Biological Conservation 209 (2017) 415–422

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Biological Conservation
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/bioc

Civic and natural place attachment as correlates of resident invasive
species control behavior in Hawaii
Rebecca M. Niemiec a,⁎, Nicole M. Ardoin b, Candace B. Wharton c, Frances Kinslow Brewer daEmmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, Stanford University, 473 Via Ortega Way, Suite 226, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
Graduate School of Education & Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, 485 Lasuen Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
Hawaii Community College, Hilo, HI, USAd
Big Island Invasive Species Committee, Paciﬁc Cooperative Studies Unit, University of Hawaii Manoa, 23 E Kawili Street, Hilo, HI, USAbca r t i c l e

i n f oArticle history:
Received 9 October 2016
Received in revised form 15 January 2017
Accepted 19 February 2017
Available online xxxx

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Invasive species pose a signiﬁcant threat to native biodiversity, as
well as local economies and the provisioning of ecosystem services(Asner et al., 2008; Funk et al., 2013; Russell et al., 2015). To achieve biodiversity gains and socio-economic beneﬁts, conservation organizations
are expanding invasive species control efforts beyond public reserves toprivate lands (Gardener et al., 2010; Russell et al., 2015; Stokes et al.,2006). Such expansion of control efforts will require motivating residents to become involved in a variety of different control behaviors on
their private properties and in their communities (Epanchin-Niell etal., 2010; Stokes et al., 2006). Graham (2013), for example, suggeststhat effective control of invasive species on a landscape scale will require motivating residents not only to remove invasive species on
their property and in their community, but also to apply peer pressure
to neighbors related to removing invasive species and to share information about proper control techniques.
Typically, education and outreach programs developed to motivate
resident engagement in invasive species control behaviors have focusedon providing information about proper control techniques, often
coupled with ﬁnancial subsidies for engaging, or penalties for not engaging, in control efforts (Graham, 2013; McLeod et al., 2015). However,such programs have often failed to bring about widespread, lasting, or⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: rniemiec@stanford.edu (R.M. Niemiec), nmardoin@stanford.edu(N.M. Ardoin), cbwharto@hawaii.edu (C.B. Wharton), fbrewer@hawaii.edu (F.K. Brewer).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2017.02.036
0006-3207/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

effective behavior change and landscape-level reductions in invader
populations (Gardener et al., 2010; Graham, 2013).
Recent literature has, therefore, sought to understand additional factors, besides knowledge of control techniques and ﬁnancial costs or
beneﬁts, which might inﬂuence citizen engagement in invasive species
control efforts (García-Llorente et al., 2008; Graham, 2013; Howell et al.,2014; Hu and Gill, 2015; Niemiec et al., 2016; Prinbeck et al., 2011). Citizens' decisions to engage in control efforts may be inﬂuenced by theirattitudes toward control tactics (Prinbeck et al., 2011), the perceived
difﬁculty of engaging in efforts to control invaders (Howell et al.,2014), perceptions of social norms regarding invasive species control(Howell et al., 2014; Niemiec et al., 2016; Prinbeck et al., 2011), environmental values and attitudes (Sharp et al., 2011), and time pressure (Huand Gill, 2015).
Although this recent literature provides greater insight into the barriers as well as social and structural factors inﬂuencing residents' decision-making related to invasive species control, relatively little
research has considered the affective, or emotional, drivers of invasive
species control behavior (McLeod et al., 2015). Considering the role ofplace attachment, an affective driver that has been found to inﬂuenceother types of environmental behaviors (Anton and Lawrence, 2015;
Raymond et al., 2011; Scannell and Gifford, 2010b), may further understanding of residents' invasive species control decision-making.
Place attachment refers to the emotional bonds that develop between individuals and their environments. It is a multi-dimensional
concept (Raymond et al., 2010) that considers the person, the psychological process, and various place dimensions (Scannell and Gifford,

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2010a). In this article we focus on two speciﬁc dimensions of place attachment: connections to the biophysical or natural environment in aplace, or natural attachment (also referred to as natural bonding); andconnections to the community or other inhabitants in a place, or civic attachment (also referred to as neighborhood attachment or social bonding). These dimensions of attachment may be somewhat ﬂuid,
differing over time and within the same individuals. They also may
have varied relationships to and impacts on behavior (Oakes et al.,2016; Scannell and Gifford, 2010a; Scannell and Gifford, 2010b;
Raymond et al., 2011).
Place attachment has been found to help predict resident engagement in wildﬁre mitigation behavior (Anton and Lawrence, 2015; Kyleet al., 2010), ﬂood preparedness (Mishra et al., 2010), sustainable farming practices (Lincoln and Ardoin, 2015), and native vegetation planting(Raymond et al., 2011). Civic and natural place attachment have beenfound to have different impacts on environmental behavior; Scannell
and Gifford (2010b), for example, found that attachment to the naturalor biophysical aspects of place predicted engagement in variety of environmental behaviors, such as carpooling and recycling, but attachment
to the civic or social aspects of place did not. While recent studies haveexamined the relationship between various dimensions of place attachment and environmental behaviors, place attachment has generally
been overlooked in the literature on invasive species control behavior.
Place attachment may provide a useful framework for analyzing resident engagement in invasive species control behavior because different
forms of attachment may provide different motivations for or barriers toengaging in individual or collective efforts to combat invasion. Civic attachment, for example, may lead to improved relations with neighbors
and thus may empower people to address shared community problems(Chavis and Wandersman, 1990). The beneﬁts of civic attachment may
be particularly important for motivating resident behavior to combat invasive species, given that reducing invasive species across private lands
typically requires the collective actions of numerous and diverse residents (Epanchin-Niell et al., 2010; Graham, 2013; Klepeis et al., 2009).
Improved neighbor relations and enhanced conceptions of community
empowerment may motivate residents to approach their neighbors
about control efforts, share information about control techniques, andorganize efforts with neighbors to combat invasion in a collective manner (Graham, 2013). Residents' invasive species control decisions may
also be inﬂuenced by their connections to the biophysical componentsof place, i.e., their natural attachment. Because invasive species can transform a landscape and threaten native ﬂora or fauna, natural attachment
may motivate engagement in invasive species control efforts due to residents' desire to maintain the biophysical aspects of a place and return it
to a state closer to the one that existed before those invaders arrived.

Given the potential ways in which place attachment may inﬂuenceinvasive species control behavior, combined with the lack of prior literature on this topic, we examined the extent to which place attachment
helped predict various types of invasive species control behavior amongresidents in the Puna District of Hawaii. In particular, we examined thequestion: to what extent, and how, are residents' natural attachment
and civic attachment related to various forms of invasive species control
behavior in their community? Our case study provided an opportunity
to explore, in depth, the relationship between place attachment and invasive species control in order to understand how this factor may inﬂuence conservation practices on private lands.
2. Methods
2.1. Case study
We examined the role of place attachment in understanding residents' engagement in invasive species control through a case study ofthe invasive albizia tree (Falcataria moluccana) in the 320,000 acre
Puna District on the island of Hawaii. Albizia is a nitrogen-ﬁxing tree native to the Moluccas, New Guinea, New Britain, and the Solomon Islands(Wagner et al., 1999). The tree, which was brought to Hawaii in 1917
and planted as part of reforestation efforts, is commonly found in forest
reserves throughout the Puna District, as well as on private residential
properties (Hughes et al., 2011). The tree threatens both the native
ﬂora of Hawaii and the safety and well-being of residents by crowding
out native species, such as ʽo̅hiʽa lehua (Metrosideros polymorpha), andfacilitating the growth of other invasive species, such as strawberry
guava (Psidium cattleianum; Hughes et al., 2011). In addition, Albizia in
one of the fastest growing trees in the world when it is in Hawaii, growing up to 2.5 cm a day; due to its low wood density and lofty height, inhigh winds, Albizia falls onto roads, powerlines, and buildings (Hughes
et al., 2011). In the 2014 Tropical Storm Iselle, for example, much of
the $50 million in estimated damage was caused by Albizia and similarinvasive trees falling on infrastructure (Butler, 2014).
The case of Albizia in the Puna District is ideal for exploring the relationship between place attachment and invasive species control forthree reasons. First, most of the Puna District residents are aware of
Albizia's negative socio-economic impacts due to Albizia-related power
losses and infrastructure damage incurred during tropical storms. Despite this widespread awareness of the species' impacts, however,
only a portion of residents have begun engaging in Albizia control behaviors in their community (Niemiec et al., 2016). Albizia in Puna thus
provides the opportunity to examine factors beyond awareness of thenegative impacts of the species that might be related to residents' Albizia

Table 1A summary of independent variables included (and how they are measured); these were hypothesized to inﬂuence resident engagement in invasive species control behavior.
Predictor variable

Indicator on survey

Natural place attachment

The green areas here are very special to me (agree/disagree 7-point scale)
I am attached to the green areas here (agree/disagree 7-point scale)I feel connected to this community (agree/disagree 7-point scale)
I am attached to this community (agree/disagree 7-point scale)How great of a risk do you believe Albizia poses to Hawaii's native plants in your community? (5-point risk scale)How great of a risk do you believe Albizia poses to residents in your community? (5-point risk scale)I have the knowledge to kill an Albizia tree safely and effectively (agree/disagree 7-point scale)I feel uncomfortable using herbicides (agree/disagree 7-point scale)I do not have the money to engage in control (agree/disagree 7-point scale)I do not have the time to engage in control (agree/disagree 7-point scale)
Most people in my community believe that I should take actions to reduce Albizia (agree/disagree 7-point scale)
How long have you lived on this property?
What was the estimated annual income for your household for 2014? (b$10,000, $10,000–$30,000, $30,001–60,000,$60,001–$90,000, $90,001–$100,000, N$100,001)
What is your highest level of education? (elementary or some high school, high school, associate degree,
college degree, graduate degree)
Do you own this property? Y/N
How many years have you lived on this property? (years)
How large is your property? (acres)

Civic/social place attachment
Albizia risk perception
Knowledge on how to control
Herbicide attitudes
Perceived behavioral control
Social norms (subjective)
Time on property
IncomeEducation
Property ownershipYears on property
Property size

R.M. Niemiec et al. / Biological Conservation 209 (2017) 415–422

control decisions. Second, because Albizia causes both social and ecological damage, residents' actions may be motivated by both civic and natural attachments. This case, thus, allows examination of whether, and towhat extent, these different forms of attachment may be related to invasive species control. Third, and ﬁnally, the Puna District consists ofaround a dozen housing subdivision communities, which vary in demographics, the presence and activeness of community associations, property size, and vegetation. Therefore, it is possible that, within thesediverse communities, residents may have developed different degrees
of attachment to the social and natural aspects of their community.
2.2. Survey design
We conducted a survey of residents throughout the Puna District,using various measures of civic and natural place attachment adaptedfrom Scannell and Gifford (2010b) that were originally adapted from
Williams and Vaske (2003) (Table 1). These measures ask about residents' connections with their community. We equated “community”
with the speciﬁc subdivision in which residents live because pilot interviews with residents, conducted in June 2015, indicated that residents
view the subdivisions as distinct from each other as well as from otherparts of the island. In our survey, we informed participants that any reference to “community” in the survey referred to the subdivision inwhich they lived. In addition to place attachment items, we also included as covariates numerous demographic measures that have been related to place attachment in previous studies, including whether residents
own their property (Brown et al., 2003), residents' length of residence(Knez, 2005), and residents' level of educational attainment (Meschand Manor, 1998). We also included property size, which may inﬂuenceneighbor interaction and the visibility of invasive species (Alexander
and Lee, 2010).
Because we wanted to examine whether natural and civic place attachment helped explain invasive species control behavior when we
controlled for other, more commonly examined predictors, we also incorporated elements of Ajzen's (1991) theory of planned behavior(TPB). The TPB has been used in numerous studies to explain environmental behavior more generally (Bamberg and Möser, 2007), as well
as resident engagement in invasive species control behaviors, more speciﬁcally (Howell et al., 2014; Hu and Gill, 2015; Prinbeck et al., 2011).
The TPB assumes that a person's intentions to engage in a behavior are
inﬂuenced by his/her: 1) attitudes toward the behavior, deﬁned as
his/her like or dislike of the behavior; 2) subjective norms, deﬁned as
the extent to which s/he believes others would approve or disapproveof the behavior; and 3) perceived behavioral control, deﬁned as the perceived ease or difﬁculty of engaging in the behavior (Ajzen, 1991).
These variables have been found to be important for understanding citizens' invasive species control behavior. Howell et al. (2014), for example, found that subjective norms were important for explaining bait
shop owners' intentions to educate their customers to engage in behaviors to reduce the spread of aquatic invasive species, while perceived behavioral control was important for predicting actual engagement withcustomers. To measure subjective norms, we included an item about
whether others in one's community believe one should be taking action
to control Albizia (Table 1). To measure behavioral control, we included
perceptions of time and funds available for controlling Albizia.
We also included as independent variables knowledge of effective
control techniques, as well as risk perceptions related to the social andecological impacts of Albizia (Table 1); previous studies have foundthese independent variables to be important for understanding citizens'
actions toward invasive species (Aslan et al., 2009; Estevez et al., 2015).
We included a question about attitudes toward herbicides, given thatthe most effective Albizia control technique requires the use of the herbicide, Milestone ® (Hughes et al., 2011). Concerns over the potential
negative impacts of herbicides on the environment and human healthhave been identiﬁed as a key barrier to engaging citizens in invasive
species control efforts (Estevez et al., 2015). A variety of other417

perceptions related to invasive species control were also measured on
the survey (described in Niemiec et al., 2016), but were not used inthis study and, as such, are not reported in this paper. All perceptions
were measured on a seven-point Likert-type scale, with the exceptionof risk perceptions, which were measured on a 5-point risk scale(Table 1).
As our dependent variables, we included various measures of residents' self-reported Albizia control behaviors. These included: killing
Albizia on their own property; killing Albizia elsewhere in the community (such as along roads or in neighbors' property); contacting neighbors
to convince them to control Albizia; teaching neighbors how to kill
Albizia; or organizing efforts with neighbors to kill Albizia throughout
the community. All dependent variables were measured as a count of
the number of times an individual had ever engaged in the behavior(0, 1, 2, ≥ 3 times).
In addition, to add depth and nuance to the survey ﬁndings regarding how residents' place attachment may relate to Albizia control, we
conducted semi-structured interviews with residents. During interviews, we asked residents about their reasons for moving to the area,
what three words they would use to describe where they lived, andthe perceived motivations and/or barriers to engaging in efforts to combat Albizia (Appendix). Our interview questions were developed basedon pilot interviews with conservation practitioners and community
leaders as well as mixed method studies on place attachment and environmental behavior (Ardoin, 2014). Interviews were transcribed verbatim. We analyzed interviews by coding sections of the interviews inwhich residents mentioned feeling connected with, or disconnected
from, the residents or natural areas in their community. After calculating the results from our regression analyses, we also developed emergent codes, related speciﬁcally to natural place attachment, which aredescribed in further detail in the appendix and qualitative results section of this paper.
2.3. Participant recruitment
We collected survey responses by recruiting residents in person at avariety of locations and community events in the Puna District. We used
purposive sampling (Teddlie and Yu, 2007),1 to allow comparison ofperceptions of place attachment among residents who were and who
were not highly involved in Albizia control. Our sampling involved
recruiting residents from events where we would ﬁnd residents who
were highly engaged in Albizia control and locations where we would
likely ﬁnd some residents who were not as engaged. Those locations included grocery stores, hardware stores, farmer's markets, and gas stations; the events included Albizia control workshops run by the Big
Island Invasive Species Committee, a project of the University of Hawaii,
and community association meetings. We also used purposive sampling
to recruit residents for follow-up interviews after they completed thesurvey; speciﬁcally, we selected interview participants from among
the population of residents who had and had not engaged in high levelsof Albizia behavior, as indicated on surveys. We approached individuals
between the hours of 7:30 am and 7:30 pm during 22 separate recruitment events between June 11 and July 25, 2015.
2.4. Surveyed population
We distributed paper surveys or links to the online Web-based survey to 1048 people and received 285 responses from the Puna area,
representing a response rate of 27%. This response rate is similar toother studies examining resident engagement in conservation behaviors on private lands (Aslan et al., 2009; Hu and Gill, 2015). These responses were completed by mail (72%), in person (8%), or online(19%). A small proportion (11%) of respondents reported receiving the1

Described in greater detail in Niemiec et al. (2016).

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survey from a friend, neighbor, or family member, while 83% reported
being recruited in person by a researcher. We conducted supplementaryinterviews with a total of 17 residents. Of the initiated surveys, 7 respondents were missing all or all but one of the measured independent
variables shown in Table 1. We removed those respondents from theanalysis, resulting in a total of 278 surveys for analysis.
Before we ran any analyses, we created the following independent
variables as an average of two factors (Table 1): We measured civic
place attachment as the average of the two questionnaire items: “I feel
connected to my community” and “I am attached to my community”(Cronbach's Alpha = 0.79); natural place attachment as the average ofthe two metrics: “The green areas here are very special to me” and “I
am attached to the green areas here” (Cronbach's Alpha = 0.83); risk
as the average of the risk posed by Albizia to both biodiversity and community safety (Cronbach's Alpha = 0.72); and perceived behavioral
control as the average of perceptions of lack of time and lack of moneyfor engaging (Cronbach's Alpha = 0.73).
Additionally, before we ran analyses, we examined the distributionof each of the ﬁve dependent variables. Nearly all (90%) of the 42% ofparticipants who had Albizia on their property had attempted to control
it at least once, so we removed this dependent variable from analysis
due to the small variation in responses. Over half (52%) of those surveyed had attempted to remove Albizia from somewhere in their community at least once before; 23% had removed Albizia three or moretimes. Fewer than half (31%) of the residents had attempted to convince
a neighbor to engage in Albizia control, and only 9% had tried to convince a neighbor three or more times. Thirty percent of residents reported having taught a neighbor how to engage in Albizia control. Residents
reported organizing efforts with their neighbors the least often; 76% ofresidents had never organized with their neighbors to combat Albizia,
and only 4% had organized three times or more.
Surveyed residents had slightly lower median income than the general population; the median income reported by respondents was between $10,000 and $30,000, compared to $33,993 overall in the Puna
District (US Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 2009–2013). Residents were slightly more educated and older than the general Puna population: 38% of surveyed respondents reported having abachelor's or graduate degree compared to 22% of Puna residents. The
median age of respondents was 54, compared to 41 in the Puna District
overall.
Residents generally reported high perceptions of natural and civic
place attachment: 56% of those surveyed averaged a “6” (moderately
agree) or higher for the civic place attachment scale, and 73% averaged
a “6” (moderately agree) or higher for the natural place attachment
scale. Only 4.6% of those surveyed slightly, moderately, or strongly
disagreed with the natural attachment statements, compared to 8.4%
for the civic attachment statements. Because of the high degreeof skewness for both natural (skewness = − 1.36) and civic(skewness = − 1.024) place attachment, we ran regression analyses
both with and without those variables transformed into a three-point
scale based on the 25th and 75th percentiles to reduce skewness. For
natural attachment, we assigned those respondents with an average of
b5.5 (or disagree to somewhat agree) a “1”, those with an average of
5.5–6.5 (moderately agree) a “2”, and those with an average of “7”(strongly agree) a “3”. For civic attachment, we assigned those respondents with an average of b5 (or disagree to neither agree nor disagree)a “1”, those with an average of 5–6.5 (slightly to moderately agree) a“2”, and those with an average of “7” (strongly agree) a “3”.
2.5. Analysis
To examine the extent to which civic and natural place attachment
related to various Albizia control behavior behaviors, we ﬁrst examinedcorrelations among all independent variables to check for collinearity.
We used Spearman's rank correlation coefﬁcients because we were examining correlations between ordinal, not continuous, variables. We

then ran a Poisson regression analysis predicting to each of the dependent variables, using all independent variables from Table 1. Poisson regression analysis was used because each of our dependent variables wasa count of the number of times a resident had engaged in a behavior,
with many (48–76%) of the respondents indicating that they had
never engaged in the behavior (Coxe et al., 2009). Coxe et al. (2009) discusses how Poisson regression analysis avoids the problems posed by
OLS regression when using count variables with a low mean, as is true
for our Albizia behavior metrics. Furthermore, the mean and variancewere similar for all of our dependent variables, which is a key assumption of Poisson regression (mean “removing Albizia” = 1.151, variance“removing Albizia” = 1.249; mean “teach neighbor” = 0.515, variance“teach neighbors” = 0.887; mean “convince neighbor” = 0.619, variance “convince neighbor” = 1.020; mean “organized efforts” = 0.396,
variance “organized efforts” = 0.803).
We ﬁrst ran our analysis with onlyfull cases (n = 187-190). To conduct a sensitivity analysis of the robustness of our results, we also repeated our analysis using multiple imputation techniques to accountfor missing data (Sterne et al., 2009). Multiple imputation has beenfound to result in less-biased results compared to listwise deletion andmean replacement and has been advocated for in recent behavioral science research (Boudet et al., 2014). Multiple imputation allows for uncertainty in missing data to be considered. It does this by creating
multiple copies of the dataset with missing values replaced as different
plausible values sampled from the distribution of the observed data
(Sterne et al., 2009). Generalized linear models can then be run by averaging together estimated associations from the various imputed
datasets. We implemented multiple imputation using the “mi” package
in R, using the default of 30 iterations and 4 chains (Gelman and Hill,2011). For multiple imputation, the number of missing values imputedin the 278 respondents ranged from 3 (for the “risk” variable) to 49 (for“income”). Our natural attachment variable included 17 missing values,
and the community attachment variable included 16 missing values.
3. Results
3.1. Correlation and Poisson regression analyses
In the correlation analysis, we found that civic place attachment was
positively correlated with natural place attachment (rs = 0.489), subjective norms (rs = 0.200), years on property (rs = 0.175), and knowledge (rs = 0.183). We found that natural place attachment was weakly
correlated with years on property (rs = 0.157) and property size (rs =0.144).
When we included risk perceptions, elements of the theory ofplanned behavior, and demographics in a Poisson regression model, in
addition to place attachment metrics, civic attachment emerged as a signiﬁcant (p = 0.020) and positive predictor of removing Albizia, but notof any behaviors that involved engaging with neighbors (Table 2). Natural attachment emerged as a signiﬁcant negative predictor (p = 0.035)
of removing Albizia in the community and organizing efforts withneighbors (p = 0.016; Table 2). Knowledge emerged as a signiﬁcantpredictor of all four behaviors, risk perceptions emerged as a signiﬁcantpredictor of all behaviors except teaching a neighbor, and subjective
norms emerged as a signiﬁcant predictor of teaching a neighbor, convincing a neighbor, and organizing efforts with neighbors (Table 2). Education was important for teaching and convincing a neighbor, whileproperty size was important for organizing efforts with neighbors(Table 2). The Pearson Goodness of Fit test for our Poisson regression
model of removing Albizia was insigniﬁcant (p = 0.096), indicatingthat the model was a good ﬁt to the data.
For the model of removing Albizia, addition of place attachment metrics improved the pseudo-R2 from 0.149 to 0.159. Transforming theplace attachment metrics to a three point scale to reduce skewness,and running the model with multiple imputation led to similar overall
key ﬁndings for the removing Albizia model, with slightly different

R.M. Niemiec et al. / Biological Conservation 209 (2017) 415–422

419

Table 2Estimated coefﬁcients and standard errors of various predictors inﬂuencing resident Albizia behavior using Poisson regression with complete cases. Bolded values indicate that that coefﬁcients are signiﬁcantly associated with the outcome variable.

Collective risk
Lack of behavioral control
Civic attachment
Natural attachment
Knowledge of control tactics
Herbicide attitude
Subjective norms
Years on property
Own property
Education
IncomeProperty size
N
Pseudo R2

Removed Albizia
in community

Convince a neighborto control Albizia

Teach a neighborhow to control Albizia

Organize efforts withneighbors to combat Albizia

0.250 (0.091)⁎⁎−0.042 (0.044)
0.163 (0.070)⁎−0.148 (0.070)⁎
0.242 (0.042)⁎⁎0.553 (0.156)⁎⁎
0.049 (0.064)
0.004 (0.097)
0.215 (0.131)
0.170 (0.054)⁎⁎0.285 (0.148)−0.054 (0.064)−0.104 (0.10)−0.034 (0.121)
0.464 (0.079)⁎⁎

0.768 (0.197)⁎⁎−0.057 (0.071)
0.129 (0.126)−0.312 (0.130)⁎0.395 (0.079)⁎⁎

0.045 (0.032)
0.067 (0.043)
0.004 (0.007)
0.192 (0.186)−0.107 (0.067)−0.051 (0.064)−0.013 (0.014)
189
0.159

−0.079 (0.045)
0.139 (0.066)*
0.006 (0.010)−0.456 (0.253)
0.212 (0.095)*
0.046 (0.091)
0.010 (0.010)
187
0.171

0.005 (0.046)
0.220 (0.070)⁎⁎0.019 (0.011)−0.371 (0.264)
0.237 (0.100)⁎−0.185 (0.104)
0.005 (0.011)
188
0.24

0.044 (0.051)
0.165 (0.079)⁎
0.013 (0.012)−0.145 (0.303)−0.023 (0.112)−0.096 (0.111)
0.028 (0.010)⁎⁎
190
0.218

⁎ p b 0.05.
⁎⁎ p b 0.01.

coefﬁcients (Table A1; Table A2). Natural place attachment was no longer a signiﬁcant predictor of organizing efforts with neighbors when theplace attachment metric was transformed to a three point scale or when
multiple imputation was used (Table A1; Table A2).
3.2. Qualitative evidence on the negative relationship between naturalplace attachment and control behavior
Given our surprising ﬁnding that natural place attachment was anegative predictor of removing Albizia, we further explored these results through our interviews (see Appendix for additional information
on analysis). The interview data suggested that some residents appeared to have become attached to the Albizia itself as part of the biophysical landscape; this attachment to Albizia as part of the “green
areas” of the landscape may have inﬂuenced a reluctance to engage inremoval efforts.
When we asked residents to describe what they liked about theirneighborhood, many residents discussed how they liked that theirneighborhood was “green,” “lush,” and felt like a “jungle.” Because
Albizia forms thick, green canopies, residents reported that Albizia contributed to this feeling of living in a lush, tropical area. Many residents
referred to one grove of Albizia trees in particular to which they had become attached; this grove of Albizia trees formed a tree tunnel over amain road through the Puna district, immediately next to the local
Lava Tree State Monument. Residents described the tree tunnel as“beautiful” and “magical,” noting that it was an iconic location in thePuna District. One resident, when discussing that particular grove of
Albizia trees, said:“Yeah and that was a real pretty drive and stuff as long as you
weren't aware that those were 20 year old Albizia trees. You thought
it was an ancient rain forest.”
Several residents spoke about how strong attachments to this particular grove of Albizia trees actually led to behavior against controlling
Albizia before the 2014 tropical storm in which Albizia caused widespread damage:“That wonderful tree tunnel that was…you know, the one that took
out the powerlines, they tried to cut some of those down in the past,
I guess, but…oh no, ‘no save the Albizia.’ On Oahu, same thing, theyheld Albizia over them; people don't take out those beautiful trees.”
While some residents' attachments to Albizia appeared to be related
to their expectations for a green and lush neighborhood, other residents

discussed how they felt attached to Albizia because it had always been
there or because it served a functional purpose. One resident discussed
how he was upset when he heard that many of the Albizia in Lava Tree
Park had fallen over in the storm because they had always been there“since he was a kid.” Others discussed how Albizia provide shade during
warm days, improve soil quality by ﬁxing nitrogen, and provide certain
ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration.
Yet, despite these emotional connections as well as the potential
beneﬁts provided by the tree, it was clear that many of the interviewees
were weighing the potential societal risks posed by Albizia with theiremotional connections to the species. For some, the damage caused by
Albizia from the 2014 Tropical Storm Iselle appeared to enhance theirsupport of control efforts, despite their emotional attachments. As one
resident said:“I was saddened when I heard the tree tunnel come down… but,then again, we lost power… they're beautiful but dangerous.”
Some residents dealt with this conﬂict between their emotional connections to and their knowledge of the negative impacts of Albizia bytaking the stance that Albizia should only be managed in areas where
it poses a direct threat to human safety. Several residents discussed
the need to control the trees along roadsides and near buildings
where Albizia could pose harm but leave the trees in open ﬁelds and forests where the trees did not pose a direct socio-economic threat. One
resident said: “They are beautiful trees if they are in the right place.”
Therefore, stemming in part from these responses, one explanation for
the negative relationship between natural attachment and removal behavior is that residents may have become attached to Albizia being apart of the biophysical landscape in their community and, as such,may have been reluctant to remove it unless the tree posed a direct
threat to human safety.

4. Discussion
Within our data set, we found a positive association between civic
attachment and residents' invasive species removal behavior in thecommunity; by contrast, we found a negative association between natural attachment and residents' invasive species removal behavior. The
positive relationship between civic attachment and removal behavior
supports previous ﬁndings in the literature on resident engagement inbehaviors to reduce natural hazards. This literature has found that
civic attachment is positively predictive of resident engagement in ﬁrehazard mitigation activities in their community (Kyle et al., 2010).

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R.M. Niemiec et al. / Biological Conservation 209 (2017) 415–422

Residents with enhanced civic attachment may be more likely to attend
events in which they receive information about a hazard and may be
more likely to feel empowered to make a difference in their community(Brenkert-Smith, 2007).
While our ﬁndings support previous hazards research, our results
are contrary to those of Scannell and Gifford (2010b), who found thatnatural, but not civic, place attachment positively predicted a range ofgeneral pro-environmental behaviors when controlling for the town,
length of residence, gender, education, and age. This difference in ﬁndings may be due to the types of behaviors examined in our study andother hazards research, compared with Scannell and Gifford's study.
Albizia, like ﬁre and other natural hazards, poses a signiﬁcant, direct,
and immediate threat to residents' well-being in the community, as
was evidenced by the damage caused by Tropical Storm Iselle.
Scannell and Gifford (2010b), on the other hand, examined more general environmental behaviors, such as carpooling and recycling, whichhave a less-obvious impact on the safety and well-being of community
residents. It is, therefore, possible that civic attachment may only be astrong motivator for behaviors that reduce signiﬁcant threats to neighborhood safety and well-being; civic attachment may not be as important for predicting resident engagement in control of invasive or
exotic species with less-obvious social impacts than Albizia. Future studies may examine how the relative importance of natural compared to
civic place attachment may vary based upon threats posed by different
invasive species in other systems.
The ﬁnding that civic attachment was predictive of removal of invasive species, but not predictive of the behaviors that involved engaging
with neighbors, is particularly interesting, given that previous literature
has suggested that civic attachment may enhance pro-social behavior
via improved relationships between neighbors (Chavis andWandersman, 1990). Residents with high civic attachment may not be
engaging in Albizia behavior that involved convincing or teaching theirneighbors due to their desire to maintain positive neighborhood relations; in fact, several studies have suggested that, in many rural areas,strong social norms exist against interfering with neighbors' land-management decisions, including invasive species control (Graham, 2013;
Ravnborg and Westermann, 2002). Although residents with strong
civic attachments may have felt empowered to protect their neighborhood though invasive species control behavior, they may have been reluctant to sour their neighboring relationships by breaking social norms
of approaching neighbors about land-management decisions.
Natural attachment emerged as a negative predictor of Albizia control behavior, and our qualitative evidence from interviews with residents provided insight into a potential explanation: residents may
have become attached to the Albizia itself as part of the biophysical landscape. It is possible that the negative relationship between natural attachment and Albizia removal could reﬂect a certain group of residents
whose attachments to Albizia as part of the local green spaces are holding them back from engaging in Albizia control behavior in their community. If this was indeed the case, then simple measures of naturalattachment, which refer to the “green” areas in one's community, may
not be sufﬁcient for understanding the complex role of natural attachment in invasive species management and biodiversity conservation
decisions. Rather, future studies might consider dividing natural attachment into separate measures of attachment to native, exotic, invasive
species or other aesthetic aspects of the landscape that people may
come to value differently.
Furthermore, our ﬁndings suggest a need to examine when, and inwhat contexts, people come to develop attachments to invasive and exotic species. Qualitative evidence from our study indicates that people's
attachments to the Albizia may have been inﬂuenced by how long thetree had been in their area, the extent to which they believed the tree
served a functional purpose, and the extent to which the invader ﬁtwithin their pre-conceived expectations for their neighborhood. Futurestudies could examine these various potential pathways as inﬂuencing
whether residents form an attachment to an exotic or invasive species.

4.1. Study limitations
While this study provides one of the ﬁrst investigations into the roleof place attachment in invasive species control behavior, it has several
limitations. First, we examined only two dimensions of place attachment: natural and civic attachment. Studies suggest that place attachment can be further divided into place identity, place dependence,social bonding (including family and friend bonding), and nature bonding (Raymond et al., 2010). A more nuanced investigation into how
these different forms of attachment may relate to various forms of invasive species control behavior is needed. Second, our study relied on selfreported behavior; future studies might examine links between residents' perceptions and ecological data on invasive species populations
to obtain more accurate measures of the impacts of place attachment
on control behavior and conservation outcomes over time.
Third, the prevalence of behaviors and attitudes in our survey population may not be generalizable to the greater Puna population due toour use of purposive sampling and in-person recruitment. These sampling techniques may have favored residents who had strong views
about Albizia control, were involved in their community, and were comfortable being approached by a stranger in a public location. The
strength of this approach, however, was that it allowed us to obtain sufﬁcient numbers of engaged and nonengaged residents, facilitating comparisons of place attachment between these populations. In addition,
there are likely cultural, geographic, and social dimensions to the responses of the neighbors in our sample which might limit the generalizability of our ﬁndings to other communities; for example, our ﬁndings
may not apply where there are different cultural views and norms associated with property rights or working with neighbors.
Finally, we only measured Albizia behavior and attachment at one
spatial scale, the subdivision community. Research suggests that people
may take action at the scale at which they feel most connected (Ardoin,2014); for example, Anton and Lawrence (2015) found that attachment
to homes, but not to the local area, predicted residents' engagement inwildlife preparedness behavior on their property. Because invasive species control behavior can take place at many scales, such as the property,
community or regional scale, it is possible that different scales of attachment may help motivate different forms of invasive species control
behavior.
4.2. Conservation implications
Our ﬁndings have implications for practitioners seeking to enhancebiodiversity conservation and motivate invasive species control on private lands. First, our ﬁndings regarding the negative relationship between natural place attachment and removal behavior suggest that
outreach efforts focused on motivating resident engagement in invasive
species removal and restoration of native biodiversity may not be effective if people have developed emotional connections to the exotic or invasive species in their community. Rather, people may see the efforts ofconservation agencies to remove exotic or invasive species, especially inareas where those species do not pose a direct threat to human safety
and well-being, as threatening aspects of place to which they feel connected. Consequently, such actions may reduce trust in and support
for conservation agencies. When those connections have formed to invasive or exotic species, conservation agencies may, therefore, beneﬁt
from acknowledging people's emotional connections to the invasive
species and carefully developing participatory processes for engaging
residents in decision-making on where, why, and to what extent the
species need to be managed. Such participatory processes may enhance
residents' trust in conservation agencies (Munton, 2003), enabling residents to consider various management options despite emotional connections to the detrimental species.
Our ﬁndings also suggest that, to enhance biodiversity and combat
invasive species on private lands, conservation agencies may beneﬁt
from taking action to prevent such connections to exotic or invasive

R.M. Niemiec et al. / Biological Conservation 209 (2017) 415–422

species from forming in the ﬁrst place. In our study, many of the people
with emotional connections to Albizia mentioned that the tree had been
widespread in their community since they moved there; thus, the tree
was symbolic of their community. It is possible, then, that the longer
an invader persists in an area, the more likely that people will become
attached to it, especially if the invader's socio-economic impacts are
not obvious. These ﬁndings emphasize the importance of initiating outreach and control efforts before an invasive species becomes widespread, facilitating attachments. Furthermore, if an invader is alreadywidespread, then our ﬁndings emphasize the importance of targeting
speciﬁc outreach and education for residents who have moved to thearea after the invader has become widespread and, as such, they do
not have a conception of and connection to the biophysical landscape
before the invader arrived. Conservation agencies could help facilitate
the formation of community groups that provide new residents with information on the exotic and invasive species in their neighborhood. In
this way, new residents may immediately come to see the species as athreat to, rather than a part of, the valued aspects of their place.
Our ﬁnding that civic place attachment is a positive predictor of control efforts suggests that conservation agencies may beneﬁt from fostering social connections among residents. Enhanced social connections
may empower residents to engage in invasive species control efforts
to improve their community, particularly when invasive species havenegative socio-economic, as well ecological, impacts. Conservation
agencies might consider holding outreach and educational events incommunity centers, where neighbors are likely to meet one another,and encourage discussion among residents, possibly over meals orother events. Furthermore, conservation agencies could organize workdays and action support groups to enhance social bonding and social
support among residents engaging in invasive species and biodiversity
conservation behaviors in their community (Staats et al., 2004).
While such efforts to enhance civic attachment may increase resident engagement in removal behavior in their community, our ﬁndings
suggest that such social bonding may not necessarily lead to enhanced
resident engagement in approaching other neighbors about their biodiversity conservation decisions. This lack of relationship between civic
attachment and behavior that involves engaging with neighbors may
be a result of residents' fear of souring their relationships with theirneighbors. Interventions focused on enhancing social connections may
therefore have to be coupled with interventions that change norms
around approaching neighbors about land management decisions.
Ravnborg and Westermann (2002), for example, discuss how, in orderto change norms around approaching neighbors, one community
group in southwestern Columbia ran community meetings in which
they provided biological explanations for the need for farmers to coordinate their control efforts of the crop-damaging leaf-cutter ants (Attacephalotes). The group also started a competition in which residents received points for convincing a neighbor to undertake control efforts; together, such activities provided residents with justiﬁcation for
approaching neighbors about land-management decisions.
In conclusion, we suggest that residents' emotional connections toboth natural and civic aspects of place are important for understanding
resident engagement in invasive species control efforts. We suggest thatbiodiversity conservation organizations may beneﬁt from carefully considering the ways in which their messages and outreach efforts may interact with emotional connections to exotic and invasive species andvarious dimensions of place attachment. Invasive species control programs may be most effective in achieving conservation objectives if design takes into account the range of connections that people may havewith their places where species invade.
Acknowledgements
We thank the Big Island Invasive Species Committee, which helped
introduce us to Albizia control issues in Puna and obtain survey data.
We thank Puna residents who completed interviews or surveys. We

421

thank Greg Asner, Flint Hughes, the University of Hawaii at Hilo Paciﬁc
Internship Programs for Exploring Science, Ann Majchrzak, and Peter
Vitousek for their support, Andrew Mertens for his statistical help, andLauren Oakes as well as anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. This work was funded by an NSF Graduate
Research Fellowship (DGE-114747) to the ﬁrst author.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at http://dx.
doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2017.02.036.

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