Connecting to "The Land's Heart": Place attachment and environmentally responsible behaviour intentions to national parks

National parks are found around the world, providing opportunities for conservation as well as tourism. Getting visitors to behave in responsible ways toward the environment is a constant struggle for national park services around the globe. Education and increasing knowledge are not adequate for bettering people’s behaviour. Instead, their emotions must be involved for behaviour to change. An emotional bond to a location is called place attachment, and it is comprised of four primary elements: identity, dependence, affect, and social bonding. This study looks at the effect of both self-identified level of outdoorsiness and the distance travelled to the national park on the level of place attachment. I found that the most outdoorsy people have significantly higher place attachment than less outdoorsy people, likely from the inherent involvement outdoorsy people have with nature. Distance travelled to the national park has no significant effect on place attachment. This result may be because the natural grandeur of national parks induces a sense of attachment, no matter how near or far the national park is from home. I also found that place attachment positively correlates to environmentally responsible behaviour intentions. The thesis film, “The Land’s Heart,” presents a case study for place attachment and environmentally responsible behaviour. The film captures the place attachment felt toward the Matukituki Valley in Aspiring National Park, New Zealand, through three perspectives: a 1949 poem by James K. Baxter, the voices of two Department of Conservation hut rangers, and the narrative voice of myself, Dena De Kryger. The combination of the film and the research present a well-rounded study on place attachment as it relates to outdoorsiness, distance travelled, and environmentally responsible behaviour