Whereas a tourist may look to create positive memories from a short stay, for local residents, what matters is more likely to be the social bonds that evolve in the course of their daily life. They are part of the community, their activities in the place are more day-to-day, more mundane, they are not looking to create lifelong memories each and every day. Residents’ attachment to a place is longer-term and more stable. Place attachment can lead residents to stay in a place, regardless of its environmental quality. There can be a general feeling of satisfaction with the status quo, a lack of drive to change or improve an area with which people have no problem. Place attachment can generate a tendency to protect and improve the environment, but it can also engender an oversight of the need to behave in such a way. There is also the issue of residents needing to invest more time and effort in pro-environment activities over a longer period of time to maintain and improve the quality of the environment. For a tourist, they might be in a place a matter of weeks; for a resident, they can be there each and every day for years. But it is not just with tourists as opposed to residents where we find differences in behaviour. The culture you come fromplays a part. In collective cultures, people feel obliged to give priority to collective interest, but self-interest rules in individualist cultures. Andwe found that those from collectivist cultureswho are attached to a place aremore likely to engage in PEB than those from individualistic cultures. This result probably explainswhy the concept of ‘Gotong-Royong’ (working together) embedded in Indonesian culture could succeed in local communities in Indonesia. Generally, collectivists have the tendency to sacrifice personal interests for the interest of the place, such as looking after it environmentally, whereas individualists act in a pro-environment manner to serve personal goals or interests, and this is less likely to be through place attachment. Someone froma collectivist culturemay behave pro-environmentally to the benefit of a place even if that behaviour requires more time, effort or monetary input. These findings offer implications for public policy makers in how they can use place attachment to encourage PEB. Public authorities can use this place attachment, nurture and encourage it. Since residents who are attached to a place may feel satisfied with the existing environmental state, and overlook the need to protect or improve it, the severity of the problem needs to be driven home. Policymakers could design campaign messages highlighting such issues, telling individuals they need to act to protect their well-loved places. For tourists, our findings underscore the importance of creating and strengthening a sense of attachment towards tourist destinations. Given their tendency to protect their recreational environment, authorities could emphasise the important role tourists play inmaintaining and improving the environment – creating beautiful memories of their beloved destination. In collective cultures where groups or communities are more valued, improving place attachment could generate higher environmental returns as people look to protect places not just for themselves but for the good of the larger population. Again, authorities could use this in their marketing messages, communicating the shared community values of a place. This has been done in Indonesia with its cultural concept of ‘Gotong-Royong’, and in China, where one pro-environment campaign used a slogan that can be translated literally as ‘the district is our home, and its environment depends on every one of us’. Dr Ahmad Daryanto is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Marketing. His paper, Ameta-analysis of the relationship between place attachment and proenvironmental behaviour, co-authored with Dr Zening Song, of Beijing Foreign Studies University, is published in the Journal of Business Research. a.daryanto@lancaster.ac.uk FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 13 Since residents who are attached to a place may feel satisfied with the existing environmental state, and overlook the need to protect or improve it, the severity of the problem needs to be driven home. ʻʻ ʼʼ
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