). In other words, humans can play an important role in resource conservation and development by better understanding environmental problems (Halpenny, 2010; Gudmanian et al., 2020; Kopnina, 2016). Therefore, researchers should pay attention to the social and psychological * Corresponding author. Visiting Research Fellow at Western Sydney University, Australia. ** Corresponding author. Department of Family Studies, Faculty of Education and Psychology, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Iran. E-mail addresses: s.rasoulzadeh@azaruniv.ac.ir (S. Rasoulzadeh Aghdam), behnam.ghasemzadeh@yahoo.com, behnam.ghasemzadeh65@gmail. com (B. Ghasemzadeh). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Environmental Development journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envdev https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2023.100897 Received 16 June 2023; Accepted 10 July 2023