People-environment interaction issues include mitigation of the human environmental footprint, and human adaptation to increasing natural hazard phenomena. Regarding the second issue, a meta-analysis by van Valkengoed and Steg (2019a, 2019b) highlights social-psychological variables capable of improving human adaptation to environmental changes: among the variables, place attachment results to be studied only a few times. Bonaiuto et al's (2016) review looks at common patterns in the sparse literature on place attachment and natural hazard risk: overall, home place attachment increases risk perception and risk knowledge, while its effect on risk coping depends on risk level and on coping behaviour (evacuation behaviour is problematic as requires individuals to leave their home to go to affectively non-significant places). On parallel, affective relations with evacuation places for environmental hazards has been rarely investigated (Scannell et al., 2016; Scannell et al., 2017), and place attachment manipulation has almost never been investigated (Scannell, Gifford, 2016). Considering these two literature gaps and the increasing relevance such a topic acquired in the very last five years (as shown by all the above reported references), the aim is twofold: trying two procedures to manipulate place attachment; and testing if a stronger Evacuation site Place Attachment (EPA) increases risk perception and risk coping. Study 1 is a correlational study on place attachment functions in a real risk context. Study 2 creates an explicit place attachment function manipulation technique, with measures for manipulation check, risk perception and risk coping. Study 3 employs an AAT (Approach Avoidance Task) procedure in order to manipulate EPA, with manipulation check, risk perception and risk coping measures. Expected result is a positive relationship between evacuation site place attachment, presence of features related to place attachment functions, and coping behaviours.
