The Effect of Place Attachment and Cultural Habits on Environmental Aesthetic Behavior as Perceived by Rural People in Kermanshah Province

Today, the study of human intervention in nature and the effects and consequences of human behavior on the natural and artificial environment has received much attention. Among these, attention to the aesthetic dimension of the environment has received less attention than other dimensions related to natural resource issues. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of place attachment and cultural habits on the environmental aesthetic behavior from the perspective of villagers in Kermanshah province. This research is of causal-relational type which was done using survey technique. The statistical population was the villagers of Kermanshah province (N = 1725956), of which 385 people were selected using Krejcie and Morgan table and stratified random sampling method with proportional assignment. Findings indicated that there was a statistically significant relationship between "environmental aesthetic behavior" with the variables "place attachment" and "environmental cultural habits". The results of path analysis showed that place attachment has the highest ability to predict environmental aesthetic behavior (β = 0.398). In general, the independent variables of the study were able to explain 30.5% of the variance of environmental aesthetic behavior. According to the results, it can be claimed that focusing on cultural habits through attracting the participation of villagers might be very effective in maintaining natural aesthetic and the occurrence of pro-environmentalist behaviors.